GHOST BOX: SIX NOVELS

The Red Church, Drummer Boy, Burial to Follow,

Speed Dating with the Dead, The Dead Love Longer, & Creative Spirit

BY SCOTT NICHOLSON

Copyright ©2011 Scott Nicholson

Published by Haunted Computer Books

www.hauntedcomputer.com/

Scott’s Amazon Author Central page

Table of Contents

A boy and a sheriff must solve the mystery of a haunted Appalachian church after a sinister preacher returns to town.

THE RED CHURCH

By Scott Nicholson

Copyright ©2002 Scott Nicholson

Scott’s Amazon Author Central page

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

The world never ends the way you believe it will, Ronnie Day thought.

There were the tried-and-true favorites, like nuclear holocaust and doomsday asteroid collisions and killer viruses and Preacher Staymore’s all-time classic, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. But the end really wasn’t such a huge, organized affair after all. The end was right up close and personal, different for each person, a kick in the rear and a joy-buzzer handshake from the Reaper himself.

But that was the Big End. First you had to twist your way through a thousand turning points and die a little each time. One of life’s lessons, learned as the by-product of thirteen years as the son of Linda and David Day and one semester sitting in class with Melanie Ward. Tough noogies, wasn’t it?

Ronnie walked quickly, staring straight ahead. Another day in the idiot factory at good old Barkersville Elementary was over. Had all evening to look forward to, and a good long walk between him and home. Nothing but his feet and the smell of damp leaves, fresh grass, and the wet mud of the riverbanks. A nice plate of spring sunshine high overhead.

And he could start slowing down in a minute, delaying his arrival into the hell that home had been lately, because soon he would be around the curve and past the thing on the hill to his right, the thing he didn’t want to think about, the thing he couldn’t help thinking about, because he had to walk past it twice a day.

Why couldn’t he be like the other kids? Their parents picked them up in shiny new Mazdas and Nissans and took them to the mall in Barkersville and dropped them off at soccer practice and then drove them right to the front door of their houses. So all they had to do was step in and stuff their faces with microwave dinners and go to their rooms and waste their brains on TV or Nintendo all night. They didn’t have to be scared.

Well, it could be worse. He had a brain, but it wasn’t something worth bragging about. His “overactive imagination” got him in trouble at school, but it was also kind of nice when other kids, especially Melanie, asked him for help in English.

So he’d take having a brain any day, even if he did suffer what the school counselor called “negative thoughts.” At least he had thoughts. Unlike his little dorkwad of a brother back there, who didn’t have sense enough to know that this stretch of road was no place to be messing around.

“Hey, Ronnie.” His brother was calling him, it sounded like from the top of the hill. The dorkwad hadn’t stopped, had he?

“Come on.” Ronnie didn’t turn around.

“Looky here.”

“Come on, or I’ll bust you upside the head.”

“No, really, Ronnie. I see something.”

Ronnie sighed and stopped walking, then slung his book bag farther up on his shoulder. He was at least eighty feet ahead of his little brother. Tim had been doing his typical nine-year-old’s dawdling, stopping occasionally to tie his sneaker strings or look in the ditch water for tadpoles or throw rocks at the river that ran below the road.

Ronnie turned—to your left, he told himself, so you don’t see it—and looked back along the sweep of gravel at the hill that was almost lost among the green bulk of mountains. He could think of a hundred reasons not to walk all the way back to see what Tim wanted him to see. For one thing, Tim was at the top of the hill, which meant Ronnie would have to hike up the steep grade again. The walk home from the bus stop was nearly a mile and a half already. Why make it longer?

Plus there were at least ninety-nine other reasons—

like the red church

—not to give a flying fig what Tim was sticking his nose into now. Dad was supposed to stop by today to pick up some more stuff, and Ronnie didn’t want to miss him. Maybe they’d get to talk for a minute, man-to-man. If Tim didn’t hurry, Dad and Mom might have another argument first and Dad would leave like he had last week, stomping the gas pedal of his rusty Ford so the wheels threw chunks of gravel and broke a window. So that was another reason not to go back to see whatever had gotten Tim so worked up.

Tim jumped up and down, the rolled cuffs of his blue jeans sagging around his sneakers. He motioned with his thin arm, his glasses flashing in the mid-afternoon sun. “C’mon, Ronnie,” he shouted.

“Dingle-dork,” Ronnie muttered to himself, then started backtracking up the grade. He kept his eyes on the gravel the way he always did when he was near the church. The sun made little sparkles in the rocks, and with a little imagination, the roadbed could turn into a big galaxy with lots of stars and planets, and if he didn’t look to his left he wouldn’t have to see the red church.

Why should he be afraid of some dumb old church? A church was a church. It was like your heart. Once Jesus came in, He was supposed to stay there. But sometimes you did bad things that drove Him away.

Ronnie peeked at the church just to prove that he didn’t care about it one way or another. There. Nothing but wood and nails.

But he’d hardly glanced at it. He’d really seen only a little piece of the church’s mossy gray roof, because of all the trees that lined the road- big old oaks and a gnarled apple tree and a crooked dogwood that would have been great for climbing except if you got to the top, you’d be right at eye level with the steeple and the belfry.

Stupid trees, he thought. All happy because it’s May and their leaves are waving in the wind and, if they were people, I bet they’d be wearing idiotic smiles just like the one that’s probably splitting up Tim’s face right now. Because, just like little bro, the trees are too doggoned dumb to be scared.

Ronnie slowed down a little. Tim had walked into the shade of the maple. Into the jungle of weeds that formed a natural fence along the road. And maybe to the edge of the graveyard.

Ronnie swallowed hard. He’d just started developing an Adam’s apple, and he could feel the knot pogo in his throat. He stopped walking. He’d thought of reason number hundred and one not to go over to the churchyard. Because—and this was the best reason of all, one that made Ronnie almost giddy with relief—he was the older brother. Tim had to listen to him. If he gave in to the little mucous midget even once, he would be asking for a lifetime of “Ronnie, do this” and “Ronnie, do that.” He got enough of that kind of treatment from Mom.

“Hurry up,” Tim called from the weeds. Ronnie couldn’t see Tim’s face. That wasn’t all bad. Tim had buck teeth and his blond hair stuck out like straw and his eyes were a little buggy. Good thing he was in the fourth grade instead of the eighth grade. Because in the eighth grade, you had to impress girls like Melanie Ward, who would laugh in your face one day and sit in the desk behind you the next, until you were so torn up that you didn’t even care about things like whatever mess your dorkwad brother was getting into at the moment. “Get out of there, you idiot. You know you’re not supposed to go into the churchyard.”

The leaves rustled where Tim had disappeared into the underbrush. He’d left his book bag lying in the grass at the base of a tree. His squeaky voice came from beyond the tangle of saplings and laurel. “I found something.”

“Get out of there right this minute.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“But look what I found.”

Ronnie came closer. He had to admit, he was a little bit curious, even though he was starting to get mad. Not to mention scared. Because through the gaps in the trees, he could see the graveyard.

A slope of thick, evenly cut grass broken up by white and gray slabs. Tombstones. At least forty dead people, just waiting to rise up and-

Those are just stories. You don’t actually believe that stuff, do you? Who cares what Whizzer Buchanan says? If he were so smart, he wouldn’t be flunking three classes.

“We’re going to miss Dad,” Ronnie called. His voice trembled slightly. He hoped Tim hadn’t noticed.

“Just a minute.”

“I ain’t got a minute.”

“You chicken or something?”

That did it. Ronnie balled up his fists and hurried to the spot where Tim had entered the churchyard. He set his book bag beside Tim’s and stepped among the crushed weeds. Furry ropes of poison sumac veined across the ground. Red-stemmed briars bent under the snowy weight of blackberry blossoms. And Ronnie would bet a Spiderman comic that snakes slithered in that high grass along the ditch.

“Where are you?” Ronnie called into the bushes.

“Over here.”

He was in the graveyard, the stupid little jerk. How many times had Dad told them to stay out of the graveyard?

Not that Ronnie needed reminding. But that was Tim for you. Tell him to not to touch a hot stove eye and you could smell the sizzling flesh of his fingers before you even finished your sentence.

Ronnie stooped to about Tim’s height—twerp’s-eye view—and saw the graveyard through the path that Tim had stomped. Tim was kneeling beside an old marble tombstone, looking down. He picked something up and it flashed in the sun. A bottle.

Ronnie looked past his little brother to the uneven rows of markers. Some were cracked and chipped, all of them worn around the edges. Old graves. Old dead people. So long dead that they were probably too rotten to lift themselves out of the soil and walk into the red church.

No, it wasn’t a church anymore, just an old building that Lester Matheson used for storing hay. Hadn’t been a church for about twenty years. Like Lester had said, pausing to let a stream of brown juice arc to the ground, then wiping his lips with the scarred stump of his thumb, “It’s people what makes a church. Without people, and what-and-all they believe, it ain’t nothing but a fancy mouse motel.”

Yeah. Fancy mouse motel. Nothing scary about that, is there?

It was just like the First Baptist Church, if you really thought about it. Except the Baptist church was bigger. And the only time the Baptist church was scary was when Preacher Staymore said Ronnie needed saving or else Jesus Christ would send him to burn in hell forever.

Ronnie scrambled through the bushes. A briar snagged his X-Files T-shirt, the one that Melanie thought was so cool. He backed up and pulled himself free, cursing as a thorn pierced his finger. A drop of crimson welled up and he started to wipe it on his shirt, then licked it away instead.

Tim put the bottle down and picked up something else. A magazine. Its pages fluttered in the breeze. Ronnie stepped clear of the brush and stood up.

So he was in the graveyard. No big deal. And if he kept his eyes straight ahead, he wouldn’t even have to see the fancy mouse motel. But then he forgot all about trying not to be scared, because of what Tim had in his hands.

As Ronnie came beside him, Tim snapped the magazine closed. But not before Ronnie had gotten a good look at the pale flesh spread along the pages. Timmy’s cheeks turned pink. He had found a Playboy.

“Give me that,” Ronnie said.

Tim faced his brother and put the magazine behind his back. “I—I’m the one who found it.”

“Yeah, and you don’t even know what it is, do you?”

Tim stared at the ground. “A naked-woman book.”

Ronnie started to laugh, but it choked off as he looked around the graveyard. “Where did you learn about girlie magazines?”

“Whizzer. He showed one to us behind the gym during recess.”

“Probably charged you a dollar a peek.”

“No, just a quarter.”

“Give it here, or I’ll tell Mom.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Will, too.”

“What are you going to tell her? That I found a naked-woman book and wouldn’t let you see it?”

Ronnie grimaced. Score one for dingle-dork. He thought about jumping Tim and taking the magazine by force, but there was no need to hurry. Tricking him out of it would be a lot more fun. But he didn’t want to stand around in the creepy graveyard and negotiate.

He looked at the other stuff scattered on the grass around the tombstone. The bottle had a square base and a black screw top. A few inches of golden-brown liquid were lying in the bottom. He knew it was liquor because of the turkey on the label. It was the kind that Aunt Donna drank. But Ronnie didn’t want to think about Aunt Donna almost as much as he didn’t want to think about being scared.

A green baseball cap lay upside down beside the tombstone. The sweatband was stained a dark gray, and the bill was so severely cupped that it came to a frayed point. Only one person rolled up their cap bill that way. Ronnie nudged the cap over with his foot. A John Deere cap. That cinched it.

“It’s Boonie Houck’s,” Ronnie said. But Boonie never went anywhere without his cap. Kept it pulled down to the bushy line of his single eyebrow, his eyes gleaming under the shade of the bill like wet ball bearings. He probably even showered and slept with the cap plastered to the top of his wide head.

A crumpled potato chip bag quivered beside the cap, fluttering in the breeze. It was held in place by an unopened can of Coca-Cola. The blind eye of a flashlight peeked out from under the edge of the chip bag.

Ronnie bent down and saw a flash of silver. Money. He picked up two dimes and a dull nickel. A couple of pennies were in the grass, but he left them. He straightened up.

“I’ll give you twenty-five cents for the magazine,” he said.

Tim backed away with his hands still behind him. He moved into the shadow of a crude stone monument, made of two pillars holding up a crosspiece. On the crosspiece was a weathered planter. A brittle sheaf of brown tulips stabbed up from the potting soil.

Tulips. So somebody had minded the graveyard at least once since winter. Probably Lester. Lester owned the property and kept the grass trimmed, but did that mean the tobacco-chewing farmer had to pay respects to those buried here? Did the dead folks come with the property deed?

But Ronnie forgot all that, because he accidentally looked over Tim’s shoulder. The red church was framed up perfectly by the stone pillars.

No, NOT accidentally. You WANTED to see it. Your eyes have been crawling right toward it the whole time you’ve been in the graveyard.

The church sat on a broad stack of creek stones that were bleached yellow and white by eons of running water. A few of the stones had tumbled away, revealing gaps of darkness beneath the structure. The church looked a little wobbly, as if a strong wind might send it roof-over-joist down the hill.

The creepy tree stood tall and gangly by the door. Ronnie didn’t believe Whizzer’s story about the tree. But if even half of it were true-

“A quarter? I can take it to school and make five bucks,” Tim said.

The magazine. Ronnie didn’t care about the magazine anymore. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“You’re going to take it from me, ain’t you?”

“No. Dad’s supposed to be coming over, that’s all. I don’t want to miss him.”

Tim suddenly took another step backward, his eyes wide.

Ronnie pointed, trying to warn him about the monument. Tim spun and bumped into one of the pillars, shaking the crosspiece. The concrete planter tipped over, sending a shower of dry black dirt onto Tim’s head. The planter rolled toward the edge of the crosspiece.

“Look out,” Ronnie yelled.

Tim pushed himself away from the pillar, but the entire monument toppled as if in slow motion. The heavy crosspiece was going to squash Tim’s head like a rotten watermelon.

Ronnie’s limbs unlocked and he leaped for Tim. Something caught his foot and he tripped, falling on his stomach. The air rushed from his lungs with a whoosh, and the smell of cut grass crowded his nostrils. He tasted blood, and his tongue found the gash on the inside of his lip just as he rediscovered how to breathe.

A dull cracking noise echoed across the graveyard. Ronnie tilted his neck up just in time to see the planter bust open on the monument’s base. Tim gave a squeak of surprise as dingy chunks of concrete rained across his chest. The pillars fell in opposite directions, the one on Tim’s side catching on the ledge just above his head. The crosspiece twirled like a slow helicopter blade and came to rest on the pillar above Tim’s legs.

Ronnie tried to crawl to Tim, but his shoe was still snagged. “You okay?”

Tim was crying. At least that meant he was still alive.

Ronnie kicked his foot. He looked back to his shoe—

NO NO NO

—red raw burger hand.

An arm had reached around the tombstone, a bloody arm, the knotty fingers forming a talon around his sneaker. The wet, gleaming bone of one knuckle hooked the laces.

DEADGHOSTDEADGHOST

He forgot that he’d learned how to breathe. He kicked at the hand, spun over on his rear, and tried to crab-crawl away. The hand wouldn’t let go. Tears stung his eyes as he stomped his other foot against the ragged grasping thing.

“Help me,” Ronnie yelled, at the same time that Tim moaned his own plea for help.

Whizzer’s words careened across Ronnie’s mind, joining the jumble of broken thoughts: They trap ya, then they get ya.

“Ronnie,” came Tim’s weak whine.

Ronnie wriggled like a speared eel, forcing his eyes along the slick wrist to the arm that was swathed in ragged flannel.

Flannel?

His skewed carousel of thoughts ground to a halt.

Why would a deadghost thing be wearing flannel?

The arm was attached to a bulk of something behind the tombstone.

The hand clutched tightly at nothing but air, then quivered and relaxed. Ronnie scrambled away as the fingers uncurled. Blood pooled in the shallow cup of the palm.

Ronnie reached Tim and began removing the chunks of concrete from his little brother’s stomach. “You okay?”

Tim nodded, charcoal streaks of mud on his face where his tears had rolled through the sprinkling of potting soil. One cheek had a red scrape across it, but otherwise he looked unharmed. Ronnie kept looking back to the mangled arm and whatever was behind the tombstone. The hand was still, the sun drying the blood on the clotted palm. A shiny fly landed and drank.

Ronnie dragged Tim free of the toppled concrete. They both stood, Tim wiping the powdery grit from the front of his shirt. “Mom’s going to kill me. . . .” he began, then saw the arm. “What in heck . . .?”

Ronnie stepped toward the tombstone, his heart hammering in his ears.

Over his pulse, he could hear Whizzer: They got livers for eyes.

Ronnie veered toward the edge of the graveyard, Tim close behind.

“When I say run. . .” Ronnie whispered, his throat thick.

“L-looky there,” Tim said.

Dorkwad didn’t have enough brains to be scared. But Ronnie looked. He couldn’t help it.

The body was crowded against the tombstone, the flannel shirt shredded, showing scoured flesh. The head was pressed against the white marble, the neck arched at a crazy angle. A thread of blood trailed from the matted beard to the ground.

“Boonie,” Ronnie said, his voice barely as loud as the wind in the oak leaves.

There was a path trampled in the grass, coming from the underbrush that girded the graveyard. Boonie must have crawled out of the weeds. And whatever had done that to him might still be in the stand of trees. Ronnie flicked his eyes from Boonie to the church. Had something fluttered in the belfry?

A bird, a BIRD, you idiot.

Not the thing that Whizzer said lived in the red church.

Not the thing that trapped you and then got you, not the thing that had wings and claws and livers for eyes, not the thing that had made a mess of Boonie Houck’s face.

And then Ronnie was running, tearing through the undergrowth, barely aware of the briars grabbing at his face and arms, of the scrub locust that pierced his skin, of the tree branches that raked at his eyes. He heard Tim behind him—at least he hoped it was Tim, but he wasn’t about to turn around and check, because now he was on the gravel road, his legs were pumping in the rhythm of fear—NOT-the-thing, NOT-the-thing, NOT-the-thing—and he didn’t pause to breathe, even as he passed Lester Matheson, who was on his tractor in the middle of a hayfield, even as he passed the Potter farm, even when geezery Zeb Potter hollered out Ronnie’s name from his shaded front porch, even as Zeb’s hound cut loose with an uneven bray, even as Ronnie jumped the barbed wire that marked off the boundary of the Day property, even as the rusty tin roof of home came into view, even as he saw Dad’s Ranger in the driveway, even as he tripped over the footbridge and saw the sharp, glistening rocks of the creek bed below, and as he fell he realized he’d hit another turning point, found yet another way for the world to end, but at least this end wasn’t as bad as whatever had shown Boonie Houck the exit door from everywhere.

CHAPTER TWO

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Like you’d understand? You didn’t understand the first time.” Linda Day balled her hands into fists. She could smell beer on David’s breath.

Drunk at three o’clock, she thought. Doesn’t he know that the body is sacred? If only he were more like Archer.

David closed in on her. She backed against the kitchen table. He’d never hit her in their fifteen years of marriage. But his face had never set in such a mix of hurt and anger before, either.

He waved the papers in the air, his thin lips crawling into a sneer. “A lie. All those years . . .”

God, he wasn’t going to CRY, was he? Mr. Ain’t-Nothing-It’ll-Heal that time he flipped the tractor and had his forearm bone poking through his denim jacket?

She looked into his wet brown eyes. Who was he? What did she really know about him? Sure, they’d gone to high school together, were both in the Future Farmers of America, lost it together one fumbling Friday night in the pines above the Pickett High football field, never really dated anybody else, got married like everybody expected and—after that little California interlude—settled down on the Gregg family farm after cancer had chewed her father’s lungs away.

More than half of their lives. Not nearly enough time to figure David out.

“Don’t start that,” she said.

“I ain’t the one who started it. You said when we got married that all that foolishness was over and done with.”

“I thought it was.”

“Thought it was?” he mocked. His face twisted.

“I was going to tell you.”

“When? After you’d sneaked another hundred lies past me?”

Linda looked away, anywhere but at his burning, red-rimmed eyes. The stick margarine on the counter was losing its sharp edges in the heat. Two black flies were playing hopscotch on the kitchen window screen. The roses that made a pattern on the yellowed wallpaper looked as if they needed watering. “It’s not like that.”

“Sure, it ain’t.” A mist of Pabst Blue Ribbon came out with his words. “When a man’s wife gets love letters from another man, why, that’s nothing to worry about, is it?”

“So you read them.”

“Course I read them.” He stepped closer, looming over her, six-three and shoulders broadened by lifting ten thousand bales of hay.

“Then maybe you noticed that the word ‘love’ isn’t in a single one of them.”

He stopped in his tracks. Linda thought about retreating to the hall entrance, but she was trying hard not to show fear. Archer said fear was for the meek, them that huddled at the feet of Christ.

David’s brow lowered. “There’s lots of different kinds of love.”

She studied his face. Twice-broken nose. A white scar in one corner of his mouth. A strong chin, the kind you could forge steel with. Skin browned by years of working in the sun. Had she ever really loved the man who wore that face?

“There’s only one kind of love,” she said. “The kind we had.”

“The kind you and Archer had.”

“David, please listen.”

He reached out. She held her breath and leaned away. But he didn’t touch her, only swept the can of Maxwell House from the table behind her. It bounced off the cabinet under the sink and the lid flew off, sending a shower of brown granules onto the vinyl floor. The rich smell of the coffee drowned out David’s sweet-sour breath.

His teeth were showing. Broad and blunt. Pressed together so tightly that his jaw trembled.

Linda scooted along the edge of the table to her right. There was a knife on the counter, a skin of dried cheese dulling the flash of the blade. If she had to-

But David turned away, slumped, his shoulders quivering.

David never cried, at least not in front of her. But since he’d found the letters, he was doing a lot of things he’d never done before. Like drinking heavily. Like leaving her.

“Hon—” She caught herself. “David?”

His work boots drummed the floor as he strode away. He paused at the back door and turned, looking down at the letters in his hand. Tears had shimmied down one side of his face, but his voice was quiet, resigned. “Archer McFall. Pretty funny. Who’d you put up to doing it?”

“Doing what?”

“We both know it ain’t Archer, so quit lying. Is it one of your buddies from California?”

Linda shook her head. He doesn’t understand. And I had hopes that he would join us. “No, it’s nobody.”

“Nobody? Nobody who’s been writing you letters while dumb-and-happy David Day runs a hammer and eats sawdust for ten hours a day, only he don’t mind because he’s got a wonderful family waiting at home each night waiting to shower him with love and bullshit?”

His bulk filled the door frame, blocking her view of the barn and the pasture beyond. The room darkened as a cloud passed over the sun. “I told you, it’s not the way you think,” she said.

“Sure. Archer McFall just happened to walk back into your life at the exact same time that you started to get the letters. That’s a mighty big coincidence.”

“This isn’t about Archer or the Temple. It’s about us.”

He flapped the letters again. “If it’s about us, how come you didn’t tell me about these?”

“I was going to.”

“When? After hell finished freezing over?”

“When I thought you were ready to listen.”

“You mean when I was ready to swallow it hook, line, and sinker. And get reeled into that mess the same as you. I thought you learned your lesson the last time.”

The cloud passed, and the sun lit up the mottled spots on the window. She looked past them to the reddish square of the garden, at the little rows of green that were starting their seasonal push to the sky, then looked beyond to the wedge of mountains that kept North Carolina from slopping over into Tennessee. Two hundred acres of Gregg land, every inch of it stony and stained, every ash and birch and poplar stitched to her skin, every gallon of creek water running through her veins like blood. She was as old-family as anybody, and the old families belonged to the McFalls.

“It’s only letters,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I’m going back in.”

“Why did you ever have to fall for it in the first place?”

“That was nearly twenty years ago. I was a different person then. We were different people.”

“No, you were different. I’m still the same. Just a mountain hick who thinks that if you say your prayers and live right, then nobody can break you down. But I reckon I was wrong.”

“You can’t still blame me for that, can you?” But his eyes answered her question by becoming hard and narrow. “Don’t you know how terrible I thought it was to be trapped here in Whispering Pines forever? Stay around and squirt out seven kids with nothing to look forward to but the next growing season? To be like my mother with her fingers as knobby as pea pods from all the canning she did? What kind of life is that?”

“It’s good enough for me. I didn’t need to run off to California.”

“I must have asked you a dozen times to come with me.”

“And I asked you a dozen-and-one times to stay.”

“You were just afraid you’d lose me.”

He hung his head and shook it slowly. “I reckon I did,” he said, barely above a whisper. “Only it took me this long to find out.”

“The kids will be home soon,” she said. “Ronnie’s been looking forward to seeing you.”

He held up the letters again. “You’re not going to drag them into this mess, are you? Because, so help me, if you do—”

The threat hung in the air like an ax.

“Archer’s not like that.” Linda said it as if she only half-believed her own words.

“You said the group broke up.”

“I . . . most of us left. I don’t know. When they said he was dead, I—”

“He’s dead. Now, the question is, who’s trying to bring back this?” David held up one of the letters, more for effect than anything. Because Linda knew perfectly well what was on the letter.

She could see the symbol from across the room, even though it was bunched into the top right corner. It looked like one of those Egyptian symbols, only the cross was topped with two loops. Two suns. The Temple of the Two Suns.

Not that she needed to see it, because she was sure now that it had been seared into her brain, that its power had reached over years and across three thousand miles and through the thick white walls of her renewed faith in Jesus. Because, after all, there was only one true savior. And his name was Archer McFall.

If only David would open his heart. Sure, he’d been born with Baptist blood, he’d been dipped in the river below the red church so that his sins would be washed away, he’d given his ten percent, but there was so much more to faith than the rituals and scriptures and prayers. Her own heart was swelling again, budding, unfolding like a flower under a bright sun. No, under two suns. Twice the love. If only she could share that with David. But he wouldn’t understand. He was as blinded by Jesus as everybody else was.

David watched her carefully, waiting for her reaction. She swallowed her smile and let her face slacken.

“The Temple,” he said in a sneer. “You promised you were over it. But I guess I’m the fool.”

“He’s not asking for money.”

David laughed, a bitter sound. He rubbed his forehead with his right hand. “Probably the only thing he’s not asking for, whoever it is.”

“Since you read the letters, you know exactly what he wants.”

“Yeah.” He held up one of the letters. “‘We’ve missed you, sister,’” he read.

“And that’s all.”

“‘There will come great trials, but we bathe in the light of faith.’” He shuffled to the next letter. “‘The stone is rolled away.’”

“Where’s the love in that?” Linda was straining to show disinterest. David wasn’t from one of the old families. She had been a fool to think Archer would accept him, anyway.

“Where’s the love? Where’s the love? Why, right there on the bottom, where it says ‘Forever Yours, Archer McFall.’ On every single one of them.”

“Maybe he didn’t die. Or maybe somebody started up the group again and is using his name. That’s all it is. I don’t care one way or another.”

But I DO care. I’ve always cared, even when you thought you and your Christian friends had “cured” me. There was always a little room in my heart tucked away for nobody but Archer.

David’s eyes had cleared a little as he sobered, but kept their bright ferocity. “You don’t care so much that you didn’t even bother to throw the letters away, huh?”

“Don’t matter none to me.”

“That so?” David started to crumple the letters into a ball.

Linda’s mouth opened, and her arm reached out of its own accord.

David smiled, but it was a sick smile, the kind worn by a reluctant martyr. He crushed the paper into a hard wad of pulp and tossed it on the floor at her feet. “I seen him come around. Last week. Laid out of work just so I could hide up in the hills and watch the house. Just me and a six-pack. Mostly I was curious if you were sending out any letters yourself.”

“You bastard.”

David licked his lips. “Is ten o’clock the regular meeting time?”

Linda felt the blood drain from her face. How much did he know?

“Got himself a Mercedes. I guess this ‘cult’ business pays pretty good.”

“It wasn’t—” Linda started.

David nodded. “I know. It wasn’t Archer McFall. Then why don’t you tell me who it really was?”

Linda wondered how many times David had watched the house from the woods. Or if she could trust anything he said.

Trust. That was a good one.

David slowly approached her. She was like a deer frozen in the headlights of his hate. She looked down just as his boot flattened the wad of letters.

“How long?” he said, and his eyes were welling with tears again. As if the reservoir had been filling all his life and, finally full, now had to leak a little or bust.

“It’s not like that.” She looked again at the butcher knife on the counter, close to tears herself.

He took another menacing step. “I wondered why you been acting strange lately. And why you ain’t been up to going to church.”

Linda grabbed a gulp of air and scooted from the table to the kitchen counter. David was close behind her and caught her when she spun. His hands were like steel hooks in her upper arms, holding her firmly but not squeezing hard enough to bruise.

She stared at his stranger’s face with its wide eyes. She’d never noticed how deep the two creases on his forehead were. The hard planes of his cheeks were patched with stubble. He looked old, as if all his thirty-seven years had dog-piled him these last few weeks.

“Tell me who it is,” he said.

She shuddered with the force of his grip. Those hands had touched her so tenderly in the night, had softly stroked her belly when she was pregnant with the boys, had tucked daisies behind her ears when they fooled around in the hayfield. But now they were cruel, the caresses forgotten, the passion in them of a different kind.

She turned her face away, afraid that he’d see the fear in her eyes. The knife was beside a bowl of melted ice cream, within reach. But David grabbed her chin and twisted her eyes back to his.

Archer had warned her what the price of belief would be. Persecution. Pain. The loss of everything human. She could hear Archer’s voice now, pouring from the geysers of her heart. There will come great trials. And great sacrifices. Because sacrifice is the currency of God.

But the reward was greater than the sacrifice. Belief paid back a hundredfold. Devotion now brought Archer’s steadfast love unto the fourth generation. Surrendering to him meant that her offspring would reap the harvest. She had been telling herself that ever since Archer and the Temple of the Two Suns reclaimed her heart. And she reminded herself now, locked in David’s grip.

He’d never hurt her before. But Archer said those who didn’t understand always fell back on violence, because violence was the way of their God. That was why the world had to end. From the ashes of their heavenfire would come—

“Who is it?” he asked.

She grunted through her clenched teeth. David relaxed his grip until her mouth could move. “Ahh—Archer.”

“Archer. Don’t lie to me, damn it.” He clamped his fingers tight again.

She fumbled with her left hand, running it along the edge of the counter. She felt the cool rim of the bowl. If only she could keep him talking. “It is. And he doesn’t want me . . . that way.”

“It can’t be Archer.”

“He’s come back.”

David choked on a laugh. “The second coming. They really do have you again, don’t they?”

“No, I meant he’s come back to Whispering Pines.” Her hand went around the bowl and touched wood. Her fingers crawled along the knife’s handle. Archer said sometimes you had to fight fire with fire, even if it meant descending down to their level. Even if it was a sin.

“You said he was dead.”

“They said . . . I thought . . . I never saw his body.”

“It’s not Archer.”

“It is. You know I’d never cheat on you.”

He released her arm with his left hand and drew his arm back. He was going to hit her. She snatched at the butcher knife, then had it in her palm, her fingers around it, and all the old memories flooded back, all the energy and power and purity that Archer promised and delivered. She raised the knife.

David saw it and stepped away easily. The blade sliced the air a foot from his face. He lurched forward and caught her wrist on the down-stroke. The knife clattered to the floor.

They both looked at it. Silence crowded the room like death crowded a coffin.

A chicken clucked out in the barnyard. Somewhere over the hill, in the direction of the Potter farm, a hound dog let out one brassy howl. A tractor engine murmured in the far distance. The clock in the living room ticked six times, seven, eight. David reached out with the toe of his boot and kicked the knife into the corner.

He exhaled, deflating his rage. “So it’s come to this.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Is that what they preach? Stabbing your own husband?”

“I . . . you scared me.” The tears erupted from her eyes even as David’s tears dried up, probably for good. “I thought you were going to hit me.”

“Yeah.” He was calm again, walking dead, a man who wouldn’t harm a fly. “I guess you never could trust me, could you? Not the way you could trust them.”

“I didn’t lie to you.”

“Which time?”

Archer was right. Pain was a steep price. Faith required sacrifice. “When we got married, and I said I was through. I believed it then.”

“And I believed it, too. Guess you’re not the only fool in the family.”

“Please, David. Don’t make this any worse than it has to be.”

“Fine.” He spread his arms in surrender. “I guess it don’t matter none who it is. I just don’t see why you had to make up this stuff about the cult.”

“It’s not a cult.”

“And Archer McFall just happens to walk back into your life twenty years after he died. You really must be crazy, or else you think I am.”

Archer always said he would return. How could she ever have doubted him?

Easy. You had your world taken away from you, and you came back to this safe, normal, God-fearing life and slipped into it like a second skin. You hid away your heart like it was separate from loving and mothering and living. But this normal life was all a lie, wasn’t it? Maybe David was right, even if he was right about the wrong thing.

“I reckon I’ll get the kids, then,” he said, and a chill sank into her, deep-freezing her bones.

“No.” She went to him.

“Any judge in the land would give me custody. Don’t worry. I won’t make no claim on the farm. That’s rightly yours as a Gregg, if for no other reason.”

“Not the kids,” she wailed. She pounded her fists on his chest. He didn’t try to stop her.

The blows softened and she collapsed, grabbing his shirt for support. He kept her from falling. She felt nothing in his embrace.

“How are we going to tell the boys about us?” She sniffled.

“They already know. They ain’t dumb.”

“I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought.” But Linda knew exactly what she thought. She thought the children were hers, to love and protect and introduce to the joys of worship in the Temple of the Two Suns. To deliver unto Archer, so the generations would be spared.

“Now quit your crying. They’ll be here any minute.”

Damn him for trying to be strong. Acting like she didn’t matter. Her eyes went to the knife in the corner.

“Don’t do it, Linda. I’d hate for that to come up at the custody hearing.”

Jesus-loving bastard. But she wouldn’t lose hope. Archer would know what to do. Archer would—

“Did you hear that?” David asked, releasing her.

“Hear what?” She rubbed her arms, trying to wipe away the memory of his rough touch.

David went to the door. Linda thought about the knife. No, if she used the knife, they’d take the kids away for sure. She heard something that sounded like a calf caught in a crabapple thicket and bawling its heart out.

“It’s Ronnie,” David said, then leaped off the porch and ran toward the creek that divided a stretch of pasture from the front yard.

Ronnie raced across the pasture, moaning and wailing, waving his arms. Tim was farther back, running down the road, and even from that distance Linda saw that her youngest boy had lost his glasses.

Ronnie reached the little wooden footbridge that spanned the creek, a bridge that was nothing more than some pallet planks laid across two locust poles. His foot caught in a gap in the planks and his scream went an octave higher as he plummeted into the rocky creek bed. Her own shout caught in her throat.

David reached the creek and jumped down to where Ronnie lay. Linda scrambled down the bank after him. Ronnie was facedown, his legs in the shallow water. His head rested on a large flat stone. A trail of blood ran down the surface of the rock and dribbled into the creek, where it was quickly swept away.

“Don’t move him,” Linda shouted.

David gave her a look, then knelt beside Ronnie. The boy moaned and lifted his head. Blood oozed from his nose. His lip was swollen.

He moaned again.

“What?” David said.

This time Linda was close enough to hear what he was saying.

Ronnie’s lips parted again. “Uhr—red church.”

His eyes were looking past both of them, seeing nothing, seeing too much.

CHAPTER THREE

Sheriff Frank Littlefield looked up the hill at the church and the monstrous dogwood that hovered beside it like a guardian. He’d always hated that tree, ever since he was a boy. It hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d set foot in the graveyard. But he had, the world had, and Boonie most definitely had.

The young get old and the dead get deader, he thought as he studied the shadowed belfry for movement.

“What do you figure done it?” asked Dr. Perry Hoyle, the Pickett County medical examiner.

Littlefield didn’t turn to face the man immediately. Instead, he squinted past the church steeple to the sun setting behind the crippled cross. The cross threw a long jagged shadow over the cemetery green. Somebody was cutting hay. Littlefield could smell the crush of grass in the wind. He scratched at his buzz cut. “You’re the ME.”

“Wild animal, that’s my guess. Mountain lion, maybe. Or a black bear.”

“Sure it wasn’t somebody with a knife or an ax?”

“Not real likely. Wounds are too jagged, for one thing.”

Littlefield exhaled in relief. “So I guess we can’t call it a murder.”

“Probably not.”

One of the deputies was vomiting in the weeds at the edge of the cemetery.

“Don’t get that mixed in with the evidence,” Littlefield hollered at him. He turned back to Hoyle. “Black bear wouldn’t attack a man unless her cubs were threatened. And it’d have to be a mighty big mountain lion.”

“They get up to two hundred pounds.”

“But they’re extinct up here.”

“One of them college professors down at Westridge believes mountain lions are making their way back to these parts.”

Littlefield resumed rubbing his scalp. He’d just had it trimmed at Ray’s, a good clipper job that let the wind and sun get right to the scalp. The department thought he wore the short style to give himself a ramrod appearance, but the truth was, he kind of liked the shape of his skull. And his hat fit better when he went to the Borderline Tavern to kick up his heels to some Friday-night country music. Boonie used to dance at the Borderline, too. Back when he still had feet.

The two men stood quietly and looked at the church for a moment. “Never been many happy times here,” Hoyle said.

Littlefield didn’t rise to the bait. He was annoyed that Hoyle would fish those waters. Some things were for nothing but forgetting. He hardened his face against the past as easily as if he’d slipped on a plastic superhero mask.

“Who found the body?” Hoyle hurriedly asked.

“Couple of kids who live down the road. They were walking home from school this afternoon.”

“Must have bothered them something awful.”

“Hell, it’s bothering me, and you know I’ve seen a few ripe ones.”

“What did they tell you?”

“The older one, he’s about thirteen, fell running home and busted his face up. He’ll be all right, but for some reason it got to him worse than it did the little one. Kept mumbling ‘the red church’ over and over again.”

“How old’s the little one?”

“Nine. Said he saw some stuff laying in the graveyard and went through the bushes to have a look. He said he saw a cap and a flashlight and a bottle of liquor, but he didn’t touch any of it. Ronnie, the thirteen-year-old, came back to see what was taking so long, and that’s when the victim must have dragged himself out from the bushes and grabbed ahold of Ronnie.”

Littlefield didn’t like calling Boonie Houck a victim. Boonie was a good fellow. A little bit creepy and plenty lazy, but he was in church of a Sunday morning and was known to vote Republican. Nobody deserved to die this way.

Hoyle looked like he could use a cup of coffee, maybe with a few drops of brandy in it. “He lived a lot longer than he should have with those kinds of wounds. My guess is he was attacked sometime in the early morning, between midnight and sunup.”

Littlefield’s stomach rolled a little. How did Boonie feel lying in the weeds, wondering about the wound between his legs, knowing that whatever had ripped him up was somewhere out there in the dark? “You going to send him to the state ME’s office?”

“Reckon I ought to. They can do a better job of guessing than I can.” Hoyle pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped the sweat from his bald head. “The press is going to want to know something.”

“Wonderful.”

“Plus, if it is a wild animal, might be some rabies going around. That could make an animal go nuts and do something like this.”

“We haven’t had that up here in a long time, either.”

“Times change.”

The sheriff nodded. You used to have hair, and I used to be worth a damn. Boonie used to be alive, and the red church used to be white.

“Let me know when you’re ready to drive him down,” Littlefield said. “We’ll get the pieces together.”

He didn’t envy Hoyle. The drive to Chapel Hill took about four hours. Boonie would be kicking up a mean stench by the time the trip was over. But Littlefield decided he ought to save his pity. Unlike Boonie, at least Hoyle would be coming back.

Littlefield patted the medical examiner on the shoulder and went to examine the articles lying on the grass in clear plastic bags. He bent over the bag that held a porn magazine. He fought an odd urge to flip through the pages.

A camera flash went off. “Could you please move to one side, Sheriff?”

He looked up. Detective Sgt. Sheila Storie waved her arm. She was taking photos of the crime scene.

No, not a CRIME scene, Littlefield had to remind himself. An accident. A tragic, violent, unexplained ACCIDENT.

The kind of thing that happened too often in Whispering Pines. But Littlefield was relieved that a psycho with a set of Ginsu knives wasn’t on the loose in his jurisdiction. They’d had one of those down the mountain in Shady Valley a few years back, and the case was never solved. Damned inept city cops.

He already knew he was going to put Storie in charge of the investigation. When they arrived and found the mess, she hadn’t even blinked, just got out her clipboard and tape measure and went to work. She was too young to be so unmoved by death, in Littlefield’s opinion. But maybe she was a little bit like him. Maybe it was the kind of thing that made them cops.

Got to keep yourself outside of it all. Don’t let them get to you. No matter what they do, no matter what the world takes from you.

“What do you make of it?” he asked Storie.

Her eyes were blue enough to hide everything, as unrevealing as her camera lens. “Extensive trauma. Death probably due to exsanguination.”

Storie’s educated flatland accent always surprised him, even though he should have been used to it by now. Most people took her for a local until they heard her speak. “That’s what Hoyle says. Only he calls it ‘bled to death.’”

“Unless shock got him first. Same to the subject either way. I haven’t seen this much blood since those driver’s ed films they showed in high school.” She took two steps to her right and snapped another picture, then let the camera hang by its strap over her chest.

“Must have taken a while. You looked over in the bushes where he crawled after the attack?”

“Yes, sir. He left a few scraps.”

Littlefield swallowed a knot of nausea.

“Footprints go from this grave marker here, where the boys said they found the stuff. They’re deep, see?” She pointed to the pressed grass. The smaller prints of the boys were visible as well. But Boonie’s were clearly marked by the thick treads of his boots.

“That means he was running, right?”

“He must have seen or heard whatever it was and gotten scared. He was probably attacked just before he started running.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Blood here is coagulated almost to powder. The blood over there- “-she waved to the slick trail of slime where Boonie had crawled out of the bushes- “-isn’t as oxidized.”

Littlefield nodded and passed his hand over his scalp. The breeze shifted and he could smell Boonie now. A person never got used to the odor of death. The detective didn’t even wrinkle her nose.

“Hoyle thinks it’s a mountain lion,” Littlefield said.

She shook her head. Her brown hair was a couple of inches past regulation and swished over her shoulders. “Wild animals typically go for the throat if they’re treating something as prey. There are a few wounds around the eyes, but those are no more devastating than the other injuries. And it doesn’t look like the subject had an animal cornered so that it would be forced to defend itself.”

Littlefield was constantly amazed by the level of instruction that new officers received. A college degree in Criminal Justice, for starters. Then state training, not to mention extra seminars along the way. Littlefield had long since quit going to those things, at least the ones that didn’t help him politically.

Or maybe Storie was a little too educated for her own good. Frank knew that as a female in a rural department, she had to be twice as smart and icy and sarcastic as everybody else. She couldn’t go out for after-shift beers.

Pay attention, damn it. In case you’re going senile and need a reminder, one of your constituents is gathering flies long before his natural time.

“So you don’t necessarily hold to the wild animal attack theory?” he asked.

“I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that if it was an animal, its behavior was unnatural.” She looked across the stretch of tombstones to where the cemetery ended near the forest. Her brow furrowed.

“What is it?” Littlefield asked.

“The thing that bothers me the most.”

If STORIE’S bothered . . . A small chill wended its way up Littlefield’s spinal column and settled in the base of his neck.

“No animal tracks,” she said.

The sheriff’s jaw tightened. So that was what had been bothering him ever since he’d first walked the scene. An animal’s claws would have ripped chunks out of the ground, especially if it were attacking.

“Damn,” he whispered.

“No tracks means no easy answers.” She almost sounded pleased. “There are no other human footprints, either.”

Storie had cracked a big case last year, when an ex-cop had hauled a body up to the mountains for disposal. Perp was a big goofy guy who went around bragging about how he’d never get caught. Well, Storie set her nose on his trail and nailed him so hard that his lawyers had to recite scripture in the courtroom to save him from a lethal injection. The conviction got statewide coverage, and Storie’s picture was in both the local papers.

This looked like it might be another of those high-profile mysteries that, if she solved it, would make her a legitimate candidate for sheriff. If she ever ran against him, she’d have him beat all to hell on looks. Her accent would hurt her some, though.

“Tell me, Sergeant. What do you think did it?” he asked.

“I can honestly say I have no idea, sir.” She folded her arms over the camera.

”Any chance that somebody did it with a sharp weapon, without leaving footprints that we could see?”

“The pattern of the wounds seems random at first glance. But what bugs me is the ritualistic nature of the injured areas.”

Areas? Littlefield wanted to remind Storie that those body parts were once near and dear to Boonie Houck. But he only nodded at her to continue.

“Look at the major wounds. First, there’s the eyes.”

“We haven’t found them yet.”

“Exactly. That’s an inconvenient spot for a rampaging animal to reach. In any event, it’s unlikely that a claw would take both eyes.”

“Unless they were shining, and somehow attracted the animal’s attention. The moon was over half full last night.”

“Okay. Let’s go on to the hand. Seems like an animal would have started gnawing at a softer spot.”

“Maybe it did.”

“That brings us to the fatal wound.”

“Now, that’s not been determined yet.” Littlefield felt the tingle of blood rushing to his cheeks.

“I saw the rip in the front of his pants.” She lifted the camera. “I took pictures, remember?”

“Guess so.” His tongue felt thick.

“With the loss of that much blood, I’m amazed he survived as long as he did.”

“You said the wounds were ritualistic. What’s that got to do with his . . . er . . .”

“Penis, Sheriff. You can say it in the company of a woman these days.”

“Of course.” His face grew warmer with embarrassment. He looked across the mountains. He would love to be walking a stream right now, flicking a hand-tied fly across the silver currents, the smell of wet stone and rotted loam in his nostrils. Alone. Anywhere but here with blood and the red church and Sheila Storie. “So what does it mean?”

“It may mean nothing. Or it may mean we have a deviant personality on the loose.” The flash of her eyes gave away her belief in the latter. Or maybe she was only hopeful.

“Is it because we haven’t found the . . . other part, either?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Think we ought to call in the state boys?” Littlefield knew Storie would bristle at turning the case over to the State Bureau of Investigation. She would want a shot first.

“That’s your decision, Sheriff.”

“I suppose we’ll have to wait for the state medical examiner’s report. Hoyle’s sending him down to Chapel Hill.”

“Good.”

Littlefield tried to read her expression. But the sun was in her face, so her half-closed eyes didn’t give away anything. He knew she thought Perry Hoyle had about as much forensic sophistication as a hog butcher. The whole department was probably a joke to her. Well, she was a flatlander, anyway. “Hoyle doesn’t think the wounds were made by a weapon.”

“You asked for my opinion, sir.”

Littlefield looked up the hill at the church. Suddenly he felt as if someone had reached an icy hand down his throat and squeezed his heart. His brother Samuel was on the roof of the church, waving and smiling.

His dead brother Samuel.

Littlefield blinked, then saw that the illusion was only a mossy patch on the shingles.

He sighed. “I’m putting you in charge of the investigation.”

Storie almost smiled. “I’ll do my best, sir.”

Littlefield nodded and stepped over the strings that marked off grids at the scene. He knelt by the toppled monument. “What do you make of this?”

“The boys’ footprints lead over here. I’d guess vandalism. Tipping tombstones is an old favorite. Maybe they were messing around when the subject heard them and tried to crawl out of the weeds.”

“Seems like they would have heard Boonie yelling.” He stopped himself. Boonie wouldn’t have called out, at least in nothing more articulate than a groan. Boonie’s tongue had been taken, too.

Hoyle rescued him from his embarrassment. “We’re ready over here, Sheriff,” the ME called. Littlefield winced and started to turn.

“I’ll handle it, sir,” Storie said. “It’s my case, remember? I might see something I missed the first two times.”

She was right. Littlefield’s shoulders slumped a little in relief. He hoped Storie hadn’t noticed, but she didn’t miss much. She had detective’s eyes, even if they were easier to look at than look through. “Go ahead.”

Littlefield headed across the cemetery and up the hill toward the red church. He glanced at the markers as he passed, some so worn he could barely make out the names. Some were nothing more than stumps of broken granite. Other graves were probably forgotten altogether, just the silent powder of bones under a skin of grass.

The ground was soft under his feet- good mountain soil, as black as coal dust. Almost a shame to waste it on a graveyard. But people had to be buried somewhere, and to the dead, maybe the most fertile soil in the world wasn’t comfort enough. Maybe his kid brother Samuel had yet to settle into eternal rest.

The names on the markers read like a who’s who history of this end of the county. Potter. Matheson. Absher. Buchanan. McFall. Gregg. More Picketts than you could shake a stick at.

And three Littlefields off by themselves.

He knelt by two familiar graves. His mother and father shared a single wide monument. He looked from the gray marble to a smaller marker, which had a bas-relief of a lamb chiseled in its center. Its letters were scarcely worn, and the fingerlike shadows of tree branches chilled the stone. Littlefield read the damning words without moving his lips.

Here Lies Samuel Riley Littlefield. 1968-1979. May God Protect and Keep Him.

His heart burned in his chest and he hurried away, his eyes frantic for a distraction. He stopped by the dogwood. The thing looked like it was dying. But it had looked that way for the last forty years, and every spring it managed to poke a few more blossoms out of the top branches. A memory stirred and crawled from the shadows before he could beat it back.

The red church. Halloween. The night he’d seen the Hung Preacher.

The night Samuel had died.

He shuddered and the memory fell away again, safely buried. The sun was warm on his face. Down the slope, Hoyle and Storie were hauling Boonie’s body to the back of the overgrown station wagon that served as the county’s non-emergency ambulance.

Littlefield moved away from the tree and put a foot on the bottom of four steps that led into the church foyer. The door was large and made of solid wooden planks. The cracks between the planks were barely distinguishable due to the buildup of paint layers. Over the door was a small strip of colored glass, two deep blue rectangular planes separated by an amber pane. Those had survived the onslaught of juvenile delinquents’ rocks.

The sheriff climbed the rest of the steps. The top one was a wider landing, scarred from the tailgate of Lester Matheson’s truck. Littlefield examined the thick hinges and the door lock. There was a lift latch in addition to the dull brass handle. Littlefield put his hand on the cool metal.

Wonder if I need a warrant to open it? Naw. Lester won’t mind if I have a peek.

There was a small chance that if Boonie had been murdered, some evidence might be hidden inside. Or the door might be locked, but he didn’t think Lester would bother keeping up with a key just to protect a hundred bales of hay. People didn’t steal out in these parts. The thieves and B&E addicts kept to Barkersville, where the rich folks had their summer homes.

Littlefield turned the knob and the catch clicked back into the cylinder. He nudged the latch up with his other hand, and as the door creaked open and the rich dust of hay hit his nostrils, he realized he hadn’t set foot inside since shortly after Samuel’s funeral.

Please, God, just let it be a plain old ordinary murderer. Some drunk who got mad because Boonie took two swigs before passing the bottle instead of one. A Mexican Christmas tree worker with a grudge. I’ll even take a crazy if you got one.

His palms were sweating, the way they had when he was seventeen and he’d first heard the laughter in the belfry.

The door opened onto a short, windowless foyer. A shaft of light pierced the ceiling from the belfry above.

Where the bell rope used to hang.

The bell rang in his memory, a thunderclap of angry bronze, an echo of the night Samuel died.

The plank floor creaked as Littlefield crossed the foyer. Golden motes of dust spiraled in the draft. What must it have been like a century ago? The worn wood had endured a hundred thousand crossings. Trembling and red-faced virgin brides with their best dresses dragging on the pine, solemn cousins come to pay their respects to a dear departed, women in bonnets and long swirling skirts gathering for Jubilee. Littlefield could almost see the preacher at the steps, shaking the hands of the menfolk, bowing to the women, patting the heads of the children.

The sheriff peered up through the tiny rope hole, an opening barely large enough for a child to scramble through. The hollow interior of the bell was full of black shadow. But that would tell him nothing. He returned to scanning the floor for signs of blood.

The foyer opened onto the main sanctuary. The chill crawled up his spine again. He didn’t know whether it was caused by childhood legends, or the chance of finding a killer hiding among the bales of hay. For a frantic moment, he almost wished he wore a firearm.

The bales were stacked to each side, forming a crooked aisle down the center of the church sanctuary. Lester had left the altar undisturbed, probably because lifting hay over the railing was too much work. The altar itself was small, the pulpit hardly more than a rectangular crate with a slanted top. A set of six wormy chestnut beams, hand-hewn, crossed the open A-frame overhead. The interior walls were unpainted chestnut as well. In the dim light, the woodwork had a rich, deep brown cast.

The bales were packed too tightly against the walls to afford hiding places.

Unless somebody had removed a few bales and made a hollow space inside the stacks.

He’d done that in his family’s barn, when he wanted to hide out on an autumn day, or when he and his brother played hide-and-seek or army. But few hours could be stolen back then. Crops, livestock, firewood, fence mending- a long list of chores was waiting at six every morning that never got finished before dark. But back then, Littlefield had slept in dreams and not bad memories.

Nothing stirred amid the hay. The church was silent, as if waiting for a congregation to again fill it with life. Littlefield walked to the dais. The chill deepened even though the air was stuffy. A small wooden cross was attached to the top of the pulpit. Like the cross on the church steeple, it was missing a section of the crosspiece.

Littlefield leaned over the waist-high railing and looked into the corners of the altar. The small vestry off to the side held nothing but bare shelves and cobwebs. He didn’t know what he expected to see. Maybe he was just trying to ease his own mind, to reassure himself that old rumors and long-ago strangeness were put to rest. Boonie was dead, and that had nothing to do with the red church or Samuel or the Hung Preacher.

As he was turning to leave, he noticed a dark stain on the dais floor. It was the kind made by a spill. Maybe Lester had stored building materials in here once. At any rate, the rust-brown stain was far too old to have been made by whatever had killed Boonie.

But something about it held his attention. The shape seemed familiar. He tilted his head, as if stumped by an inkblot in a Rorschach test. When he realized where he had seen the form before, he drew in a dusty gasp of air.

The dark shape in the belfry, that long-ago Halloween.

Littlefield strode back through the church, suddenly anxious to be in the sunshine. He was going to go with the animal theory for now. If Storie wanted to play her forensic games, that was fine. But he wouldn’t allow himself to believe that something masquerading as human had ripped apart good old Boonie Houck. Not in Pickett County. Not on God’s ground. Not on his watch.

As he closed the door and looked across the graveyard where Storie searched the weeds for clues, the chill evaporated. Something fluttered in the belfry.

Bird or raccoon, he told himself without looking up. NOT the thing that had laughed as Samuel died.

He hurried down the slope to see if Storie had found any of Boonie’s missing parts.

CHAPTER FOUR

Bummer.

That was Ronnie’s first thought when the gray blindfold of unconsciousness dissolved into light. And that was the last thought he’d had when the anesthesiologist had pressed the mask to his face. Or maybe not. He’d been so stone-black-buzzed from the injection that he couldn’t be sure if he’d had any prior thoughts at all.

His face, at least what he could feel of it, was like a molasses balloon. Pain tingled and teased him through a curtain of gauze. It was a sneaky, funny pain, a bully that skulked around the edge of the playground, waiting for you to chase a stray kickball. Once you were alone, it would jump on you and beat you and kick you and rip you--

More of the druggy haze fell away. Ronnie opened his eyes and the light sliced at his pupils. His eyes were overflowing, but he couldn’t feel the tears on his cheeks. His stomach turned crooked flips. Mom and Dad were blurry images beside the bed. A man with a mustache whose eyes looked like licorice drops leaned over him.

“I think we’ve got somebody waking up.” The man’s mustache twitched like a caterpillar on a hot griddle. He wore a white coat.

Doctor. Ronnie’s thoughts spun, then collected. Pain plus doctor equals hospital.

He opened his mouth to speak, but his tongue was too thick to find his teeth.

“Easy now, little partner,” the doctor said. “Take it slow.”

Slow was the only way Ronnie could take it. His arms and legs felt like lead pipes. He turned his head to look at his parents. Despite the numbness, he felt a warmth growing in his chest. Mom and Dad were together.

Well, they weren’t holding hands, but at least they weren’t yelling at each other. And all it took to make that happen was for Ronnie to . . . what had he done?

He slogged through the tunnels of his memory. He remembered the ride to the hospital, Dad holding him in the back seat, Dad’s shirt against his face. The shirt should have smelled of sawdust and sweat and maybe a little gasoline, but Ronnie had smelled nothing but blood.

Then, farther back, before that, the little footbridge, falling, the rocks . . .

Ouch.

Ronnie was old enough to know that the memory of pain could never quite match up to the real thing. Which was a good thing; otherwise, everybody would be running around as crazy as old Mama Bet McFall, or Grandma Gregg down at the Haywood Assisted Care Center back before she slipped into the grave. But even Ronnie’s memory of the pain was strong enough to wipe out some of the numbing effects of the drugs.

Dad stepped forward, his lower lip curled, his face made sickly green by the fluorescent strip lights. Dad never looked quite right indoors, sort of like the tiger Ronnie had seen in a pen down at the Asheboro zoo. Both of them nervous and impatient, pacing, too large for walls or bars.

“Hey, Ronnie,” Dad said, unsuccessfully trying to funnel his deep voice into a whisper. “How are you feeling?”

“Muuuuhr.” Even Ronnie couldn’t translate the sound his vocal chords made.

Mom leaned over him, a tight smile wrinkling her face. The skin under her eyes was dark blue. She reached out and brushed hair away from his forehead with a clammy hand. “It’s okay, baby.”

The doctor checked Ronnie’s pulse. “Coming around fine. You’ll be able to take him home in an hour or so. Buzz one of the nurses if you need anything.”

The doctor left the room, and the draft from the closing door swept over Ronnie like a tide of water. Being a molasses-head wasn’t all bad. His thoughts weren’t dropping as fast as usual, but he was thinking wider than he ever had before. If not for the pain bully waiting behind the numbness, Ronnie wouldn’t mind hanging out in this half-speed dreamscape for a while.

This was almost peaceful. If he closed his eyes, the white walls fell away and the sky got big and he could float on a cloud and no one could bother him, not even dingle-dork—

Tim. What had happened to Tim?

The molasses of his face rippled as his eyes opened wide. Mom and Dad and . . . where was Tim? Because suddenly it was all coming back, the molasses creek turning a bend and flowing into sunlight and, now hot and golden, churning over a precipice in a sugary waterfall. The run home, the hand on his foot, the bleeding thing—they got livers for eyes—the toppled monument, the red church, the graveyard.

Had the bleeding thing trapped Tim?

Dad must have sensed his agitation, because a hand on his shoulder prevented him from sitting up. “Now, you heard the doctor, son. Just rest up.”

Mom chewed on the skin at the end of her thumb. “You got busted up pretty good when you fell. Broke your nose. The doctor said you were lucky you didn’t crack your skull.”

Good old Mom. Found the bright side to everything. So he had a broken nose. He thought of some of the players on his football cards, how their noses had great big humps across the bridge or were twisted off to one side. Just what a guy like him needed. Now Melanie would never talk to him.

The molasses mask slipped a little more, and the pain bully chuckled from the shadows, knowing an opportunity was drawing near. Ronnie became aware of a lower portion of his body, where the knot of snakes nested in his stomach. He was going to throw up.

Total bummer. He groaned and his tongue worked.

“What is it, honey?” Mom said, her face now paler and her eyes wider.

“Poooook,” he said. His right arm flailed like a water hose under pressure.

“Puke?” She looked at Dad. “Oh, Lord, David, he’s going to throw up.”

Dad looked helpless. The situation called for quick action and compassion. As a caregiver, Dad made a good pallbearer.

Mom spun and began searching under a counter beside the bed. A mirror ran along the length of the counter, and Ronnie was startled by his own reflection. His nose was purple and swollen, little clots of bloody gauze hanging out of his nostrils. His eyes were like green-brown marbles pressed into ten pounds of dough.

The image accelerated his nausea. He turned his body with effort, and now Dad helped, putting a hand in his armpit to lean him over the steel railing of the bed. The scene in the mirror was doubly disorienting from being reversed. The greasy snakes crawled up Ronnie’s throat.

Mom found a plastic pan made of a yucky aqua color, but that was okay because yucky was just what the situation required. She held it under his face, and the snakes exploded from his mouth. His eyes squeezed shut in the effort of vomiting, and drops of something besides molasses beaded his forehead. His abdomen spasmed twice, three times, four, a pause, then a fifth eruption.

“Oh, my Lord,” Mom exclaimed to Dad. “Call the nurse.”

“He said this might happen. And look, it’s stopped now.”

“But it’s blood.”

“What did you think it would be, grits and sausage gravy? They just operated on his nose.”

Ronnie looked into the pan and his guts almost lurched again. A thick gruel of blood and mucus pooled in front of his face. And what were those things floating in-

Fingers. They cut off my fingers and made me eat them.

Dad’s words came as if through cotton. “What the hell are those?”

“Get a nurse.” Mom waved her hands helplessly.

The draft of the door opening wafted over Ronnie again, but this time it provided no comfort. He lay back on the raised pillows.

A tired-looking nurse looked in the pan. “Oh, those are the fingers of surgical gloves. The doctor stuffs them with gauze and uses them as packing.”

“How did they get in his stomach?” Mom’s voice was a thin screech.

“The packing must have worked its way down the pharyngeal openings of his Eustachian tubes. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing to worry about?” Dad’s voice was loud enough to make Ronnie’s head hurt. “It’s not your kid in the bed, is it?”

The nurse gave a forced smile that Ronnie figured she wore while giving medicine to somebody who wasn’t likely to last the week. A smile that plainly said, If there were another job in Pickett County that paid this well, he could puke rubber fingers until he choked, for all I care.

But all she said was, “I’ll see if I can find the doctor.”

After she was gone, Mom said, “You didn’t have to raise your voice.”

“Shut up.”

“David, please. For Ronnie’s sake?”

Ronnie wasn’t bothered by the argument. The relief of passing nausea was so great that he would have slow-danced with the pain bully, he felt so wonderful. So what if more sweat had popped out along his neck and in his armpits and down the slope of his spine? The stomach snakes were gone.

The act of vomiting also cleared his head a little. That was a mixed blessing. Or mixed curse. Because not only were the good wide thoughts gone, they were being replaced by memories.

Before he’d been wheeled into surgery, the sheriff had talked to him about the things that happened at the red church. It was scary enough just to talk to a policeman, especially one with a crew cut and a face that looked like it was chiseled out of stone. But the sheriff wanted him to remember what had happened, when Ronnie really, really, really wanted to be in the business of forgetting.

Forgetting the wet, slooshing sound his shoe had made as he jerked his foot from the graveyard grip.

Forgetting the raw, bloody arm reaching around the tombstone.

Forgetting the laughter that had fluttered from the belfry of the red church.

The sheriff finally went away, and they had rolled Ronnie to the operating room. Then came the needle and the mask and the wide thoughts and the darkness.

“How are you feeling, honey?”

He looked at his mom. Her hair was wilted and stringy, a dull chestnut color. She looked about a hundred and twelve, older even than Mama Bet McFall, the crazy woman who lived up the road from the Day farm.

“Better,” he whispered, and the air of his voice scraped his throat as it passed.

The door opened again and Ronnie craned his neck. The doctor was whistling an uneven tune through the scrub brush of his mustache. Ronnie would bet money that it was a Michael Bolton song. Or maybe something even lamer. Ronnie was almost glad that his nose was clogged. He would have bet double-or-nothing that the man was wearing some sissy cologne. He flopped his heavy head back on the pillows.

“I heard you had a little episode,” the doctor said.

Episode? Was that the medical term for vomiting up fingers?

“I’m okay now,” Ronnie said in a wheeze, mainly because the doctor was leaning over and reaching for his nose. And even though the painkiller was still dumbing him down, he was smart enough to know that being touched there would hurt like heck. Even through the molasses that encased his brain.

The doctor backed away at the last moment. “The packing looks like it’s still in place where the break occurred. I don’t think any harm was done.”

Nope. No harm at all to YOU, was there, Mr. Mustache?

“We could always roll him back into the OR and pack some more gauze up there,” the doctor said to his parents, as if Ronnie weren’t even in the room.

“What do you think?” Mom turned another shade closer to invisibility.

“I believe he’s okay,” the doctor said, fingering his mustache. “In fact, I’d say you could go ahead and take him home. Call me next week and we’ll schedule a time to take the stitches out.”

Dad nodded dumbly. Mom worked at the gnawed skin of her fingers.

Ronnie was eager to go home. By the time the nurse showed up with a fake smile and a wheelchair, he was sitting up in bed, feeling dizzy but no longer nauseated. As the nurse wheeled him to the elevators, he was floating away again. The outside air tasted strange and thick.

Ronnie was surprised to see that the sun was setting. He felt as if years had passed, not hours, since he’d fallen. Pinkish gray clouds wreathed the horizon above the dark mountains.

Mom had pulled her big black Coupe De Ville by the hospital doors. Dad eased him into the backseat and they were on their way home. They had gone about two miles when Ronnie remembered Tim.

“Where’s Tim?” he managed to ask. He was sleepy again, a molasses-head.

“At Donna’s. They went back to the graveyard to find his glasses.”

So Tim had survived the encounter at the red church. The Encounter. Sounded like a title for a cheesy monster movie. Whatever. His thoughts were getting wide again.

He wanted to be asleep by the time they drove past the red church.

He was.

###

“Didn’t see nothing,” Lester Matheson said. His face was crooked from decades of chewing his tobacco in the same cheek. He ground his teeth sideways, showing the dark mass inside his mouth, occasionally flicking it more firmly into place with his tongue.

“Last night, either?” Sheriff Littlefield turned from the man’s smacking habit and looked out over the rolling meadows. A herd of cows dotted the ridge, all pointed in the same direction. Like their owner, they also chewed mindlessly, not caring what dribbled out of their mouths.

“No, ain’t seen nothing up at the red church in a long time. Course, kids go up there to mess around from time to time. Always have.”

Littlefield nodded. “Yeah. Ever think of posting a ‘No Trespassing’ sign?”

“That would only draw twice as many. I’d never keep nothing out there that I couldn’t afford to get stolen.”

Littlefield shifted his weight from one foot to another and a porch board groaned. The Mathesons lived in a board-and-batten house on the edge of two hundred acres of land. Even Lester’s barns seemed better built than the house. It was roofed with cheap linoleum sheeting that had visible patches in the material. The windows were large single panes fixed with gray strips of wood. The air coming from the open front door was stale and cool, like that of a tomb.

The sun was disappearing into the angle where Buckhorn Mountain slid down to the base of Piney Top. The air was moist with the waiting dew. Pigs snorted from their wooden stalls beside the larger of Lester’s two barns. Crickets had taken up their night noises, and the aroma of cow manure made Littlefield almost nostalgic for his own childhood farm days. “Have you ever seen Boonie hanging around the graveyard?”

Lester scratched his bulbous head that gleamed even in the fading light. His hand was knotted from a life of work, thick with blue veins and constellations of age spots. “Well, I found him in the red church one time, passed out in the straw. I just let him sleep it off. As long as he didn’t smoke in there, he couldn’t really hurt nothing.”

“Have you noticed anything unusual around here?”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘unusual.’ The church has always been mighty unusual. But I don’t have to tell you that, do I?”

“I’m not interested in ghost stories,” Littlefield lied.

Lester emitted a gurgling laugh and leaned back in his rocker. “Fine, Sheriff. Whatever you say. And I guess Boonie just happened to get killed in one of them gang wars or something.”

“Perry Hoyle thinks it was a mountain lion.”

Lester laughed again, then shot a stream of black juice into the yard. “Or maybe it was Bigfoot. Used to be a lot of mountain lions in these parts, all right. Back in the thirties and forties, they were thick as flies. They’d come down out of the hills of a night and take a calf or a chicken, once in a while a dog. But they’re deader than four o’clock in the morning now.”

Lester was a hunter. Littlefield wasn’t, these days. “When’s the last time you saw one?” the sheriff asked.

“Nineteen sixty-three. I remember because everybody was just getting over the Kennedy mess. I took up yonder to Buckhorn”—he waved a gnarled hand at the darkening mountain—”because somebody said they’d seen a six-point buck. I set up a little stand at a crossing trail and waited. My stand was twenty feet up a tree, covered with canvas and cut branches. Moon come out, so I decided to stay some after dark, even though it was colder than a witch’s heart.

“I heard a twig snap and got my rifle shouldered as smooth as you please. We didn’t mess with scopes and such back in them days. Just pointed and shot. So I was looking down the barrel when something big stepped in the sights. Even in the bad light, I could see its gold fur. And two shiny green eyes was looking right back up the barrel at me.”

Lester drained his excess juice off the side of the porch. The old man paused for dramatic effect. People still passed down stories in these parts. The front porch was Lester’s stage, and they both knew his audience was duty-bound to stay.

The sheriff obliged. “You shot him,” he said, even though he knew that wouldn’t have made a satisfactory ending to the tale.

Lester waited another ten seconds, five seconds longer than the ritual called for. “About did. I knew what he was right off, even though his fur was about the same color as a deer’s. It was the eyes, see? Deer eyes don’t glow. They just sop up light like a scratch biscuit draws gravy.”

“What happened next?”

“He just kind of stared back at me. Damnedest thing I ever saw. Looking at me like I was an equal, or maybe not even that. Like I was a mosquito buzzing around his head. He drew his mouth open like he was going to snarl, and his whiskers flashed in the moonlight. And I couldn’t pull the trigger.”

“Scared?” Littlefield asked, hoping Lester wasn’t insulted. But Lester seemed to have forgotten the sheriff as he stared off at the mountain.

“In a way I was, but that’s not the reason I didn’t pull the trigger. There was something about him, something in the eyes, that was more than animal. You might think I’m crazy, and you probably wouldn’t be too far wrong, but that cat knew what I was thinking. It knew I wouldn’t pull the trigger. After maybe half a minute of us staring each other down, he slipped into the woods, his long tail twitching like he was laughing to hisself. Like I was a big ball of yarn he’d played with and gotten tired of.”

The sun had slipped behind the horizon now, and Littlefield couldn’t read Lester’s expression in the darkness. All he could see was the crooked shape of the farmer’s face.

“I was frozen, and not just from the chill, either,” Lester continued. “When I finally let out a breath, it made a mist in front of my face. I was sweating like I was baling hay and racing a rainstorm. I strained my ears for any little sound, even though I knew the cat was gone.”

Littlefield had been standing more or less at parade rest, a habit he had when he was on official business, even around people he knew. Now he let his shoulders droop slightly and leaned against the porch rail. As a youngster, he’d hunted at night himself. He could easily imagine Lester in the tree, muscles taut, ears picking up the slight scurry of a chipmunk or the whispering wings of a nighthawk. Like any good storyteller, Lester had put the sheriff in another place and time.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m going on so about this mountain lion,” Lester said. “You’re asking yourself what that’s got to do with Boonie Houck’s death.”

“That mountain lion would have died a natural death long ago.”

Lester said nothing. There was a clattering inside the house, then the rusty skree of the storm door opening. Lester’s wife Vivian came out on the porch. Her hair was in a bun, tied up with a scarf. She had a slight hump in her back, a counterpart to her husband’s twisted face. The interior light cast her odd shadow across the yard.

“You done yapping the Sheriff’s ear off?” she asked, her voice trembling and thin. She must have been a little hard of hearing, because she talked louder than necessary.

“Ain’t hardly started yet,” Lester said, not rising from his rocker. “Now get on back in the house before I throw a shoe at you.”

“You do and I’ll put vinegar in your denture glass.”

Lester chuckled. “I love you, too, honey.”

“You going to invite the sheriff in for pie?”

“No, thank you, ma’am,” Littlefield said, bowing a little in graciousness. “I’ve got a few other people to talk to tonight.”

“Well, don’t listen too much to this old fool. He lies like a cheap rug.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

The door sprang closed. The darkness sprang just as abruptly. “So you haven’t seen a mountain lion since then?” the sheriff asked Lester.

“Nope.”

“And you’re sure you haven’t seen anything strange around the red church?”

“Haven’t seen nothing. Heard something, though.”

“Heard something?”

“Last night, would’ve been about three o’clock. You don’t sleep too well when you get to be my age. Always up and down for some reason. So when I heard them, I figured it was one of those in-between dreams. You know, right before you fall asleep and your real thoughts are mixing in with the nonsense?”

Littlefield nodded, then realized the old man couldn’t see his face. “Yeah. What did you hear, or think you heard?”

Littlefield glanced at his watch, about to chalk up his time spent talking to Lester as a waste. The luminous dial showed that it was nearly nine o’clock.

“Bells,” the old man said in a near-whisper.

“Bells?” Littlefield repeated, though he’d plainly heard the man.

“Real soft and faint, but a bell’s a bell. Ain’t no mistaking that sound.”

“I hate to tell you this, Lester, but we both know that the red church has the only bell around here. And even if some kids were messing around there last night, there’s no bell rope.”

“And we both know why there ain’t no bell rope. But I’m just telling you what I heard, that’s all. I don’t expect you to put much stock in an old man’s words.”

The ghost stories. Some families had passed them down until they’d acquired a mythic truth that had even more power than fact. Littlefield wasn’t ready to write Death by supernatural causes on Boonie’s incident report. Since Samuel had died, the sheriff had spent most of his life trying to convince himself that supernatural occurrences didn’t occur.

Just the facts, ma’am, Littlefield told himself, hearing the words in Jack Webb’s voice from the old Dragnet television show.

“There were no recent footprints around the church. No sign of disturbances inside the church, either,” Littlefield said, piling up the evidence as if to convince himself along with Lester.

“I bet there wasn’t no mountain lion paw-prints, either, was there?”

This time, Littlefield initiated the ten-second silence. “Not that we’ve found yet.”

Lester gave his liquid laugh.

Littlefield’s head filled with warm anger. “If you believe so much in the stories, why did you buy the red church in the first place?”

“Because I got it for a song. But it won’t be my problem no more.”

“Why not?”

“Selling it. One of the McFall boys came by the other day. You know, the one that everybody said didn’t act like regular folks? The one that got beat near to a pulp behind the football bleachers one night?”

“Yeah. Archer McFall.” Littlefield had been a young deputy then, on foot patrol at the football game. Archer ended up in the hospital for a week. No arrests were made, even though Littlefield had seen two or three punks rubbing their hands as if their knuckles were sore. Of course, nobody pressed the case too much. Archer was a McFall, after all, and the oddest of the bunch.

“Well, he says he went off to California and made good, working in religion and such. And now he’s moving back to the area and wants to settle here.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“Me, too. And when he offered me two hundred thousand dollars for the red church and a dozen acres of mostly scrub pine and graveyard, I had to bite my lip to keep from grinning like a possum. Supposed to go in tomorrow and sign the papers at the lawyer’s office.”

“Why the red church, if he’s got that kind of money?” Littlefield asked, even though he was pretty sure he already knew.

“That property started off in the McFall family. They’re the ones who donated the land for the church in the first place. Remember Wendell McFall?”

Coincidences. Littlefield didn’t like coincidences. He liked cause-and-effect. That’s what solved cases. “That’s a lot of money.”

“Couldn’t say no to it. But I had a funny feeling that he would have offered more if I had asked. But he knew I wouldn’t. It was like that time with the mountain lion, like he was staring me down, like he knew what I was thinking.”

“I guess if he’s a successful businessman, then he’s had a lot of practice at negotiating.”

“Reckon so,” Lester said, unconvinced. He stood with a creaking that might have been either his joints or the rocker’s wooden slats. “It’s time to be putting up the cows.”

“And I’d best finish my rounds. I appreciate your time, Lester.”

“Sure. Come on back anytime. And next time, plan on staying for a piece of pie.”

“I’ll do that.”

As Littlefield started the Trooper, he couldn’t help thinking about the part of Lester’s story that had gone untold. The part about why a bell rope no longer hung in the red church, and why Archer McFall would want to buy back the old family birthright.

He shook his head and went down the driveway, gravel crackling under his wheels.

CHAPTER FIVE

The dawn was crisp and pink, the air moistened by dew. The scent of pine and wild cherry blossoms spread across the valley along with the thin, smoky threads of the night’s hearths. Water swept its way south underneath the soft fog that veiled the river. A rooster’s crow cracked the stillness of the hills.

Archer McFall nestled against the damp soil, the earth cool against his nakedness. He kept his eyes closed, looking back into the dark avenues of his dreams, chasing shadows to nowhere. The dreams were splashed with red, the color of retribution. They were human dreams, strange and new and chaotic.

The rooster crowed three times before Archer remembered where he was.

Home.

The word, even though it was only thought and not spoken, left a bitter taste in his mouth. The bitterness came from the memory of old humiliations. And an older suffering, one that ran deeper than the expansive surface of sleep.

Archer coughed. Pine needles and brittle leaves pressed against his cheek. He shivered and rolled into a sitting position, opening his eyes. After so long in darkness, he was almost surprised at the brightness of the coming day. The light slashed through the gaps in the forest canopy, sharp and merciless and full of grace.

He gazed down at his bare human flesh. His skin seemed to fit well enough. These human bags of water and bone had always seemed awkwardly constructed to him. But he’d come among these people to take up their ways. Deliverance was more joyful when the victims thought it came from one of their own kind.

More thoughts came back to him, more memories flooded the gray mass of brain that filled his skull. He spat. A reddish clot of half-digested pulp clung to a stump.

As the sun warmed him and his shifting night shapes slithered the rest of the way out of existence, he planned his route back to the Mercedes. He knew the river well. It flowed below the old home grounds, below the church. He’d left his car in the woods a mile away. A Brooks Brothers suit, pinstriped and charcoal gray, was spread out in the trunk, along with leather shoes, knit socks, cologne, a Rolex wristwatch and a sky-blue tie.

The uniform of the walking dead, the Christian soldiers, the false idol-worshippers. The pretenders. And he would pretend to be one of them.

Archer stood and brushed the clinging loam from his body. A kingfisher swooped and lit on a branch nearby, then either smelled or sensed him and disappeared with a frantic snap of wings. Archer smiled and studied the gray mountain slopes.

Home.

The Promised Land.

Creeks as old as lies, dirt as dark as hopelessness. Stones as cold as the heart of a father who had only enough love for one son. Mountains thrust like angry fists up to the sky, defying the heaven that so many people believed in, including his dear deranged mother.

The worst part of this incarnation was the emotional turmoil. No wonder these creatures sinned. No wonder they sought refuge in lust and depravity and excess. They were God’s mistakes. But God’s biggest mistake was jealousy, the craving to build things in His image, the demand for sacrifice.

God demanded love, but had no love of His own to spare. At least not for the second-born. Not for the one destined for dust, while the first earned a high place above. The second son was fit only to rule what he could see, left to find corrupted pleasure here on Earth.

Archer began walking down the rugged incline toward the river. Brambles and branches pricked at his skin, but he soaked up the pain and buried it inside the hollowness of his rage. Sharp outcrops of granite tore at the soles of his feet, and he relished the flow of blood from his wounds.

Jesus had walked in wilderness. So would Archer.

The blood would leave tracks. Others could find his trail, if they were clever. Let them follow. He was born to lead, after all.

And even if they found him, what were they going to do? Kill him?

His laughter echoed through the trees, as deep as the glacier-cut and time-eroded valleys, the human vocal cords vibrating strangely as he threw back his head and chilled the spine of the forest.

Sheriff Littlefield leaned back in his oak swivel chair. Not a whisper of a squeak came from the well-oiled springs. Detective Sergeant Storie shifted uneasily in the chair across the desk from him, her suit jacket rumpled. The morning light on her face showed that she had slept little and poorly. Her eyes were puffy and narrowed from the headache caused by disrupted dreams. Her hair was still wet from a morning shower, and the smell of her conditioner filled the room.

Steam billowed from Littlefield’s cup of black coffee. He looked through it, and the steam parted and swirled as he spoke. “I talked to the folks out in Whispering Pines.”

“Any eyewitnesses?”

“Nobody saw anything.” He put a little too much emphasis on the word “saw.”

“What about knowing? This isn’t the big city, where people don’t want to get involved. The old woman in the apartment next to mine knows it when my cat breaks wind. And the rest of the neighbors are clued in before the fumes disperse.”

Littlefield winced. But he let the wince slip into what he hoped looked like a frown of concern. Storie was always calling him “old school” as it was.

“Well, two people said they heard the bells ringing at the church,” he said.

“So the killer celebrated by letting everybody know what he’d done?” Storie asked incredulously.

“Must have been their imaginations. There’s no bell rope.”

Storie leaned forward, tapping the report that lay on Littlefield’s desk. The pages were wrinkled, probably from where she had worried over them in bed while trying to fall asleep. “Nobody heard the screams, either, I suppose.”

“All we have is what we had yesterday. I’ve got Charlie and Wade searching the hills up around the church. Wade brought his dogs. If there’s anything to be found, they’ll turn it up.”

Storie stood. “I guess I’d better get to work. Any word from Chapel Hill yet?”

“Hoyle says they should get around to the autopsy Monday. Ought to have preliminary results by Wednesday or so.”

“What if it is a psycho?”

Littlefield looked past her to the glass case that lined one wall of his office. He had a collection of confiscated drug paraphernalia that would make a doper weep with envy. Colorful bongs and ornately carved pipes adorned the shelves, along with photographs of a younger Littlefield posing next to marijuana plants. In the center of the case stood a brass cup emblazoned with a badge: the 1998 Law Enforcement Officer of the Year Award, bestowed by the North Carolina Sheriff’s Association.

There wasn’t much crime in Pickett County. In Littlefield’s seven years as sheriff, there had been a total of two murders. In one, the killer himself called the department, and blubberingly narrated how he had just blown his wife’s head open with a .38 revolver. He was waiting on the porch when officers arrived, draining the last of his liquor, the gun cleaned and returned to its cabinet. His wife’s body was in the garage, gingerly covered with a hand-woven shawl.

The other was Storie’s case, the one that had established her as a legitimate detective. In Littlefield’s mind, all the technical training in the world was useless until you actually snapped the cuffs on a perpetrator. And Storie had done that with style, making headlines across the region by helping prosecute the cop-turned-killer. After the trial, she gave the press a highly quotable statement: “If I had written the book, the final chapter would have been different. He would have gotten the death penalty.”

So Littlefield was left with domestic disputes and civil disturbances. Some kids with a stereo blasting too loud, a drunk breaking windows, somebody rearranging the letters on Barkersville’s Main Street Theater marquee to spell out crude words. Or some longhair in an army jacket would sell oregano joints behind the high school. The crime stats looked great on paper, which was part of the reason Littlefield had won his Sheriff’s Association award.

But sometimes he was afraid that Pickett County was just a little too sleepy, that underneath the shimmering overlay of tight community and good-natured harmony was a layer of moral rot. After all, people were people. Maybe having a mad killer on the loose wasn’t really so hard to imagine, not with what played out in other small towns across the country on the nightly news.

“Dogs should be able to track it, whether it’s a mountain lion or a human.”

Storie put her hands on her hips. “And?”

“And what?”

“The rest of the sentence. I get the feeling that you aren’t telling me everything.”

Littlefield sighed and rubbed his eyes. Storie was now wide-awake, as if she had magically cast her weariness over to him. He didn’t know how to begin, but it would be unfair to withhold the information.

Information, hell. It was flat-out rubber-room stuff. But she would find out sooner or later, if she talked to any of the oldtimers in Whispering Pines.

“Well,” he started, “it’s about the church.”

“The church?” Her eyebrows lifted into her wet bangs. “What about the church? Did you find something yesterday?”

“Nothing that you could call a clue,” he lied. “Maybe you’d better sit back down.”

Storie sat on the arm of the chair, clasping her hands together. Like Wade’s hounds, she was excited by the fresh scent of prey. Littlefield pretended to look through a stack of papers on his desk, then cleared his throat.

“The church is haunted.”

Littlefield could have sworn he heard his wristwatch ticking in the sudden silence, but that was impossible. His wristwatch was electronic. Even the police scanner, which sat on a stack of manuals in the corner, quit its squelching in response to his statement. He searched Storie’s face.

Her eyes were wide, disbelieving, as if she had misheard him. But they quickly hardened back into a cool, professional gaze.

“Okay, Sheriff,” she said with an irritated laugh. “That explains everything. A ghost sneaks out at night, maybe it’s pissed off because its sheets got mildewed in the wash, whatever. So it finds a drunk in the graveyard with a dirty magazine and a bottle of bourbon and decides to vent its wrath. That explains why we didn’t find any footprints at the scene. Case closed.”

Littlefield folded his arms over his chest and let the wave of sarcasm sweep over him and die in the corners of the room.

His tight lips must have aroused Detective Storie’s curiosity, because she looked as if she expected him to admit he was joking. “What?” Her mouth dropped open. “Sheesh, you’re serious, aren’t you?”

He said nothing. The coffeemaker on a side table gurgled. He walked slowly over to the machine and refilled his cup. “Want some?” he said, lifting the pot in Storie’s direction.

She shook her head. Littlefield had been dreading this moment ever since they’d gotten the call yesterday. The thing at the church had never left. All these years of hoping, wishing, and his best attempts at praying hadn’t made it go away.

“In the 1860s, the church was the only one in these parts,” he began, walking to the closed door of his office. He looked at the hardware store calendar hanging there. The almanac said the moon was favorable for planting root crops.

He continued, keeping his back to the detective. “Back then it was called Potter’s Mill Baptist Church, after the old grist mill that operated down by the river. Wendell McFall was the pastor. He was an ‘old school’ preacher”—he turned to judge her reaction and saw she was carefully controlling her expression, which didn’t surprise him—”all fire and brimstone and hell to pay. But during the Civil War, they say he started stretching his interpretation of the Gospel.

“I don’t know how much you know about the history of these parts, but the war pretty much made a hard life harder for the people who lived here,” he said. “Pickett County men were part of the Fifty-eighth North Carolina Troops, and almost two-thirds of them were killed in action. Women were keeping up the fields and home chores at the same time. It was a bad stretch, as you can imagine. And Reverend McFall started preaching that the end of the world was nigh.”

“Now, there’s an original idea,” Storie said. “They’ve been peddling that line for at least four thousand years.”

Littlefield gulped his coffee, welcoming the hot sting in his throat. At least Storie hadn’t walked out of the office yet. Maybe rank had its privileges after all.

“Some of the soldiers’ bodies were shipped back here to be buried,” Littlefield said. “Reverend McFall insisted on holding midnight vigils over the graves, because he said they would rise up and walk again otherwise. At the same time, he was preaching some nonsense about how God had two sons, and while the first one was merciful and good and holy, this second son was just the opposite.”

“Too bad this guy wasn’t around in the 1980s,” Storie said. “He could have made a fortune selling cheesy paperbacks.”

Littlefield ignored her. “So McFall starts warning the congregation that this second son would return to the earth, come to undo the good done by Jesus. Said the second son demanded love and sacrifice, like God’s spoiled little brat. In those times, the preacher was pretty much the leader of the community. While those ideas might seem a little flaky now, people were more imaginative back then, carrying with them all the legends and beliefs of their Scottish and English ancestors. So when a man of the cloth told you he had a vision, then you were bound to believe it. And with their fathers and brothers and sons dying and hunger spreading, the congregation must have felt that they hadn’t given enough tribute to God. Or His sons.”

Littlefield had never discussed religion with Storie, or with much of anyone else, for that matter. He’d invited her to attend the First Baptist Church in Barkersville, but that was more of a rote politeness than a serious recruiting pitch. Littlefield himself usually went to services about once a month. He’d stopped reading the Bible after he finished his run through Sunday school and there was no longer anyone to force to him memorize verse. But he’d been raised Baptist, and he was going to die Baptist, even if he’d never devoted a minute to finding out what that really meant. Jesus was Lord, and that was that.

His grandmother on his mother’s side used to tell the story of the red church while she snapped peas or shucked corn. He would sit at her feet, helping with the chore at his own awkward pace, listening too closely to the story to do much work. Sometimes Littlefield’s mother would come in and say, “Don’t fill Frankie’s head with that foolishness,” but Grandma would start right in again the minute Littlefield’s mother left the kitchen.

Littlefield closed his eyes and tried to hear her voice in his mind. But it was no use. He fumbled for eloquent words, found none. “McFall was the one who painted the church red. Said that would bring the first son around to save them, to defeat the second son. Plus the congregation had to start meeting at midnight on Sunday instead of in the morning. By this time, according to the way the oldtimers tell it, McFall was feverish and white as a sheet. He’d stand in the pulpit, a dozen candles lighting up the old wooden interior of the church, and he’d describe his visions. He’d go into convulsions and rant about sin and violent ways and the punishment of the wicked and false idols and a blight carried unto umpteen generations. And the strange thing was, McFall never did prescribe a remedy for this punishment. No prayers, nothing. He wasn’t even passing the plate.”

Storie was rapt now, staring at the sheriff. He didn’t know if it was because she found the legend fascinating or whether she was transfixed by her boss’s making a fool of himself. “So this second son...was he supposed to be the devil or something?”

Littlefield shook his head. “McFall believed this second son had a power equal to Jesus’. And according to my grandmother, McFall had most of the congregation believing it. So the preacher was riding high, dishing out his revelations while the congregation cowered speechless in the pews. And I guess he started getting a little delusional after that.”

“After that? Like he wasn’t before?”

“He started taking advantage,” Littlefield continued. “Said he was the instrument of the Lord, and only he could protect them from the second son. Well, he got a woman pregnant, the wife of a soldier who was off fighting at Gainesville. People started whispering then, though they were too afraid to confront the preacher. Then, one morning following a midnight service, one of the parishioners found her young child mutilated at the altar of the red church.

“Well, as crazy as the preacher had been acting, they figured he had played Abraham or something. Only God didn’t tell him to stop as he raised the knife, so he chopped up the child as a sacrifice. That Sunday night in 1864, the parishioners showed up for service and hauled the preacher from the pulpit. Somebody climbed up the bell rope and cut it loose, threw it out on the ground where the others stood holding torches.”

“They didn’t,” Storie cut in. Littlefield couldn’t tell if she was still mocking him. He decided to bust on through the tale and get it over with. He could feel his neck blushing.

“You know that dogwood by the church door? They hanged him from it.”

“So that was that. Except his ghost still haunts the church, right?”

“I guess the Potters and the Mathesons and the Buchanans started feeling a little guilty and decided that maybe ‘an eye for an eye’ was all fine and dandy, but once a sin was paid for, all was forgiven. They buried him out in the woods, covered him with rocks in a place long forgotten. But they said prayers over his grave even if he didn’t deserve them. They even took care of the woman he got pregnant.”

The police scanner squawked, and a female dispatcher’s voice came over. “Ten-sixty-eight. Ten-sixty-eight on Old Turnpike Road.”

The tension in Littlefield’s office eased slightly. “Denny Eggers’s cows got out again,” Littlefield said.

A deputy on patrol responded to the call. “Ten-four,base. Unit Four, en route.”

“Ten-four,” said the dispatcher. The scanner returned to broadcasting its ambient hiss.

The sheriff looked at Storie. She stood and stretched. “Well, I’d better get out to the church and see if I missed anything yesterday,” she said.

She was at the door, with her hand on the knob, when Littlefield spoke. “The woman he got pregnant brought flowers to his grave. They say that three days after the hanging, she came running out of the woods with tears in her eyes, her clothes torn by the tree branches. She said, ‘Praise God, the stone’s been rolled away.’”

Detective Storie didn’t turn around. The sheriff continued, his words spilling over each other, as if he were experiencing an attack of nausea and wanted it to pass. “When she said that, the church bell started ringing. Only the bell had no rope. And nobody was in the church at the time.”

Storie turned. “So that’s why you told me all this. That’ll really stand up in court.” She dropped her voice into a low, professional delivery. “‘Your Honor, I would like to submit as state’s evidence thirty-two a tape recording of church bells ringing, made on the night of Mr. Houck’s death.’”

Littlefield stared into the black pool of his cup of coffee. “Maybe all that has nothing to do with Boonie’s death. I sure as hell hope not. A psycho might be able to hide out in the woods for a few weeks, but the bloodhounds would get him sooner or later. Same with a mountain lion. But I hear that one of McFall’s descendants is back in town.”

“So you expect me to believe in coincidence?” she said. “They didn’t teach paranormal investigation at the academy. As for Reverend McFall’s ghost, I’ll believe it when you can prove it in court.”

“I’ve got an eyewitness for you,” he said, his voice tired now, an old man’s defeated voice.

“Who?”

He glanced at the Officer of the Year award, glinting dully in the morning sun that sliced through the parted blinds. Storie approached his desk. She leaned over it in a position of superiority, like a teacher berating a daydreaming student.

“Who?” she repeated. “Who’s going to testify that a ghost committed murder?”

“Me.”

CHAPTER SIX

“You?” Storie shook her head.

Littlefield sat back, feeling twice his forty years. The good thing about the past was that you left it farther and farther behind each day. The bad thing was that you also got closer to the day when you could no longer hide from the past. A day of reckoning and judgment.

“I was seventeen,” he said, his flesh cold. “It was Halloween night. Back then, and probably still to this day, getting drunk and driving over to the red church was the thing to do on Halloween. Me and a few of my high school buddies loaded into a pickup I borrowed from my dad. Well, my kid brother Samuel, he was eleven at the time, saw the beer in the bed of the pickup and said he was going to tell on me.”

Littlefield rubbed his eyes. He wasn’t going to let himself cry in front of a woman or another cop. He cleared his throat. “So I told him he could come along if he’d keep his stupid little mouth shut. We went out to the church- we only lived about two miles away, up near the McFalls at the foot of Buckhorn- and parked in the trees off to one side of the graveyard. We drank the beer and dared each other to go inside the church, you know how teenagers will do.”

“Sure I do,” Storie said. “I just never expected you to have been such a scofflaw.”

Littlefield wasn’t sure if her sarcasm was designed to provoke him or encourage him to continue. But he’d kept the story bottled up for too long. He’d never had anyone to confide in.

“Naturally, we were all too scared to do it. Like I said, the ghost stories were pretty well known in these parts. Which was funny as hell, because that’s where most of us went to church on Sundays. During the day, with all the people there and the sun in the windows, it wasn’t scary at all. But at night, with the dark shadows of the woods, your imagination had a lot of room to play.

“So then we got to picking on Samuel, calling him a chicken, as if we were any braver. And, damn me, I was as bad as any of the others. Samuel sat in the bed of that pick-up truck, his eyes wide and shiny in the moonlight and his lip quivering. What else could he do but go up to the church?”

Storie leaned against the wall. The sheriff glanced at her, but she was staring at the floor, looking uncomfortable. She was a cop. Maybe she was as emotionally inhibited as he was and hated this type of intimacy. Well, she could walk out if she wanted. Now that he had started, he was going to finish the story, even if the walls and God were his only audience.

“He went across the graveyard, wearing a cape that was part of his trick-or-treating getup. He was Batman that year, and the cape was a beach towel tied in a knot around his neck. Maybe as he walked, he tried to convince himself that he was a brave superhero.”

Littlefield closed his eyes, and it was as if an October wind had carried him back to that night. He could almost smell the freshly fallen leaves, the sweetness of the late-autumn grass, the beer that had spilled in the truck bed, the smoke from the cigarettes one of the boys smoked. He continued in a monotone.

“By the time he passed those lonely tombstones, I started feeling a little guilty. I jumped out of the truck and ran across the graveyard to get him and drag him away. I hollered, and I guess he thought I was going to do something to him. He ran up the steps and lifted the latch to the church door, then went inside. The rest of the guys were hooting and moaning, making ghost noises while trying not to snicker.

“I followed Samuel inside the church and closed the door behind me. That’s when I got the idea. ‘Let’s scare the bejesus out of them,’ I said, mad at the other guys mostly because I was so much like them. The entryway was dark, but the moonlight spilled through the belfry and lit up that little square where the bell rope used to hang. The hole was about two feet by two feet, too small for most people to squeeze through. But Samuel was slender and wiggly, so I knew he could slip through there if I boosted him up.”

Unit Four’s voice came through on the police radio and interrupted Littlefield’s story. “Come in, base. Found the cows, all right. Denny’s getting them rounded up. I’ll be ten-ten for a few—”

Storie crossed the room and cut off the radio, then turned back to Littlefield. Her eyes flicked to the sheriff’s face, then away, as if she were as ashamed of his vulnerability as he was.

He continued. “I told him, ‘Get up there and hide, and I’ll run out screaming and say that the Bell Monster got you.’ He must have been scared, but I’d always been his hero, and I guess he trusted me that everything would be okay, that nothing bad could happen while I was there. So I boosted him up, and he scrambled through, then I saw his pale face framed in the rope hole. ‘When I wave my arms, you kick the bell,’ I said. He nodded, and I ran outside, waving my arms and screaming like a crazy man.

“‘It got him, it got him,’ I yelled. ‘The Bell Monster got him.’ And all those drunken guys jumped out of the pickup and took off running down the road. I turned and pointed to the belfry, signaling Samuel to ring the bell. I saw his eyes, his white forehead, and the dark mess of his curly hair. And behind him, behind him . . .”

Littlefield took three swallows of cold black coffee. He looked at the sunlight sneaking around the window shade. He’d never told anybody this part. Except for himself. He’d relived it during a thousand sweaty, sleepless nights.

“The Bell Monster was there,” he said, his whisper filling the room.

“It was really just a shadow, but it was there. It had sharp edges, and it moved toward Samuel. I screamed for real then, and I guess Samuel thought it was part of the act. Then he turned around and saw the thing, God only knows what it looked like from that close up. He scrambled over the edge of the belfry and started to slide down the roof. It was a short drop, he should have been fine. But that stupid cape got caught on a nail or something, and I heard the pop from clear across the graveyard.” Littlefield’s whisper dropped a notch quieter. “His neck broke.”

Littlefield could still see Samuel’s startled expression, his eyes and tongue bulging as his body spun beneath the eave of the church. The image had been burned into his retinas, coming to him in dreams and while awake, crisper than a high-definition television signal, more vivid than any movie.

Storie came to him and put a hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry.”

The tears came now, hot and wet and stinging, but not enough to flush away the image of his dead brother’s face. “We buried him there at the church. Sometimes I think that’s the worst part, that we left him buried there forever. The place got what it wanted. The place got him.”

Littlefield wiped his nose on his sleeve. “And here I am, blubbering like an idiot.”

Storie came closer. “It’s okay, Frank,” she said, and for a moment he thought she was going to hug him. That would be the final humiliation. He spun so that the back of his chair was facing her.

“I saw him,” he said.

“I know. It must have been awful.”

“No, not Samuel. I saw him. Right when Samuel’s neck broke, I saw the Hung Preacher. Just for a second. He shimmered there at the end of a rope, hanging from that goddamned dogwood tree that I’ve never had the nerve to chop down. He was looking at me like he knew what he’d done. And he was mighty damned pleased with himself.”

Littlefield was deflated, tired. He was sorry he’d said anything. How could he expect anyone to believe what he barely believed himself? He knew what had happened that night. He’d seen it with his own eyes. But that night existed as if in a separate reality, a private hell, apart from the safe and sane world of Pickett County.

“Did any of your drinking buddies witness anything?” Storie asked.

Damn her. Of course SHE’D want hard evidence. A broken soul wasn’t enough to convince her. His anger dried his eyes.

“No,” he said, staring at a drug prevention poster on the wall. “Officially, it was a prank that turned into a tragedy. Freak accident. Of course, the oldtimers muttered and added Samuel’s death to the legend of the red church. The rest of the world went on with the business of living.”

“Except you,” Storie said.

Except me. Storie did have a detective’s eyes. Littlefield ran his hand over his scalp and stood. “Well, now you know your sheriff is apeshit crazy.”

“The eyes can play tricks. In my psychology classes, they taught us that bad memories can trigger—”

Littlefield sliced his palm across the air to silence her. “I don’t give a damn about theories. I know what I saw.”

She clenched her fists and looked at him, the hurt clear on her face. She hurried out of the office, and he did nothing to stop her. She slammed the door, and Littlefield’s Officer of the Year award rattled in its case.

Elizabeth McFall, known to the old families as Mama Bet, knelt in the damp forest soil.

The dead belong to the dirt. And the dirt belongs to Him that shaped it all.

The dirt would have her soon enough. She was nearly eighty, suffering from diabetes, cataracts, and high blood pressure. But at least God allowed her legs to work still, and her mind was a lot clearer than her eyesight. She looked through the treetops, at the blue sky and the invisible kingdom waiting behind it.

A hand touched her shoulder.

“You done yet, Mama Bet?”

It was Sonny Absher, the biggest small-time thief this side of Tennessee. She hoped his sins didn’t jump onto her, like lice or fleas jumping to greener pastures.

The worst part of this whole business was that the Abshers were in on it. The Buchanans were bad enough, what with their moonshining and wife-beating and chicken-stealing ways. But at least the Buchanans knew how to get down on their knees and say they were sorry. The Abshers would just as soon spit at God, even if the saliva fell right back onto their oily faces.

But the Abshers couldn’t be culled from the congregation. All the families had a hand in the original persecution, and they all carried a common debt in their hearts. After all these years, they were practically of the same blood anyway. And that blood would have to spill, and spill, and spill.

“I’ll be done shortly,” Mama Bet answered. “Gotta suffer a little, get right down here on my knees and feel a little pain.”

“So this is where they buried him?”

Mama Bet bowed over the small pile of stones. “Yeah. But without a body, a grave’s just a hole in the ground.”

Sonny Absher snorted. She could smell the white lightning on his breath, in his clothes, strong enough to drown out his rancid sweat. “You mean you believe all that bullshit about Wendell McFall coming back from the dead?”

“You better hush yourself,” Mama Bet said, shrugging his hand away from her shoulder. “God might strike you down. Look what He done to Boonie.”

“God’s done and struck me,” Sonny said. “He got me born here. Why in hell else would I be part of this bunch?”

Sonny drew a cigarette from his stained shirt pocket, lit it, and blew a gray cloud of smoke to the sky. He retreated to a stand of laurels, where his brother Haywood and Haywood’s wife and teenage daughter waited. Stepford Matheson sat on a stump, whittling on a little chunk of white ash.

Haywood had tried to aspire to a little dignity, taking up with the Baptists and selling insurance in Barkersville. His hands were folded in reverence, but he didn’t fool Mama Bet. A person of true faith didn’t believe in insurance. But Haywood was all show anyway. His retail-rack suit swamped his skinny frame.

You put a weasel in a forty-dollar suit, and you get a forty-dollar weasel. And Nell ain’t quite got all the ingredients to be a trophy wife. I mean, a quart of makeup and a weekly trip to the hair salon ought to give better results than THAT. Why, I’ve seen better eyeliner jobs down at Mooney’s Funeral Home.

Mama Bet turned back to the loose pile of stones that marked her great-grandfather’s former resting place.

Forgive me, God, for thinking ill of others. I guess I suffer the sin of pride. I’m just a little shaky, is all. Scared. You can understand, can’t You?

Sure, God could understand. God was really to blame for this whole mess, when you got right down to it. God was the one who put those fool notions in Wendell McFall’s head. God was the one who put temptation in Wendell’s path. God was the one who sat right up there in the clouds and didn’t lift a finger while Wendell sliced up that pretty little girl.

God sat right there and laughed. And God laughed the night He slipped His seed into Mama Bet’s belly. Oh, yes, God was a sneaky little devil, all right. Came to her in the dark and made her forget all about it after.

Until she missed a few of her monthlies. Her belly had started to swell and her breasts grew heavy with milk. Everyone thought she had suffered a sin of the flesh, had fallen in with one of those door-to-door Bible salesmen who had a reputation for rutting like stallions going after a pent-up mare. And so the little hens clucked, Alma Potter and Vivian Matheson and all the other no-good gossips of Whispering Pines.

She didn’t tell anybody she was still a virgin. Then, now, and forever, as far as she could tell. Virgins couldn’t get pregnant, could they? Only one had in the whole history of the world, the way the Bible told it.

Mama Bet delivered the baby without help, had strained and groaned and screamed for twenty hours, as her water burst and her uterine walls spasmed. God forgive her, she had even cussed that baby’s Father. Borrowed every bad word in the Absher repertoire, then added a few of her own. Finally that slimy head popped through, followed by little shoulders and arms and belly and legs.

Can a body love something so much that her heart aches with the loving?

She had often wondered. Because she fell in love with that child, she pulled him onto her belly and then hugged him against her face, her tears running like whatever was leaking from her broken place down there. Her whole world, her whole reason for living, was realized in that moment after birth.

“How long you going to pray over that damned old pile of rocks?” Sonny called.

“Shut up,” Haywood said.

Mama Bet slowly rose to her feet, pushing on the mossy stones for support. Haywood started forward to help her, but she waved him away.

“I get my strength from God and Archer,” she said.

Oh, yes, it was strength, all right. The strength born of stubbornness and determination. God was the worst absentee father of all time. Because He never really just showed up and did his business, never made this or that happen directly, though He had his hand in every little breath that human beings took. He kept himself invisible, because He wanted nary bit of the blame when things went wrong. That was why He’d planted the seed and sneaked away in the night without even leaving an instruction manual on how to raise a messiah.

Mama Bet peeled her scarf back and let it rest around her neck. The sun was high enough to break through the canopy of forest. The leaves weren’t at full size yet. Otherwise, the grave would be in the shadows all day. Mama Bet took a deep swallow of the fresh mountain air. She could taste the past winter’s ice and the coming summer’s oak blooms in the same breath.

Round and round these dadgummed seasons go. Seems like they get faster and faster, mixing together and not stopping to rest, like the world’s in a great big hurry to get to the reckoning.

She hobbled across the damp leaves of the forest clearing until she reached the others. The congregation. Only they didn’t know it yet. They knew only that they had to come, had to join in, had to open their hearts. Mama Bet was the only one who knew that the Second Son was back, and now there would be hell to pay. But she had never whispered a word of the truth, except to Archer. Darned if she couldn’t keep a secret as good as God could.

“I reckon we ought to pray,” she said. She held out her wrinkled hand to Stepford, who folded his pocketknife and put away his carving. He wiped the wood chips from his hand and clasped it to Mama Bet’s. Noreen took her other hand, smiling. She was a pretty girl, not as moon-faced as the rest of the Abshers. Maybe she had Potter blood in her. Zeb Potter had been known to cat around a little, back before his health started failing. Maybe Nell had succumbed to old Zebulon’s sinful charms.

There I go again, God. Thinking ill of others, as if I got no sins of my own to worry about. Strike me down if it be Thy will. Just please don’t plant another seed in me. I don’t think I could take another go-round as bad as the last one.

Well, that, plus she had no more love to spare for another child. Archer Dell McFall took up every square inch of her heart. Archer had given her more joy than she ever thought heaven could hold. Archer was the most beautiful creature under Creation. Darned if God couldn’t produce a fine offspring when He set His mind to it.

The others gathered in a circle and held hands, though Sonny gave another of his little grunts of annoyance. Mama Bet shot him a wicked look. He blinked and went cow-eyed. The gathered bowed their heads.

“Dear God, give us the strength to do Your will, and to accept our part in Your work,” she said, her voice taking on a tremulous quality. “We know we have sinned and come short of the glory, but we know You love us anyway. Lead our eyes from evil visions and lead our ears from the call of false prophets. Allow us to make whatever sacrifices You require, that we may not stray from the one true path. Keep us and protect us unto the fourth generation. Amen.”

And may Archer do this thing right, she silently added, as the others echoed “Amen.”

“Are we done now?” Sonny said, pulling out another cigarette.

“We might not ever be done,” Mama Bet said.

“When the Lord Jesus gives you a mission, you follow it to the end,” Haywood said.

Poor Haywood. Swallowing that New Testament tomfoolery hook, line, and sinker. Well, Archer will shine the light on him soon enough.

Stepford spat onto the trunk of a poplar. “Come on, Sonny. I’m thirsty,” he said. He turned and started down the path that led to the rutted dirt road. They had parked their cars at the foot of the trail.

“Wait a second,” Sonny yelled. He turned to Mama Bet. “Do we got to go to the red church tomorrow night?”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

He frowned at the forest floor. “It’s getting so a body ain’t got time to pitch a good drunk, what with all this bowing and scraping and worshiping.”

“Well, Mr. Absher, you’re welcome to go straight on down to hell if you want, but this ain’t about you, is it?”

He looked at the small overgrown grave.

“The stone’s been rolled away,” Mama Bet said. “We all got sacrifices to make.”

Sonny’s thin lips curled. “Well, we may have to follow the call, but we sure don’t have to like it none.”

He turned and hurried after Stepford, his boots kicking up a wash of leaves. Haywood came to Mama Bet’s side and took her arm. “Come on, Mama Bet,” he said. “Let’s get you home so you can rest up.”

She smiled at him, at Noreen, even at Nell. The congregation. Well, part of it, anyway. That Noreen was so pretty, there in her Easter dress the color of robin’s eggs. Almost a shame that beauty such as that would have to fall by the wayside.

Because all a pretty face does is hide the ugly underneath, don’t it?

“Yeah, I guess we all better rest up,” she said. “There will come great trials.”

The sky seemed to darken a little at her words, or maybe God took up into the trees and reached His fingers out to throw a shadow in her eyes. He liked to keep things confusing, all right. She sometimes wondered if He loved her, if He really loved any of them. Or was He just pretending so He could get the things He wanted, like love?

Haywood led her down the mountain path to her home, to the birthplace of the Second Son.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Linda watched the sun crawl down toward the ridge of Buckhorn Mountain. Just a few more hours. She was wondering how she could slip away without the boys noticing. She almost wished David had stayed. He swallowed lies more easily than the boys did.

She turned from the door and went back to the kitchen. Timmy would be hungry when he got in from his chores. She could see him through the window above the sink, chopping at the brown garden soil with his hoe. The cabbage and peas and potatoes were in the ground, and soon it would be time to plant corn and cucumbers. She didn’t know how she was going to manage the farm alone. Even though the fields were leased out for growing hay, the garden took a lot of backbreaking time and sacrifice.

Sacrifice.

Archer always said that sacrifice was the currency of God.

Linda bit her lip. Tears stung her eyes, and she didn’t know whether they were brought by regret or joy. The fold would prosper in the next life and unto the fourth generation, but letting go of the things in this life was hard. There were joys to be had here: her children and sometimes even David, a walk in the wet grass of a morning, standing in the barn during a rainstorm with the music of the drops on the tin roof.

No, that was mortal thinking, covetous and vain and destructive. But she was a mortal. Still. A mother of two wonderful boys. Until Archer demanded it, she wouldn’t forsake them.

Linda stopped at the refrigerator. One of Ronnie’s poems from school was hanging from a banana magnet. His teacher had circled a large red A on the corner of the page. “The Tree,” it was called.

The tree has arms

that hug,

not as warm as Mother’s.

Sometimes when I walk by,

the tree waves

and I run away.

The tree barks at me.

Ronnie was doing okay. He had slept most of the time since coming back from the hospital. His face was pale and his nose was lost in gauze and padding. Once he had vomited blood and stained the carpet in the boys’ room. The place smelled like carpet-cleaning spray, but luckily it was warm enough that she could leave the windows open.

Linda pulled some hamburger from the refrigerator. They had killed their final cow the previous fall. Linda wondered if the dead cow counted as a sacrifice. Maybe for the God of cows. Let Archer worry about that kind of stuff.

Tim came in the back door.

“Go wash your hands, honey,” she said over the rush of water as she rinsed some potatoes.

“They’re sore.” Not too much whine in his voice.

“I know. You’ll get used to it.”

Tim came to the sink and saw the hamburger. “It looks like that guy’s face.”

“Hush, honey.”

“I dreamed about him last night.”

“Was it scary?” She searched his face, looking for weakness. All she saw were David’s eyes, the stubborn gift of genetics. She moved over and let Timmy wash his hands.

The sink turned brown-red from the dirt. “No. In my dream, the graveyard was sort of dark, but not a bad dark. A fun dark, like a carnival or something. And the dead man was all ripped up and stuff, but he was walking around the tombstones.”

“You’re a brave boy. That sure would have scared me.” Was Archer coming to the boys? Or had it just been the usual trick of dreams?

Tim turned off the taps and wiped his hands on the dishcloth that hung from a cabinet knob. “There was another person, a boy, up at the church. Except the church wasn’t a church, it was lit up like a spookhouse. This boy was up in the place with the bell, just laughing and laughing and laughing and ringing the bell. And the dead man danced around the tombstones, pieces of him falling off the whole time.”

Archer. It had to be Archer. The truth has many faces, he always said. “Well, you’ve been through a lot. It’s no wonder you had such a weird dream,” Linda said, pressing out two patties and placing them in a black iron skillet on the stove. The heat made the meat sizzle, the white noise of energy transformation.

“That dream was nowhere near as scary as talking to the sheriff. Or seeing Ronnie in the hospital.”

The sheriff. No wonder Tim had thought the man was going to arrest him. The sheriff had stood like an army man in the hospital lobby, asking Tim questions in his deep, patient voice. He was a threat. But he was of the old blood, and had his own debt to pay. Archer could handle him.

The burgers popped as she flipped them, sending tiny sparks of pain up her bare arms as hot grease spattered on her skin. The bell rang on the microwave. “Dinner’s ready,” she said.

While Tim ate at the kitchen table, Linda took some apple juice to Ronnie. She turned on the light, and he moaned. “It’s okay, honey,” she said. “I brought you something to drink.”

He was feverish and pale against the pillow. His nose was still plumped by packing, and a stray bloody thread of gauze dangled from one nostril.

“N—not thirsty,” Ronnie said.

She sat beside him on the lower bunk. As the oldest, he usually slept in the upper bunk, but she didn’t want to risk his falling during the night. Archer would want him mended, healed, whole. Not like this.

Why did you have to go and break your nose? He looked so small, with his hair brushed back and the Star Wars sheets pulled up to his chin. Theo, his stuffed bear, had fallen to the side, the stiff arms providing no comfort.

For a split second, she blamed Archer for the injury. Of course, she knew that Archer had taken Boonie Houck, had made the drunkard pay for his sins at the same time Archer rejuvenated himself for holy work. Boonie’s worthless life had culminated with a great act of giving. Serving as a sacrifice was Boonie’s highest possible purpose in this world. He should have been whimpering in gratitude as Archer took his wicked eyes and tongue and other sinful parts.

Ronnie’s accident was only a down payment, she knew. Many innocents would fall so that none of the guilty escaped. That was the Word, that was the Way. She had accepted the testament long ago.

Archer warned that some choices would be difficult. But he reminded the fold that earthly love was only another vanity, another sin. All love must be directed to the Temple of the Two Suns. And none of that love could be wasted on the First Son, Jesus.

Jesus, the plague maker. The damning one. The liar. A mask of light and peace covering a devil’s scarred and pocked face. Linda shivered, recalling how deeply the Baptists had brainwashed her. And to think that she’d been making the boys go to their church.

A Jesus trick, Archer had explained. Using David to trap her. To “save” her.

She shuddered and put the apple juice to Ronnie’s lips. He strained his head forward and took a swallow, then collapsed back against the pillow. “How are you feeling, sugar?”

“Hurts,” he whispered.

“I know, baby. It’ll be okay soon.”

“I just want to sleep.”

“Sure.” She kissed him on the forehead, careful to avoid the purpled flesh around his eyes. “Sweet dreams.”

Timmy was finished eating by the time she got back to the kitchen. She sent him to wash his face and brush his teeth, and then to bed. She turned on the radio, the local station. A Beatles song was playing, “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Sinful. But she was strong. She could withstand this test of faith.

Yes, Archer, I am strong. I am worthy. The music can’t touch me, because I know it for what it is.

She listened as the song segued into its second fadeout, the backward tape effects filled with secret messages. The taunts and seductive whispers of Jesus. Something about burying Paul, the cursed apostle. Dozens of people across the county, maybe hundreds, were being exposed to this depraved Christ-worship. She said a quick prayer to Archer for their souls.

Another song came on. The Culture Club, a band she used to like. Back before she met Archer. “Karma chameleon,” Boy George sang. Karma chameleon. More sacrilege, more perverted celebrations of the spirit, another false Way.

The boys would be asleep now. She turned off the radio and silently crept out the door. The sky was charcoal gray in the west, where the waxing moon hung bloated and obscene. But the ground, the earth, the mountains were black as absolution. As near Archer’s promised peace as one could hope, at least in this mortal world.

Crickets. The chuckle of the creek. The wind soughing through the trees, hiding the noises of nocturnal creatures.

She didn’t need light in order to see.

She needed only faith.

And darkness.

Archer’s darkness summoned her, a beacon so righteously black that it was blinding.

She crossed the damp meadow and slipped into the forest.

###

Zeb Potter cradled the shotgun across one flannel-wrapped arm. He shined the flashlight into the belly of the barn. The cows were banging against the walls of their stall, uneasy lowing coming from their throats. The air was thick with the smell of fresh manure.

Something’s scared ‘em bad.

Zeb had been getting ready for bed, had taken out his chewing tobacco and his teeth and was deciding whether or not he could go one more night in the same pair of long johns when the bawling of a calf filled the night. A calf could wail its lungs out if it wanted, but hardly ever cut loose without a good reason.

Most people thought cows were dumb as dirt, but they had peculiarities that none of those genius “agronomists” from NC State would ever be able to explain. A healthy cow, you hit it in that place just between and a little above the eyes with a sledgehammer, and it dropped dead on the spot, ready to turn to steak and hamburger. But a sick cow, you had to hit it five or six times before it went down. And why was that? The sick cow was living to get healthy, but the healthy cow was about as well off as it could hope to be. So the healthy cow didn’t have as much to look forward to. Cows knew a thing or two about life.

So they always kicked up a fuss when they smelled something bad. Though all the big predators had died out, once in a while a pack of wild dogs came over the hills from Tennessee-ways, where people let such things go on. But on this side of the state line, people took care of their problems. They didn’t wait for problems to do their damage and move on.

After the first commotion, Zeb had cussed once and slipped into his boots without bothering to find his socks. He’d stopped by the door and put on his hat and collected his twenty-gauge and his spotlight. If Betty were still alive, she would be waiting by the door in her nightgown, telling him to be careful. And he would have patted the shotgun and said, “This is all the care I need.” But Betty had gone to be with the Lord, and the farm was big and lonely and the house made noises at night. And the damned hound had probably skulked away into the woods at the slightest scent of trouble.

The shotgun was heavy, and Zeb’s muscles ached from tension. He flicked the light over the barn, its yellow beam bouncing around among locust posts and old wire and rotted feed sacks. Hay dust choked the air, and the crumbs from last fall’s tobacco snowed between the cracks in the loft floor above. Something was moving around up there.

That ain’t no damned wild Tennessee dogs.

Zeb clenched his bare gums together and moved as smoothly as his old bones would let him over to the loft stairs. A chicken was disturbed from its nest under the steps and almost got its knobby head blown off when it erupted into Zeb’s face. Zeb picked up the flashlight he had dropped. The cows were noisier now, their milling more frantic.

Zeb put a trembling foot on the stairs. “Who’s up yonder?” he hollered, hoping he sounded angry instead of scared. Nothing but moos answered him.

He’d heard what had happened to Boonie, and there was no way in hell that it was going to happen to him. The sheriff had even been out, asking if Zeb had seen or heard anything unusual. But the only thing Zeb had heard was those damned bells in the middle of the night, what was probably some of them high school kids finding a way to bug as many people as possible.

He thought now about going up to the house and ringing the sheriff’s department. Littlefield told him to call if anything “unusual” happened. Littlefield sure liked that word. But Zeb had known Littlefield when the boy was knee-high to a scarecrow, and he didn’t want the sheriff to think that he couldn’t take care of his own problems. That was why Tennessee and the rest of the damned country was in such a mess. Everybody closed their eyes when the bad stuff came along.

John Wayne never even blinked.

Zeb played the spotlight into the darkness at the top of the stairs. He put a boot on the second tread, and before he could decide whether he was really going to or not, he had taken another step, then another, and he was halfway up before he even started thinking again. He laid the barrel of the shotgun over his left wrist so he could shine the light while still keeping his right hand at the trigger. If he fired the gun in that position, with it held beside his hip, the recoil would probably break his trigger finger. That was one worry that John Wayne never had.

“Might have been somebody with a knife or an ax,” the sheriff had said. “Either that, or a wild animal.”

Sure, it could be somebody with a blade. City folks had moved into Whispering Pines, up from Florida or down from New York, come to escape those streets that were full of maniacs with drugged-out eyes and hands that would rather slap you than lift in greeting. But guess what? The city folks had brought the bad things with them. A killer’s instinct was as easily packed away in a U-Haul as a fitness machine or a golf cart was.

He’d told the sheriff in no uncertain terms that there wasn’t an animal around here big enough to mutilate a man like that. Maybe off in Africa or something, but things were tamed over here. So when Littlefield said Perry Hoyle had mentioned a mountain lion, Zeb laughed out loud. The idea of a touched-in-the-head killer running around was way easier to swallow than believing a mountain lion was on the loose.

But right now, Zeb was in no mood to laugh at anything. His stomach was a wet sack of cornmeal, tied closed by the knot in his throat. He had ascended enough to poke his head into the loft, and the spotlight jittered from corner to corner, too fast for him to really see much.

Hay, stacked crooked like a child’s wooden blocks.

The bright metal glint of his tools hanging on the wall by his workbench.

Night, cool beyond the chicken wire that covered the open windows.

Posts, the dull underside of the tin roofing, the hewed stakes where the tobacco hung to dry, the-

The dark thing, swooping, a sudden papery rattle breaking the strained quiet.

Zeb jerked the spotlight and his trigger hand tensed.

Bat.

Goddamned no-good mouse with wings.

Zeb exhaled, his heart pounding in his eardrums. A small warm ache filled his chest.

Easy now, Zebulon. Don’t be putting yourself in no hospital.

He’d been in the hospital last year, and that was as close to prison as he ever wanted to be. Doctors sticking things inside every hole in his body, nurses seeing him naked, people in white coats telling him when to eat what pills. Couldn’t have a chaw, no, sir. Have you ever had this, this, or this?

Finally, they’d cut him open and taken out his gall bladder. He suspected it was just for the hell of it, that they really couldn’t find anything wrong but didn’t want to admit it. But he figured the surgery would make them happy, and he’d never needed the damned gallbladder anyway. At least they didn’t take anything important, and he got to go home again, even if he still felt like warmed-over liver mush about half the time.

Zeb was mad at himself for shaking. And to prove to himself that he didn’t close his eyes to problems, and that, by God, he didn’t have no sorry Tennessee blood in him, he walked across the loft, careful to avoid the black squares cut in the floor where he threw down hay to the cattle in the winter months.

If anybody was up here, they were trespassing, plain and simple.

And if it was a touched-in-the-head druggie escaped from the city, Zeb could handle him.

No matter the ax or knife.

A shadow of movement caught his eye, and he brought up the light to see that it was only a piece of hemp rope, swaying in the breeze that leaked in from the windows.

A metallic squeak came from behind him. Zeb spun, the flashlight beam crawling over the workbench. A short piece of stovepipe rocked back and forth. Wasn’t no wind blowed that.

He crept toward the bench, the pump-action shotgun leading the way. It occurred to him that the flashlight was giving away his position. The druggie or whatnot knew exactly where Zeb was.

Nothing to do but walk brave and proud. He stood John Wayne straight and said, “Come on out where I can see you.”

Only silence and the muted ruckus of the cows.

“Got a gun here.”

A cricket chirped somewhere amid the hay.

Zeb played the light along the wall above the workbench. Something wasn’t right.

There was the pitchfork, hanging by two rusty nails. A pulley, used for raising cows so they could be properly gutted. A cross-saw. An ax. A crop sprayer with a shoulder strap. A loop of harness. A shovel. Two hoes. An old mowing bar for the tractor. Three different thicknesses of chain.

And what else? What was missing?

The wall went dark and it took Zeb a second to realize that the light had been blocked.

Druggie.

A face filled the circle of light, a face that looked familiar but unreal. Zeb’s chest was boiling, as hot as a chicken-scalding cauldron.

Not a druggie. A—

Zeb’s finger tightened on the trigger, and the roar of exploding gunpowder slapped against the tin roofing, then echoed to give Zeb’s ears an extra deafening blow. Pellets ripped scars in the wormy chestnut walls. And the thing that had been standing before him was blown back to hell where it belonged.

Except . . .

Sweet merciful Jesus.

The thing was still there, the face split into a sharp grin as the features around it rippled between skin and scale and fur and a shapeless, slick gray. But the eyes were the worst, those green stabbing rays that loved and hated worse than any dream or nightmare, eyes that owned, eyes that blessed and cursed, eyes that—

Zeb could hear himself whimpering as he tried to pull back the pumping stock. He’d been right: firing the gun had broken his shooting finger, but no time to worry about the pain in his heart and hand. He might have missed the first time, but the thing was closer now, only he was too weak to reload—this would never happen to John Wayne.

The spotlight had fallen in the hay, but its beam was angled upward. The bright-eyed thing filled the circle of light like the star of a demented puppet show. It raised the sledge, Zeb’s cow-killing hammer, and as the eight-pound metal head began its downward stroke, aimed for that place just between and a little above the eyes, he realized that maybe those Tennessee-born bastards were right.

There was a time to close your eyes until the bad stuff went away.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Frank Littlefield topped the hill in his Trooper, blinking against the dawn as he threaded his way into the valley of Whispering Pines. He had the window rolled down because the smell of green spring was so much sweeter this far from town. The few houses were set away from the road, with stretches of pasture and tobacco fields broken by stands of hardwood forest. Below, the silver and brown of barn roofs made tiny rectangles along the plain of the river. Cows ambled near the fence lines, moving as sleepily and lazily as the river, their heads all pointed in the same direction.

A few vehicles passed, their occupants in dark suits and starched dresses, with hair respectfully combed or brushed. They were headed toward Barkersville, toward church. Sunday was supposed to be a holy day, a day of rest and fellowship, of fried chicken and televised sports. Not a day of death.

He reached the valley floor and turned onto the gravel road that he knew too well. A boy was fishing off the one-lane bridge, and Littlefield slowed to minimize the dust raised by the Trooper’s passing. The sheriff checked the boy’s stringer line to see if the trout were biting. The stringer was slack. Even the fish were lazy today.

He rounded a bend and the red church came into view. From this distance, the structure seemed to have a face. The windows were like flat eyes, the eaves a brooding brow, the uneven stone foundation a cruel grin of broken teeth. The church glowered, smug and hateful on its cemetery hill. Littlefield looked away to rid himself of the image of Samuel hanging from the eaves.

A strip of yellow plastic at the lower edge of the cemetery marked off the scene where Boonie Houck had died. Do Not Cross, the police line commanded. Funny how those words always came a little too late. If only the barrier had been in place a week ago. Then Boonie might be waking up with a hangover instead of sleeping on a metal gurney in the state medical examiner’s meat locker.

All we have to do is mark off the whole world. Little yellow strips for everybody.

A truck was backed up to the church’s door. It was Lester’s farm truck, a big black Dodge two-ton. Bales of hay were stacked in the cattle bed. Lester had never worked on Sundays. The only time he missed a morning worship service was when he had to make a November run to the tobacco market in Durham.

Littlefield decided to have another talk with Lester. Storie would be waiting for him at Zeb Potter’s place, but from what the detective had told him over the phone that morning, there wasn’t much Littlefield could do for the old farmer. And the sheriff had a feeling that whatever was going on at the red church might have some connection to last night’s murder. Because Zeb Potter most definitely had not been attacked by a mountain lion. Unless mountain lions had learned how to swing sledgehammers.

He pulled into the twin ruts that served as the church’s driveway and parked by the Dodge. Lester was standing at the church door, a bale of brown-yellow hay in his gloved hands. “Howdy, Sheriff. You’re getting to be a regular around these parts.”

“A mite too regular,” Littlefield said, getting out of the Trooper. He looked up at the dogwood, at the thin black branches that never died. He started to glance at the belfry, but caught himself and turned his attention back to Lester. “I guess the sale went through okay.”

“Sure did. I ain’t seen that many zeroes since my last report card, way back in the fourth grade.” Lester drained the excess tobacco juice from his mouth.

Someone came out of the sanctuary. It was the Day woman, the mother of the boys who had found Boonie’s body. A red kerchief held her hair out of her face, and her shirtsleeves were rolled halfway up. Bits of straw clung to the flannel.

“Hi, Sheriff,” she said, tossing a bale of hay into the truck and starting back inside the church.

“Good morning, ma’am. How’s your boy this morning?”

She looked confused at first, as if she didn’t know who he was talking about. “Ronnie? Oh, he’s fine. Just fine. They bounce back fast when they’re that age.”

Fast enough so that you can go out and leave them unattended? “Glad to hear it, ma’am. What about the little one?”

“Timmy’s okay, too. He’s at the house, keeping watch for me.”

“Did he remember anything else about finding the body? Anything that might help us?”

She looked at Lester, then into the dark belly of the church. “I think it’s best that he forget all about it, don’t you?”

“Maybe so.” Who or what was inside the church that was making her so nervous? And what was she doing here in the first place? To Littlefield, the chore seemed like something more than just a case of neighbor helping neighbor.

Lester squinted up at the sun. “Excuse us, Sheriff. We got work to do.”

“Sure. One thing, though. You hear anything last night?”

Lester’s eyes flicked almost imperceptibly to the belfry. Almost. “No. I slept like a hibernating log. Why?”

“I thought you might have heard something. What about you, Mrs. Day?”

The woman was leaning against the door frame, biting her lip. “Heard something? What do you mean?”

“Like maybe something from over your neighbor’s way? On the Potter farm?”

She shook her head. “Why, no, Sheriff.”

He eased closer to the steps that led into the red church, veering clear of the dogwood. The air coming from the church was cool, even though light slanted through the windows. Lester and Linda stepped side by side as if to block his way.

“Somebody killed Zeb Potter last night.” The sheriff watched for any reaction. Lester quickened the pace of his tobacco chewing. Linda Day looked in the direction of the Potter farm.

“I guess it for sure wasn’t no mountain lion this time, was it?” Lester said.

“That’s what my deputies say. Zeb was killed with a sledgehammer.”

“Huh. They know who done it?”

“Not yet. We’re trying to lift some fingerprints.” But Littlefield suspected they would find no clues. No fingerprints, no footprints, no clothing fibers. And no eyewitnesses. “I was wondering if you heard the bells ring last night?”

Littlefield had learned from long experience how to tell if a person was about to lie. And Lester fit the profile. The old farmer’s nostrils flared slightly with indignation, he drew in a sharp breath, his eyes shifted left and right, and he stood a little straighter. “Like I told you, I was sleeping like the dead.”

The sheriff nodded. “What about you, ma’am? Or your husband?”

She was a better liar than Lester. Maybe she had done it too often. “Well, I had the radio on most of the night, at least till I fell asleep. I wouldn’t have heard nothing. David was . . . asleep.”

“I see. Well, I guess I better get over to Zeb’s.”

He started to turn, then quickly looked up at the pair, trying to catch them off guard. “You mind if I have a quick look inside the church? You know, in case the killer stopped by. I’m kind of figuring that the same person that killed Zeb killed Boonie.”

Sweat glistened underneath Lester’s eyes. He pulled at the straps of his coveralls. “Well, Sheriff, I don’t mind a bit, but it ain’t my property no more. I don’t know if I can give permission like that unless you got a search warrant.”

A smooth voice boomed from inside the church. “Now, now, Lester. Our church is always open.”

Lester and Linda parted, standing one on each side of the door like concrete lions at a library entrance.

A man stepped into the light. He was tall, with dark curly hair and healthy, tanned skin. He had a slight touch of gray hair at the temples. His cheeks crinkled when he smiled, but his deep brown eyes were unreadable. He wore a white cotton shirt and a gray tie, slacks, and a pair of leather shoes that cost about two weeks’ worth of Littlefield’s salary.

“A church should turn away no one, especially a man who seeks the truth,” the man said. An aroma of cologne wafted from him, but underneath the spicy musk was a disturbing smell that Littlefield couldn’t place. The man stooped and extended a hand. “Sheriff Littlefield. I’m glad we have a capable man on the job in these uncertain and dangerous times.”

The sheriff climbed to the landing. The preacher’s hand was as cool as a fish. “Pleased to meet you, uh . . .”

“It’s been a long time. Nearly a lifetime ago.”

Now his face was familiar. McFall. Except he didn’t have that typical McFall slump, that devious way of moving, the almost cowering attitude that ran in the McFall family as a result of being snubbed and kicked around. “I’m Archer McFall,” he said, in that used-car-salesman voice of his.

“Archer. Lester told me you were moving back here.” Littlefield glanced at Lester, who had suddenly become highly interested in the flaking paint of the truck’s cattle bed.

“Well, Sheriff, everybody loves these mountains,” Archer said. “It gets in your blood.”

“And you bought this here church?”

“Yes, sir. I’m going to open it up again. God’s work has been sorely neglected in these parts. People are in desperate need of the Word and the Way. That we have a murderer in our midst is only one more sign of how far we’ve fallen.”

Littlefield nodded. He never knew how to conduct himself in the presence of a preacher. He always felt a flash of guilt for his sins and his irregular church visitations, but usually an aura of forgiving calm emanated from someone of the cloth. With Archer, though, he felt nothing but the guilt.

“Come on inside, Sheriff. Make sure there’s no killer here. We can’t have a devil hiding out in the house of God.”

Suddenly the sheriff didn’t want to step inside. In his mind, he could hear the fluttery Halloween laugh from his childhood. The boards were clapping, clawing, the church door was a mouth, he was going to be swallowed, like Jonah into the belly of the whale. Like his brother Samuel.

He swayed dizzily and felt the preacher’s strong grip on his forearm. “Are you okay, Sheriff?”

“Uh . . .” Littlefield rubbed his temples. “Not getting much sleep lately. These damned—excuse me, Reverend—these doggoned murder cases must be getting to me.”

“There’s peace in prayer, Sheriff. You will find your killer. All things in God’s good time.”

Littlefield felt his feet shuffle forward, almost against his will, and then he was inside the church. Most of the hay was gone. The handmade pews that had been stacked against one wall the day before were now lined unevenly across the floor. Brooms, pitchforks, mops, and buckets were scattered across the sanctuary. The room smelled of candle wax. They had accomplished a lot this morning.

Or had they been working all night?

Behind him, Lester and Linda resumed their work. A woman emerged from the small wing at one side of the dais. Littlefield recognized her face but didn’t know her name. She gave a short nod and began dusting the lectern. Littlefield thought he might sneeze, but he rubbed his nose until the urge passed.

“Looks like you’ll soon be ready for a service,” Littlefield said.

“There are different kinds of service, Sheriff. I work for God, you work for the people. But we’re a lot alike, in a way.”

“What way?”

“We both know there’s more to this church than just nails and chestnut and rippled glass.”

Littlefield tried again to read the man’s eyes. The irises glittered like muddy diamonds with many facets, each facet hiding a different secret. Archer surely was well versed about the legends, handed down in his family for generations. Those were the sources of his childhood beatings. That he could maintain faith in God after such suffering was a miracle in itself.

“My father used to say, ‘It’s people what makes a church,’” Littlefield said.

Archer smiled, showing perfect white teeth. “He was a wise man.”

“Aren’t you afraid of what people are going to say when you open the church again?”

“God delivered Daniel from the lion’s den. He delivered Isaac from Abraham’s sacrificial altar. Why should I expect any less?”

“Well, for one thing, push never came to shove for Abraham, because he never had to deliver the knife blow. And Daniel didn’t have a great-great-grandfather named Wendell McFall.”

The preacher let out a laugh that rolled from deep inside his diaphragm. The sound echoed in the wooden hollow of the church, the acoustics amplifying the power of Archer’s voice. “Ah, the scandals and the ghost stories,” he said. “There’s only one ghost here and that’s the Holy Ghost. As for the rest of it, I hope that the legends might draw a few curiosity seekers to our services. There are many paths to the one true Way.”

“Amen to that.” Littlefield walked to the dais, the fall of his boots resounding in the hollow of the church. He leaned over the railing that fronted the pulpit. The stain was still there. Littlefield’s dizziness returned as he tried to attach an image to the random shape.

And he saw that it was the shape of an angel, or a Bell Monster, winged and fierce, with jagged claws and . . .

Yeah, sure. Sounds like something a murderer’s lawyer would make up. It’s nothing but a stain, old paint or something.

It was larger than it had been the day before, yet still retained its weathered quality, as if the stain had been embedded in the floor ages ago. And Littlefield wondered if it had been even smaller before Boonie’s death. As if . . .

He didn’t want to give legitimacy to his superstitious turn of mind. Telling Detective Sergeant Storie about the ghosts had been foolish enough. But now that the thought was trying to form, he held it outside himself, examined it rationally.

. . . as if the stain is made from the blood of its victims.

There. Now that he admitted it, it seemed safe and perfectly silly. A psychotic killer wasn’t on the loose. Something worse was on the loose, somehow finding legs and hands and a pair of eyes and a soul.

A soul.

“See anything unusual, Sheriff?”

Archer’s voice pulled him from a pool of dizziness. He met those brown eyes again, eyes that were now as dull and faded as the ancient woodwork of the church. Some famous person had said that eyes were the windows to the soul. Well, Archer’s windows needed a good washing. Except then, you might be able to see inside.

“I don’t believe you have anything to worry about,” Littlefield said. “Now that you’ve cleaned up, there’s no place for a killer to hide.”

Except right out in the open.

Archer smiled, standing with his arms crossed. He was taller than the sheriff. “I never worry. I have God on my side, remember?”

“Yeah, but isn’t that what the other side always says, too?”

Archer laughed again. “So they do, Sheriff. So they do.”

Littlefield walked back through the church, Archer following. “I used to come to services here when I was young,” the sheriff said. “Back when it was Potter’s Mill Baptist Church.”

“Oh, is that so? Being inside it must bring back a lot of memories.”

Littlefield didn’t respond. He paused in the foyer to look up at the square hole in the ceiling. “You going to get a new rope?”

“Sooner or later. And I hope none of the congregation gets a crazy notion to hang their preacher.”

“God stopped Abraham’s knife.” Lester and the Day woman were standing in the doorway. They drew back as he went back into the sunshine. “Thanks for your time. Guess I’d better get on over to Zeb’s.”

As Littlefield was getting in the Trooper, Archer called to him from the steps: “Say, Sheriff. Why don’t you come back sometime for a service?”

“When?”

“First one’s tonight at midnight.”

Midnight. It figured. Nothing could be ordinary about this church.

Maybe he would come to a service, Littlefield thought as he drove away. Crazy as it was, maybe he would.

The thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes clicked sharp bone against Ronnie’s window. Can you hear him aknocking?

Ronnie was trapped by the weight of blankets, frozen in sweat, clenched around the tight fire in his belly. Close your eyes and it will go away. Close your eyes—

His eyes were already closed. He opened them.

The sunlight coming through the window made his head hurt. He’d been asleep for so long that he couldn’t remember where he was for about a minute. Plus he’d been having really weird dreams about the red church and a walking bloody thing and something to do with Mom.

“Mom?” he called, his throat dry.

His nose wasn’t as sore today, but he felt as if somebody had taken a hand pump and blown his face full of air. He licked his thick lips. “Mom?”

Tim came into the room, still wearing his pajamas. And he was eating chocolate-chip cookies. Mom was going to kill the little dork if she caught him eating cookies so early in the day. But, after the scary dreams, Ronnie was actually kind of glad to see his brother, though he’d never admit it in a million years.

“Where’s Mom?” Ronnie asked.

Tim shrugged. His belly button showed below the fabric of his top. “Ain’t seen her this morning.”

“What time is it?” Ronnie groaned as he tried to sit up, then fell back onto the pillows.

“Almost eleven.”

“Eleven?” That meant that Mom was skipping church again. It was the first time she’d missed church two weeks in a row since Tim was a baby. Not that Ronnie minded, because his Sunday school teacher, Preacher Staymore, usually told him he needed to be saved, then made him wait after class while everybody else went to the main sanctuary for worship service.

Preacher Staymore would sit beside Ronnie and ask the spirit of Jesus to move into Ronnie’s heart so that the child might be spared, and though Jesus loved the little children, there was only one path to salvation and that was through the blood of the Lord. And Preacher Staymore would tremble and put his palm on Ronnie’s head and invoke the mercy and the power and the goodness, then ask Ronnie if he could hear the Lord aknocking. And the whole time Ronnie would be thinking about how Preacher Staymore’s breath smelled like a basket of rotten fruit.

“Can you hear Him aknocking?” the preacher would say, his eyes shining and glassy. “He’s awanting in. And all you got to do is say, ‘Come on in, Jesus. Come right on into this sorry sinful heart of mine and clean house.’ If you won’t do that one little thing, then don’t go crying to the Lord when the devil comes to drag you into the pits of hell.”

And Ronnie would always be afraid. That message, along with the preacher’s pungent breath, made him hastily agree to be saved, to let the Lord shine His everlasting light into the darkness of Ronnie’s heart, to throw the door wide open and say, “Come in, come in, come in.”

Getting saved always filled him with a kind of warmth, as if something really had come into his heart. But the feeling always faded, and he’d slip back into his sinning ways. Preacher Staymore said there were two kinds of sin: the kind of the flesh, and the kind of the spirit. Ronnie suspected that sins of the flesh had something to do with the naked women like those in Boonie’s magazine, but his own sins were mostly those of the spirit. Still, any kind of sin made his heart beat faster, and maybe that drove the Lord away, what with all the noise and commotion in his chest.

So every few weeks, Preacher Staymore would sense that Ronnie needed another saving. Ronnie was scared enough of the hellfire not to take any chances, even though sometimes he wondered, if the Lord was merciful, why would He make people go to such a bad hot place? And if sinners went to hell, what was the point of Jesus dying for them in the first place? And if the Lord was all-powerful, why didn’t He just make people so they didn’t sin? And if He already knew what happened in people’s hearts, why did there have to be a Judgment Day when all the sins were revealed?

But those kinds of thoughts were sins of the spirit, and led to a fresh need to be saved. Ronnie didn’t want to think about that right now. He had enough troubles, like a broken nose and his parents separated and a scary red church and bad dreams.

“Have you seen Mom?” he asked Tim.

Tim bit a crescent of cookie and shook his head. “Not since last night,” he said, spraying cookie crumbs onto the floor as he spoke.

“Dang.”

“The police are out again.”

Ronnie sat up. “Here?”

“No. They’re over at Mr. Potter’s.”

“Mr. Potter? I guess maybe the sheriff wanted to ask him some questions.”

Tim shook his head. His bowl haircut made him look like a turtle. “I don’t think so. Their blue lights were flashing when they drove up. And I saw the ambulance over by the barn.”

“You’re fooling.”

Tim’s eyes widened behind his spectacles. “No, I ain’t. You can go look.”

Ronnie rolled himself out of bed with a groan. He leaned against the railing of the top bunk, dizzy from spending nearly two days in bed. Through the window, he could see two police cars on the Potter farm. The sheriff’s vehicle was parked by the house. One of the deputies walked toward the barn, the sun glinting off his handcuffs and black shoes.

“You don’t suppose . . . ?” Ronnie said.

“That whatever got Boonie Houck got Mr. Potter?” Tim sounded almost pleased at the prospect. “That would be cool. Like one of those movies Mom won’t let us watch.”

Ronnie remembered his dream. Maybe it was just his overactive imagination again. “Did you hear anything last night?” he asked, trying to sound like he didn’t care one way or another.

“Not really. I heard some bells ringing. I don’t know what time, except for it was dark.”

“I hope Mom is okay.” Sure, Mom would be okay. Nothing would get her.

Not even the thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes.

Ronnie thought of Preacher Staymore’s words: Can you hear Him aknocking? He’s awanting in.

No way in hell would Ronnie let that thing come in.

He shivered in the sunlight.

CHAPTER NINE

Sunday. A holy day, at least to the Protestants and Catholics and Mormons. Fools all. But Mama Bet comforted herself with the knowledge that they’d be burned by the light in due time.

It was almost as if God had roped off a little section of the Blue Ridge and saved it for the Potters, Abshers, McFalls, and the rest. The original families came from Scotland and England, as white as the driven snow, though their hearts were as dark and Jesus-laden as any of their ancestors’ hearts. And somehow those families had managed to protect this piece of valley at the foot of Buckhorn from invaders and outsiders. Kept it pure, except for the original taint that they brought with them when they settled in the 1780s.

You can’t ever shake the blood.

She sat in her front porch rocker, looking out over the mountains she loved so much. Heaven ought to be this nice. A fresh spring breeze cut through a gap, working up from the foothills to stir the jack pines and locusts and poplars. The sky was clear enough for her to see the gray face of Grandfather Mountain forty miles in the distance. Even with her cataracts, she could make out the features that looked like a brow, a nose, and a long granite beard.

Her goat bleated below the porch. She kept a few chickens, too, but they were free-ranging up in the woods. She was getting too old to track down their eggs, and plucking their feathers was too rough on her fingers. Come to think of it, she didn’t know why she bothered with a goat, either. She hated the taste of goat’s milk, and she didn’t know how to cook the animal up even if she could bear to kill it.

“What are you thinking about, Mother?” asked Archer. He sat on the porch swing, uncomfortable, his face rigid, as if holding his earthly flesh together took all his concentration. He was a fine boy, handsome and respectably clean-shaven, with the whole world laid out before him. All a mother could want for her son.

She felt a tug in her heart, or maybe it was a spell of the murmurs. The murmurs were coming on a lot more often lately. God was priming her for a trip up to the kingdom, striking her with all the little ailments that added up to the miseries of old age. God could be downright cruel when He set his mind to it. But He allowed good stuff to happen, too. Like Archer.

“I was just remembering,” she said. “When you was little, you used to go up yonder on that knoll and pick gooseberries. You’d eat them things till you turned green and got sick to your stomach. And I’d lay you down in bed, tuck you in, and give you a nice cup of peppermint tea.”

“And you’d tell me stories,” Archer said. His voice was different from the one he’d used on television. It was softer, more down-home, a little of his Carolina mountain accent creeping in between those California words.

“Sure did. You probably don’t remember any of them silly stories.”

Archer leaned forward, sniffed the air. “I remember them all.”

“All of them?”

“Yeah. The Old Testament. Jack tales. Ghost stories. And the real story of Jesus. Except that one always gave me nightmares.”

“I hope I done right. It wasn’t easy, raising you by myself. I reckon I made some mistakes along the way, but I always acted out of love.”

Archer left his porch swing and knelt before her rocker. He took her hands and looked up, his brown eyes shining with that same radiant depth they’d had when he was a baby. As he grew older, those eyes got him in trouble. They made the other kids suspicious and made adults uncomfortable. Those eyes, plus the fact that he was a McFall, pretty much brought the persecution on him. Many was the time he came home from school with a black eye or a skinned knee or his little shoulders shaking with sobs.

All she could tell him was that the lamb must walk among wolves. He seemed to accept that he would be persecuted, that the human hatred was all part of God’s plan. He came up with that bit about “There will come great trials” all by himself. What willpower it must have taken to keep from lashing out, what patience and understanding Archer had possessed even from an early age. Of course, he always knew that he was the Second Son. She was up-front about that right from the moment he could speak.

“You did everything perfectly,” Archer said. “God should be proud.”

“Well, I ain’t so sure about that. If I was so all-fired perfect, maybe I’d be out of this place by now.”

“Why don’t you let me buy you one of those chalets at Ski Village?”

Mama Bet looked at the scar that ran up Wellborn Mountain. The steel threads of the lift cables arced along the barren slope. The snow had melted weeks ago, leaving nothing but a mud patch. She despised those ski people. “No. People best stick to their own kind. Besides, I reckon God put us here for a reason.”

And that reason just MIGHT have something to do with that little hell-hole in back of the root cellar, the one I got to keep plugged with prayers. But I ain’t going to worry YOU with that.

Something beeped in Archer’s pocket. Mama Bet looked at him suspiciously.

He smiled. “Cellular phone. You ought to let me get you one, Mother.”

“That’s the devil’s tool,” she said, frowning. “I don’t even trust words that come over wires. When it’s invisible, there’s no telling where the messages are coming from.”

Archer pulled his phone from his jacket pocket and flipped it open. He put it to his head. “Archer McFall.”

He listened for a moment, then put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Excuse me, Mother. It’s the foundation offices in California.”

She nodded. She’d been against his exodus to California from the start. Nothing out there but heathens and hippies and all manner of strange cults. Archer had no business among that sort.

But children had to learn on their own, didn’t they? All you could do was fill them up with love, and let them wander the path. You couldn’t hammer faith into them. You couldn’t drive goodliness and grace into them like nails. You couldn’t make them believe the things God wanted them to believe. They just had to search in their own hearts, and, God willing, come up with the truth.

She watched him as he carried on a conversation, something about stock splits, portfolios, and divestitures. She didn’t understand why God kept Archer meddling in such affairs. But then, there was a lot she didn’t understand about God. And she had to admit, that black Mercedes looked awfully shiny and clean down there in the driveway.

She rose from her rocker and headed for the door. Archer glanced at her questioningly, but she waved him back to his phone conversation. She entered the house, walking over the same boards that the McFalls had trodden for more than two hundred years. The main room was the original cabin, thick hand-hewed logs chinked with yellowed cement. Not much had changed in the room since her great-great-great-grandparents Robert and Hepzibah McFall had first blessed these walls with love and devotion.

The old stone fireplace was black from ten thousand fires. The room was dark, the small wooden windows nailed shut. Three sides of the cabin were partially underground, built that way to cut down on the wind leaking through the cracks, though the room always stayed as cold as a Christian’s heart. Water was piped from a spring up the hill, and a leak dripped steadily into the freestanding ceramic sink in the corner.

A few rooms had been added onto the south side of the cabin, and these had glass windows. The sun poured through, God’s pure light, but it barely touched what had once served as kitchen, bedroom, and living room combined. When electricity first reached these parts in the 1950s, Mama Bet wouldn’t allow them to hook up the original part of the house. Some things were to be kept sacred, untouched by the progress that marked the spread of the devil’s influence.

Mama Bet went past the rough hemlock table where Wendell McFall had once taken his meals. She parted the gingham that curtained off the pantry. She took a candle from a counter and lit it, and looked to make sure Archer was still outside. She stepped inside among the shelves and rows of canning jars, dried beans, and sacks of cornmeal. The chill from the back of the pantry crept over her like a live thing, a giant shadow, an ice-cold invisible lover.

She pushed aside the rotted boards that lined the back of the pantry. A fungal, earthy smell filled her nostrils. She extended the candle into the root cellar, peering over the rows of potatoes and red apples into the darkness. The candle shrank from the stale, still air, its light swallowed by the dirt walls of the cellar.

“I’m getting too old for this, God,” she whispered in silent prayer. God said nothing, but she knew He was up there, watching, biting His tongue to keep from laughing. She wiggled the base of the candle into the red clay until it stood without her holding it. She could see the stone that blocked the narrow tunnel, a tunnel that wound down and down and deep into the earth.

This was the one secret she had spared Archer, the one that had been passed down through eight generations of McFalls. The Appalachians were the oldest mountains in the world, had risen from the hot magma when God crushed the world together. And she knew exactly why God made the earth. He had trapped the devil inside it, wrapped billions of tons of rock and dirt and molten lava around the beast. And, oh, how the devil must have kicked and struggled to get free, shoving up mountains and causing the rifts that became the oceans.

She knew this as surely as she knew that Archer was a savior. You didn’t question universal truths. You accepted them on faith. You tucked them in your heart and made the best of them. You fought for them. You made the sacrifices that kept those truths alive.

Who knew when the devil had first wormed its way finally to the surface of the world? It could have been tens of thousands of years ago, or a few hundred. All that mattered now was that the devil was loose upon the face of the earth, and Archer had to defeat it.

That had to be why Archer had returned to Whispering Pines, why God had called His son back home. The devil was still here, tied to this mouth of hell, living in those original families. The devil had hidden behind the faces of the Littlefields, worn the masks of the Houcks, slipped into the blood and meat of the Mathesons.

Archer would have to perform the cleansing. And she had to help. Even though she was as worn as these mountains, eroded by time and tides, by the forces of God’s tireless punishment. Even though she was only mortal.

She crawled to the rear of the root cellar and rolled away the flat stone. In the weak light, she could see the small crippled cross that had been carved into its surface. She stuck her face near the black opening. She never understood why the path to hell was so bone-chillingly cold. It should have been blazing hot, and smelling of sulfur and brimstone and smoke instead of dirt. But God worked in mysterious ways, and the devil worked just as strangely.

She cast her prayers into the pit. She could hold back the hordes. With her faith, she could win the battle below. Let God and Archer take care of the devil up here.

Mama Bet finished her prayers, the same ones the McFalls had been saying for over two centuries. She replaced the stone, sweating with effort even though her fingers were stiff from the cold. On aching knees she backed her way to the pantry, retrieved the candle, and replaced the boards along the back wall. She wiped the dirt from her hands and cussed God for burdening her with this holy work. As if filling her up with a messiah weren’t bad enough. No, He made her crawl on her belly like a serpent.

She blew out the candle and peeked through the gingham curtains. Archer was still outside. She could hear him carrying on with his business deals over the telephone, acting for all the world like an ordinary person. Well, Jesus had taken on work as a carpenter before starting up his career as a liar. Archer might as well be a rich preacher as a poor one.

She turned on the kitchen tap and stuck her hands under the frigid springwater. The dirt ran red down the drain. She put the candle away and wiped her hands on a towel. Her dress was stained at the knees, but she didn’t like to change clothes in midday. That was wasteful, the kind of thing a Christian might do.

She heard voices outside. They ain’t supposed to gather here, not with Archer around. The church will be ready soon enough.

She hurried onto the porch. Archer folded his phone and put it away. At the edge of the yard, in the shade of the trees, stood some members of the congregation: Stepford Matheson, Sonny Absher, Donna Gregg, and Rudy Buchanan. Rudy carried a shotgun and a Bible.

They started forward, Rudy’s broad face split with a grin, Sonny and Stepford red-faced from drink. Donna Gregg hung back, tugging Sonny’s sleeve. He brushed her away and scowled.

“What do y’all want?” Mama Bet called, shading her eyes so she could see them better. Archer stood beside her, looking down on them.

“We been thinking,” said Rudy, apparently the leader of this shoddy crew.

“Well, there’s a first time for everything.”

Rudy’s thick lips curled. Mama Bet could almost hear the gears churning rustily inside his head as he tried to think of a comeback. He soon gave up, and settled for raising the shotgun barrel until it pointed at the sky.

“We’ve been hearing a lot about the red church, and the day of reckoning, and all this foolishness about ‘great trials,’” Rudy said. “Now all of a sudden you’re telling us that Archer’s the Second Son of God. And that somehow we’re all part of it, because of what our kin did way back when.” He looked at Stepford and Sonny.

Stepford swayed a little, and Rudy pressed the Bible against him until he regained his balance.

“Yeah,” Stepford said. “You’re telling us that this”—he pointed to Archer—”is the earthly face of God? Then God must be one hell of a practical joker, I say.”

Mama Bet started to speak, but Archer raised his hand. “I don’t blame you for your doubts,” he said to them. “I know some of you were raised as Christians. But people use God for their own purposes, they twist His ways to benefit themselves. People build up the idols that are easy to accept. And they always destroy what they can’t understand.”

Sonny spat. His eyes were bloodshot and bright. “We didn’t hang Wendell McFall.”

“You don’t think it’s fair that you have to suffer for the sins of your ancestors. But blood sins require payment in blood. And sacrifice now will protect your blood unto the fourth generation.”

Rudy elbowed Stepford. “Tell him.”

Stepford moved reluctantly closer, until he was at the foot of the porch steps. Mama Bet’s goat, which was tied to the porch rail, came over and sniffed his dirty jeans. Stepford shooed the goat away and looked up at Archer. “We decided we ain’t so sure you’re a messiah after all.”

Rudy nodded, his courage bolstered by the shotgun. “Yeah. All we hear is fancy talk. Sure, Boonie Houck and Zeb Potter got killed. But how do we know that has anything to do with these ‘great trials’ we keep hearing about?”

“Getting killed sure don’t take no sacrifice,” Stepford said. “It ain’t like they were asking to die, or anything.”

Donna Gregg pressed close behind Sonny, her chest against his back.

Dirty sinners, Mama Bet thought. It’s a wonder that God and Archer don’t strike them down on the spot. And Sonny married, at that. Of course, his wife took down to Raleigh after she got tired of getting beat up every time he got drunk. I can hardly wait to see them adulterers get cleansed.

“This is about sacrifice,” Archer said, his voice lifting now, resounding with the power of his faith. Mama Bet’s heart swelled with pride.

“More big talk,” Sonny said. “But we ain’t seen no signs.”

“Yeah,” taunted Rudy. “Why don’t you whip us up a miracle? Maybe break us up some loaves and fishes?”

“To hell with that,” slurred Sonny. “Do something worthwhile, like changing some water into wine.”

The drunken trio laughed, Donna smiling uncertainly behind them.

“True faith doesn’t require proof,” Archer said.

“Exactly what I’m saying,” Rudy said. “I can’t rightly call my faith ‘true.’ It’s more like it’s been shoved down my throat. And I don’t much like the taste of it.”

Mama Bet saw that Sonny and Stepford wore similar expressions of rebellion.

The devil’s in them so deep they can’t even separate it out from their own selves. Can’t they just accept that the time for the cleansing is here, that God’s back and ready to do the job right this time?

“Archer?” Mama Bet said. Her son was holding his head in his hands, his knuckles white from the pressure of squeezing. He bowed forward, wobbling unsteadily, and nearly fell against the porch rail. Mama Bet hurried to catch him.

My poor baby.

Muffled moans of anguish came from behind his hands. His legs and shoulders quivered. She touched him, and her fingers felt electrified. Suddenly the moans turned into roars and Archer threw his arms wide.

The sky darkened as if a large cloud had passed over the sun.

Donna screamed, and Sonny joined in. Rudy dropped the shotgun and clasped the Bible to his chest. Stepford fainted dead away, his legs folding up like a wet stretch of rope and his eyes rolling up to stare at the top of his skull.

Mama Bet looked on her son with love. Archer smiled, all wings and claws and livers for eyes.

Detective Storie knelt in the hayloft of the Potter barn. The sledgehammer lay on the warped boards of the floor, its handle slick with blood, the eight-pound head clotted with grue. A few strands of gray hair clung to the shredded matter that had once been encased in the delicate shell of Zebulon Potter’s skull.

The sheriff’s face turned ashen as he looked at the body. “Zeb was a friend of my parents,” he said, looking out the window as though the mountain slopes were a movie screen and the past were being projected onto them. “I used to help him bale hay during the summer. He even gave me a hound puppy a long time ago. So long ago that Samuel was still alive.”

Storie didn’t like the vacant look in the sheriff’s eyes. She’d seen that look once. During a criminal transport, in her first week on the Charlotte Metro force, she had met evil, if such a thing could possibly be embodied. She’d been green then, a rookie who thought that police officers could actually make a difference simply by caring.

The middle-aged suspect in the back of the car had allegedly raped an eight-year-old girl. He bragged about it as they drove to the Mecklenburg County jail, his unshaven face broken into a satisfied grin, his eyes afire with some secret madness. Storie was riding shotgun, fuming and helpless. Innocent until proven guilty, even if they’re guilty. That was what they taught in cop school.

“The puppy was named Roscoe,” Littlefield said quietly, rubbing his scalp. “Got run over before it was barely big enough to bark.”

Perry Hoyle knelt and examined the open cavity of the victim’s skull. Storie took another photograph and the camera’s flash glinted off Hoyle’s bald head. She pulled a metal tape measure from her jacket pocket. “You mind holding that end?” she asked the sheriff.

He started as if jerked from a dream and took the end of the tape. Storie pointed to the hammer. The sheriff held the tape near the handle and Storie let the tape unwind until it stretched near the body.

“Seventeen feet,” she said, though she doubted the sheriff was listening. He was so damned hard to figure out, at times friendly, at times cold and distant. But she didn’t need friends, and she didn’t need to waste thoughts on Frank Littlefield. She wrote the measurement in her notebook.

Long ago, the child rapist had put his face near the wire screen that separated the front seat from the rear. His breath smelled like sardines and gasoline. “Hey, good-looking, what you doing after work?” he’d said.

Storie had clenched her fists, fighting the urge to pull her nightstick from her belt and drive it into the rapist’s face. But, no, he was a suspect and he had rights. No matter that he’d already pulled three years for two separate indecent liberties raps. No matter that he’d be out on the street in two years. No matter anything but that the world was absolutely, hopelessly insane. God had made a pretty good stew, then He’d screwed it up by mixing in humans and giving them free will and brains.

Brains. Zeb Potter’s brains were as gray as the old oak boards that covered the barn walls.

“I can finish up here, Sheriff,” she said. He nodded absently and moved to the workbench. Deputy Wade Wellborn helped Hoyle put the body on a stretcher. The body made a sticky sloughing noise as it was lifted from the pool of blood.

“Guess I’m not helping much,” Littlefield said quietly. Storie didn’t want to show him up in front of the others. She understood that vacant look. Because she knew it well.

She’d seen it herself, in her own eyes, in the mirror of a Charlotte Metro police car. As she was transporting a rape suspect with a familiar face and secret mad eyes. It was the same suspect she’d arrested a few months earlier. Purest evil wearing meat. This time, he’d gone for a six-year-old. The girl had died on the way to the hospital.

The rapist recognized Storie. “Hey, honey, you can lock me up, but I’ll be back. One of these days, I might even get around to your part of town.”

Storie had nearly pulled the car over and shot the creep in the head. But she did her job and took him in, handed him over to a judicial system that was fair but overmatched.

That was when Storie made two decisions: she would leave the Metro force and get a job with a rural department. And she would try her damnedest to make a small difference, even though the world was absolutely, hopelessly insane. Even though God was insane.

Or was God, like the serial rapist, also innocent until proven guilty?

She watched Littlefield follow Hoyle, Wellborn, and the cold body of Zeb Potter down the loft stairs. Outside, a small breeze played through the trees, the sound she imagined gave Whispering Pines its name. Somewhere out there, a killer was harboring a secret madness in his eyes. Storie didn’t like secrets.

CHAPTER TEN

David Day watched from the hills as the sunset threw bands of orange over the dark lines of the horizon. The air was moist and smelled of damp leaves. Normally, being alone in the woods gave him a sense of peace. But under these trees where he had spent some of the happiest hours of his life, he felt like an intruder. Because now the forest belonged to something else.

Below him, the old Gregg farm was spread out like a wrinkled green carpet. He still thought of it as home, even though he hadn’t slept there in weeks. But all the things that made the place home were still behind those white walls of the house: the boys, the bed, the maple gun cabinet, the trophy heads on the wall. Everything but her.

He hated that the boys were alone. But they were safer at the house than with Linda at the church. She would give them to Archer sooner or later, unless David could find a way to stop Archer again. But this time would be more difficult.

The red church was crouched on a little rise to his left, above the road and the curve of the river. Six or eight cars were parked by the old building. People milled around the cemetery grounds, going into and out of the church. They moved like ants on a sugar hill, heads meeting, seeming to communicate silently from that distance. One of those ants was Linda.

The police were finally finished at the Potter farm. David had seen them carrying a stretcher from the barn. From the way the deputies’ backs stooped, the load must have been heavy. The sheet-draped load was marred by a dark stain. They’d slid their burden into Perry Hoyle’s station wagon. Then the vehicles had driven away one by one, including the sheriff’s Trooper. The cruiser driven by that woman deputy was the last to leave, about an hour ago.

Poor old Zeb. And Boonie before him. In California, the killing hadn’t seemed as brutal, as casual. But David hadn’t known any of those victims. Boonie and Zeb were mountain folks. These were his people who were dying this time, not nameless longhairs and drifters.

Archer was gathering a flock, just as he had done in California. And David had learned that there were only two kinds of people who followed Archer McFall: the dead and the about to be.

David lifted his Marlin rifle and peered into the scope, the odor of gun oil comfortingly strong. Through the magnifying lenses, he saw Lester at the church door. The crosshairs were centered on the man’s beet-red face. David shifted the scope and saw Becca Faye Greene, her smile a rapture of lipstick. Another shift, and Linda’s face filled the small circle of the scope.

Linda.

They’d met in the ninth grade, a Buckhorn Mountain boy and a valley farm girl. Most of the families, including the Days, who lived on the back side of Buckhorn were the descendants of Union sympathizers. Some people in these parts still held a grudge, the ones who had Rebel-flag license plates and considered summer tourists to be invaders. In seedy bars at each corner of the county, the Civil War was renewed every Friday night.

But, Day or not, Linda had let him pick her books up that time she’d dropped them in the mud getting off the school bus. She had thick books, math and social studies. All David had was an auto-repair manual and a set of plans for a wooden desk.

She had pushed her hair back with one hand and actually looked into his face. Her eyes were deep and blue and seemed to penetrate his skin so that she could see everything he kept hidden. He looked back and grinned like a sick mule. His hands felt as if they were made of wood as he wiped the books clean against his pants.

“Thanks,” she said, smiling. Her teeth were only a little crooked, just enough so that David didn’t feel self-conscious. He gave her the books. She walked away, her figure shifting attractively inside her knee-length dress.

He had solved the mystery of those curves, though it had taken years. But the waiting was far from a waste. David knew that she liked yellow squash better than butternut, and she hadn’t laughed at his big dream of owning a saw mill. She liked Bob Seger, and David liked him a little. She cried every time they slaughtered a beef steer. He cried when each of the boys was born.

Through the scope, her blue eyes were damp and bright. But the depth had been replaced by a flat glaze, her pupils large. She was scared or excited or aroused. Or maybe all three. Just the way she had looked in California.

David swiveled the rifle barrel slightly to the right. Archer smiled into the crosshairs of the scope. The preacher was looking through the lenses at David, the magnifying process somehow reversed, David the prey and Archer the hunter. David shuddered and blinked and the illusion passed.

He couldn’t hold the rifle steady. From this range, the .30-06 round would drop only a few inches in trajectory. The hot bullet would pierce Archer’s chest, chew up his heart, and shatter his ribs. And then what?

He pictured Linda, screaming, spattered by the gore of her messiah. She would kneel by Archer, the other disciples crowding around as his death tremors passed and his blood cooled. Then their wailing would lift and fill the darkening sky, the moon would moan, the red church would howl in anguish. Just as legend said happened the last time one of the McFall preachers was killed. And those buried in the cemetery would . . .

David closed his eyes and let the barrel of the gun tilt slowly to the ground. Sweat stung his eyes, and the metallic stench of his fear overwhelmed the green smells of the forest.

Forgive me, Lord, for I am weak.

He leaned against a cold hickory and waited for midnight.

###

“It’ll be dark soon,” Sheriff Littlefield said, turning from the window in Storie’s cramped office. Papers were piled high on the sofa, crime reports and DARE brochures and gun magazines. He had nowhere to sit. He couldn’t be comfortable in front of Sheila anyway, even if he were lying in a feather bed. “You coming?”

“Afraid not.” She didn’t look up from her cluttered desk. “I’d better go over these reports one more time.”

Littlefield sagged against the wall, the years heavy on him, the last two days heavier still. “I guess you never thought you’d get a serial killer here.”

She looked up. “I guess you didn’t, either.”

She hadn’t mentioned Littlefield’s confession, the way he’d broken down in front of her about Samuel. Whether it was kindness or embarrassment that kept her off the subject, he hoped it would continue. “We’ll be calling in the SBI.”

Storie’s lips tightened. “I want this bastard.”

Littlefield contemplated the black sludge in the coffeepot. “No witnesses. No prints. No suspects. No motives. Probably no DNA evidence.”

“Let’s wait for the state lab to have a look. Or did I forget that ghosts don’t have DNA?”

Littlefield slammed his fist against the wall. Storie’s framed copy of a newspaper article trembled from the blow.

“Look, forget what I said about the ghosts. I wouldn’t expect you to understand, anyway. You’re not from around here.”

Storie stood, the wheels of her chair squealing in the rush. She parodied a hillbilly accent. “‘Cause I ain’t mountain, I don’t know nothin’. Well, Sheriff, I wouldn’t believe in ghosts or boogiemen or haunted churches even if I lived in Transylvania County. I’m sorry about your brother, and I know his death must have . . . upset you. But this is the twenty-first century, even in the Appalachians.”

They stared each other down. Littlefield finally looked away, out the small window to the lights of town below. “You do it your way. I’ll solve it mine.”

Storie held up some papers. “The answer’s here somewhere. And we’ll get the coroner’s report back in a few days.”

“A few days might be too late.”

“You think there’s going to be another one?” She sat down, her anger deflated.

“Maybe more.”

“You really do think the church has something to do with all this, don’t you?”

“There’s no such thing as coincidence.”

“What’s the background on this Archer McFall character? You think we should bring him in?”

Storie was interrupted by the receptionist’s voice paging from the speakerphone. “Sheriff, you have a call on line two.”

“Who is it?”

“The radio station. Wants to know about reports of murders in the county.”

“That’s all we need, getting everybody worked up,” he said to Storie, then louder, to the dispatcher, “Tell them we’ll have a press release going out next week. In the meantime, they can make do with the obituaries.”

“Yes, Sheriff.” The static was silenced.

“I’d better get to the church. It’s going on midnight,” he said.

Storie called to him as he reached the doorway. “Sheriff . . .”

Her face was hard, but her eyes were soft. “Sorry I lost my temper,” she said.

“We all want to solve this case. And I hope I’m wrong about the church. Lord only knows how wrong I want to be.”

“What kind of crazy has a church service at midnight?”

“The kind named Archer McFall.”

“Well, be careful.”

“I’m going to church. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Littlefield was relieved that she didn’t prod him for an answer.

“I got to go,” Ronnie said.

“You’re crazy.” Tim was still in his pajamas, watching television with the living room lights off. A half-empty bag of cookies and a bottle of Pepsi were beside him on the couch. The flickering from the screen strobed over him and made his movements jerky. Twin reflections of the on-screen action played themselves out in his glasses as well as in the false eyes of the deer heads mounted on the walls.

“You can either stay here by yourself or come with me.” Ronnie’s dizziness had passed, and he’d taken one of the pills that made his nose stop hurting. But the pill also made him feel as if he had pillows under his feet.

“What if Mom comes back?”

“Mom won’t be back. Not until morning.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know, dingle-dork.”

“I’m scared.”

“The moon’s out and we can take a flashlight.” Ronnie didn’t know why he wanted to go to the red church. Especially at night. But maybe he didn’t want to. Maybe something was making him go.

Like the thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes.

He swallowed invisible dry needles. Tim was looking at him, waiting. Maybe it would be better if Tim stayed here. But then the thing might get him. No, better to stick together.

Ronnie went to the closet by the front door. Tim reluctantly followed. “Better take a jacket,” Ronnie said.

He rummaged in the closet for a flashlight. His heart stopped for a moment when he saw Dad’s fishing pole, leaning all thin and lonely in the corner. A pair of hip waders flopped bonelessly against the wall.

If only Dad were here . . .

But Dad wasn’t here, for whatever mysterious reason people got mad at each other. Mad enough to hate. Maybe Jesus was paying Ronnie back for all those sins of the spirit, all those questions he asked himself that Preacher Staymore said would lead to eternal damnation.

“The answer is Jesus,” Preacher Staymore said, every time Ronnie was getting saved and asked one of those questions. But Jesus was the question. How could He be the answer to His own question? But Dad said the Baptists were the true religion, and Dad was smart enough to catch a trout in four inches of water.

Ronnie found the flashlight and put on a jacket and they went out the door. The driveway and the gravel road were pale under the big moon, like white rivers in the night. But the wooded hills rose black around them, filled with the chatter of a million restless insects. Across the meadows, the Potter farm was dark and still. The stars above were far and cold with great spaces between them. Ronnie wanted so much for there to be a Jesus behind the stars.

“I’m scared,” whispered Tim.

“Shh. It’s okay. I’m here.”

“I want Dad.”

“Me, too. But Dad’s not here.”

“Even Mom.”

“We’ll get to Mom.”

“Are you scared?”

“No,” Ronnie lied.

“Then why are you whispering?”

Ronnie looked off the porch into the thick shadow of the barn, then down along the creek bank. The thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes was nowhere around, or else was really good at hiding.

“I’m not whispering,” he said aloud. He hoped Tim didn’t hear the tremble in his voice. “Now come on,” he said, stepping off the squeaky porch.

“Where are we going?”

“You know.”

“Do we have to?”

“Yeah.”

“How come?”

“We just have to, that’s all. Remember what Dad says: ‘Some things, a man’s just gotta do.’” Ronnie didn’t want to point out that Dad could do anything, wasn’t scared of anything, and was a man, and they were only boys.

They started down the driveway, Tim huddling close and Ronnie not minding a bit. When they reached the road, Ronnie looked back at the house and its squares of yellow light. For a moment the light beckoned, promising safety and warmth and the possibility of love. But love wasn’t found behind walls. It was found in Mom and Dad and Jesus.

He switched on the flashlight when they reached the road. It made an orange circle in the gray gravel. Ronnie shifted his head back and forth, studying the dark roadside weeds for any movement. The sounds of the forest were smothered by their footsteps crunching on the gravel.

“I thought you didn’t like the church,” Tim said.

“I don’t. But we have to go anyway.”

“Do you think whatever got Boonie Houck and Mr. Potter—?”

“No,” Ronnie said too quickly. “There’s nothing out here now. It’s . . .”

It’s WHAT? Eaten its fill and flown home to the belfry?

“We’ll be okay,” Ronnie said.

“Do you think it was the thing that lives in the church steeple?”

“What thing?”

“You know. What Whizzer says. The thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes.”

“Whizzer’s a dork.”

They went around a bend and were out of sight of the house. Ronnie couldn’t smell the river, but he could feel its fishy dampness on his face. They passed the last of Zeb Potter’s pasture. The barbed-wire fence ran into the forest, and the trees pressed close on both sides of the road. The moon sliced through a narrow gap between the treetops.

“How come Mom’s at the church so late at night?” Tim asked. There was a note of complaint in his voice.

“What am I, Einstein or something? And do you have to ask so many stupid questions?”

“Talking makes me not as scared.”

They walked faster now, the exertion driving away the moist chill of the spring night. They hit an incline and slowed. One side of the road sloped away into blackness. The river rushed over rocks below, the water gurgling liked a choking victim trying to breathe.

They rounded another turn, and the red church stood on a hill, black under the moonlight. The moon glinted off the windshields of cars that were huddled around the church. Behind the cars, the pale slabs of tombstones stood like soldiers. The dogwood was all black bones and sharp fingers and reaching hands of wood.

The church’s front door was open, a gray rectangle against the darkness of the church structure. Yellow light flickered from the church windows, tiny pinpricks that would flash and then disappear. Candles, Ronnie thought. The church had never been wired for electricity.

Singing drifted from the church, a choir of several dozen voices. The music was nothing like the songs they sang at First Baptist. This singing was hollow and creepy, as if half the people were singing off-key on purpose. But if they were singing about Jesus and God’s love and mercy and salvation, that would make the music not so creepy. Ronnie listened but couldn’t make out the words.

“That song is creepy,” Tim said.

“Shh.” Ronnie grabbed the sleeve of Tim’s jacket and led him toward the edge of the woods where the nearest cars were parked. He wanted to be as far away from the dark wall of forest as possible, but he also was reluctant to approach the graveyard. He pulled Tim down to the ground and they crawled between the cars until they could see into the church. The singing stopped.

“Do you see Mom?” Tim whispered. Ronnie elbowed him in the ribs.

A man’s voice resonated inside the church and spilled into the night.

“My fellow worshipers,” the voice rang out. During the pause, someone coughed. The voice continued. “We are gathered here tonight to honor the one true God. For He is a jealous God, and many are the lies that fall on our ears. Many are the promises made to us by those who wear faces of evil. Many are the paths that lead from the true Way.”

Ronnie peeked over the hood of the vehicle they had hidden behind. The engine was still warm. He saw the rounded light on the dashboard. It was the sheriff’s Trooper.

Ronnie felt a little better. Nothing bad could happen if the sheriff was here. Ronnie knew that the cops on the TV shows were all fake, but the sheriff had seemed like a nice guy when he’d asked Ronnie about finding Boonie. So if both the sheriff and Mom were here . . .

“. . . and the First Son was a carpenter,” came the voice. “The First Son went among the people, among the sick and the outcast and the poor. The First Son taught of love and peace and salvation.”

Salvation. So the man was a regular preacher after all. Though he spoke more like an actor than any of the preachers Ronnie had ever heard, the man’s voice made Ronnie less afraid.

“And God called the First Son back to heaven, letting Him die on the cross so that we might find grace,” the preacher said, his voice rising. “But God always promised that the Son would return. And the Son has returned. The Son walks among us. But it’s not the First Son that God has sent. God gave Jesus a chance to save the world, and Jesus failed. Jesus with his false miracles and lies. So now the job goes to the Second Son.”

“Second Son,” murmured a few in the audience.

Second Son. That didn’t sound like something a Baptist preacher would say. But now that he thought about it, it kind of made sense. Why should Jesus be an only child, when God could make as many offspring as He wanted? Jesus certainly hadn’t made the world a perfect and sinless place.

And the red church wasn’t as scary anymore. In fact, Ronnie felt a kind of warmth radiating from the structure. How silly and dumb and third-grade he had been, thinking the church was a bad place. The church was a good place.

The preacher increased his cadence. “The Second Son spares no one from His love. This one needs no money, asks for no servitude, demands no tribute. The Son has found the path, and it leads through people’s hearts. The Son wants to take us all home. But every journey begins with a single step. Tonight, in this house of the Lord, let us begin.”

“Let us begin,” echoed twenty voices.

“Let us begin,” Ronnie whispered.

“Why are you saying that?” Tim said, still crouched behind the Trooper.

“Didn’t you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“The Second Son.”

“What about it?”

Tim wouldn’t understand. All he cared about was cartoons and comic books and miniature action figures and sweets. Preacher Staymore hadn’t made Tim get saved yet. Tim didn’t know the warm feeling of something moving into your heart. And this warmth- spreading from this preacher’s voice straight into Ronnie’s blood- was better than anything Ronnie had ever known. This time he was saved for real.

Ronnie felt light, as if made of cotton candy. Even his broken nose, which had been throbbing with every beat of his heart, was forgotten in the rush of purest love. And love was what was between the preacher’s words, love was what filled the wooden cavity of the church, love was what emanated like a welcoming fog from the red church and crept out across the hills of Whispering Pines. Love was more numbing than the pain pills.

“Let’s go in,” Ronnie said.

“Are you crazy?”

“It needs us.” Ronnie started around the front of the Trooper. Tim grabbed his shirt from behind and pulled him backward. They fell on the ground, and Tim’s flailing hand struck Ronnie’s nose. Pain flashed behind Ronnie’s eyes in streaks of bright purple and electric lime green. He yelped in agony.

“You dork.” He grunted at Tim between clenched teeth. He pushed Tim away and rolled to his knees. He put a hand to his nose and felt something warm and wet.

The people inside the church had started singing again, but Ronnie scarcely heard it. He shivered and realized the night was chilly. The warmth of love had left him, as if he’d been asleep and someone had yanked the winter quilts off his body. An empty ache filled his chest. Something had been taken, and he couldn’t remember what it was.

“You ain’t going in there,” Tim said, his eyes wide behind his glasses. The moon gave Tim’s eyes a feral, eager quality.

“Now why in the heck would I want to go in there?”

“You just had a funny look in your eye.”

“Shh. Listen—”

The singing stopped. A silence settled over the mountains. The wind waited in the tops of the trees. Not an insect stirred. Even the river seemed to pause in its twisting bed.

Then, a soft sound.

A scratching, fluttering sound.

Not inside the church.

Above.

In the steeple.

A shadow moved, a lesser gray against the church bell.

“Holy crud.” Tim gasped.

Ronnie swallowed hard, and some of the blood from his nosebleed snaked down his throat.

It smells the blood. The thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes . . .

“Run!” he shouted at Tim, but his little brother was already a step ahead of him. They dashed between the cars and hit the gravel road, rocks flying as they scampered away from the red church. They were exposed, vulnerable in the open, but Ronnie didn’t dare head into the forest. The pounding in Ronnie’s ears almost sounded like laughter, but he didn’t stop to listen.

Instead he ran into the night, hunching his shoulders against the monster that swept down from the blackness.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ronnie ducked low, sensing the cold shadow sweeping down over him and blocking out the moon. Ahead, Tim stumbled in the gravel and veered toward the ditch that ran along the edge of the road. Tim looked back at his older brother, his mouth a round well of fear. Ronnie saw a fluttering shape reflected in Tim’s glasses.

Then Tim hurdled the ditch and headed into the trees.

No, no, no, NOT the forest, Ronnie silently screamed.

But Tim was already out of sight, lost amid thrashing branches. Ronnie followed, sizing up the dark gaps between the trees, each like a door to nowhere. Something brushed his shoulder, and he bit back a shout. His body was electrified, sweat thick around his ankles and armpits and trickling down the ladder of his spine.

The monster is going to get me.

Ronnie thought of Boonie Houck, eyeless and mutilated and groping for a handhold to drag himself back to the ordinary, sane world.

Going to get me get me get me.

He held his breath and jumped the black ditch. A pine branch whacked him across the face, and he yelped in pain, then fell to his knees. Blood was flowing steadily from his nose. It made a warm rope down his chin.

Tree limbs snapped above and behind him in the dark.

The trees had arms, would hug him and hold him. The trees were part of the nightmare.

He scrambled to his feet, throwing damp leaves and dirt as he regained his balance. He ran ten steps, twenty steps, blind, his arm raised over his face to fend off the branches. His heart spasmed like a trapped animal in his chest.

Ronnie didn’t know where the road was, and couldn’t hear Tim above the noise of his own passing. He dodged between the trees, unaware of his feet.

Run, dingle-dork.

Maybe if the Bell Monster follows me, you can get away. If the thing’s not too hungry, maybe one boy will be enough for it.

Shards of moonlight cut into the forest canopy in places, creating a mad strobe as he ran from darkness to light, darkness to light. Then all was dark as he moved under the thicker canopy of old oak and hickory, and the branches were higher, no longer beating at his sides.

He was going downhill now, skidding in the mud. He stepped on a flat rock and fell on his rear, sliding and then rolling back to his feet.

A damp chill overlaid his sweat, and he knew he was near the river. Though his nose was blocked, he carried the river’s fishy and muddy smell in his memory. The rushing water roared faintly in his ears.

Follow me, but not TOO close, Ronnie silently willed the Bell Monster.

The trees opened and he reached the river. Moonlight glinted off the black water. The froth of waterfalls sparkled like ten million eyes. The air was colder here, fresh and heavy in Ronnie’s gasping lungs. The earth vibrated under his feet as he dodged among the gray rocks along the riverbank.

He huddled in a gap between two boulders, peering back up the slope. The tops of the trees moved, all big black creatures, live things, hostile and bristling and in league with the Bell Monster.

Ronnie didn’t know how long he had been running, but it felt like years. He breathed with his mouth open, his throat sore. His nose had stopped bleeding. He wiped his chin with his hand.

If the thing smells blood . . .

Ronnie crawled along the rocks until he reached the water. He stuck his hand in the current and a frigid shock ran up his arm. But he cupped his palm and brought the water to his face, wiping, then repeating the process until he thought his face was clean.

The front of his jacket was wet. He drew himself into a ball and waited for the Bell Monster to find him.

Waited.

Waited.

The river roared on, sweeping down below him past the red church and under the bridge into the valley.

A few thin clouds drifted across the sky, made silver-gray by the moonlight.

Did Tim make it? Or did the Bell Monster lose track of me and go after him?

Ronnie suddenly felt ashamed, remembering how he ran away when they’d found Boonie Houck. He’d left Tim behind to face the red, raw horror alone. And now he was abandoning him again.

Big brothers were supposed to take care of little brothers. Even if little brothers were dorks.

Dad was gone, and Mom was at that weird meeting in the red church. Tim had nobody to help him. Except Ronnie.

“Danged rocks are getting cold anyway,” he whispered to himself. He stood on trembling legs, his bones aching and stiff. The trees around him were still, their leaves wet and heavy.

He eased his way from behind the boulders, his back to the river. If he went upstream he would eventually come to Buckhorn Mountain, where a series of creeks ran together. If he went downstream he’d reach the bridge near the red church. If he went back into the woods, he would have to climb a hill to see where he was.

The river wasn’t too deep to cross, only waist-high in most places, but he was already nearly frozen. Besides, Tim wouldn’t dare cross the river. Tim had fallen into it once, and had been scared of deep water ever since.

Ronnie hunched low and headed back the way he thought he had come. His nose was not hurting much but, like the river, pulsed steadily under the bandages. He moved quietly through the trees, the way he did when he was playing Indian scout. He kept his palms up to push the branches from his face.

Once away from the river, he found an old hunting trail. A little moonlight splashed along the clearing, and he paused to listen for Tim. The Bell Monster probably hadn’t found Tim yet, or screams would be shattering the night silence.

Ronnie gulped at that thought. What if the thing had gotten Tim while Ronnie was cowering by the water? What if the Bell Monster had come aknocking on Tim’s rib cage? What if the thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes was even now scooping out Tim’s guts and having a late-night snack?

No. Think happy thoughts.

When you have one of those waking nightmares, when you think bad things in the dark and can’t go to sleep, you think happy thoughts. Cartoon dogs, fat clowns, things like that. Except sometimes the cartoon dogs bite and the fat clowns grow sharp smiles.

Happy thoughts.

Ronnie kept walking, using those words as a mantra, falling into their rhythm.

Think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts . . .

He tried to picture those stupid yellow smiley faces, but the faces kept turning into Preacher Staymore from Sunday School, lips pursed and asking, Can you hear Him aknocking?

Ronnie staggered on, tripping over roots and stones, mentally clinging to his happy-thoughts mantra.

He was nearly on his hundredth repetition when he first heard the twigs snapping.

He froze.

Whatever had been following him rustled some low bushes to his left.

A whisper of wings.

A soft clicking, like that of claws meeting in anticipation.

A wet flutter, like that made by liverish eyes opening and closing.

Ronnie’s limbs turned wooden, his feet grew roots, he was part of the dark soil he would die on. As the bushes exploded with movement, Ronnie’s last thought was that maybe Tim got away.

And then the monster had him, in a fury of tooth and wing and razor hatred.

The monster had smelled his blood in the dark.

The monster embraced him, eager and sharp-fingered.

The monster—

Ronnie kicked and screamed, flailing his elbows. He pressed his eyes closed, not wanting to watch the thing open his insides and pull out his dripping wet heart.

Ronnie balled his fists.

The creature growled in his ear.

“Ronnie, it’s me.”

Dad?

Yes, it was. Ronnie imagined Dad’s smell, all aftershave and sawdust and boot leather.

He relaxed in his dad’s strong arms, finally opening his eyes. Dad’s face was pale in the weak wash of moonlight.

“The . . . the thing,” Ronnie said, fighting back tears.

“Shh,” Dad said. “It’s okay now. Nothing’s going to get you.”

Ronnie shivered against his Dad, burrowing close for warmth. Ronnie was relieved to note that Dad had a gun with him. He suddenly pushed away. “Tim. Where’s Tim?”

“Right here.” Tim came out from the shadow of the trees.

“Did you see it?”

Tim’s glasses flashed as he nodded.

“What is it, Dad?” Ronnie asked.

“I’ll tell you later. Right now, let’s get to the house.” Dad put an arm around each boy and led them up the hill.

“Is Mom going to be okay?”

“I hope so, son. I hope so.”

They walked past midnight and into safety.

Midnight.

Linda was lifted by invisible loving arms. The singing, the sermon, the pure love of her fellow worshippers, all flowed through her like the charged juice of her blood. Every cell of her body glowed in the warmth of Archer’s glory. Her mouth was flooded with the sweetness of the communion they had taken.

She felt as if she had returned from a long sleep. But it had been a long sleep, years and years and years of religious tyranny, licking at the pierced feet of David’s foolish Jesus. But now Archer was back, and everything would be the way it was before.

She would belong again.

She looked to her right, to the owner of the hand she was holding. Sheriff Littlefield. Of course. The Littlefields were one of the old families. They, like the Greggs, Mathesons, Potters, and others, had attended the church back in Wendell McFall’s day. Now the families were reuniting, answering a call that was deeper than flesh and blood.

Archer McFall leaned over the lectern, spent from his rampaging sermon. His eyelids fluttered and the muscles in his shoulders twitched. He lifted his head and smiled. The sweat on his face glistened in the candlelight. He reached out with a trembling hand and caressed the broken wooden cross that jutted from the top of the lectern.

“He has found us worthy,” Archer said, in a drained voice that had none of its earlier thunder.

“Amen,” echoed the parishioners.

Linda turned from her front-row pew and looked at the others. Lester Matheson smiled at her, his teeth yellow. His wife Vivian swayed as if in rhythm to an inaudible hymn, her eyes closed. Old Mamie Pickett was beside Vivian, her wrinkled and spotted hands folded carefully across the waist of her blouse.

Nell and Haywood Absher sat erect in the back row, Nell in her blue hat with the diaphanous netting. Their daughter Noreen wore a blissful, vacant expression. Others filled the church, their eyes bright with joy. Mama Bet sat in the last row, her wrinkled mouth pressed in solemn joy.

Abshers. Mathesons. Greggs. Picketts. McFalls. Only one family was missing. No, two. The Potters and the Houcks.

The sheriff had said that old man Potter had died. And Boonie Houck had lost his sinful eyes and tongue and penis. Linda couldn’t mourn their loss. They had found their own path to the everlasting glory that Archer spoke of. They had paid in blood so that the other families might live unto the fourth generation.

Nobody gets anything without a little sacrifice. Archer needed them. He just sent them home ahead of the rest of us, that’s all.

Archer lifted his head, his brown eyes as intense as truck headlights. Linda quit thinking. He was about to speak.

“We have done God’s work,” Archer said, swiveling his head to indicate the refurbished interior of the church.

“We done Him proud,” Lester shouted.

“Amen,” Vivian said, not opening her eyes. A clamor of approval spread across the room. Linda glanced at the black world outside the windows, momentarily sorry for all the blind, misguided fools who had been led astray by that devil, Jesus. Even her very own sons had fallen for the devil’s tricks.

Her eyes welled and spilled over.

I’ll bring them. They should know of the true path before it’s too late.

She looked back at Archer, so grateful for his rescuing her from the flames of Christianity. She slid from her hard pew and knelt on the floorboards, bowing to Archer. Her heart was a tortured mix of love and regret. She had found Archer, then had lost him, and now she had found him again.

Archer says that the truth will always win out. Faith will beat Satan and Jesus both.

She bent lower, her head near the floor she had spent hours cleaning.

Faith is sacrifice. And sacrifice is the currency of God.

She kissed the floor, tasted the red church. And she knew—knew—that Archer would need her children.

Ronnie and Tim.

But what were their sins?

A voice came to her, unbidden: They don’t pay for their own sins. They pay for YOURS, Linda.

She looked up from where she was kneeling on the floor. Archer smiled at her, eyes moist and arms spread in supplication.

Remember Abraham from the Old Testament? When God asked him to kill his beloved son Isaac? Do you think Isaac was the one who had sins to pay for? Of course not. Abraham was the one who needed to suffer a little, who needed to prove his faith.

Around her, the parishioners stood and began to file out, talking quietly among themselves. Their words were joyless now, muted, as if the gathered had given all their emotions to the walls of the church. Outside they went, shuffling sacks of skin and fluid and organs, while within, the wood seemed vibrant, soaked with light and energy and the ghosts of prayers.

Archer stepped off the dais and came to Linda. He offered her his hands. For a moment she thought she saw stigmata, tiny red pocks in the white palms. The mark of Jesus. She recoiled in horror even as the image faded.

“What’s wrong, my child?” Archer said. He was the Archer of old, aged and ageless, wise and innocent, his eyes sparkling with love and hate.

“I—I’m . . .” she stammered, looking back down to the floor. She couldn’t meet his eyes, couldn’t stare into the hot hells inside them, couldn’t bear his gracious cruelty. Because she knew she would see the threat in them, the hunger, the need for her children.

But then, Archer was a divine incarnation, the flesh of God, sent among the mortals with a mission to perform. What were her needs next to the needs of Archer?

She felt Archer’s strong arms pulling her to her feet.

“Do you doubt?” he asked simply. There was no anger in his voice, no accusation.

Linda shook her head. She could hear the others talking outside, seemingly revived by the fresh spring night. A few cars started and drove away with a crunch of gravel.

Archer cupped her chin and tilted her head up until their eyes met. “You’re as lovely as you were in California.”

Linda thought for a moment that he was going to kiss her. If only . . .

But she was mortal and he was the Second Son. He didn’t need love the way that others did, the way that David did. For Archer, love was a fuel, a human juice that would propel the world to heaven. Love wasn’t for the soul, not a contract between two people in defiance of death; no, to Archer, love was for the Soul, the collective, the glory. Not an ounce of it could be spared on carnal yearnings.

Oh, she had loved him. Archer with his long hair and his Volkswagen bus with peace signs painted on the rear and sides. Archer who could never fit into the small-town mountain life. Archer who had dreams, who saw visions, who accepted the taunts and jeers with equanimity.

It was just after her high school graduation, when she and David had been busy planning their marriage and their careers and their future together. And that was when Linda first recognized the glass walls that surrounded her, that would forever keep her caged in the mountains. Oh, she could leave, she could go to Charlotte or the Outer Banks, but only for days at a time. Her life was here, as bound to the mountains as the granite foundations of the earth were. That long-ago summer, she had carried the certainty of it like a lump in her throat.

She was waiting tables at the Mountaineer Diner when Archer came in. She’d noticed Archer in high school, but he kept to himself, carrying at times a Bible or thick books that weren’t required reading. That in itself was enough to mark him as an outcast. But coupled with the fact that he was the great-great-grandson of the Hung Preacher, he might as well have had a sign that read Kick Me stuck to the back of his shirt.

He sat in a corner booth that day, under the fake antique Pepsi-Cola sign. Linda looked around, hoping Sue Ann, the other waitress on duty, would take the “weird one.” But Sue Ann was leaning over the counter, showing her cleavage to some red-eyed trucker. So Linda pulled out her order pad and walked over to the booth.

“What do you want?” she said, sizing him up as a lousy tipper in addition to being a long-haired creep. He fumbled with the menu and scraped a bit of gravy away with his thumb.

“Coffee,” he said.

“That all?” She was irritated by the way he watched her, as if she were a piece of chocolate cake.

He nodded. She turned to hurry back to the kitchen.

“Your name’s Linda, isn’t it?” he said.

Maybe he would tip after all. “Yeah,” she said, giving him her two-dollar smile.

“My name’s Archer.”

“I know. You go to Pickett High, don’t you?”

“Did. I graduated.”

Linda didn’t remember him from the ceremony. Of course, she and David had hit a little Jim Beam before crossing the stage. Suddenly she felt guilty, as if his stare saw through her, into her. Then she was angry at herself for feeling guilty. Who cared what some longhaired bum thought?

His eyes were brown, vibrant yet distant. She felt dizzy looking into them.

“Uh . . . coffee, coming right up.”

She brought the coffee but he didn’t drink it. “The body is a temple,” he said. “And sacrifice is the currency of God. For He is a jealous God, and He punishes children for the iniquity of the parents.”

What a weirdo, she thought, but within fifteen minutes she was taking a break and sitting across from him in the booth, on the edge of the cheap vinyl seat. He talked matter-of-factly, and damned if he didn’t know just what he was talking about.

“You’re tired of this place,” Archer said. “You’re tired of these people and all this arguing over whether Chevy is better than Ford and what caliber bullet takes down a deer the fastest. You’re about to be married, your union blessed by God, and you think that this is your dream come true, that it’s happily-ever-after from now on. But scratch the surface”—he leaned forward as he said this, their faces only a foot apart—”and you find that you’re scared to death that this is it, this is all there is to life.”

She tried to protest, tried not to show that he had completely peeled back the layers of her soul like an onion. But she was already enthralled, already hooked, already mesmerized by the cadences of his speech. And by the time Sue Ann was calling Linda to get back to work, she had agreed to meet Archer for dinner.

She had to lie to David, but sinning was much easier back then. She and Archer ate at the Chick’n Shack over the line in Tennessee. She didn’t resist when Archer took her out behind the old red church after dinner. They rode back through town in his van, her with her head down, hoping no one would see her. At the same time, she was thinking that this was it, she was going to do it, she was going to cheat on David and damn the consequences. It was time to finally get around to the business of taking chances.

But Archer only wanted to talk. She thought at first it was just another come-on line. He wasn’t really her type. She was no longer sure just what was her type, even though she had always thought it was David. So they sat in the dark and Archer talked, and even though she was aching with lust and the fire of her flesh would lead her to the fires of hell, she somehow couldn’t get up the courage to touch him.

Archer talked of strange things. He made her look at the stars. He pointed to the church bell and the dogwood and told the story of the Hung Preacher. Linda thought at first he was trying to spook her so that she would slide close and he could put his arm around her. But he told the story wrong.

In Archer’s version, the Hung Preacher was a victim of persecution. “It was all a conspiracy of Jesus,” he said. His eyes seemed to gather the scraps of stray light and glistened like oil. “Jesus got in the heads of all those people and made them kill my great-great-grandfather. And Jesus had to pay nothing for his own sins. Because God loved Jesus more than He loves the entire world.”

Linda knew she should be getting the hell out of the van, that he was insane, but he spoke so reasonably and kept his voice level. So she listened to the rest of it, how Jesus hated the McFalls because they would bring forth the holy child. And that child would rise up and reveal Jesus for the fallen angel that he was. By morning, when the first timid rays of the sun peeked over the hills, she was more than in love; she was devoted.

She went through that summer with a bounce in her step, seeing David throughout the week but saving every Sunday night for Archer and his private sermons. When she found out that Archer had others, like Mandy Potter and Esther Matheson, she got jealous. But Archer explained how each had a part in the Divine Plan and that Linda would always hold a special place in his heart.

They moved to California at the end of the summer. Linda wrote a good-bye letter to David, three pages. At the end, she’d written, I hope you understand, but there’s a larger mission that I must attend to. I love you. Archer helped her write that last bit, and she cried until Archer made her stop.

They headed west in the van, Archer driving, the seven girls taking turns sleeping, singing silly songs by the Eagles and the Beach Boys, at least until Archer pointed out the sinful subtexts in the lyrics. Then they passed the time wondering aloud what California would be like.

“What are we going to do out there?” Linda asked from the front passenger seat. They were halfway across Tennessee, and the hills were rounded and green. Archer was hunched over the steering wheel, wearing a faint peaceful smile.

“Get delivered,” he had said.

Now, with his face only inches from hers, Linda wanted so very much for Archer to deliver her once and for all.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Sheriff Littlefield looked around the churchyard at the trees. The moon bathed the open hill with light, and the tombstones were like silver sentinels, mute and mocking. Littlefield took a deep breath of the chilly air, trying to clear his head. His tongue was fouled with a sweetly putrid aftertaste. He felt as if he had just walked out of the long tunnel of a dream.

He had come to the church to see if he could learn more about Archer McFall. His plan had been to keep a polite smile on his face and sit quietly through the service. He would shake hands if necessary and bow in prayer at the right time. But his eyes would always be slightly open.

His plan had failed. The green digital display on his watch read 1:57. Somehow he had lost nearly two hours. He leaned against the front of the Trooper and tried to remember what had brought him to the red church.

The others had gone already, shaking hands with each other and saying “God bless,” and driving back to their dark farmhouses. Linda Day and the preacher were inside the church. He could hear them talking.

The sheriff was hit by a sudden wave of nausea that almost drove him to his knees. The candlelight dancing from the open church door blurred in his vision. The huge, twisted dogwood swayed, as if moving to invisible music. His head roared with the first soul-ripping toll of the church bell.

He covered his ears and looked up at the bell tower, his mind scattered by the noise.

No rope. It CAN’T be ringing.

The dull cast iron of the bell glinted under the moon. As the note pealed through Littlefield, vibrating every nerve ending in his body, he fought to keep his eyelids from snapping shut in agony. The bell hadn’t moved an inch.

Archer was at the mouth of the church now, arms spread to the sky. The preacher was a dark shape shimmering in Littlefield’s tears. Behind Archer, Linda was bowed in reverence or else hunched in an agony that echoed Littlefield’s own.

With the second toll of the bell, Littlefield knew the deep resonance had driven him insane. Because the night walked.

A shape fluttered from the forest and settled in the belfry, a ragged black thing, an insult to the swimming beauty of the stars. The red church took on a glow, as if consumed with bright fire. A rope dangled from a strong, high limb of the dogwood. Pulling the rope taut was a body, full and heavy and limp.

It’s HIM.

The thought came to Littlefield along with a flood of other broken thoughts and images. The cemetery ground buckled and swelled, and the turf beneath the headstones rippled like boiling water. Archer grew in Littlefield’s vision—grew—until he filled the church door, and the edges of Archer’s body sharpened. The nearby trees leaned forward as if to ogle the unreal spectacle before them.

Littlefield surrendered to gravity and fell to his hands and knees. With effort, he lifted his head, transfixed by the still form of the Hung Preacher shimmering twenty feet away. The man’s face was waxen, and the skin reminded Littlefield of the way Freeman Harper had looked after floating dead in the river for two weeks. The tongue protruded like a blacksnake’s head. The eyes bulged, maniacally gleaming as if lit by strange suns.

The Hung Preacher wore a vested suit of ill-cut cotton that draped about the body like burlap, the ivory buttons resembling teeth. The dull leather square-toed shoes dangled inches above the ground. A leaf stirred between the feet, and Littlefield watched the leaf’s shadow skip across the grass on the breeze. He visually traced the shadow of the tree, thrown long across the hill by the candlelit church. But the Hung Preacher cast no shadow.

Littlefield stared the illusion full in the face. But he knew the Hung Preacher was no illusion. He had almost been able to convince himself that the first time had been a trick of the mind, the night that Samuel died. Now here was the ghost again, dangling like a slip of lost light, back to prove that the long-ago Halloween was as horrible as Littlefield remembered.

But in some small part of himself, he knew that such things were impossible, irrational. Dead people don’t come back. Samuel had died, and was as dead or deader now than he had ever been. This hideous vision hanging before him had no right to be here. Dead people belonged in the dirt.

He focused on the Hung Preacher’s bloated, wan face.

See? It can’t be real. You’ve let it build up in your mind, giving shape to your guilt over Samuel. You’ve just heard too many stories, that’s all.

And the stories are wrong. Because in the stories, right after the Hung Preacher comes back, the congregation gathers around him—

The bell rang a third time, louder and more jarring than before, and the Hung Preacher blinked and smiled.

The black tongue flitted back inside the swollen head. The dead arms trembled and raised as if testing the gravity of a new reality. The Hung Preacher parted his blood-engorged lips and laughed. It was the Halloween laugh, the terrible and unforgettable sound from Littlefield’s childhood. All the fear came flooding back, all the memories, only this time he couldn’t run away.

Around and behind Littlefield, the cemetery came alive.

His screams sheared the damp silence of the night.

###

“Do you smell that?” Tim said.

David Day did smell it. He knew the smell intimately. He was a hunter. Death had its own essence, a thick, heady quality that went beyond the olfactory sense. Death seeped inside of you like a mist.

“Smell what?” Ronnie said, his voice nasally because of his bandages. David looked down at the wide eyes of his oldest son. Ronnie was lucky that he couldn’t smell. The coppery odor of blood and a sickly-sweet aroma of decay mixed in the night air, tinged with an underlying pungency.

David looked down the gravel road, then back to the woods. He didn’t know what was safer, being out in the open stretch of moonlit road or sneaking through the dark forest. Their house was still half a mile away, and the only nearby houses, those of the Potters and the Mathesons, were dark. He gripped the gun more tightly. The weapon probably wouldn’t do any good, but it made him feel better.

Tim kept trying to run ahead of their little group. He didn’t seem scared anymore, just excited, as if he had sneaked out past bedtime to play some silly chasing game. David tried to keep his fear to himself, but Ronnie was smart. Ronnie knew that something bad had come to Whispering Pines.

“Hey, looky,” Tim said, pulling his hand from David’s. He pointed into the tall grass along the side of the road ahead. “There’s somebody.”

It could just as easily have been a sack of grain or a pile of rags, except for the pale hand that extended from the weeds onto the roadbed. Even in the dimness, there was no mistaking the fact that it was a human hand, its fingers curled upward in motionless begging. The hand was slender, feminine.

“Stay here,” David whispered, taking a quick look around. The breeze that had steadily risen and fallen was now in a lull. The stillness was almost more unbearable than the flapping of leaves and the groaning of trees bending in the wind. He crept toward the body, his rifle tilted in front of him.

David fought back the vomit that tried to leap from his stomach. He recognized the woman’s blouse. He thought at first that her blouse was unbuttoned and that she was wearing a dark, rumpled shirt underneath. But now he realized that her chest was open, not her blouse, and that someone or something had parted her rib cage. Blood pooled in the cavity, a slight steam rising toward the moon.

Her heart was gone.

David glanced at the woman’s face. Her eyes were open, her mouth gaping in an endless, voiceless scream. It was Donna. Linda’s cousin.

Linda had given Donna the blouse for Christmas two years ago. David hadn’t liked Donna because he always got the sense that she didn’t approve of Linda’s marrying a redneck. But nobody deserved to die like this, to be ripped open like a cow at the slaughterhouse. Horror and sorrow and fear welled up in David’s chest, fought each other for space, and then settled into a miserable mixture.

“What is it, Daddy?” Ronnie called.

“Somebody . . .” He fought to keep his voice calm. “Somebody had an accident.”

“Are they dead?” Tim asked.

David knelt in the grass and looked at the boys waiting thirty feet behind him. They would have to walk past the body, and he didn’t want them to know that it was Donna. He settled his fingers on her eyelids and pulled them closed, the way he had seen soldier buddies do in war movies. He tried to nudge her mouth closed, but her jaw muscles had locked in an everlasting scream.

He pulled the blouse closed across her wound, careful not to get blood on his hands. He took off his deerskin jacket, even though the night was chilly. Then he whispered a quick prayer.

“Dear Lord, I know she took You into her heart. And I know she was messing around at that awful church. But please don’t hold that against her. The devil spins a mighty good yarn, and I don’t think it’s fair if she got tricked off the path of salvation. Judge her by the way she was before Archer got ahold of her. So if it be Thy will, please take her away from him and bring her up into the heavenly fold where she rightly belongs. Amen.”

David looked into the woman’s face. Death was supposed to be peaceful. But there was no peace in those rigid features. Worst of all, the thin nose and the sharp cheekbones and the rounded eyebrows were Gregg family characteristics. Exactly the same as Linda’s. He laid the jacket across Donna’s face.

“Are they dead?” Tim repeated, coming forward despite David’s order to stay put. Ronnie followed, hesitantly.

“Looks like it, son,” David said, standing. “We’d best get home and call the sheriff.”

“The sheriff?” Ronnie said. “We saw his truck back at the church.”

Tim tried to peer at the body. David put his arm around Tim and led him to the far side of the road. “Come on. Let’s get home.”

They walked in silence past the forest and into the open stretch of pasture and fields. The Potter farm sprawled dark and empty at the foot of the mountains. The farmhouse and barns were like tiny boats in a rough sea. Nobody let their lights burn all night in Whispering Pines. That was wasteful and expensive. But somehow the darkness in Zeb’s windows was more desolate and final than if the occupant had been merely sleeping.

Boonie, Zeb, and now Donna. It’s starting again, getting faster. Just like Archer done in California. Except this time I don’t know if I can even slow him down, much less stop him.

“How come people are dying, Daddy?” Tim asked.

David thought about how to answer.

The devil’s setting up revival camp in Whispering Pines? A preacher got hung over a hundred years ago and he’s been pissed off ever since? We’ve all collected on the wages of sin and now it’s payback time?

“I don’t rightly know, son,” he finally said. “I just know it’s going to be all right.”

Lying, like marksmanship and tomato growing, got easier with practice.

He could see their house ahead, the mailbox shining in the moonlight. It somehow made him feel safer, even though he knew that mere walls wouldn’t keep the Bell Monster away. The lights were off in their house, too.

“Is Mama home?” Tim asked.

“Don’t believe so,” David said, hoping he could keep his worry hidden.

“How come she was at the church?” Ronnie asked. “We always go on Sunday morning, not late at night.”

“Well, she was just being neighborly, helping out,” David lied for the third time. Well, it wasn’t a complete lie. She was helping out, all right, just not the kind of help a person usually gave to their church. Her service went way beyond bake sales and sending get-well cards and arranging flowers.

She would be out with Archer, taking part in whatever crazy ritual the freak thought up next. She was helping him bring death and fear and hell’s madness into their little valley. His chest tightened, this time hot with failure.

He’d rescued Linda once, led her back into the Baptist fold, into the love and light of the Lord. But maybe that wasn’t good enough for her, because she’d taken a second taste of the devil’s temptation and found it to be sweeter than Christ’s redeeming blood.

He clenched his hands tight around his rifle. He tried to offer a prayer, to ask for God’s strength, but he’d run out of words. He glanced at the sky, ink-dark and star-filled and stretching from mountaintop to mountaintop.

Just exactly who owns this damned world?

David shivered at the slight weakening of his faith.

He led the boys up the driveway and into the house. He was momentarily afraid that, even if he managed a prayer, it would fall on deaf ears. Or worse, ears that heard but just didn’t plain care.

###

When the bell rang, Linda didn’t cover her ears, though the church shook with the vibrations.

That was part of the ritual, Archer had said. The bell had to ring to drive away that crazy Jesus and all the other demons that clouded people’s minds. The bell must toll as a reminder of the iniquities of murderous ancestors.

So she welcomed the sound, and each rich resonance washed over her body like a cleansing wave of holy water. Archer folded his hands together and bowed his head.

“Stronger,” he whispered after the third toll. “It’s getting stronger.”

What’s getting stronger? Linda wondered. But she dared not break his reverie to ask. She craned her neck to peer outside the church. That was when the sheriff screamed.

Archer ran down the church steps and stood over Littlefield’s prostrate form. Linda followed slowly, waiting for a sign from Archer. The sheriff had been looking at the tree. Linda wondered what he had seen that was so frightening. The churchyard was a place of peace and beauty, not a place of fear. Perhaps the sheriff was faithless, weak, unworthy.

Archer knelt on the ground beside the sheriff and lifted his face to the sky.

“O Father,” he intoned in that preacher voice that sent shivers of rapture up Linda’s spine, “See me take this sinner into my church. He has joined us in communion and has eaten of the host. O Father, watch him join us in the battle against the unrighteousness and evil that masquerades as salvation, so that he may walk into light forever, amen.”

“Amen,” Linda echoed automatically. She felt a piece of the communion between her teeth. She worked it free with her tongue, then swallowed the soft flesh that Archer had consecrated and administered. The sense of well-being expanded in her chest, swelled her head, made her light with love.

And then she saw.

The Hung Preacher rolled his eyes in her direction, looking at her appreciatively. Then the thick apparition turned his face back to Archer.

The Hung Preacher’s black lips parted, and insubstantial things wiggled inside his mouth. “More,” he said, moving his lips again, but the second time he made no sound.

A vision, Linda told herself. An honest-to-God VISION. Just like Archer always promised.

The Baptists had raved on and on about Moses and the burning bush, about how such-and-such was revealed to God’s chosen, but nobody at First Baptist had ever had a vision of his or her own. Well, Boonie Houck had laid claim to a few, but his revelations never seemed religious in nature, especially since they usually came after a week of the trembles. But this . . . this . . .

The Hung Preacher dangled in full glory before her. But even now he was shimmering, fading back into his holy realm beyond this earth. Linda felt her heart leap with uncertain loss.

Archer clutched his hands together and edged toward the dogwood tree on his knees. “Don’t go, oh sweet prophet,” he pleaded, his voice almost childlike.

The Hung Preacher mouthed the word more a final time, the dead face contorted in rage. His arms fell limp at his sides, and he drifted into invisibility.

Archer stood and ran to the spot beneath the tree. He reached his arms out and hugged the empty air to his chest. “Come back,” he said softly. He had a lost look on his face.

Linda had never seen Archer appear in any way vulnerable. It made her heart soar with joy. She could be of use to him. He did have needs. He needed her.

Archer had given her so much, opened her eyes to the follies of Christianity, saved her soul. The least she could do was comfort him now in his time of trouble. At last she had something to offer. She touched his shoulder. His coat was so hot that it almost burned her fingers.

He spun. Linda drew back, her hand covering her mouth in shock.

Archer’s face contorted as if the bones of his skull had broken and the fragments were trying to push through his skin. His forehead flattened and elongated, the lower part of his face funneled together, the nose broadened over the mouth. His eyes widened, and a fierce golden color ringed the black, marble-sized pupils. Archer’s eyes glittered, capturing the moonlight and turning it into green and yellow diamonds.

A low, animal growl came from his throat, and triangular ears pricked up at the top of his head. Whiskers like silver wire sprouted from the sides of the black-gummed mouth. The eyes narrowed, cat-like, and Archer fell onto his hands.

No, not his hands. PAWS.

Archer’s suit ripped, and reddish-brown fur sprouted over the preacher’s flesh. The creature stepped forward, out of Archer’s shoes, its thick claws curling into the ground through the socks.

A mountain lion.

David had told her stories about them, her father had hunted them, and the Appalachian settlers used to fear them so much that they became the stuff of fireplace scare stories. But all the mountain lions were dead.

She had never doubted that Archer could work miracles. Now, with this undeniable proof, she gave the last of herself to him. She fell before the great cat and bowed her head, trembling, awaiting the mighty gnash of its teeth or the swift stroke of its talons, whatever method Archer deemed most fitting. Salvation was all about sacrifice, Archer had told her, and she was willing to make the ultimate one.

Jesus divided loaves and fishes and walked on water. Big deal. Jesus had never been anything but Jesus. This proved that Archer was better, the true savior, the real Son of God. This proved that Archer was master of the atoms and cells and all that other invisible stuff that made things what they were.

The animal growled again, a low rumbling noise in its chest. It moved forward and sniffed at Linda. Despite herself, she shivered as warm, moist breath passed across the back of her neck.

Please make it not hurt, Archer.

The mountain lion waited. The sky was a shade lighter now, a deeper blue from the east pushing away the black. The forest was still, hushed in that moment just before dawn when the diurnal and nocturnal animals changed shifts. The great cat’s soft breathing was the only sound besides the pounding of Linda’s heart.

The cat moved away, toward the still-unconscious sheriff. Linda felt a small surge of disappointment, but also a rush of relief.

So I’m to be spared. I promise to have a purpose if you only let me live, God. You need me here to serve Archer, to help him do whatever he needs done to save the world. To beat Jesus and Satan forever.

She watched as the cat lowered its head toward the sheriff’s neck.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The house was dark when Linda drove up. That meant the boys were asleep. She hated to neglect them the way she had been, but Archer needed her more than the boys did. A servant should have only one master, Archer always said. And God was a jealous God.

She had passed the body that had been lying on the side of the road. Some of the other parishioners had probably passed it as well, though all would murmur to themselves, “There must be great sacrifices.” Linda recognized David’s jacket draped across the body. So her husband had been out nosing around.

She hoped he would stay out of the way. If David left her alone, maybe Archer would spare him. David had married into the Gregg family, not earned the birthright with blood. The Days weren’t one of the old families, so they owed no tribute to the red church and had no iniquities to pay for.

She got out of the car and took a breath of fresh air. The smells of the farm, freshly tilled soil, hay, and chicken manure always comforted her. That was one of the ironies of her life: she’d always been afraid that she’d wind up trapped in Whispering Pines, yet she had never really felt comfortable anywhere else, especially in California. Not even Archer’s wonderful presence there could totally erase her homesickness.

The moon was low in the sky, three-quarters full over the uneven mountain ridges. The deep indigo of the night and the scattered pinpricks of stars were beautiful. She would miss this world. It was hard to believe that a better one existed, but Archer said he had a place for her waiting in heaven. The real heaven, not that mock-up illusion that the Christians peddled.

Harps and white robes. What a laugh.

She went into the house, careful not to make any noise. She would go in and kiss the boys good night and make sure the blankets were tucked under their chins. Her hand fumbled along the wall until she found the light switch, and she flipped it up.

“Well, well, well . . .” David said. She jumped back against the door.

“. . . if it ain’t the whore of Babylon,” David finished. He sat on the couch, still in his work clothes, eyes alert. His rifle was across his lap.

“What in the world do you think you’re doing here?” she whispered, as loudly as she could without waking the boys.

“Taking care of my own.” His eyes narrowed as he patted the gun barrel. “Somebody’s got to do it.”

“Get out.”

“Not while that . . . that McFall bastard is on the prowl.”

“Leave Archer out of this.”

“I wish I could.”

“You think this is all about you? This doesn’t have anything to do with you, so just mind your own business.”

David watched her as she stepped away from the open door and eased toward the kitchen. Only his eyes moved. The rest of him remained rigid. “What’s going on up at the church, Linda?”

“Nothing. Just getting services going again.” Linda looked away to escape his gaze. “How are the boys?”

“Oh, they’re just fine. Ain’t nothing like being scared to death and having their mother taking up with a touched-in-the-head bunch of midnight worshipers.”

“Those are good folks. You know most of them. They’re our neighbors.”

“Yeah, at least the ones who are still alive.”

“You saw her?”

“Yeah.”

Linda’s eyes grew moist. She had not allowed herself to mourn for Donna. But now that David had reminded her, she couldn’t fight the mortal weakness of tears.

“Boys saw her, too.” David’s voice was sharper now that he saw he could cut her with his words. “Lucky for them, they didn’t find out who it was.”

Linda leaned against the jamb of the entryway that led into the hall. The guilty had to die. But why did it have to be Donna? Her cousin had never really done anything wrong, except maybe committing a little adultery. Was Donna’s heart really that tainted, just because she liked to love other women’s husbands?

“That makes three,” David said. “One every night. Just like in California.”

Linda slammed her fist against the cheap paneling, and the trophy heads on the wall shook. “Why didn’t you just let me stay in California?” she said, louder than she wanted to.

“You’re going to wake the boys.”

She crossed the room and stood over him. “Why didn’t you leave me out there? I was happy. Maybe for the first time ever.”

David took his hands from the rifle and cupped them over his knees. “Because you turned your back on the Lord. And on me. I couldn’t let Archer McFall and that bunch rot your soul.”

She snorted, her nose red from crying. “Soul? What do you know about having a soul?”

“I know what’s right. And Archer ain’t right. He’s the devil. He’s worse than the devil. At least the devil plays by God’s rules, and knows good from evil. Your precious preacher seems to get them a little mixed up.”

“You’re crazy, David.”

“I ain’t the one praying to a murdering monster.”

“Archer has nothing to do with the killings.”

“Sure he don’t. Mighty big damned coincidence, wouldn’t you say? Archer goes to California, people die hard. Archer comes back to Whispering Pines, people die hard.”

“Sometimes the innocent must die-”

“I got news for you. None of us are innocent.”

Linda shook her head. “You don’t get it, do you? I’ve been praying and praying, asking God to throw some light on you so you’d see that Archer is the real savior. But I guess that ten-dollar-a-week Jesus is all you’ve got the brains for. Serves you right to follow him to hell.”

David stood suddenly, the rifle thumping to the floor. He glared down into her eyes, but Linda wasn’t afraid. There will come great trials, Archer said. She would be strong. Her faith would not waver.

“You can follow that fool,” David said between clenched teeth. “But I’ll be damned if you’re going to take the boys with you.”

“That’s right. You’ll be damned,” she said, angry now that David was taking her greatest possessions, the greatest tithe she could make to Archer. The boys were her ticket into Archer’s heart, into the kingdom of God.

David bent and picked up the rifle, holding it across his chest between them. “Then let the son of a bitch come and get them. But he’ll have to come through me first.”

David’s eyes were hard. She knew how stubborn he could be. He had worn that same expression in California, when he came into the temple after Archer had disappeared. He’d carried her out to his pickup, then drove back to the mountains, stopping only for gas and food or when exhaustion forced him to nap for a few hours. Now, as then, Linda realized just how much she loved him. But love was a trick, a scare tactic that led to desperation. Archer said that earthly love was just another vanity, didn’t he?

Love in its way was a false idol. Love was as hollow as a golden calf- all shiny and bright on the outside, and nothing but bad dark air on the inside. Love gave you nothing, but took every little thing that you had.

Human love was an altar that you crawled on and then asked to be slaughtered.

Love was Jesus’ greatest lie.

She would be strong.

“I hate you,” she said, her chest cold, her heart coated with the iron will that Archer had instilled.

David held up a hand, glanced at the front door and then the window. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

David thumbed the rifle’s safety off and tilted his head to listen. “Shh.”

“It won’t come here,” Linda whispered, trying to reassure herself. Archer would send his heavenly agent for the boys. But he’d promised to wait until they’d become part of the fold. That would ensure their place in Archer’s eternal glory, and secure her place by Archer’s side.

Something rattled at the front door.

It can’t be. Tonight’s sacrifice has already been made.

In the silence, the ticking of the clock was like raindrops on a coffin.

David put his cheek to the gunstock and waited for whatever was outside to enter.

Can you hear Him aknocking?

Ronnie pulled the covers over his head, but the suffocating darkness made his fear grow instead of disappear. Mom and Dad had stopped arguing, so maybe they had heard the noise, too. Tim was snoring, but Ronnie hadn’t been able to close his eyes since they’d arrived home. He was afraid that if he slept, he’d dream about the black shape that flapped across the sky like a jaggedy kite.

And now it was here, the Bell Monster, the scary thing from the church that had wings and claws and livers for eyes. It had followed them home, and Ronnie knew—knew—that it had come just for him. Because he had sinned in his heart, and the devil had sent a demon from the pits of hell, just the way Preacher Staymore had threatened in Sunday school.

The claws clicked on the glass. Ronnie chewed nervously on the blankets and a stray fiber got in his throat and made him cough. The clicking stopped. The monster had heard him. In the stillness, Ronnie listened to the wet mist of its waiting breath.

Ronnie tried to pray. The preacher said that the Lord forgave all sins and protected the children. If God had control over the heavens and the earth, then surely He controlled the demons as well.

Dear Jesus, please forgive me for my sins of the heart. I know I’ve suffered bad thoughts, and I haven’t been saved in three weeks. But I want YOU in my heart and not the thing with livers for eyes. Please, please, get me out of this and I promise I’ll get saved every week from now on, even if Preacher Staymore’s breath smells like rotten fruit. Amen.

Ronnie opened his eyes under the blankets. It was working. The wet noises went away. The prayer had sent the demon back to hell, or maybe back to the red church.

Thankyou thankyou thankyou, O Jesus—

The clicking started again, and Ronnie felt as if the door to his heart had slammed shut. Across the room, Tim rolled over in his sleep. If the Bell Monster came in through the window, it might get Tim.

And maybe if it gets Tim, it will leave me alone.

As soon as he had the thought, his face warmed with shame. Didn’t Jesus say to love thy brother? Or was that one of the Ten Commandments? Either way, he had suffered another sin of the heart, and Jesus would punish him even more.

The brave thing to do would be to go out and face the monster. To let the thing rip him open and gnaw on his sinning heart, the way it had ripped up Boonie Houck and probably Zeb Potter and that person on the side of the road.

Mom said that Archer McFall said that sacrifice was the way to heaven. If Ronnie sacrificed himself, maybe Jesus would take him instead of letting the demon drag him down to the hot place. But Archer McFall was weirder than any preacher Ronnie had ever heard of. Who else would hold services in a haunted church? And the memory of those strange hymns that Mom and the others had been singing made him shiver with strange, sick pleasure.

The claws were on the windowsill now, exploring the crack at the base of the window. Ronnie couldn’t remember if the window was locked. Mom had raised it yesterday to let in some fresh air, and Ronnie went right after she left and latched it again. But maybe she had unlatched it again while he was asleep.

Footsteps came down the hall, heavy footsteps. Dad’s boots. Ronnie pulled the covers off his head and sat up, braver now that Dad was coming to the rescue. He couldn’t help himself. He had to glance at the window.

Through the curtains, Ronnie saw the Bell Monster pressed against the glass. It was moist, changing shape as he watched, the lesser gray of its mouth parting in some kind of anger or longing.

And he saw the eyes.

Livers.

Wet, drippy, slick, and red.

Eyes that looked right into Ronnie’s, that seemed to crawl down his eyeball sockets and into his brain, to reach from his brain to his heart, as if to say, You’re mine now, you’ve always been mine, can you hear me aknocking?

Then the door to the bedroom crashed open and light from the hall spilled across the room and Dad’s long shadow filled the doorway.

“Get down,” Dad yelled, and Ronnie fell back against the pillows as the first shot exploded from Dad’s rifle.

Glass shattered as the percussion echoed off the walls.

Dad yanked the bolt back, reloaded, and fired again.

Gun smoke filled Ronnie’s lungs, and though he couldn’t smell it, he could taste it, as acrid as car exhaust on his tongue.

Tim woke up screaming. Mom ran into the room and hugged him, pausing for a moment to look at the window.

Dad hurried across the room and looked through the broken panes. Jagged glass framed him, sparkling in the moonlight like sharp teeth.

“Is it gone?” Mom asked. Tim cried into her chest, his shudders shaking them both.

“I don’t see it,” Dad said, the rifle at his shoulder.

“Did you kill it?” she asked.

“Who the hell knows?”

“Will it come back?”

Dad turned from the window and glared at her. “You tell me. You’re the damned prophet.”

Prophet? thought Ronnie. Like Ezekiel and Abraham and all those? Was Dad committing a sin of the heart?

Dad bent over Ronnie’s bed. “You okay?”

Ronnie nodded.

Yeah, I’m as okay as I’m ever going to be, considering that the thing with livers for eyes is after me because I’ve sinned in my heart, and now it’s after YOU, too. And my nose hurts and you and Mom are fighting again and I’m not going to cry, I’m not going to—

Dad sat on the bed and wiped Ronnie’s tears away. “It’s gone now. You’re safe. I won’t let that thing get you.”

“P—promise?”

“Yeah.”

“Will you stay here?”

Dad tensed, then looked at Mom. Ronnie felt their hatred in the air, a black electricity, as mean as the Bell Monster and almost as scary.

Tim had stopped crying, and now whimpered a little into the folds of Mom’s shirt. Ronnie knew his little brother was waiting for what would happen next. They both knew what was at stake. If Dad left again, they would be helpless against the Bell Monster. And despite the promises, Dad might just be angry enough to leave them all, to go somewhere in his truck and drink beer and do other things that he’d never done before.

This was one of those turning points, like when the Lord came aknocking, and you either opened the door or you didn’t. Where everything changed, either for better or worse. No going back to last week, when life was nearly normal and all Ronnie had to worry about was homework and Melanie Ward. This was for all the marbles.

Dad looked at Mom again, then at Tim, then at the shattered window. The sky had settled into that deep blue of early morning and even the crickets had quit their chirping. Somewhere in the hills, a hound dog bayed, a lost, lonely sound in the predawn stillness.

“I’ll stay,” Dad said, staring out the window at the black slopes of the mountains.

Ronnie admired the muscles in his dad’s jaws, the way Dad held his head up proudly, without a bit of back-down in him. Dad said that a man ought to draw his strength from the Lord, that nobody who trusted the Man Upstairs needed to be afraid of anything. And Dad made a pretty good case for it, too: why should you be afraid of dying if dying only brought you into the presence of everlasting glory?

When Ronnie thought of heaven, he always imagined that color illustration in Dad’s Bible, right before the New Testament. The picture showed Jesus at the top of a set of golden stairs that rose up into the clouds. Jesus had long hair and a brown beard and the saddest eyes Ronnie had ever seen. He had his arms out and his palms lifted in welcome, but there was nobody on the stairs. Heaven looked like a lonely place.

And besides, no matter how wonderful heaven was, new things were always scary. Like the first day of school, the time he’d given that poem to Melanie, the first time he’d been inside the red church, this business about Mom and Dad being mad at each other. So he’d rather stay right here in bed, with Dad sitting beside him and Mom and Tim under the same roof. He’d rather just go on living, thank you very much.

Even with a broken nose and a monster after him and schoolwork and Mom hanging out with that creepy preacher.

Even with all that.

He closed his eyes and waited for the sun to come up.

###

Archer crouched in the forest near the church. He had dragged the sheriff under the trees after sending Linda away. She wouldn’t understand why the sheriff should be suffered to live. She was a good disciple, and she would willingly sacrifice herself, but she wasn’t prepared for the truth. None of them were.

Archer surveyed the landscape, his great cat’s eyes piercing the darkness. God ruled the kingdom of heaven, but He had given Archer the kingdom of the Earth, along with dominion over all of its creatures. Archer’s brother Jesus had misused that power, had wandered among the humans and confused them with messages of love and hope. Before the rise of Christianity, heaven was attained only through pain, trials, and sacrifice. After Jesus’s blasphemy was erased from the earth, people would again turn to those true tests of faith.

Of all the ludicrous Christian beliefs, the most laughable was that being forgiven would earn the sinner a ticket to heaven. Yet it was so utterly human. Why bother living right and enduring the rigors of true faith when all you had to do was say, “Come into my heart” and Jesus would be right there tricking you with lies?

Archer would also grant forgiveness. But his would be delivered after the sinner got on bended knee and begged, begged, even as the dark claws of justice performed the cleansing. Deliverance must be paid in blood. Redemption must be earned the hard way.

And Father above would burn with jealousy as Archer succeeded where Jesus had failed.

Archer felt a brief twinge. Bullets passed through the manifested spirit that lurked at the Days’ house three miles away. Archer threw back his head and growled a laugh at the moon, then sent the manifestation back to its home in the belfry. Let it eat the shadows there until the next night’s work.

Dawn would be breaking soon. The forest was in the held breath between the changing of the guards, the nocturnal animals returning to their nests and burrows and the morning songbirds shaking sleep from their heads. What a beautiful world God had made. Except for the blight of human hearts, a blight born of God’s insecurity, the earth nearly approached heaven in its glory.

But Archer was here to erase that blight. All that sinned must be destroyed, so that a new, pure world could emerge. And all on Earth had sinned, even Jesus. Especially Jesus. All except the Second Son.

Archer licked his fur, patient in the knowledge that he had forever. In the meantime, he would continue the cleansing right here in the place of his mortal birth. Here where Wendell McFall’s soul had been trapped, where Archer himself had suffered the taunts and abuses of the unrighteous. Here where the sinless ones could come forth in an exodus of blasphemy and mockery.

Archer brought his teeth to the sheriff’s collar and gently closed his mouth around the cloth. The sheriff’s eyelids twitched as Archer’s warm breath tickled his neck, but he didn’t awaken. The smell of the man’s sin, and those of all the generations of Littlefields, crowded Archer’s sensitive nose.

Before Littlefield paid for his own sins, the sheriff first had to suffer for the sins of his ancestors. Archer dragged Littlefield across the churchyard, to a special place of punishment. Littlefield thought that the death of his younger brother had been enough to atone for Wendell McFall’s hanging. But he would soon learn that sacrifice was the currency of a jealous God, and of jealous sons as well.

There was joy in being a messiah.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Det. Sgt. Sheila Storie looked at the clock above her office door. It was one of those old round clocks of the kind that hung in elementary schools, with a black casing and plain, oversize numerals. The second hand didn’t sweep smoothly. It locked into place on each tiny mark, then twitched over to the next. She watched twenty-three of the spastic seconds pass before she took her eyes away.

She had spent the night in the office, napping a few hours in her chair. Now her back was stiff. She stood and stretched and made another pot of coffee, even though her stomach ached from the abusive night of caffeine and snack food from the machine in the hall. Just before the midnight shift change, Deputy Wellborn had called in to report that the hounds had found nothing.

Somehow, she wasn’t surprised by the negative report. Hounds might be okay for chasing down runaway convicts, but this was the twenty-first century. Sifting forensic evidence and poring through criminal databases were the ways to solve crimes, not sniffing around the woods. But she had to admit that a night spent at the desk with her reports had brought her no closer to solving the two murders.

Where was the motive?

That was one of the first lessons of homicide investigation: find the motive, and you find the murderer. But she had a near-penniless drunk mutilated in a churchyard and a farmer with his head caved in by a sledgehammer. As far as anyone could determine, robbery was not a motive in either crime. In fact, the only connection between the two victims was that both lived in the Whispering Pines area.

No, that wasn’t the only connection. There were more of what she called the BDC’s—big damned coincidences. And most of the coincidences seemed to center on the old church.

McFall’s buying of it. Frank’s spilling his guts about the childhood tragedy he’d endured there. Even the ghost stories seemed to be a red flag of some kind, though she would never in a million years admit that she gave them any credence at all.

Storie looked out the window. The sky was just turning pink behind Barkersville. The two blocks of Main Street were shadowed, the brick buildings cold and empty in the gasp of dawn. A few vehicles were on the road, most of them pickup trucks with tools in the back. People were heading to work, another week to get through before another payday, and then another two days to forget that they had to do it all over again on the following Monday.

The Chamber of Commerce mailed out glossy brochures that said, Up here, life moves at a different speed. The idea was to lure rich tourists with the promise of front-porch rockers and lazy river breezes. Of course, once they got here, they were bored out of their minds after two days and then dumped a few thousand dollars in the area craft shops and restaurants. Some different speed.

Then why are you here?

She chewed her pencil. Why the hell was she here? Running from the Metro force and big-city crime, she had wanted as rural a life as she could find. Maybe she thought this would be an easy place to cut her teeth, move up a little in rank, and then make a run for sheriff.

She’d always wanted a department of her own. Storie wanted it the way other people craved sex or fame or a family. Solving high-profile cases was just the means to that end. But she also had developed this very scary need to understand Frank Littlefield, to get beneath his professional veneer and his good-ol’-boy act and figure out just what in the hell he was about.

She didn’t know much about him. She didn’t know enough about the red church or Archer McFall, either. It was time to change that. She pulled her keys from her desk and poured herself a last cup of coffee.

She pressed a button on her two-way. “Unit Two will be in service.”

“Ten-four,” came the third-shift dispatcher’s voice.

She strapped on her shoulder holster before putting on her blazer. The .38 revolver was comforting against her rib cage. As she went outside, she was struck by the moist scent of life: lilies crawling out of their night pajamas, the wild cherry in front of the library snow white with blossoms, birds chattering from branches and utility poles. She took a deep breath and gazed over the mountains.

On those hills were houses, filled with people who were as deeply rooted as the old-growth hardwoods. Smoke curled from a couple of the chimneys, despite the warmth of the morning. These people were no different from the urbanites she had grown up with. They slept with dreams, and the dreams dissolved when they awoke. Time passed for them as rapidly as it passed for everyone.

Yep, some different speed, all right.

She got in her cruiser and headed for Whispering Pines, staying just under the limit all the way.

###

Frank.

Get up.

Frank didn’t want to get up. He was lying under some hay, and the sun was coming through the open loft door and warming his bones until they were like cooked noodles.

“Get up, Frankie.”

Frank opened his eyes. The world was yellow, all sunlight and straw dust. The straps of his overalls dug into his neck, making him itch. But that was only a minor problem. He could endure the itch, and he could ignore Samuel. Samuel was about as minor a problem as a little brother could be.

“Come on, let’s go fishing.”

“Go away,” Frank murmured. If Grandpa or Dad found him lazing off, they’d wear out his rear end with a hickory switch. He could hear Grandpa’s crotchety voice now: Corn to be hoed and hogs to be slopped and the goldurned dinner chicken’s still wearing its feathers. The chainsaw buzzed like a drunken bee where the two men were cutting firewood on one of the hillsides.

Something poked Frank in the side. He reluctantly rolled over and saw Samuel with a cane pole in his hands, feet bare and an Atlanta Braves cap perched on his head. A grin filled with crooked teeth threatened to split Samuel’s freckled face in half. “Come down to the river, Frankie.”

Frank sat up, dazzled by the sun. Outside, the fields were a brilliant shade of green. The mountains were sharply in focus, as if each individual tree and rock had been carefully etched onto a fine cotton paper. The sky was so vividly blue that he rubbed his eyes, because the air was like water, thick with currents and eddies and languorous coolness. He stood on wobbly scarecrow legs.

“Got your pole, too,” said Samuel. He held out another bamboo cane. A round red-and-white float and a small silver hook dangled from the monofilament line. Frank took the pole without a word, then followed Samuel across the hayloft. His feet felt as if they were wrapped in fat clouds and scarcely seemed to touch the ground. Then they were down the ladder and out of the barn and crossing a long meadow. The grass was alive, like the crisp hair of the earth.

The chainsaw stopped and its echo fell like smoke across the valley and dissolved. In the sudden silence, a bird cried from the trees near the river. Samuel led the way across the meadow, below the garden with its tomato vines and leafy cabbage heads and cornstalks tipped with golden buds. He felt as if he were attached to an invisible line, being reeled toward an unknown shore.

Samuel hummed a church hymn that was a little too somber for such a bright summer day. And Samuel should be skipping, laughing, beating at the thistles with his cane pole. He should be running ahead of Frank to find a hiding place under the cottonwoods. Instead his little brother walked solemnly, watching his toes.

The sky pressed down and Frank swam against it. They were at the river now, and its sparkling silvery eyes watched them.

“We’re going to catch the big one,” Samuel said, standing on a sandbar and freeing his line. He sneaked a look at Frank and put his hand to his mouth. Then he held out his palm to Frank, showing a writhing mass of thick, glistening nightcrawlers. Frank took one and speared it on his hook. Samuel took one for himself and returned the rest of the worms to his mouth. Frank’s stomach tightened in nausea.

The boys launched their baited hooks almost in unison. Dragonflies scooted along the riverbank, their green wings beating against the air. Water splashed over stones, snickering.

“It’s almost like Sunday,” Samuel said.

“Yeah. Here we are being lazy when there’s chores to be done. Dad will get ill as a hornet if he finds out we’re fishing.” Frank moved down the sandbar a little so the sun didn’t flash off the water into his eyes.

“Lazy Sunday. Makes you want to go to church, don’t it?”

“Church?”

Samuel smiled and his head lolled limply to one side. “Fun place to hang around, know what I mean?”

“We don’t have time for that,” Frank said, his hands sweating and his heart pounding.

“I got all the time in the world,” Samuel said, as a thick worm crawled from his mouth. The brown tip of it squirmed as if sniffing the air, then the worm inched down Samuel’s chin.

“I don’t go the church anymore,” Frank said. “Not since . . .”

“Since what, brother?”

Samuel’s float bobbed once, twice. Then he jerked his pole and it bowed nearly double. “Got one, got one.” He squealed in delight.

Frank dropped his own pole and lay on his belly so he could reach into the water and land the fish. In the calm water near the shore, he saw the reflection of the sky and the high white clouds. His own face was dark on the water, unwrinkled, unworried. Young.

“Pull him in,” Samuel said. Frank reached out and grabbed the taut line. As he tugged, the river erupted in a silver avalanche.

The Hung Preacher rose from the water.

The fishing line was a rope, the hook a noose that encircled the preacher’s neck. The pale figure clawed at the strands, and the skin was purple where the rope dug into flesh.

The Hung Preacher’s mouth parted in a suffocated scream, except—no, that wasn’t the river, that was the preacher—he was laughing, gurgling, a font of morbid merriment.

Frank’s own scream was a dull fist in his throat, a mossy stone, a cold fish. He tried to scramble up the bank, but a hand on his arm held him down.

“Time for a baptism, Frankie,” came Samuel’s voice, only it wasn’t the voice of a child. It was a low voice from beyond the grave, a putrid exhalation of hate, the words rustling and slithering like snakes through a catacomb.

Frank looked up at his dead brother, into the eyes that had once been mercifully sewn closed by the funeral director, eyes that now stared accusingly, filled with the hot hunger of vengeance delayed. Samuel’s crooked teeth were sharp, moldy, the spaces between them filled with quick darkness.

Samuel was knee-deep in the water now, his gaunt hand tight on Frank’s arm, drawing him across the mud and soggy roots into the lapping, laughing tongue of the river. The Hung Preacher tented his hands in a prayer, and his bowed head was smiling, smiling.

Samuel tugged, and Frank was in the river, his dead little brother pushing down on the top of his head, submerging him, and the water tasted like death, the water was crypt air and flooded his lungs even while he struggled toward the surface that was so far away. He fought, even though he knew he deserved to die for what he had done to Samuel.

The hands tugged, pulled. He felt himself going under, deeper—

“Sheriff, wake up.”

Littlefield kicked and flailed, moaning.

“Get up, you’re having a bad dream.”

Littlefield tensed, his muscles spasming from the struggle. “Sh—Sheila?”

“Yeah, Sheriff. Are you okay?”

He opened his eyes. The morning sun was painful. He blinked up into Detective Storie’s face. She was so close that he could smell the coffee on her breath. Her hair fell softly about her cheekbones, but her mouth was lined with worry.

What a pleasant sight to wake up to.

Littlefield’s head felt as if Zeb Potter’s murderer had done another sledgehammer job. A sweetly foul aftertaste coated the inside of his mouth. He could smell his own body odor.

Storie helped him sit up. His uniform was moist with sweat and dew. Or maybe baptismal water . . .

“What happened?” Storie asked.

“I don’t know,” said the sheriff, shaking his head. “Last thing I remember . . .”

He looked across the churchyard. The Trooper was where he had parked it the night before, but that was his last memory. Had he been inside the church?

Gravestones surrounded him, the marble and granite bright in the sun. He knew this area of the cemetery. He had brought flowers here many times. He turned and glanced at the marker where his head had been resting.

A small lamb was engraved on the top of the tombstone. The etched symbols beneath the image pierced his heart, just as they had always done:

HERE LIES

SAMUEL RILEY LITTLEFIELD

1968-1979

May God Protect and Keep Him

May God protect him. Because Frank Littlefield sure hadn’t. Frank had practically sealed Samuel’s coffin shut through stupidity and indifference. A big brother was supposed to be his brother’s keeper.

The dream.

“Look,” said Storie, pulling Littlefield from his reverie. She pointed to a flattened path in the grass that led from the forest.

“Something dragged me here.”

“Something?”

Sure. The Hung Preacher, the Bell Monster, the Tooth Fairy. Maybe even the Bride of Frankenstein. Take your pick. She’ll believe any of them, won’t she?

“The back of your shirt is dirty,” she said. “And your collar’s torn. You look like you pulled an all-night drunk.”

“Gee, thanks. I feel like it.”

“Must have been a hell of a church service. What did they do, make you go back for second helpings of the wine until you blacked out?”

Communion. Vague images floated through his head, images of taking something into his mouth from Archer McFall’s fingers. He swallowed and probed his mouth with a thick tongue. He wanted to spit but couldn’t muster enough saliva.

The red church stood silent at the top of the rise. The belfry was black with shadows. He watched for a moment, but the shadows didn’t move. His fingers explored the shredded fabric of his collar. Whatever had made the wounds had stopped inches from his neck. He had been spared, but why?

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“Looky,” said Tim. “There’s the sheriff and that lady cop. Out in the churchyard.”

Ronnie looked past his dad to the two police officers. The sheriff was sitting in front of a tombstone, his hair all messed up. The woman waved at them. He started to wave back, then remembered what Dad had said.

Dad glanced over into the cemetery, then back to the gravel road. He kept his hands clenched around the steering wheel. Ronnie knew that when Dad set his jaw so that it creased, he didn’t want to be bothered.

“Shouldn’t we tell them about the dead person we saw last night? And the monster?”

David glanced into the rearview mirror and froze Tim with a hard look. “Those things are best not talked about.”

“Is it because the sheriff was at the church with Mom? Is he one of the bad people?” Tim didn’t know when to shut up.

“Let the Lord sort that out,” Dad said. “Our job is to keep our eyes on our own paths.”

They rounded the bend and the church was out of sight. Below the road, the river raced them, losing by a wide margin. The water was low because no rain had fallen in weeks. Ronnie looked for places that might make good swimming holes. Anything to avoid thinking about you-know-what.

“Why do we have to go to school, Daddy?” The motor of Tim’s mouth couldn’t idle for long.

“The best thing to do is to keep everything as normal as possible.”

“Is that why we can’t tell anybody what happened?”

“Yep. So you two are going to school and I’m going to work.”

“What about Mom?”

Oops, Ronnie thought. What a dingle-dork.

“Your mom will be okay,” Dad said. “Just took a fool notion. We all do that once in a while. Now let’s talk about something else.”

Ronnie looked out the window. He didn’t mind going to school, even if his nose was still a little sore. The swelling had gone down, and the only problem was that the packing in his nose muffled his speech. Kids would be making fun of him. But at least at school, the Bell Monster had plenty of victims to choose from if it came aknocking. Ronnie wouldn’t mind seeing two or three of his classmates come face-to-face with whatever the thing was. But that wish sounded like a sin of the heart, and Ronnie couldn’t risk any more of those.

“Got your medicine?” Dad asked. Ronnie nodded.

Yep. A good old pain pill. He would go through the day with a dorked-up brain, that was for sure. He wondered if that was why Whizzer Buchanan smoked those stinky pot cigarettes he brought to school. If so, maybe Whizzer wasn’t as loony as Ronnie thought.

Because there was something to be said for going through life in a fog. In the fog, you couldn’t see the monsters coming. In the fog, they got you before you knew what hit you.

They reached Barkersville Elementary about a half hour late. Dad said he would pick them up in the afternoon. Ronnie was relieved he didn’t have to spend all day worrying about having to walk past the red church. He and Tim got excuse notes from the principal’s office and went into the hall.

“See you, Tim,” said Ronnie.

“Are you going to tell anybody?”

“Tell anybody what?”

Tim just didn’t get it. If Dad said do something, you did it. Dad had his reasons.

“You know. The monster.”

“Lock it and throw away the key,” said Ronnie, imitating turning a key against his tight lips and tossing the invisible key over his shoulder.

“Even about finding Boonie Houck?”

“If anybody asks, just say the police told you not to talk about it.”

“Cool,” said Tim, his eyes widening behind his glasses. “We’re sort of like heroes.”

“Yeah, sure.” Heroes. Brave as hell, that was Ronnie, all right. Ran from Boonie Houck and busted his nose. Left Tim to fend for himself when the monster had chased them both. Chickened out when something came scratching around the bedroom window.

At least here at school, the biggest horror was Mrs. Rathbone’s pre-algebra class.

“Meet me out front after school,” Ronnie said. He turned toward the upper-grade wing. He’d taken about six steps before Tim called.

“Ronnie?” The word echoed off the cinder block walls. Ronnie looked around, hoping none of the teachers came out in the hall to shush them.

“Yeah?”

“Is everything going to be okay?”

“Of course it is.”

“With Mom and Dad? And everything?”

Ronnie walked back, made sure no one was in the hall, and gave Tim a quick hug. “Sure. Your big brother’s here. I’ll make sure nothing happens to us.”

Tim almost looked convinced.

“Now get to class, squirt,” Ronnie said. Tim hustled down the hall. Ronnie got his books from his locker, then went to Mrs. Rathbone’s room. He hung his head as he walked to his assigned desk near the back of the class.

“Why, Mr. Day, we’re fortunate that you have graced us with your presence today,” Mrs. Rathbone said, folding her arms, stretching her ever-present acrylic sweater over her sharp shoulders.

Ronnie stifled a groan and glanced at Melanie in the next row. He slid into his desk and said, “Sorry, Mrs. Rathbone. We . . . had an accident at home.”

“I see,” she said, touching her nose in derision. She imitated his stuffy tone as the class giggled. “I trust you have your homework, nevertheless?”

“Uh, yeah, sure.” He shuffled through his papers. He hadn’t done his homework. Who else but crazy Mrs. Rathbone assigned homework over the weekend?

“Then would you share with us the answer to problem number seventeen?”

Ronnie gulped and pretended to scan down a piece of paper. Mrs. Rathbone was almost as scary as the Bell Monster. Sweat collected along his hairline. He was about to blurt a random answer when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Melanie wiggling her fingers. He rolled his eyes toward her while holding up his paper to hide his face. Melanie had scrawled something and angled her paper toward him so that Mrs. Rathbone couldn’t see it.

X = 7.

He looked over his paper at Mrs. Rathbone. “X equals seven?”

The teacher frowned. “Very good,” she said, unable to hide the sour disappointment in her voice. She turned her attention to the next victim.

After class, Ronnie caught up with Melanie at her locker. With his heart pounding, he said, “Thanks.”

“It was nothing.” She smiled. Ronnie grew about two feet and felt as if he’d already taken the pain pill. “Besides, you’ve helped me a couple of times.”

He nodded, unable to think of what to say next.

“What happened to your nose?” she asked.

“Broke it.”

“Ouch. Does it hurt?”

“Yeah.”

Around them, kids slammed lockers and the intercom ordered somebody to the office. Ronnie checked the clock on the wall. He’d better hurry to his next class before he’d have to think of something else to say.

“How did you break it?” she asked, her eyes blue and bright and her pretty lips parted in waiting.

He swallowed. Better to stare down Mrs. Rathbone than to talk face-to-face with Melanie. But she was looking at him as if what he had to say actually mattered.

It was now or never, one of those stupid turning points again. Did everything require bravery?

We’re sort of like heroes.

Well, maybe.

He lowered his voice conspiratorially, his heart fluttering as she leaned closer to listen. He wished his nose worked so he could smell her hair. “You ever heard of Boonie Houck?”

She shook her head. The warning bell rang.

“I got to go,” he said.

She put her hand on his arm. “Sit with me at lunch and tell me about it,” she said, then disappeared into the bustle of students.

Ronnie floated to his next class. He’d just learned that fogs came in different flavors.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Sheila stood on the steps of the red church and stared it down.

Just a building. Wood and nails and stone and glass. A little shabby, the roof bowed in the middle from age. Walls that creak a little when the wind blows, and mice probably skittering around under the foundation. Nothing but a building.

Then why all the ghost stories? Sure, the Scottish and English and Irish settlers brought their folk legends to the mountains, something to spook the children when gathered around a winter’s fire. Maybe preachers were always a favorite target of gossipers, and gossip turned to whispered legend. If Frank could fall for that “Hung Preacher” nonsense, then that was a testament to the power of a whisper.

Even in the flatlands, every town had a haunted house or two. There was one in Charlotte, an old brick house a few blocks from where she had grown up. She had pedaled her bike past it several times, searching the darkness of the broken windows for movement.

One bright autumn morning, Sheila saw something move in the dead space behind a shutter. She stopped her bike and looked up from the edge of the overgrown yard. Something or someone was watching her. She had shivered and pedaled madly away. She hadn’t believed the place was haunted, yet she had never accepted her friends’ Halloween dares to enter it.

Now, after all her derision of Frank’s stories, she hesitated at the church door. Of course this place held horrors for Frank. His brother had died here while Frank watched. A memory like that would haunt anybody. But did that explain why the hair on her forearms tingled erect when she touched the doorknob?

Sheila looked around the churchyard. Frank was at the edge of the forest, searching the ground. Other than the noise of his moving through the brush, the hill was quiet. Though the sun glared down, she was chilled by the shadow of the huge old dogwood. Its branches hovered over her, long bony fingers, reaching, reaching . . . .

Nonsense. You’re just catching whatever craziness is infecting everybody else in Whispering Pines. You deal in facts, and don’t you forget it.

She went inside. The foyer was dark, since it had no windows. She blinked and headed into the sanctuary. The handmade pews were lined neatly on both sides, even though the heights of them varied slightly. Storie admired the woodwork of the beams and the carved railing that marked off the dais. Once upon a time, somebody had put a lot of love into this church.

The church smelled of hay and her nose itched from dust. The church had been used as a barn, Frank had said. The church had undergone a haphazard cleaning job since the Houck murder. She wondered if the intent had been to hide evidence, and regretted not ordering the church sealed off with yellow crime scene tape. But Frank said he’d checked the church thoroughly.

She approached the pulpit, aware of her footsteps and heartbeat intruding on the stillness of the church. She wasn’t religious, but she was respectful of houses of God. Still, the Christian God was all about getting to the truth, right? So maybe Jesus wouldn’t mind her snooping around a bit.

Nothing seemed amiss in the sanctuary and a quick look in the vestry revealed only cobwebs and dark corners. She crossed the dais and stood at the lectern, looking out over pews and imagining what it would be like to have a congregation to address. If she were going to understand Archer McFall’s motives, she had to put herself in his place. All murderers had a motive, however senseless in the eyes of sane people.

A preacher as prime suspect? That’s about as loopy as a murderous ghost.

She put her hands on the lectern and realized her palms were sweating. Was this the power that lured McFall from California, to leave a life of sun and cash to preach in these cold mountains? Did McFall have a messiah complex or something? No, that was giving him too much credit. The only reason he was a suspect at all was that she couldn’t come up with anything better.

She checked over the dais one more time, and on the second pass she saw the stain. It was old and brown, faded into the oak floorboards. It looked like a bloodstain, though too ancient to be from Boonie Houck’s murder. She knelt and traced her finger around the edges of it.

The stain made a pattern. She stood and studied it. If you looked hard enough, you could imagine it was an angel, all wings and...

She smiled to herself. Yep, she’d failed her own Rorschach test. So much for those criminal psychology classes. It was time to see if Frank had found anything.

She touched the railing as she stepped off the dais, and something clung to her hand. At first she thought it was dust, but she held her hand to the light coming through the windows. Rust-colored flakes glistened against her skin. Dried blood.

Sheila stooped and looked at the rail, wishing that she’d brought a flashlight. A few flakes of dried blood were scattered across the wood. How had Frank missed seeing them? She thought maybe she’d better be more discriminating about the things Frank said. After all, he believed in ghosts.

She had a solid clue at last, something the labs could work with. They could at least determine whether the blood was Houck’s or, if she were lucky, the killer’s. She wondered how many fingerprints were lying about the church. Even if they were from fifty different hands, at least she would have a suspect pool.

Sheila backtracked down the aisle, scanning the floor for more bloodstains. No luck.

She went through the foyer, better able to see this time because her eyes had adjusted to the dimness. A coat rack was nailed to one wall, wooden pegs angled out like deer antlers. Sheila bumped into the bell rope and it swayed against her blazer with a whispering sound. The rope led up into the belfry.

Wait a second. Frank said there wasn’t a bell rope. Why would he lie about something like that? And what ELSE has he lied about?

Well, at least this explains why those witnesses had reported hearing bells on the nights of the murders. Probably some kids messing around in here.

She hurried from the church to share her news with Frank. She wanted to see his face when he was confronted with his lies. “Hey, Sheriff,” she called.

He stepped out from a laurel thicket. He looked a little better now, though his eyes were bloodshot and his hair unkempt. “I didn’t find anything,” he said with a shrug.

Big surprise.

“Well, I did. Bloodstains.”

“Bloodstains?”

“In the church.”

Frank’s eyebrows rose. “I’ll be damned.”

“I thought you would be. And another thing. You know the ringing bells that you kept talking about?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I have a simple explanation for that.”

“How simple?”

“Follow me.”

She jogged to the church steps and waited for Frank. “In here. I thought you said there wasn’t a bell rope because of-”

“Right. There hasn’t been a bell rope for over a hundred and thirty years. Because people wanted to forget that mess about the Hung Preacher.”

Sure. That’s why the legend is alive and kicking today, isn’t it? Because they did such a damned good job of forgetting?

She smiled to herself as she followed Frank up the steps. THIS will show him.

She blinked. The rope was gone.

She gazed up into the small hole that led to the belfry. Nothing. Had someone pulled it up? If so, whoever it was would still be up there. They would have seen anybody running from the church.

Frank had his hands on his hips, looking at her.

“I swear. There was a rope here.”

“Ha, ha. Very funny.”

“I’m serious. Give me a boost up to that hole.”

The sheriff shook his head. “No way in hell, Sheila. The last time I did that, I lost a brother. I’m not about to lose you.”

She balled her fists. “Damn it, I saw a rope. Are you going to tell me one of your ghosts tied it to the bell?”

“There’s no rope.”

“Do you think I imagined it? That I’m catching whatever craziness seems to be spreading around these parts?”

The sheriff sighed. “Look, maybe I’ve been a fool. Forget all that crap about the ghosts. If I really believed in ghosts, why would I bother to investigate the case?”

“Because you’re the sheriff. You have to act like you know what you’re doing.”

“You’re not going up in the belfry.”

“There’s no way you’re going to fit. One of us has to look. We can’t just sit back and cower while people keep getting murdered.”

Sheila grabbed two of the coat-rack pegs and pulled herself up, then positioned one foot against the doorknob. If the murderer was dumb enough to play stupid tricks, he was just begging to be caught. She wondered if she should draw her revolver, but her hands were occupied. If the murderer was waiting with a weapon . . .

She poked her head through the belfry, her anger giving her strength despite the poor grip she had on the wood.

Nothing.

Nothing in the belfry but a cold, tarnished cast-iron bell. A few leaves skittered in the breeze, caught in the corners since last autumn. Nothing else.

After a moment she jumped down, the impact jarring her knees. Frank caught her and helped her regain her balance. Their eyes met at the contact and they both looked away.

“Satisfied?” asked the sheriff.

“I swear I saw a rope,” she said, failing to convince even herself. Had she seen it?

Well, at least there was the blood. That was real enough. She vividly recalled the texture of the coagulated flakes. Good, hard forensic evidence, with none of the problems caused by haunted eyewitnesses.

She brushed past Frank and hurried to the rail. The blood was gone.

“So where’s this blood?” Frank asked when he caught up with her.

She stared at her hand, thinking of that Shakespeare play. Out, out, damned spot. Had she imagined it, just as Lady Macbeth had?

“It was right here,” she whispered.

“Maybe it was ghost’s blood.”

From the windows, shafts of sunlight sliced across the church. Golden dust spun slowly in the air. Wood and nails and stone and glass. The building, the walls, waited.

“Are you ready to call in the SBI?” Frank asked after an awkward stretch of silence.

“Why? So they can certify me as insane as everybody else in these mountains?”

She went outside and sat on the church steps, alone with her confusion.

Linda drove up the narrow dirt road that led to Mama Bet’s house. The driveway became so rutted that she had to park along the fence beside the other cars. She walked the last hundred yards, up the hill to a little glen in the forest. She heard the music before she saw the house. Sounded like a fiddle and a guitar playing “Fox on the Run.”

Mama Bet’s house was one of the oldest structures in Whispering Pines, and generations of McFalls had been born, grew old, and died behind those warped gray walls. It was a perfect place for a good old-fashioned revival, away from the snooping eyes of the cops and those brownnosers from Barkersville. It was only fitting that the church members congregate here. After all, besides Archer, Mama Bet was the last of her line. Though Linda had always thought the old woman was strange, a little bit haughty and holier-than-thou.

Lester Matheson had brought his four-wheel-drive truck all the way up to the house. The truck was parked under a half-dead apple tree. Two of the Buchanan sisters sat on the sidewalls, moonfaced and dull-eyed. The oldest wore a red plastic clip in her greasy hair.

A goat was tied to the apple tree, browsing along the banks of the creek. The goat stared at Linda, its dark eyes knowing and cold. It sniffed the air. The goat’s jaws worked sideways, then it shook the flies from its ears and dipped its head back to the brush.

Jim Potter and Stepford Matheson continued their counterpoint melody on guitar and fiddle. Vivian, Lester’s wife, sat in a rocker beside them, tapping her toe in time to the music. Rudy Buchanan stood at one end of the porch, nodding his head, though he was about a half beat off the rhythm.

Sonny Absher leaned against a corner post, smoking a cigarette. His eyes moved to the woods behind the house, then fixed on Linda. “You’re late,” he said, smoke drifting through his ragged mustache as he spoke.

“I got here as soon as I could.”

“The reverend don’t like people to be late.”

“Archer says, ‘Everything in God’s good time,’ brother,” she answered.

The Abshers were a bunch of inbred ignorants, and Sonny was the worst of the lot. That was one of the things that burned her up about some of her neighbors: they were on the doorstep to heaven here in Archer’s mountains, but instead of reveling in the glory, they lived off food stamps and bootlegging and selling the occasional beef steer. Archer would cleanse them, though. She could hardly wait.

She entered the house without knocking. Mama Bet sat in an overstuffed armchair, a shawl over her lap. Her lower legs were thick-veined below the hem of her dress. The woman smelled of smoke and salt, like a cured ham.

“Hi, Mama Bet.” Linda bent and kissed the woman’s cheek.

“Hey, honey. How’s that man of yours coming along?”

“Not real good. I was hoping he would see the light and be spared, but-”

The old woman cut her off with a hard look, her eyes misted by cataracts. “Ain’t for us to decide such as that.”

Linda lowered her head.

“Only Archer knows the proper time and place for each man’s death,” Mama Bet continued. “You ain’t the one turned David into a sinner, are you? You ain’t the one packed him off to the Baptist church when he was a boy and too young to know any better. So Jesus is to blame for leading David astray, not you.”

“Amen to that,” said Nell Absher. Her husband Haywood nodded in solemn agreement. Their daughter Noreen went to the window and looked out over the clouded mountains.

“Here come Hank and Beulah,” Noreen said.

“Good,” said Mama Bet. “Is that everybody?”

Becca Faye Greene came in from the kitchen, a cup of coffee in her hand. She gave it to Mama Bet and stood beside the old woman’s chair. She flashed a smug smile at Linda.

Becca Faye was a Potter by blood, but had married and kept the Greene name after her husband ran off to Minnesota. She was part of Archer’s circle back in high school, but had chickened out when Archer asked her to help found the Temple in California. Since Archer had returned, Becca Faye was doing everything in her power to stay in the reverend’s good graces, perhaps to make up for her earlier betrayal.

Or perhaps for something more. Becca Faye’s blouse was low-cut, and she was flashing enough cleavage to earn her a severe spiritual cleansing. Linda had seen the way Becca Faye had sidled up to Archer at last night’s service. She wondered if the woman had had better luck than Linda in Archer’s parked van.

Jealousy. One of the greatest sins of all. Forgive me, Archer.

“Call them on in,” said Mama Bet. She put the coffee cup to her wrinkled lips and took a sip.

One of the Mathesons went outside, and the music stopped. The others filed in, silent Potters, Abshers, Mathesons, Buchanans, and two Greggs, both Linda’s cousins. One of them met her eyes, then turned away in shame.

Linda wanted to shout, There will come great trials, cousin. Archer says sacrifice is the true test of faith. Donna needed cleansing as much as anybody.

But she kept her tongue. No words would bring Donna back from the dead. Except perhaps Archer’s words.

About thirty people packed the living room, lined along the stone hearth and against the corner cupboard, filling the kitchen entrance. Some of the Mathesons skulked in the hall, looking into the room over Lester’s shoulders. Mama Bet scanned the waiting faces. She worked her mouth in approval.

“You all know why we’re here,” she began. “The time’s almost upon us. We prayed for the return, and now He’s returned. We have all sinned and come short of the glory of heaven. Our ancestors came unto these mountains to worship in peace, but then their hearts turned hard and cold and went to Jesus. We thought saying ‘I’m sorry’ would make all the old sins go away.”

The assembled crowd grew silent at the mention of that foul name “Jesus.” Linda’s stomach clenched in anger. Mama Bet nodded in appreciation of their revulsion, then continued.

“We got away from all the good things we worshiped,” she said. “We strayed from the one true path. We needed the savior to return and deliver us from evil. So God sent Archer into the world of us mortals. And God punished us by making our seed go barren and letting our families die out, punishing the sinners unto the fourth generation.”

“Amen,” said Lester, and a smattering of others echoed the sentiment.

“We are wicked,” said Mama Bet.

“Amen,” said Haywood and Nell in unison. Haywood adjusted the knot of his red silk tie.

“We deserve God’s wrath,” the old woman said, her voice trembling as it increased in volume.

Becca Faye raised her hands and threw back her head. “There will come great trials.”

The woman’s breasts swelled against the fabric of her blouse as she arched her back. Linda sneered, wondering who the hussy was showing off for. Archer wasn’t here, and God could care less.

The air in the room was electric, thick with the odor of sweat and tension. “Some of us have suffered loss,” Mama Bet said.

Linda looked at her cousins. They lowered their heads. The Potters also looked at each other. Old Alma Potter, Zeb’s sister, choked on a sob.

“But don’t mourn those who have gone before,” Mama Bet said, finding her rhythm. “Sacrifice is the currency of God. It’s part of Archer’s work. We’ll all have to make sacrifices before it’s done.”

Mama Bet’s eyes brimmed with tears. Archer was her son, the last of the McFalls. Linda knew that all the families had suffered losses. But the losses were justified, because all of them, the Greggs, Abshers, Potters, Buchanans, and Mathesons, were touched with sin. All of them had a hand in the murder of Wendell McFall.

“What do we do about the sheriff?” Lester asked. The room grew quiet.

Mama Bet clutched the worn arms of her chair. Her fingers crooked as if she were suffering a spasm of pain. “Archer can deal with the sheriff.”

“There’s others that are against the church,” said Becca Faye, staring at Linda.

Linda’s face flushed with anger and shame. “He’s my husband. The Old Testament says to honor your husband.”

Not that you would know about honoring a husband. The only thing YOU honor is whatever big-spending cowboy picks you up at Gulpin’ Gulch on Friday night.

“What about your boys?” Becca Faye said, her eyes half-lidded with pleasure at Linda’s discomfort. The other members of the congregation looked on with interest. Ronnie and Tim were the youngest descendants of the families that had committed deicide more than a century ago.

Linda looked out the window, at the trees green in the sun, at the dark ridges, at the creek winding between the slopes toward the river. She wished she had stayed in California. Then Ronnie and Tim would have never been born. But she couldn’t imagine a life without them, even a life spent in Archer’s divine arms.

“I pray for Archer’s mercy,” Linda finally said. Becca Faye had no response to that simple plea.

Sonny Absher broke the silence. “They got to pay like everybody else.”

“But they’re innocent,” Linda said, angry now.

“Ain’t nobody innocent.”

Especially you, Linda thought, but she shouldn’t pass judgment on a fellow sinner. All were equal in the eyes of Archer. All were equally guilty, and all would pay the same price.

No, not exactly the same price. Sonny would lose only his own miserable life. Linda was more than ready to give Archer her life if that was required to complete his sacred work. She even understood that David would have to die if he insisted on interfering. But the boys . . .

The boys shouldn’t have to pay for sins that only barely touched them. Their blood was nearly pure. But so had Isaac’s blood been pure, and Abraham still had to lay him on the altar.

Mama Bet tried to stand and fell back into the armchair. Two of the Potter brothers moved forward to help her rise. She wobbled slightly in their grip.

“Archer be praised,” she said. “Y’all go on now. I’ll see you at church tonight.”

“Archer be praised,” said Haywood Absher. He had been one of the last to leave the Baptist fold, but he had embraced Archer’s gospel as wholeheartedly as anyone. At least, he put on a good act of believing.

Linda joined the others in a closing “Amen.”

The families began filing out, their heads down. Linda thought they should be joyful, but instead they were worried about their own mortal flesh. Death wasn’t the end: death was the beginning of a new life in the kingdom. The coming deliverance was a time of celebration and exaltation, not punishment. God had blessed them by sending Archer to serve as His mighty sword.

Then why did she so dread giving her boys away?

Linda waited on the porch for the crowd to thin. Becca Faye brushed past, leaving a trail of dimestore perfume. Sonny Absher flashed his four-toothed grin and nodded good-bye, then took Becca Faye’s arm. He escorted her to his rusty Chevelle, where they would probably spend the afternoon sinning in the backseat.

“You coming to the church early tonight?” asked Lester.

Linda chewed at her thumb. “If it’s Archer’s will.”

“Don’t worry none about your boys. Mine went to God years ago, and I’ve come to accept it.” Lester nervously chewed his tobacco.

“What if Vivian is the next sacrifice? How would you feel then?”

“Sins got to be paid for.”

“Why can’t we just pay for our own sins?”

Mama Bet was listening from the screen door. “It don’t work that way, child. Sacrifice is the true test of faith. Remember the lesson of Abraham? It ain’t a sacrifice unless you lose something dear.”

“And what are you losing, Mama Bet?”

The old woman looked out across the mountains, squinting her milky eyes. A small breeze was blowing from Tennessee, carrying with it the smell of sourwood blooms and pine.

“Flesh and blood,” Mama Bet finally said. “Just like everybody else.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The last bell rang, and Ronnie ran to his locker, holding his books in front of his face so that no stray elbows would bump him in the nose. The injury throbbed a little, but he’d decided not to take the pain pill. After he’d spent lunchtime with Melanie, pain barely touched him. He felt bulletproof, especially because she said maybe they should eat lunch together every day.

He was mentally going over the poem that he’d given her last month. He had tried to be funny and sweet at the same time, so that maybe if she read between the lines, she’d see that he thought she was the most beautiful flower in the whole garden. Dripping in the rain. Soaking color from the sun. Flashing beauty in the breeze.

Plucking petals. She loves me. She loves me not. Well, he’d left out that last part. No way was he going to say love in a poem. Plus, she might think that, since she was the flower, that would mean he wanted to pull her arms and legs off.

The best thing about the poem was that she didn’t giggle and show it to all her girlfriends. Ronnie didn’t think he could stand that. A lot of the other kids already thought he was weird because he carried around books that weren’t even assigned. He also wore bargain-brand blue jeans and sometimes his T-shirts didn’t even have messages on them. He wasn’t cool: he didn’t play sports, hang around the Barkersville mall, or watch MTV.

But right now, he didn’t care what people thought or how far out of it he was. All he cared about was that Melanie would sit with him at lunch. He recalled the breathless way she had said, “I promise,” when he told her not to tell anyone else about Boonie Houck and the Bell Monster. His heart was made of helium.

A commotion in the hall pulled him from his pleasant thoughts. Shouts erupted, and a gawking ring of students had gathered in the math wing. Something was happening, possibly a fight. Most likely a fight. That was about the only thing that drew people’s attention these days.

“Leave me alone,” came a scared voice.

Tim! Ronnie fought through the circle. He heard Whizzer Buchanan’s smoky, snickering voice.

“Tell us about it, goober-head,” taunted Whizzer. “Tell us about the thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes.”

“No,” whimpered Tim. “Let me go.”

Ronnie shouldered past the eighth graders in the front row. Whizzer had Tim by the shoulders, shaking him. Tears trailed down Tim’s cheeks. His glasses were on the floor, and books were scattered around his feet.

“Tell us, Tim,” said Whizzer. “Inquiring minds want to know.”

This drew a laugh from the crowd. Ronnie threw down his books and shoved Whizzer in the back. The crowd gasped and grew silent. Whizzer turned, all five feet ten of him, jaw muscles twitching. Ronnie imagined the bully’s muscles tensing under his camouflage jacket.

“Well, well, well,” said Whizzer. “If it ain’t Mr. Hero himself.”

Whizzer’s eyes half closed, as if Ronnie were a bug that he wanted to squash with one big lace-up boot. Ronnie looked around the looming hulk at Tim, who was pressed back against the lockers that lined the hall. “You okay, Tim?”

Tim sniffed and nodded.

“Get your books, then. Dad’s waiting.”

“And what if I say it ain’t time for you to go yet?” said Whizzer.

Ronnie looked at the faces in the crowd. Their expressions were eager, expectant, relieved that they weren’t Whizzer’s victims of choice this time. If only a teacher would come. He’d even be happy to see Mrs. Rathbone.

“We didn’t do anything to you,” Ronnie said.

“Yeah, you did. You got born, didn’t you?” This drew another laugh, but Whizzer wasn’t smiling.

Tim stooped to pick up his books. Whizzer kicked them away.

“Heard you been to church,” said Whizzer. “And you got a little friend there. Something with wings and claws and livers for eyes. Everybody likes a good ghost story, Mr. Hero-Man. Tell us about how you saved Tim from the Bell Monster.”

Ronnie’s heart lodged in his throat. “Did you tell anybody, Timmy?”

Tim shook his head, then knelt and found his glasses and put them back on.

If Tim hadn’t told, then . . .

Ronnie spun and searched the crowd. Melanie was on the edge of it. To her credit, she was a little pale. She looked away in shame.

He would not cry. Oh, no, Ronnie would not cry, at least not here and not now. He balled his fists, and a sigh of satisfaction rose from the crowd.

“Tell us about the rest of it,” said Whizzer, looking down at Ronnie, his smile like a possum’s. “Tell us about your Mama and the temple in California.”

Temple? California? His mom had never been to California. “You’re crazy, you . . . you—”

Ronnie was aware that he could never take back what he would say next. “You gap-toothed redneck.”

A murmur rippled through the hall. Some of the kids had buses to catch, but the crowd had grown larger. Sweat trickled down the back of Ronnie’s neck.

Where were those teachers?

Whizzer shoved Ronnie in the chest. Ronnie stumbled but kept his feet.

“Now you done it, you sissy,” said Whizzer. “The reverend says everybody got to pay for their sins in blood. Time for a down payment.”

The reverend? Ronnie’s head spun in confusion. His ears rang because of the pulse throbbing in his head. He was scarcely aware of the crowd now. It was just him and Whizzer and hate and pain.

Whizzer drew back a fist that looked the size of a football. Ronnie heard the whisper of air just before the fist crashed into the side of his head. His vision went black for a moment, and when it returned, he was looking at Whizzer’s boots only inches away.

One of the boots nudged him on the shoulder. “Get up, weasel. Or you want me to step on you a little?”

Ronnie struggled to his knees, then stood on wobbly legs. He realized that the crowd was roaring, shouts and laughter and jeers. Tim had slipped to safety. The blood hunters had bigger game now.

Ronnie pretended to be hurt. It wasn’t a far stretch of his imagination. His ears rang and the side of his face throbbed.

“Come on. Archer says there will come great trials,” taunted Whizzer. “Archer says it’s high time for a cleansing.”

Did none of the other kids realize Whizzer was a raving lunatic? No. They didn’t care. Reasons didn’t matter. Only entertainment at someone else’s expense.

Ronnie stooped and bulled his way into Whizzer’s belly. He heard the wind rush from Whizzer’s gut, and they both slammed into the lockers. Whizzer pounded on his back, but he could hardly feel it. He held on and squeezed, his nose pulsing now. He tasted blood on his lips.

An authoritative voice boomed through the hall. “What’s going on here?”

It was Mr. Gladstone, the principal. The one everybody called either Glad-Stoned or Fred Flintstone. The students backed away, and Ronnie relaxed his grip on Whizzer, though he didn’t let go. The principal grabbed Ronnie by the collar and finally dragged him to his feet. Whizzer stood and smoothed his jacket, his face red.

“Ah, Mr. Buchanan,” Mr. Gladstone said. “Why am I not surprised?”

He turned to Ronnie. “And you are . . . ?”

Lying was useless. Everything was useless. “Ronnie. Ronnie Day.”

“Okay, gentlemen. Let’s take a trip to my office.”

Ronnie and Whizzer marched down the hall like prisoners at gunpoint. The crowd had broken into lines on each side of the hall, whispering among themselves, already expanding the fight into a bloody schoolyard legend. Ronnie realized he was the first person stupid enough to stand up to Whizzer Buchanan. He wiped his nose with his hand. At least Whizzer hadn’t punched him there.

Sins paid for in blood. Well, how much freaking blood does it TAKE?

He looked behind him. The kids were juiced on adrenaline, dispersing now, a few shadow-boxing to re-create the fight. Tim’s tears had dried and he followed Mr. Gladstone as if in shock, carrying an armful of books. Melanie was behind Tim, and Ronnie looked back into her blue eyes.

So this is what it feels like when the Bell Monster rips open your chest and takes your heart. Except this way, you don’t die. This way, your heart keeps working, and you get a dose of nails and barbed wire and broken glass with every beat.

Melanie opened her mouth as if to explain, then looked down at the floor and shook her head. Her lip quivered and her eyes were moist.

She loves me. She loves me not.

At least that was one less thing to worry about. The principal nudged Whizzer and Ronnie into his office and closed the door.

###

“Another one dead.” Sheriff Littlefield let the deerskin jacket fall back over the face of the mutilated woman. “One of the Gregg girls.”

“You know her?” Detective Storie asked.

“Used to date her sister back in high school.” Littlefield looked up the road, where it wound into the hills. He knew this area well. A half dozen houses were tucked away in the shadowed folds. Behind them, Buckhorn Mountain rose so steep and rocky that no one could settle there. The mountain was the end of the world, a great wall that imprisoned as much as it protected.

Littlefield had grown up in one of those old houses. He still owned a couple of acres of sloping timberland at the foot of the mountain. He had visited the land only twice since his mom had died some ten years ago. She had gone to her grave still heartbroken over the deaths of her husband and youngest son.

Frank was the last of the Littlefields. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Seemed all the old families were dying out. The world had changed under them, time had left them in the dust, and all that remained was the demolishing of homesteads and the erecting of monuments. Stone markers that read, May God Protect and—

“Sheriff?” Storie called from the ditch.

He rubbed his eyes and looked up from where he was kneeling over the body. Whatever haze he’d been in last night still affected him. He felt as if he were moving underwater. “Did you find something?”

She held up a yellow receipt, gripping it carefully by the edge so that she wouldn’t smudge any fingerprints. “This must have fallen out of the jacket.”

“What does it say?”

“It’s from Barkersville Hardware. Made out to Day Construction.”

“David Day. He lives about a mile up the road.”

“We couldn’t be that lucky, could we?”

“David ain’t a murderer. I’ve known him since we were kids.”

David sometimes wore a jacket like the one over Donna Gregg’s body.

“How well do you know him?”

Littlefield stood, his knees sore. “Well enough.”

“As well as you know Archer McFall?”

The sheriff looked up the road, then at Sheila. “I’d better go question him.”

“I’ll call for Perry Hoyle,” Sheila said.

The county’s station wagon was putting on a lot of miles these days. Sheila headed back to her cruiser, which was pulled off the side of the road behind the sheriff’s Trooper.

Littlefield checked around the body. Chest ripped open. Heart gone. No mountain lion had performed that particular atrocity.

How about the Bell Monster, Frankie?

Samuel’s voice. Littlefield glanced into the forest on both sides of the road. His ears rang, a high-pitched buzz that ripped like a jigsaw blade through his brain.

He tried to blink away the darkness that seeped from the corners of his vision.

Not another blackout. Not in front of Sheila.

He wouldn’t allow himself to go insane. Too many people were counting on him. Samuel was dead. So were Donna Gregg and two others. More, unless he did something.

A car came down the road and slowed as it approached the scene. Littlefield forced himself to stand erect and wave the car past. One of the Absher boys was driving. Becca Faye smiled at him from the passenger’s side. Neither of the pair looked at the body lying in the weeds, though it was visible from the road.

The sheriff waited until his hands stopped trembling, then walked to Sheila’s cruiser. She was just hanging up her radio handset when he reached her open door.

“Another unit’s on the way, and Hoyle will be out in a half hour.” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you okay, Sheriff?”

He nodded, hoping she didn’t notice the sweat on his face. “I’m going to ride up to the Day place.”

“Good. I’ll wait here for backup, then I’m going to pay a little visit of my own.”

“Who to?”

“The Reverend Archer McFall.”

He came around the door and leaned over her. “Listen, Shei—” He started to say her first name, then caught himself. “Sergeant. We got nothing on him.”

“In that case, he won’t mind answering a few questions.”

“Maybe we should go together.”

She shook her head. “We don’t have time. Who knows when the killer’s going to strike again? We need to jump on every lead we’ve got.”

“Then let me take Archer.”

Her eyes shone with defiance. “This is my case, remember? You assigned it to me. What are you so worried about, anyway?”

Ghosts don’t exist. Archer McFall is just another preacher, another ordinary person who took up the Bible and found something in its pages that meant something. That doesn’t make him dangerous. That doesn’t even make him that unusual.

He didn’t want to admit that he was scared. The detective would perform a better interrogation without him around to muddy the waters. After all, Littlefield had taken his chances with Archer the evening before, and had nothing but a gaping hole in his memory to show for it. Littlefield was losing faith in his own abilities, and that was even scarier than the Hung Preacher’s ghost.

“Do you know where he’s staying?” he asked.

She nodded. “I checked around. He’s rented a room down at the Holiday Inn.”

“That’s funny. His mother has a place up the road. Wonder why he’s not staying with her?”

“With his money, you’d think he’d rent one of those chalets by the ski slopes. You’re the one who’s supposed to know him, remember?”

He looked at Donna Gregg’s cold body. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t remember.”

“Maybe after you talk to David Day, you should get some sleep.” Sheila went past him and continued her search of the scene. Littlefield got in his Trooper and started the engine. He rolled down the window as he pulled away. “Be careful,” he called over the motor’s roar.

She nodded absently, her mind already consumed with analyzing the victim’s ragged flesh. Littlefield swallowed hard and headed toward Buckhorn Mountain.

###

It was past four o’clock. David and the boys should have been home by now.

I hope Archer didn’t take them early, Linda thought. The angel of God would be coming for them all sooner or later. She couldn’t help but hope it was later. She was going to miss the boys when they were gone. But at least the reunion would be sweet and everlasting.

For the tenth time, she peered anxiously through the curtains. The sheriff’s Trooper turned off the river road onto their packed dirt driveway. Linda dropped the curtain, heart pounding. Even though he’d attended last night’s service, she didn’t trust him.

She waited by the front door until she heard his feet on the porch. She swung the door open and forced a smile. “Hey, Sheriff. What brings you out to these parts?”

The sheriff bobbed his head in greeting. “Bad news, I’m afraid.”

Was there any other kind?

She cleared her throat. “It’s not the boys, is it?” Hoping, hoping.

Please, God, don’t take them yet.

“No.” The sheriff looked at her closely, as if they had once shared some secret that he’d forgotten. Then he pointed to the side of the house, where David had nailed a piece of plywood over the window. “Looks like you got a broken window.”

“Yeah. Those darned blue jays, they see their reflection and just got to pick a fight. One of them hit it just a little too hard.”

“Is David home?”

“He went to pick up the boys at school. Should be back any minute.”

“Mind if I wait for him?”

Linda opened the door all the way and stepped aside. “Please come in.”

The sheriff sat on the edge of the easy chair and leaned forward. Linda sat across from him, not knowing what to do with her hands. She straightened the magazines on the coffee table, wrinkled copies of David’s Field & Stream and her Woman’s World Weekly.

She sat back and cupped her hands over her knees, then pushed her hair away from her forehead. “Wasn’t that a wonderful service last night?”

“Reverend McFall sure knows how to preach up a storm. I’ll say that for him.”

The sheriff’s eyes focused behind her. She turned to see what he was looking at. It was a knitted sampler, one Grandma Gregg had made for her, which read, May God Protect And Keep This House. A little farm scene was stitched below the words.

“We’re mighty blessed that he came back,” she said.

“Came back?”

“To the mountains.”

The sheriff nodded. The room was cramped with silence. The air smelled of the trout she had cooked for lunch.

“So what do you think of this weather?” she asked.

“Pretty nice.”

“Yeah, we’ve got to get our pole beans planted. Been in such a commotion lately, we got behind on our chores.”

“How’s Ronnie?”

“Ronnie? Oh, he’s fine. Good enough to go back to school today. I got to take him to the doctor next week to get his stitches out, but he won’t have a permanent hump on his nose or anything.”

“That’s good.”

Another long silence. The sheriff looked at the wall again. “What’s that?” he asked.

Linda’s heart warmed as she looked at the small metal ankh on the wall. She had put the symbol of the temple in place of the old wooden cross David had nailed there. “It’s a joyous time, isn’t it?”

“Linda, what’s going on at the church?”

She swallowed some air and nearly choked on it. “You heard Archer last night. It’s time for a cleansing, time to pay for iniquities.”

“People are getting killed.”

“Archer says sins have to be paid for in blood.”

“Jesus did that for all of us by dying on the cross.”

Linda held her breath. Blasphemy. Archer had allowed this nonbeliever into the church?

Archer must have his reasons. Who was she to doubt his holy ways?

Outside, a vehicle pulled up. She jumped up from the sofa and ran to the door. The sheriff followed her out onto the porch. David and a glum-looking Ronnie and Tim got out of the Ranger.

David cast a hostile look at the sheriff. “What do you want?”

The sheriff looked at the two boys, then back to David. “It’s about Donna Gregg.”

Linda put her hand over her mouth. David turned to the boys. “Why don’t y’all go play in the barn for a while?” he said to them.

“What’s wrong?” Tim asked. His glasses sat askew on his nose. He pushed them up with a thin forefinger.

“Come on,” Ronnie said to Tim. “Let’s get out of here.”

As Ronnie turned, Linda saw the large bruise on his temple. “What happened?” she asked David.

“He got in a fight.”

Ronnie? In a fight? He wouldn’t hurt an earthworm.

“Something bad happened, didn’t it?” Tim said to Linda. “You always send us away when you want to talk about bad stuff.”

Ronnie took his brother’s arm and led him across the uneven stretch of green lawn. The sheriff waited until the boys had disappeared inside the barn, then said, “Donna’s dead.”

David looked at Buckhorn Mountain as if he wished he were walking its ridgeline. He always wanted to be away, alone, in troubled times. Linda tried to fake a sob, but failed.

“I found your jacket at the scene,” the sheriff said to David. “And a receipt made out to Day Construction. That kind of evidence is enough for me to take you in for questioning, but I’d just as soon do it here.”

“She was still warm when I found her,” David said, his voice as hollow as a potato barrel in spring. “Must have been about two in the morning.”

“Why didn’t you report it?”

“You were around. I figured you knew about it before I did.”

“Did you see anybody?”

“Depends on your definition of ‘anybody.’”

Linda tried to signal David with her eyes. Then she realized she didn’t know whose side to be on. The sheriff was one of the flock, but somehow wrong, Jesus-tainted and closed-hearted. And David was . . . well, she didn’t know what David was.

“Tell me what you saw,” the sheriff said.

“Probably the same thing you saw.” David folded his arms. “After all, you’re one of them, ain’t you?”

“One of what?”

He nodded at Linda. “Them. Archer’s little angels. I saw you at the church last night.”

Linda looked from the sheriff to David, as if she were watching a badminton match being played with a live grenade. She chewed at her fingernail. Blood rushed from the ragged quick and filled her mouth with a brassy sweetness.

“Three people are dead,” the sheriff said. “All of them were somehow connected to the church.”

“It’s not Archer,” Linda said too quickly and forcefully.

“The old families,” Littlefield said. “Houck. Potter. Gregg.”

“They needed cleansing,” Linda said. “Archer says we all need cleansing.”

“Shut up,” David said. “I’m sick to death of ‘Archer this’ and ‘Archer that.’ I had enough of that the first time.”

“The first time?” the sheriff asked.

“Yeah,” David said. “In California.”

“What’s California got to do with what’s happening now?” Linda asked.

David slowly shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you? He was a lot smarter out in California. Or maybe he just didn’t know his own power.”

“Don’t bring your blamed old jealousy into this.”

“You didn’t see him,” David said, his voice rising in pitch. “You didn’t see him carry the bodies into the so-called temple.”

“What are you talking about?” Linda said.

“The Temple of the Two Suns,” he spat. “You didn’t hear about the murders out there. Who misses another lost drifter on the Santa Monica freeway? Even a half dozen. Plenty more where they came from. Now I just got to figure out why Archer came back.”

Linda shook her head. What was he saying? Archer didn’t kill anybody. It was God who performed the cleansings. Archer was merely the savior, the earthly vessel.

“You’re saying that he committed murders in California?” she heard the sheriff ask David.

“Saw it with my own eyes. How do they taste, Linda?”

Linda looked in horror at the gnawed flesh of her fingertips.

“How do they taste, Sheriff?” David asked.

“What the hell?” the sheriff asked.

“Communion. The body. The bread of life.” David walked to the Ranger.

The sheriff looked questioningly at Linda, then called to David, “I’m not through talking yet.”

“Well, I am.” David pulled his rifle out from under the Ranger’s seat.

“Don’t do it,” the sheriff warned. He fell into a crouch, like one of those television cowboys in a showdown. Except Linda saw that the sheriff wore no firearm.

David laughed. “Don’t worry. I won’t waste good bullets on the likes of you and her. These are for Archer. I’m going to kill him as many damned times as it takes. This time, I’m going to blow him back to hell for good.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“What’s going on?”

“Shh.” Ronnie pressed his cheek against the board so that he could see through the knothole. The air was thick with dust. He wondered what would happen to the packing in his broken nose if he sneezed. Could he even sneeze if he couldn’t smell?

Dad strode back to the Ranger, leaving Mom and the sheriff standing on the porch. When Ronnie saw the rifle, his heart stuttered in his chest. “No,” he whispered.

“What?” Tim said.

Dad went into the house. Mom said something to the sheriff that Ronnie couldn’t hear. The sheriff got in his Trooper and drove away. Mom looked around, then also went into the house.

Ronnie moved away so that Tim could look through the knothole. Tim stood on an overturned bucket to get eye-level with the hole.

“I don’t see nothing,” Tim said.

“They’re in the house.”

“Is it bad?”

Tim’s not dumb. He knows what’s going on. I guess this is the part where I have to play Brave Big Brother.

Ronnie tried to sound nonchalant. “Dad’s home, isn’t he? How bad can it be?”

“I’m scared.”

“It’s daytime,” Ronnie said, though the shadows and dusty cobwebs and the creaking planks of the barn made him nervous. “Monsters don’t get you in the daytime.”

“No, I mean scared about Mom and Dad.” Tim stepped off the bucket and sat on a bale of hay.

Ronnie stared into the row of wooden stalls that lined the far side of the barn. They didn’t keep cows anymore. Dad said with beef prices being so low, it was cheaper to buy meat at the supermarket than to raise it. Ronnie almost missed taking care of the animals, putting them up at night and making sure they had hay in the winter. Dad and Ronnie had slaughtered cows, too, hung them up by a chain and cut them open, the steam rising from the animals’ insides. Ronnie didn’t miss that part of it.

“Mom and Dad will work it out,” Ronnie said. “They have to.”

“What if they don’t? What if she makes him mad again and he leaves? Who will protect us then?” Tim’s lower lip trembled.

“Look, I saved you from Whizzer, didn’t I? You have to trust me.”

“Yeah, right. Like you’re going to be able to beat up the Bell Monster?”

Ronnie coughed from the dust. “I’ll think of something.”

“Anyway, how do you kill a ghost? Dad shot it, but I know it’s coming back.”

Ronnie had been wondering that himself. Why would a ghost want to kill people? It didn’t make sense. If a ghost were crazy, maybe, but just a plain old ordinary ghost?

Whatever it was, the red church was to blame. He’d read books about hauntings. Supposedly, “psychic imprints” could be projected into the walls if a person suffered great emotional turmoil. That seemed kind of stupid to Ronnie, but the Bell Monster was real. What if the Bell Monster was the spirit of the preacher who had been hanged there? Surely having a rope around your throat would cause some emotional turmoil.

But then, everything that had ever died would leave a ghost. What living thing hadn’t suffered a little emotional turmoil in its life? A lot of cows had been killed right there in the middle of the barn, shot in the brains with a rifle and cut into pieces and their guts hauled away in a wheelbarrow. But you didn’t see ghost cows lurking around everywhere.

Maybe God was trying to take the preacher’s soul to heaven, but decided halfway up that the preacher was too evil to enter the kingdom. Maybe the devil didn’t want the preacher, either, because the preacher knew too many Bible verses and would tell them to the other people in hell. Maybe the preacher would try to save people who had already been condemned to the everlasting fire. No way the devil would want something like that going on. So the preacher got stuck in the middle, and killed people because he was lonely and wanted some ghosts for company.

That was dorky. He was thinking like a third grader.

“You don’t have to kill a ghost,” Ronnie finally said. “It’s already dead. The trick is to make it stay dead.”

“How do you do that?”

“By giving it what it wants.”

They looked at each other. “What it wants is to kill us,” said Tim.

“Yeah.” Ronnie sighed. “A real kick in the rear.”

“I don’t want to die.”

Ronnie didn’t, either- no matter how many times Preacher Staymore tried to tell him that God had a special place for children. The preacher had also introduced him to the idea of committing sins of the heart. It was bad enough back when doing something bad would get you scratched out of the Big Golden Book. Now he’d learned that just thinking about bad stuff would damn him to hell.

He’d asked Jesus into his heart every few weeks, just like Preacher Staymore wanted. How long did your heart stay clean after Jesus washed away the sins? What if you died while you were thinking a bad thought, and didn’t have time to ask forgiveness? The whole business sounded pretty risky to Ronnie.

And he was in no hurry to find out for sure.

“You’re not going to die, Tim,” Ronnie promised, hoping he sounded more reassuring than he felt. He was about to say something else when the shot rang out.

###

The Holiday Inn was off the only four-lane highway through Pickett County, just outside the Barkersville exit. Sheila Storie pulled into the parking lot. The lot was nearly empty. Tourists were rare between the ski season and summer, when Floridians came to escape the heat and New Yorkers came to escape New York.

Archer McFall’s room was on the first floor, just beside the motel’s drained pool. McFall’s black Mercedes was parked in front of 107. Storie parked beside it and got out, checking her watch and wondering how the sheriff was coming along. She glanced through the driver’s-side window of the Mercedes. The interior was spotless. She knocked on the door of 107.

A tall man answered the knock. He was handsome, but a little slick-looking, like a lawyer on a television show. He had strong cheekbones and a wide face that was freshly shaven. He smiled at her.

“Archer McFall?” she asked.

“Yes, my child. How may I help you?”

The way he called her “child” irritated Storie. He couldn’t have been more than ten years older than she was, about Frank’s age. He smelled faintly of cologne and a more pungent odor that she couldn’t identify. The room behind him was dark, the shades drawn.

“I’m Det. Sgt. Sheila Storie, Pickett County Sheriff’s Department,” she said, not bothering to dig her badge out of her jacket.

McFall blinked, but his smile didn’t waver. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am. Your sheriff and I go way back.”

How far back?

Storie looked into his eyes, trying to read them. He gave nothing away. “I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

“Oh, about Mr. Houck.” His eyes went colder, darker. “That poor, unfortunate man. I hope you’ve caught his killer.”

“No, sir, but we have a few leads.”

“I’m glad. What kind of perverse notion leads someone to commit such an act on holy ground?”

“Well, sir, at the time, the red church was being used as a barn.”

McFall laughed, a low sound that started in his abdomen and shook his entire body. “That’s true. Without a congregation, a church isn’t much of a church, is it? Without people, and what they believe-”

“Did they believe in you in California?” Storie said. She gave him her “sunglasses stare,” the kind of cool look that some of her fellow cops gave only when hidden behind the safety of tinted shields.

“The people of Whispering Pines need ministering as much as anyone else.”

“Badly enough to make you give up an easy life in California?”

“Why, Sergeant,” he said, tugging at his tie. “I do believe you are interrogating me.”

“Not really. Just dropped by for a chat.”

“In that case, please come in.” He showed his capped teeth and pushed the door wide.

Storie went inside. The bed was neatly made, with no clothes or suitcases in sight. A Bible lay open on the bedside table. McFall shut the door and flipped the shades. Afternoon sunlight striped the room.

She sat in the stiff-backed chair by the desk. McFall sat on the edge of the bed, looking uncomfortable. “So why did you come back?” she asked.

“I’m of the mountains. My heart has always belonged here. My mother still lives in Whispering Pines, in a little farmhouse at the base of Buckhorn Mountain.”

Storie nodded at him, encouraging him to continue.

“I felt the calling as a child,” he said. “As you may know, my family has a long history of serving God and spreading the Holy Word. Even as a child, I always knew I was going to be a preacher.”

“Like your great-great-grandfather?”

McFall looked out the window, his jaw twitching. “Wendell McFall was an unpleasant twig on the family tree. Still, I don’t think he deserved hanging, do you?”

“I don’t know anything about him but the legend.”

“Oh, the so-called ‘ghost’ story. Let me assure you that the only spirit that walks the church is the Holy Spirit. I should know. I spent a lot of time there as a teenager, praying to God for direction.”

Storie shifted in her chair. “Tell me about California.”

“I thought I would start a church out there. A few local girls went with me. We were a fine bunch, not a sinful thought among us, our hearts as pure as the sun. We were going to start a commune and live a simple, ascetic life.”

“Seven girls went out there, I hear.” Storie had traced the seven. Of them, only Linda Gregg, now Linda Day, had ever been heard from again.

“When we got there, most of the girls wandered off to Los Angeles and San Francisco. I guess the big-city life was more enticing than a life spent in the service of God.”

“How come your church out there failed?”

McFall smiled at her. “It didn’t fail. The Temple of the Two Suns prospered, thanks be to God. I had a television show that ministered to thousands. I opened a music store, a religious bookstore, and some other businesses. Even with the success, even though I was reaching the people, my heart held an emptiness. I prayed for guidance, and God told me to go home. So here I am.”

Storie watched his face carefully. “If you don’t mind my saying so, the Temple of the Two Suns sounds like an unusual name for a church founded by someone from the Bible Belt.”

“There are many paths to God. The true path is to follow your own heart. My heart says that what I do is right.”

“What denomination is your religion?”

“Christian, in a manner of speaking. Of course, every sect or order has its unique qualities. ‘Two Suns’ comes from the idea of God sending a second light into the world. That’s one of God’s promises, you know.”

“It certainly didn’t take you long to get a church up and running here,” she said.

“I was fortunate that Lester Matheson let me buy the property and return it to the family. And the people of Whispering Pines opened their hearts and welcomed me into their community.”

“You have to admit, it’s something of a coincidence that murders started occurring as soon as you came back to the area.”

“I came because God called.” He leaned forward. “He calls all of us. He asked to be invited into our hearts. Is He inside you?”

Storie shifted in her chair. “That’s not important.”

His mouth twisted. “It’s the only thing that’s important. What’s in your heart?”

“Look, Mr. McFall—”

“What’s in your heart?” His eyes were bright, feverish.

Storie stood and headed for the door. A hand fell on her shoulder. She spun, instinctively crouching into the defensive judo stance she had learned in cop school. For a long second, her muscles froze.

His FACE.

McFall’s chin lengthened, and his teeth sharpened between his wide black lips. His eyes were feral, so glitteringly yellow that they seemed to float in front of his face. His nose lifted in a snarl.

Just as suddenly, the illusion passed. McFall stood before her, his hands up in apology. “I didn’t mean to startle you, my child,” he said in a calm voice.

Great. As if seeing bloodstains and ropes that don’t exist wasn’t bad enough, now I’m starting to think . . .

She put her hand to her forehead. Stress, that was what it was. Three murders to solve before more people died. Her people, the ones she had sworn to uphold and protect.

“What’s troubling you, Sergeant?”

His voice soothed her. She had a sudden urge to break down in front of this man who was unruffled by life’s traumas and worries. He was like the sun on the smooth surface of a lake. His serenity radiated in almost palpable waves.

“It’s nothing, Reverend. Nothing at all.”

“You don’t have to keep it inside,” he said, taking a step nearer. She backed against the door.

“Just turn your troubles over to a higher power,” he continued in his soft, firm voice. “Open your heart and trust in God.”

That sounded like a good idea. And as soon as she realized it sounded like a good idea, a warning flare rocketed across her mind.

Wait a second. I don’t trust ANYBODY, much less a man who’s on a suspect list for three counts of murder.

But there was something about his tone, the gentleness and concern in his dark eyes. He was close enough so that she could smell mint mouthwash on his breath. For a moment, she thought he was going to lean forward and kiss her, and the worst part was that she didn’t think she would stop him.

Instead he said, “Don’t be afraid. Open your heart. Have faith.”

She looked into his eyes, and her skin tingled with mild electricity. Such warmth, such promise, such peace emanated from his eyes. Such humanity.

Oh, yes. She had faith. She believed. Her heart felt swollen and warm in her chest, like a balloon on a summer day.

I believe. Just tell me WHAT to believe.

This was insane. She should have called for backup, told Communications what her 10-20 was. The only person who knew what she was doing was Frank. She tried to picture his face, but all she could see was the golden light that emanated from Archer.

He touched her face. His fingers were hot. She couldn’t look away from his eyes, though part of her wanted to vomit, to punch him, to claw at the corners of his smile.

“Faith comes with a price,” he said. “All you have to do is give me everything. But the rewards are great, too. The kingdom of heaven can be yours, which contains all the world and more.”

She would give and give and give. No, she wouldn’t. She served only the taxpayers and law-abiding citizens. She—

“The congregation must have communion,” he said. “One bread, one body. And sacrifice is the currency of God. All I ask of you is that you serve.”

She nodded. She could do that. Faith required a little sacrifice, but the rewards were everlasting, weren’t they?

“Please,” she said, lowering herself to her knees. She gazed up into that beatific face. “Let me serve.”

He gave a benevolent nod. “You’re not one of the old families. But you are working against the purpose of God.”

I have fallen short. I am unworthy. I deserve punishment.

What could she offer that would compensate for her sins? What did she have? She could offer her soul, but that was nearly worthless. She did have flesh. She could sacrifice that, and perhaps appease the God she had so callously ignored all the days of her life.

“Take me,” she said, her voice hoarse and her eyes moist. So great was the glory of God. And equally great was the glory of Archer McFall. “Use me any way you need.”

McFall cocked his head, as if he were consulting God, listening to a divine command that would determine her fate. He knelt quickly and lifted her by the shoulders of her jacket, then wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes.

“Don’t cry, my child,” he said.

She smiled at him. How could she bury the happiness that filled her and brimmed over, the joy and rapture that he had delivered unto her?

He pulled her away from the door. “Say nothing of this. Tonight you will serve, and thus gain a place in the bosom of God.”

Oh, glory! Oh, how merciful is God in his wisdom! She would make the sacrifice to earn her place, to please Archer, to pay for the sin of pride that had shadowed her life.

“Come to the church tonight,” he said, then turned and crossed the room, again sitting on the bed.

He adjusted his tie, then clasped his hands lightly in his lap just as someone knocked on the door. “Would you get that, please?” Archer said.

Storie spun, fumbling with the doorknob in her haste to serve. She opened the door and Frank Littlefield stood before her, his fist held sideways, preparing to knock again.

“Hi, Sergeant,” Frank said, no surprise in his voice.

She blinked against the sudden rush of sun, annoyed by this trespass into her spiritual communion with Archer. “What are you doing here?” she said.

He looked past her to the reverend. “I came to get some answers, same as you.”

“Come in, Sheriff. We’ve been expecting you,” McFall said.

###

David lowered the rifle and smiled.

The front door burst open, and David thought the sheriff might have returned to sneak up on him and jump him. He swiveled the rifle toward the door, his finger tight on the trigger. Ronnie stood in the doorway, Tim small behind him.

David sniffed the comforting aroma of gun smoke. Linda was facedown on the living room floor. Tim ran to her and got on his knees, touching her hair, murmuring “Mommy” over and over again. Ronnie stared at David, his eyes wide with shock, his face pale.

“Did you . . . did you shoot her?” Ronnie asked.

David leaned the rifle against the coffee table. “I ain’t that crazy yet.”

Linda groaned and Tim helped her sit up.

Ronnie clenched his hands, a tear running down his cheek. “What in the hell’s going on, Dad?” he said, shuddering with sobs. “Why are you trying to kill her?”

“I’m not the one trying to kill her,” he said, looking down at his wife. “It’s that damned Archer McFall.”

“Archer McFall’s the preacher. The preacher’s supposed to be the good guy.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear in Sunday school, son.”

“You’re scaring me, Dad. You told us a family’s supposed to stick together when times get bad.” Ronnie helped Tim lean Linda against the easy chair. She had a welt above her eye. Ronnie looked at it and then glared at David.

He looks so damned much like his mother.

“I didn’t touch her,” he said. “She fell when I shot that damned thing.”

He pointed to the little symbol that hung on the wall, the lopsided cross that Linda had kept from her days in California. She’d told David she’d thrown it away, that all the old nonsense was over. Well, the devil’s hooks sank deep. All it took was a little whiff of sulfur and brimstone to fan the embers in a sinner’s heart.

The bullet had penetrated the center of the mock cross. The metal arms had twisted outward, curled by the impact. Gypsum powder trickled from a hole in the sheet rock. David nodded in satisfaction at a good shot.

“Hell followed her from California,” he said.

“California?” Ronnie said. “She’s never been to California.”

David wiped sweat from his forehead. Maybe some secrets were best left buried.

“Are you okay, Mommy?” Tim sounded like a four-year-old.

“Yeah, honey,” she said, pushing her hair away from her face and looking at David with mean eyes. “There will come great trials, but we keep on walking.”

David was filled with renewed rage. So this was what Archer had driven his family to. Linda, ready to give up everything she owned, including her own flesh and blood. Tim, not knowing which of his parents to trust. Ronnie, learning too young that the world was a screwed-up and hard-assed place. And he himself wondering if faith was enough, if he could single-handedly take on the devil who wore lamb’s clothing.

No, I won’t be single-handed. I’ve got God and Jesus and a rifle and everything that’s right on my side. Surely that will be enough. I pray to the Lord that will be enough.

“What are we going to do, Dad?” Ronnie looked pathetic, his eyes red and moist, his swollen nose a bruised shade of purple.

“It’s high time for a cleansing,” Linda said, her voice distant. She rocked back and forth as if tuned into an invisible gospel radio station.

David looked out the open door. Dark mountains huddled on the horizon, cowering before the sinking sun. Even the trees seemed to dread the coming night. The shadows held their breath, waiting to send out an army of monsters under cover of darkness.

Linda’s eyes focused on a high spot behind the wall. Tim and Ronnie looked at David, expectant and fearful.

Maybe it was high time for a cleansing.

“We’re going to beat that thing,” he said, more to himself than to the boys.

“How do you kill a ghost?” Tim asked.

David rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Hell if I know, Tim.”

“Ronnie says the trick is to make it stay dead. By giving it what it wants.”

“Maybe so. We’re just going to have to trust in the Lord.”

“The Lord,” Linda said with a sneer. She stiffened and contorted her features. She resembled the wrinkle-faced bat that David had found dead in the barn one morning. The old Linda, the pretty wife and loving mother and good sin-despising Christian, was as dead as Donna Gregg.

David knew Linda had been saved. He had knelt with her at the foot of the pulpit and held her hand while she tearfully asked Jesus into her heart. Once Jesus was in there, He belonged forever. Or was being saved a privilege that He could take away, like the court took away your driver’s license if you drove drunk?

David was getting a headache thinking about it. That was God’s business, and not for him to worry about. His mission was to protect the innocent, and let the guilty be damned.

“Get out,” he said to Linda, trying not to raise his voice.

She lifted her face to him, her eyes wild. The boys wore twin masks of terror.

“Get out,” David said more firmly. He gripped the rifle. “Go to the red church or Archer McFall’s bed or straight to hell if you want. Just as long as you stay away from the boys.”

Linda trembled as she stood.

“Don’t hurt her, Daddy,” Tim yelled.

David felt a smile crawl across his face, and a chill wended up his spine. He was sickened by the realization that he was enjoying this. A Christian was supposed to hate the sin but love the sinner. A man was supposed to honor his wife. The Lord’s number one lesson was that people ought to forgive trespasses.

But the Lord also knew that the human heart was weak.

David pointed the rifle at her.

Tim jumped at Linda and hugged her, his face tight against her chest. “Don’t go, Mommy,” he pleaded.

David motioned with the rifle barrel toward the door. Linda glared at him, then leaned down and kissed Tim on top of the head. “Shh, baby. It will be okay.”

She gently pushed Tim’s arms from her waist. Her blue blouse was dark with Tim’s tears. She rubbed Ronnie’s hair and smiled at him. “Take care of your brother, okay?”

Ronnie nodded. Linda pulled the mangled cross from the wall and clenched her hand around it. She paused at the door. “It’s tonight, you know,” she said to David.

He swallowed hard. He started to tell her that he still loved her, despite it all. But he could only stare numbly, his fingers like wood on the rifle.

“Lord help us all,” he whispered as she headed into the shroud of twilight. His prayer tasted of dried blood and ash.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The sunset threw an orange wash over the ribbed clouds in the west. The strong green smell of the day’s growing died away on the evening breeze. The river’s muddy aroma rose like a fog, seeping across the churchyard so thick that Mama Bet could almost taste it. She eyed the shadows in the belfry, clutching her shawl tightly across her chest.

This was bad ground, here at the church. She didn’t know why Archer insisted on holding services in this marred house of worship. Wendell McFall had died right there at the end of a rope, one end of it tied high in that bedeviled dogwood. The tree’s branches stretched both high and low, toward the sky and the ground, like fingers reaching to grab everything and everybody.

“What’s wrong, Mama Bet?”

She turned and looked into the dirty face of Whizzer Buchanan. Fourteen and already in need of a shave. He was all Buchanan, wall-eyed and his hands as plump and clumsy as rubber gloves filled with water. And to think his family used to be fine whittlers, back in the days when people made what they needed instead of buying it down at the Wal-Mart.

“Why, nothing’s wrong, child.” She smiled at him.

Whizzer smelled of sweet smoke, probably that wacky weed she heard some of the hippies were growing up in the mountains. Archer would cleanse them, sure as day. Archer held no truck with such trash. Hippies were as bad as the hard-drinking Mathesons and Abshers. Sins of the flesh, sins of the heart. All sins led down one road, down one tunnel, into the dark heart of hell.

“How come we ain’t seen the Bell Monster yet?” Whizzer asked. Like the Bell Monster was some kind of video game that you could switch on and off at your convenience. The boy had a lot to learn about the workings of God.

“We got to be patient,” she said.

Whizzer nodded and ran into the church, his boots thumping across the wooden floor. She looked across the cemetery. Stepford was relieving himself against a tall granite statue. The faded angel accepted the insult with nary a peep.

In the woods, shadows moved and separated. Becca Faye and Sonny came out from the trees, holding hands and giggling like kids at an Easter egg hunt. Crumpled leaves stuck to Becca Faye’s blouse, and the top button was undone. Mama Bet hoped the hussy enjoyed her sweaty little frolic. Because soon she would be sweating the long sweat, the devil riding her back, until forever ate its own sorry tail.

Mama Bet walked across the gravel to the church steps. Diabetes was making her feet hurt something awful. She slowly went up the steps, keeping a grip on the worn handrail. She figured she might as well get used to taking them one step at a time, because she just knew that God had a mighty high set of golden stairs for her to climb to get to heaven.

She rested in the windowless foyer, in the cool darkness. Voices came from the main sanctuary, scattered and echoing in the hushed hollow of the church. She overheard Haywood telling Nell about the benefits of a high deductible with a low co-pay.

“You see, honey,” he said, as Mama Bet entered the main body of the church, “odds are that if you do get sick enough to meet your deductible, it’s going to run into the tens of thousands of dollars anyway. And the way hospitals charge these days, a body pretty much meets their deductible just walking in the door. So you might as well save that money up front with the cheaper plan.”

Nell nodded and put the back of her hand to her mouth to hide her yawn. A couple of pews in front of them, Jim and Alma whispered about Zeb’s funeral arrangements. Rudy Buchanan knelt near the lectern, on both knees, practicing his Archer-worship. Almost as phony as a boot-licking Christian.

Mama Bet chewed her lower lip between the nubs of her gums. She didn’t want to have one of her spells, not on Archer’s night. She took slow deep breaths until her rage subsided.

Some congregation this was. As addle-brained as fish-head stew. But it wasn’t Archer’s fault. Her boy worked with what material God gave him. If anybody was to blame for this shoddy bunch of backwoods nonbelievers, then you had to turn your eyes upwards- to Him that would plant the seed and then laugh until the skies busted open. And all you could do was let your belly swell until you busted open yourself, until the child crawled out from between your legs and took its rightful throne.

“It’s going to be tonight, ain’t it?” said Jim, pulling her from her reverie.

“That’s for God and Archer to know,” she answered. “It ain’t for the likes of us to worry about.”

“Can’t help but worry,” he said, sweat under his eyes. “It might be any of us up on the chopping block.”

“Pray that you’re worthy.” She couldn’t abide such selfishness in the face of a great moment, the moment the whole world was born to see, the reason God clabbered the mud together and shaped the mountains and spit the seas and breathed life into dust. This one shining moment of glory. This end to everything, and the start of the business beyond everything.

She gazed upon the dark stain on the dais. The thing was taking shape, drawing on the sacrificial blood spilled onto its wooden skin. It had slept for 140 years, fighting free once in a while to drift across the night hills or to spook up some teenagers. But now it was awakening for real, busting loose of whatever kind of invisible chains bound the past.

Archer said the red church had to feed, so let it be fed. Let the juice of these sorry souls soak into the floorboards. Let this church absorb all their human blood and sweat and sin. Let them be cleansed for the final journey. Because Archer so ordained.

A tear collected in the corner of her eye. Jim stood and gently clasped her hand, thinking she was afraid or mournful. No, she was joyful, grateful to be allowed to hobble into the church, though it was tainted with the sins of their ancestors. Even aching and stiff, her bones as brittle as chalk sticks and her blood vessels as narrow as flaxen threads, even with eyes that could barely tell day from night and fire from ice, even with all the crush of eighty-odd years weighing down and crooking her spine, she could stand proud before the altar.

Here, she could surrender. In this sick house of God, she could give up her flesh and blood.

###

Frank Littlefield looked around the motel room. Sheila appeared dazed, her eyes wide and her pupils unnaturally large. Archer McFall sat on the bed like a patient king who was deigning to accept tribute from a minor subject.

“Did you learn anything from David Day?” Sheila asked, though judging from the tone of her voice, she could care less.

“He pulled a gun on me, mostly just for show,” Frank said. “He’s crazy, but not the kind of crazy that kills three people.”

“David Day?” Archer said. “I believe his wife is a member of the congregation.”

“Linda,” said Frank. “And if I remember right, she was one of the ones who took off to California with you.”

Archer looked from Frank to Sheila, and back again. “California has nothing to do with what’s happening here. Please put your minds at rest about that. We’re all home now, and that’s what’s important. We’re all fulfilling God’s plan.”

“God’s plan,” said Frank. “God’s plan has left three innocent people dead, assuming that God is the one who pulls the strings.”

“Nobody’s innocent,” said Archer. “And God doesn’t pull the strings.”

“Sure,” Frank said. “I forgot. You do.”

“Have you been talking to my mother?” Archer smiled. Shadows flitted in the corner of his mouth, or maybe it was worms crawling from between his lips.

Frank blinked away the illusion. “Oh, no, Mr. McFall. I don’t have to talk to your mother. Because on the way over here, I was thinking back on a night a long time ago. One night when you and me were both younger and, I reckon, more innocent.”

“Nobody’s innocent,” Archer repeated.

“Samuel was,” Frank said.

“What’s your brother got to do with this?” Sheila asked, her voice hesitant. She put a hand to her head, then rubbed her face as if wiping away sleep.

“That Halloween night at the red church,” Frank said hurriedly. His blood raced, his face grew warm, his stomach clenched around a bag of hot nails.

Archer’s eyes widened in interest, his face passive and unconcerned, his hands in his lap. As if he were watching a bug in a jar, curious to see what it would do next. “Halloween? There’ve been so many Halloweens.”

“When Samuel climbed up into the belfry, something came up behind him. A shadow. Except the shadow laughed.” Frank balled his hands into fists.

“Please, Sheriff, not the ghost story again,” Sheila said. She seemed to have recovered from her daze, and was probably worried that Frank would make a fool of himself in front of the public. Probably thought that Frank would blow his law enforcement career, maybe his whole future in Pickett County. But right now, Frank wasn’t thinking about the future. He was thinking about the past. About the dead and buried. And about a familiar laugh.

“I recognized that laugh,” Frank said. “Sent a chill through me, the first time I heard it again- at the red church, the day after Zeb Potter was killed.”

The Halloween laugh. Frank had heard it hundreds of times, keeping him awake at 4 A.M. or jerking him from nightmares. He heard it in the squeal of car tires, in the wail of a police siren, in the rush of the cold river. He heard it in the howl of the wind, and he even heard it in silence. The laugh was loudest in silence.

“You were there.” Frank raised his fist toward Archer’s face. Archer ignored the threatening gesture.

“Sheriff,” Sheila said, in her stern cop voice.

“You were in the belfry that night,” Frank said to Archer.

He’d heard assault suspects talk about being so mad they “saw red,” and now Frank knew what they meant. It was a real thing, the red brighter than the blood of the sun. It poured down over his vision, blocking out Sheila, blocking out the Bible on the nightstand, blocking out the consequences.

“You scared Samuel.” Frank was trembling now. “You made him jump. You killed him.”

“Sheriff, Sheriff, Sheriff,” Archer said, shaking his head slowly as if having to explain an obvious truth to a child. “I didn’t kill Samuel. You did.”

Frank leaped at Archer, the red in his vision now completely obscuring everything but the smile on Archer’s face. Frank wanted to tear that smile from the man’s face, to hear the satisfying rip of flesh and crack of bone. Frank wanted to feed the man his own smile, shove it down his throat until he choked.

His hands snaked around Archer’s neck, squeezing. Frank looked at his own fingers, white from the pressure. He felt removed from the attack, as if it were someone else’s hands shutting the air from Archer’s lungs. As if he were watching a movie. The thought angered him. He didn’t want to be distanced, removed, cheated of his satisfaction.

Hands pounded on his back, pulled at his shirt. He barely felt the blows. Sheila’s voice came to him as if through a thick curtain of dreams.

“Stop it, Frank,” she shouted. “Damn you, you’re killing him.”

Killing him.

A wave of pleasure surged through Frank, almost sexual in its intensity. At the same moment, he was repelled by his joyful vengeance. He was no better than Archer, no better than whoever had killed Boonie Houck, Zeb Potter, Donna Gregg.

Sheila had one arm hooked under his right bicep, the other pressing on his neck, her weight full on his back. Frank kept his grip on Archer’s neck, watching the carotid artery swell from the stifled circulation. Throughout the attack, Archer had made no move to defend himself. As if he were submitting, a willing victim. A sacrifice.

Frank stared into Archer’s eyes. He saw nothing human, no fear, no anger, no pity.

“If he did it, we can take him to trial.” Sheila grunted, levering her body against his, trying to break his chokehold. “Let the justice system make him pay.”

Justice system.

God supposedly ran a justice system, one where the meek and the just earned a place in the kingdom of heaven. One where the guilty paid for their sins eternally. But eternity was a long way away, and revenge was like chocolate on his tongue, the taste sweet and rich and consuming.

Frank pictured Samuel in his mind as he pressed his fingers tighter. The gristle of Archer’s throat popped and clicked, his breath coming in shallow, whistling gasps. Still Archer endured his own murder without raising a finger to protect himself.

Sheila’s knee pressed against Frank’s lower spine and he shouted in pain. Sheila seized the opening, bending him backward and jerking one of his hands from Archer’s throat. She twisted her hip against Frank, and the sheriff slammed against the nightstand as Archer fell back onto the rumpled bed.

Sheila drew her .38 and stood in cop stance, both arms extended, legs spread, jaw tense. Frank looked up at her. His shoulder throbbed. He ignored it, and rubbed his scalp instead.

“Are you okay, Reverend?” Sheila asked, her hard gaze never leaving Frank’s face. Archer didn’t answer.

“Reverend McFall?” she said, her voice rising in both pitch and volume. Still she didn’t look away from Frank.

The sheriff tried to stand.

“Don’t do it, sir,” she ordered.

Archer rose slowly from the bed behind her. Floated up without bending his legs. As if God were pulling invisible strings.

“Look out, Sheila,” Frank yelled. “Behind you.”

She gave him a disbelieving look, as if use of this oldest trick in the book was proof of his utter madness.

Behind her, Archer came to full life, the skin of his neck unblemished, his face contorted.

Changing.

Archer’s smile returned, a curved gash of bright, sharp teeth that dripped hate. His wings filled the room behind Sheila, stretching themselves and stirring a wind to life.

Something broke inside Frank’s head, some thin threshold was breached, and his thoughts spilled out into dark places where thoughts should never go. He sprang at Sheila, trying for her knees in a perfect flying tackle.

Her gun went off, and the blood spilled along with his thoughts.

It all happened at once, distorted in jerky slow motion, as if the filmstrip of reality had jumped its sprockets and was jamming the projector.

Frank had cracked. Sheila had no doubt at all about that. Attacking a suspect like that, trying to choke Archer, trying to . . .

She still felt groggy, and barely trusted her own thoughts, but now she was acting on instinct. She heard a whisper of movement behind her at the same time that Frank jumped at her knees.

Aiming to wound instead of kill was also instinctive, the product of countless hours of training. Still, she was surprised when the revolver roared in her ears and twitched in her hands. Frank shouted in pain as a red rip erupted in his left shoulder. Frank slammed against the nightstand, the bedside lamp and Bible knocked to the floor, his head bouncing off the edge of the mattress as he crumpled to the floor.

The sulfurous tang of gunpowder reached Sheila’s nose at the same moment she realized what she had just done. She had shot Frank. Her sheriff and the man she cared about most in the world was bleeding at her feet. And Archer was laughing.

The source of the laughter was so close that she could feel its wind stirring her hair. The preacher’s breath was cold on her neck, sending icy rivers down her spine. Or maybe it was the quality of the laugh itself that chilled her. The voice was scarcely human, a cross between an animal’s growl and an asylum inmate’s demented cackle. Or maybe Archer’s windpipe was so damaged that he could scarcely breathe. It was a miracle he could stand at all.

She stepped backward and pivoted to face Archer, expecting to see red fingerprints around the preacher’s throat. She nearly dropped her revolver.

The thing hovering before her was not real. Not real, not real, not real. She had cracked, same as Frank. Too many murders to solve, not enough sleep, too much processed food, she shouldn’t have watched Rosemary’s Baby as a child, yeah, that was it, that was why she was crazy, and she began laughing herself.

Because this just ain’t HAPPENING, this thing’s got wings and nothing that big has wings and oh my what big TEETH you have, the better to eat you with, my dear and Oh God your EYES, what have they done to your EYES they look like split meat in a butcher’s counter and where’s Archer and hee hee since I’m absolute apeshit crazy it’s OKAY if I shoot you, especially if you don’t exist.

Sheila pulled the trigger, the firm metal beneath her finger her only link with reality. The .38 flashed a second time, and the window exploded. Still the impossible vision hovered before her, the hideous face gleaming with a wet, sharp smile. She fired again, and Frank groaned from the floor. The sheriff’s hand gripped her pant leg as if he were trying to pull himself to his feet.

“Nice try,” said the thing, only now it was using Archer’s voice, and the flesh rippled and changed and became the preacher again. His suit had three holes in the breast. He fingered them and smiled. “This is a three-thousand-dollar suit,” he said.

Yeah Judge, I swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, if only I could figure out what it IS, but I testify that one Archer McFall turned into a . . . a THING . . . yeah, right in front of my eyes, it had big teeth and gray wings and you could smell the rot in the wrinkles of its meat and . . . no, of COURSE I didn’t sneak into the evidence room and sample the contraband drugs, hee hee, I’m just apeshit crazy, that’s all—

“And I would be a good boy and lie down and die, but that isn’t the way this works,” Archer said. “Is it, Frank?”

Archer’s face changed again, the body quivered and shrank, and a young boy of about eleven stood before her, his hair mussed and his eyes sparkling blue above his freckled cheeks. Beneath the freckles, his skin was as pale as milk. A beach towel was tied around his neck and hung down his back like a cape.

“Tell her, Frankie,” said the boy in a rural mountain accent. “Tell her how it’s got to be done.”

Frank leaned against the bed, his right hand pressed against the gunshot wound, his left arm dangling limply. “Suh . . . Samuel?” he whispered, his voice cracking.

Sheila looked in disbelief from Frank to the pale boy, then to the revolver in her hand. A small trail of smoke wended from its barrel.

I killed him, Judge. I swear, as God is my witness. I shot Archer dead, but you know the rules. Innocent until proven guilty.

“Tell her how it is, Frankie,” said the boy, his eyes darkening. “What the legend says. The gospel according to the Hung Preacher.”

“Sacrifice is the currency of God,” Frank said in a hiss between clenched teeth.

“And everybody pays,” said the smiling boy. The gap between his top front teeth did nothing to dampen the corruption of his smile.

“Not you, Samuel,” Frank said, struggling to his knees. Tears pooled in his eyes. “You’re innocent.”

The boy’s face changed yet again, became that of a balding middle-aged man with sweat beading his upper lip. “Innocent until proven guilty,” he said. “Just ask your lady-cop friend.”

Storie recognized that voice, the one that sometimes slithered into her own nightmares. Hey, honey, you can lock me up, but I’ll be BACK.

Years ago in Charlotte, she couldn’t ram the nightstick into the kiddie-rapist’s face or pull the car over and shoot him in the head. But she was already a murderer now, so one more victim wouldn’t matter. She pulled the trigger, then again, then again, only the last time the hammer clicked on a spent shell. And still the pudgy man licked his lips and leered at her.

“Except nobody’s innocent,” the man said, his shape shifting again, growing taller and becoming Archer McFall.

“What have you done to Samuel?” Frank shouted.

“I told you, it’s not what I’ve done to Samuel,” Archer said. “It’s what you’ve done.”

Archer touched the spot on his forehead where Sheila had aimed the revolver. “Not bad,” he said to her, in his calm televangelist voice. “But you have some deep sins in your heart, Sheila Storie. If only you would open up and let God come inside, give over all your troubles, then you’d find the one true Way.”

Sheila stumbled slowly backward, away from this insane vision, away from the black pit of madness that threatened to swallow her whole.

If I close my eyes, it will all go away. Criminal Psych 101: “psychotic episodes can be triggered by extreme emotional stress, leaving the subject temporarily displaced from reality,” yeah, that’s a good one, I’ll have to remember to tell that to my defense lawyer, because when I open my eyes, Archer McFall is going to be lying dead on the floor of a Holiday Inn motel room, unarmed, with five bullet holes in his body.

And with luck, I’ll only get six to ten for manslaughter, only I’ve got the funny feeling that this is a life sentence. Innocent until proven guilty? Hell, we’re ALL guilty, just like the man says.

She sat on the bed, eyes still closed, the .38 in her limp fingers. She could smell Frank’s blood and her own sweat. A breeze seeped through the broken window, raising goosebumps on her neck. A hand touched her just above the knee, and she tensed. Frank’s voice broke through the knotted fabric of her thoughts. “Sheila? Are you okay?”

“She’ll live,” Archer said. “At least for a while.”

Sheila’s eyelids fluttered open despite her best efforts to keep them clamped tight. Archer smiled at her with his most benevolent and beatific expression.

“I’m sorry to have misled you earlier, Detective,” the preacher said. “You will not serve me, nor God, nor the church. That’s only for the old families, right, Sheriff?”

Frank’s lips pressed tightly together, as if his anger would crawl up his throat and erupt in sharp claws and needles of fire and silver blades.

“Now if you two will excuse me, I have a congregration in need of tending.” Archer turned and walked to the door. Three holes formed a triangle in the back of his jacket. Archer opened the door, and the darkening hills were behind him, the security lights in the parking lot blinking on. A car whisked by on the highway beyond the lot. A siren, probably from a patrol car responding to reported gunshots, bounced off the high, hard mountains.

“See you at church, Frank? It’s the Third Day, you know.” Archer stepped into the twilight and closed the door.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Night.

It pressed down on the whole world, stretching out and smothering the trees, crushing the mountains, swallowing the weak light of the stars. The night pressed against the remaining bedroom window, and Ronnie knew it was equally thick outside the walls. The scariest thing about the night was that it always came back. You could shine the universe’s brightest light into it, make it run away, but the second you switched that light off—whoosh—the night came swooping back in blacker than ever.

“We’re going to be okay, ain’t we?” Tim said. He was in the bottom bunk, bundled in blankets.

Ronnie nodded in the bunk above him, not trusting his voice. Then he realized that Tim couldn’t see him, though Dad had left the light on. He took a quick breath and spoke. “How many times do I have to tell you it’s going to be all right?”

His anger had no force, like a bad actor’s in those stupid daytime soaps that Mom used to watch, back before she joined the red church.

“What about Mom?”

Ronnie rolled over and stuck his head over the edge of the bunk. “She’ll be fine. Things will work out. You’ll see.”

“I don’t like it when they fight.” Tim squinted, his glasses put away for bedtime.

“They don’t like it, either.”

“Then why do they do it?”

Why? That was the big question, wasn’t it? Why did the Bell Monster want to eat Ronnie’s heart? Why did Mom have to join the red church? Why did Melanie turn out to be the queen of mean girls?

And there was always the big question: why did God let bad things happen? God let Boonie Houck and Mr. Potter and that woman by the side of the road get killed. He even let people kill His only begotten son. What sort of all-merciful God was that? Maybe Ronnie would ask Preacher Staymore that one, if Ronnie was lucky enough to live until the next Sunday school meeting.

“Ronnie?”

Ronnie realized that Tim had been talking for at least half a minute, but Ronnie had just zoned out. Better to keep the kid occupied, so he didn’t completely lose it. “I’m listening.”

“We have to give it what it wants.”

“Give what to who?” Ronnie said, though he knew exactly what Tim was talking about.

“To . . . you know.”

“Yeah, yeah. The thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes.”

Tim pulled the blankets up to his chin. His eyes were wide now, his lip quivering from fear. Ronnie swung down off the bunk and got in bed with him.

“I won’t let it get you,” Ronnie said. “No matter what. Dad will beat it somehow.”

Tim didn’t look like he believed Ronnie, but he didn’t say anything. He closed his eyes and Ronnie told him the story of Sleeping Beauty, and he was halfway through “Hansel and Gretel” when Tim fell asleep. Ronnie lay beside him in the cramped bunk, trying to figure a way out of this mess.

Then it struck him, the revelation like an icicle in the chest: God was sending all these trials down on Ronnie as some kind of test. If there was one thing that stood out clearly in the Bible, it was that God liked to test the faith of His people. Job, Daniel, Abraham, why, heck, even Jesus got tempted by the devil, and if God was all-powerful, surely He pulled the devil’s strings, too.

Imagine that. Jesus was God’s own son, His flesh and blood, His earthly incarnation, yet even Jesus had to measure up. And with Ronnie committing all these sins of the heart lately, it was no wonder that God wanted to visit some great trials on him. And that was the scariest thing of all.

Because Dad said that when the night was dark and the pain was great and you were all alone, then you turned your eyes up to God and you opened up your heart and let Jesus come on inside. You let God take away the fear. You let Him work out your problems, you let Him push back your enemies. But what if God was the enemy? What if God was the source of your fear?

Even as he thought it, he knew it was wrong. The idea of God as the bad guy was just too awful. You had to have faith. If you didn’t, you might as well curl up in a ball and let the Bell Monsters of the world eat your insides. You might as well roll away the stone and head down into hell. So Ronnie tried to picture the face of Jesus from those color plates in the Bible, that man with the beard, long brown hair, and sad, loving blue eyes.

Something clicked against the window.

A rap on the glass at the good window, the one that hadn’t been boarded up.

Can you hear him aknocking?

Oh, yes, Ronnie could hear the knock. Only this wasn’t Jesus. This was the Bell Monster, come back to finish the job.

This was what God wanted—for Ronnie to get up out of bed and open the window and give himself away. Then the dead would stay dead, ghosts would stay in the ground, and Tim would be saved. And Ronnie would have passed the test.

Ronnie almost yelled for Dad, so Dad could come in with the rifle and kill the thing again. But what good would that do? You could kill it a million times, but still it would come back, night after night forever. Until it had what it wanted.

Until it had Ronnie.

He slid out from under the covers, looked at Tim’s face relaxed by sleep, and crossed the room. Even though he was wearing pajamas, he shivered. The thing rapped on the glass again, and Ronnie heard slithery whispers. He hoped the claws were fast, so that he could die without pain.

He was carrying plenty of pain already. His broken nose, the welt on his face where Whizzer had punched him, the stone lump in his chest. At least all those would pass away. Soon Jesus would come and take his hand and float with him up to heaven, where there was a cure for every pain. Because Ronnie believed.

Don’t you, Ronnie?

He took another trembling step to the window. He couldn’t see through the blackness beyond the glass. All he saw was his own reflection and the lighted bedroom. It was better this way. If he saw the Bell Monster, he would scream, Tim would wake up, Dad would come in, and the Bell Monster would get all of them. Or Dad would kill the Bell Monster and they’d have to do it all again, every night forever, until the test was taken.

So he pulled back the sash-lock and held his breath and slowly slid the window up. It squeaked in its frame, and the cold night air poured through the crack and chilled his belly. He tensed for the claws to his gut, his eyes closed. Nothing happened, so he lifted the window another few inches.

“Ronnie,” came the whisper.

Mom.

Relief surged through his body, a warmth similar to the one made by Jesus coming into his heart. But what was Mom doing out there with the Bell Monster?

Confused, Ronnie opened his eyes. The light from the room spilled on Mom’s face. She didn’t look scared at all. She smiled and put her finger to her lips. “Shh. Where’s your dad?”

Ronnie stooped until his head was near hers. “In the living room. He thinks the Bell Monster will come through the front door this time.”

“Let’s go,” she said, waving at him to come outside.

“Where are we going?”

“The church.”

The red church. At night. Maybe Dad was right. Maybe Mom really was crazy.

“Get Tim,” she said.

“Tim?” Ronnie glanced back at his brother. Tim moaned in his sleep from a bad dream. “Why does Tim have to come?”

“He’s of the blood.” Her eyes were strangely bright. “We all are.”

“What about Dad?”

Mom’s eyes narrowed. “He’s not a member of the church.”

Ronnie started to add that he and Tim weren’t, either. Mom smiled again, and it was the old Mom smile, the one that said Everything’s going to be all right and Mom will kiss it and make it better and I love you more than anything in the world.

“I’m scared of the red church,” Ronnie said.

She took down the screen, reached through the window, and gently squeezed his shoulder. “Honey, it’s so wonderful. You know how good it feels to be in the First Baptist Church?”

Ronnie nodded.

“Well, this is a hundred times better. This is like having God right in the same room with you. No more pain, no more anger, no more earthly worries. Nothing but everlasting peace.”

Being in the red church was starting to sound a whole lot like being dead. But Ronnie thought that if he went with Mom just this once, he could figure out why she loved the place so much. Besides, she wouldn’t let anything happen to her sons. She would protect Tim from the Bell Monster and other bad things, and she’d help Ronnie pass the test.

He woke Tim, putting a hand over Tim’s mouth before he could yell out. “Mom’s here,” he whispered. “We have to go to the church.”

Tim’s lips moved beneath his palm, so Ronnie moved his hand away. “Why do we have to go to the church?” he said drowsily.

“Why do we ever go to church? Because we have to, that’s why. Mom’s here to take us.”

At the mention of Mom, Tim came fully awake and sat up. “Is she here?”

“At the window.”

“Hi, sugar,” she said. “Now hurry, before Dad hears. Don’t worry about changing clothes. We won’t be there long. Just put your shoes on.”

“Don’t we need to tell Dad?” Tim asked.

“He’ll only get mad, honey. He’ll yell at me. You don’t want him to yell at me, do you?”

Tim rushed to the window and hugged her. Ronnie locked the door and the boys put on their sneakers. Then Ronnie helped Tim slip through the window. Ronnie followed, taking a last look into the lighted room before heading into the night.

###

The siren was louder now, closer. Frank shut his eyes and leaned against the bed. His shoulder throbbed, but he could still flex the fingers of his left hand. No major nerve damage, at least from the bullet wound. But Archer McFall had damaged his nerves plenty.

Sheila’s fingers explored the area around the wound. “Does it hurt?” she asked, her voice as spaced-out as it had been when he’d first entered the motel room. He thought about trying to make a wisecrack, like Bruce Willis in “Die Hard,” but he gave up. Bruce Willis had a writer to feed him lines. All Frank had was a jangled-up nest of thoughts and red wires of hurt in his brain.

He grunted and opened his eyes. Sheila’s face was corpse white, as white as Samuel’s had been.

Samuel.

Anger and hate pushed Frank’s pain away. That bastard Archer had killed Samuel. Whoever or whatever Archer was, ghost or demon or the best damned magician this side of Houdini, the “preacher” was to blame for Samuel’s death. And for Frank’s long years of guilt.

“You know what’s funny?” Frank said.

“Nothing’s funny,” Sheila said. “I just shot you.”

“No, really, it is funny,” he said. “Once you throw away all the old rules, all the things you thought you knew and that you counted on, then you can believe just about anything.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“Ghosts. Archer McFall. Whatever he is, he’s real. Not some trick of the mind, or a vision to fit in with your criminal psychology theories.”

“He’s real, all right,” she said, though she sounded unsure. She folded back the bedspread and yanked the sheet free. She tore a long strip from the sheet and wrapped it around Frank’s shoulder and upper arm. He winced at the fresh pain.

“Damn, it’s only a flesh wound,” she said.

“That’s good.”

“No, it’s not. I was aiming for your heart.”

“I’ll take that under advisement, for the next time you threaten to shoot me.”

She tied off the bandage as the wailing patrol car pulled up to the door. It skidded to a stop, tires squealing, and Wade Wellborn shouted from the parking lot.

“Sheriff? Detective Storie?” He had seen their vehicles.

“It’s all clear, Wade,” Frank yelled back.

Wade rushed through the open door, gun pointed to the ceiling. “What in the holy heck happened?” he said, eyes wide.

“We had us what you call an ‘incident,’” Frank said. His blood stained the makeshift bandage, but the spreading seemed to have slowed. He stood, Sheila taking his good arm and helping him up.

As he struggled to keep his balance, he said, “Maybe it was more of an ‘encounter’ than an incident.”

“Sir?” Wade said.

“Call in backup. Then stay and secure the scene.”

“Who done it?” Wade gaped at the bandage, then at the broken window and the holes in the motel’s sheetrock wall.

“You’ll have to wait for the incident report like everybody else,” said Frank. “I won’t even know what happened until I make it up.”

Wade hesitated, a confused expression on his face. Then he obeyed Frank’s command. When Wade left the room, Frank said to Sheila, “You up for a church service?”

“I don’t know. I always thought I’d believe in ghosts when I saw them. Only now I’ve seen one, and I still don’t believe it.”

“You ought to have a little faith, Sergeant.”

“Faith?”

“Yeah. I told you the church was haunted. I just didn’t know what was doing the haunting.”

“Like I was supposed to believe you when you babbled on about the Hung Preacher?” Sheila seemed to be coming around, emerging from her daze and regaining her sarcastic edge. Frank was glad she was her old self again. He kind of liked her old self. Maybe the old Sheila wouldn’t shoot him next time.

They went out the door, Frank taking a last look at the bloodstain on the carpet, the mussed bed, the Bible on the floor. “You drive,” he said to Sheila.

“Yes, sir.”

“Stop calling me ‘sir.’ If we’re going to try to kill a ghost together, we might as well be on a first-name basis.”

The few motel tenants had left their rooms and stood in clumps of two or three, whispering to one another in the parking lot. Blue lights strobed off the windows, adding to the disorienting power of the experience. The Holiday Inn’s night manager stood at the far end of the parking lot, half-hidden behind a concrete planter.

“Everything’s under control,” Frank shouted to him.

“Don’t look so damned under control to me,” said the manager in a squeaky voice. “Where’s Mr. McFall?”

“Checked out early,” Sheila replied. She got in the driver’s side of her patrol car and opened the passenger door for Frank. As he settled onto the seat, Wade ran over to their car.

“Where are you going?” he asked, his face red from exertion.

“Following up on a lead,” Frank said. “We’ll radio in the details.”

Sheila gunned the engine to life, backed up, then fishtailed out of the parking lot. When they were on the highway and accelerating smoothly, Sheila pulled her revolver from her shoulder holster.

“You’re not going to finish the job, are you? Shoot me for real?” he asked.

She handed the gun to him. “Need to reload.”

“Why? We already know that bullets can’t stop him. Or it. Whatever the hell it is.”

“There’s still such a thing called ‘proper procedure.’ It might be the last thing I can do by the book.” She hit eighty and held steady, running without siren or blue lights. He watched her face as she drove.

He liked her.

Crazy as it was, he liked her. Hell, the world was touched-in-the-head crazy anyway, with its haunted churches, shape-shifters, Hung Preachers, and Looney Toons sheriffs. Why couldn’t he like a woman he had worked with for years? So what if she’d shot him? He knew men who’d been treated worse.

Sheila glanced at him for a moment, and must have seen his strange expression. She glanced again. “What are you looking at?”

“You.”

She gave a tired smile. “Just reload the gun.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, struggling to open the box of shells she’d flipped onto the seat. She turned off the highway onto a narrow road that was paved but unmarked. Frank looked up at the dim stars. A high haze belted the sky, and the three-quarters wedge of moon was wreathed with electric-blue clouds just above the mountains.

“Sheila?” he said, the first time he’d said her name aloud. At least to her. He’d tried it on his tongue a few times, back in his small apartment in the wee hours between nightmares.

“What?” she said.

“What are we going to do when we get to the red church?”

“You’re the sheriff,” she said.

“I mean, how do you kill a ghost?”

“Good question,” she said.

They rode in silence as Frank clumsily dumped the spent shell casings and reloaded the revolver using his one good hand. He passed it back to Sheila.

“Feel better?” he asked after she’d returned it to its holster.

“No,” she said. “What about you?”

His shoulder still throbbed with every beat of his heart, but the pain was just a background distraction now, mental white noise. “I’ll live. More or less.”

The dispatcher’s voice fuzzed from the radio. “Base to Unit Two, come in, Unit Two.”

Frank turned the radio off.

Sheila glanced at him, her hands still tight on the steering wheel. “Guess we do this without backup?”

“Seems like those are the rules.”

Her next question made his breath catch. “Do you believe in God?”

“Sure,” he said without thinking. “Jesus is our Lord and Savior.”

“No,” she said. “I mean really believe.”

“Look, if you think Archer is the devil and this is the ultimate battle of good and evil—”

“Don’t be a jerk, Frank.”

“I don’t think it’s ever that simple,” he said. “I mean, God is good and the devil is evil. One’s right and one’s wrong. You ever known anything that clear-cut?”

“Well, we’re only human,” she said with some sarcasm. “What the hell do we know?”

“Archer says it’s the flesh itself that leads to sin,” Frank said, wondering where he’d picked up that little nugget of wisdom. “The heart is pure, but the flesh gets us in trouble.”

“Archer says a lot of things.” Sheila slowed the cruiser and turned onto the gravel road leading to Whispering Pines. The river glinted below them, the silver of the moon dappled across its surface. They rounded a bend and the dark shape of the church stood out on the hill above them.

“Here goes nothing,” Frank said, his voice barely audible over the gravel crackling beneath the wheels.

“What’s the plan?”

Frank looked at the long dark fingers of the dogwood, at the black belfry, at the white bones of the tombstones. Figures moved around the church, and cars were clustered in the driveway. Archer’s fold was gathering.

“If I come up with one, you’ll be the first to know,” he said.

It happened so fast that it seemed like slow motion.

He yelled, Sheila braked, and the cruiser slid sideways. Her elbows flailed as she fought the steering wheel, trying to avoid the boy standing in the road. The momentum slammed Frank against Sheila’s side and she lost control. The car skated across the loose gravel onto the soft dirt shoulder, then slipped down the embankment to the black river below.

Frank’s head bounced off the dashboard, then rammed into the roof, and he reached for Sheila as metal twisted and glass shattered and the world turned cartwheels. As his thoughts turned black and blue, he held on to the image of Samuel in the road, arms spread in welcome, worms dripping from his smile.

Then, wet darkness.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Where’s your car?” Mama Bet asked in the dimness of the vestry. Not that a car mattered much to her, but few around these parts had raised a son who made good in the world. Maybe she suffered from sinful pride, but a flashy luxury car just flat-out said, I done proud. Soon cars and pride and such wouldn’t matter, but you clung to life’s little joys while you had them.

“I won’t need a car where I’m going,” Archer said. “Where we’re going.”

Archer lit a candle. Waxy smoke mingled with the smell of the communion. The reverent murmurs of the congregation filled the wooden shell of the church, anticipation in the air as thick as flies on roadkill.

Archer’s suit was a little rumpled. Mama Bet frowned and straightened his tie. A messiah had to look the part. People didn’t fall in for just any old body.

“You going to make me walk into the kingdom on these tired old feet?” she said, trying to get Archer to smile. He was so blamed serious all the time.

“We each must make the sacrifice,” he said.

Mama Bet worked her shoulders so that the lace of her dress collar stopped tickling her neck. “Guess we’d best get on with it.”

“Yes . . . you go ahead. Give me a moment to commune with God the Father,” Archer said without a hint of irony.

That was one part of this deal that worried Mama Bet. She was finally going to come face-to-face with that low-down, sneaky thing. The one who’d planted the seed and left her with all the pain and trials of raising a messiah. Well, He couldn’t properly claim any of the benefits. She was the one who had made the hard decisions, the sacrifices, endured the whispers. Even though the reward of heaven was great, she felt she deserved a little something more.

Like maybe God ought to get down on His knees and beg her forgiveness.

She smiled at the image, though she had no clear picture of what God should look like. She remembered that night of sweaty pleasure, but His flesh had been moist and cool as clay. She hadn’t glimpsed His face, but had felt his mouth slick on her neck, her shoulders, her chest. She shuddered in a mixture of remembered pleasure and revulsion.

Everybody knew that saying, “An eye for an eye,” from the Old Testament. But not many knew the part right after, Mama Bet’s favorite verse: “A stripe for a stripe, a burning for a burning.”

You got what was coming to you, what was due, the very thing you deserved. That was the best thing about God. He was fair. What you dished out to the world, He fed back to you, over and over, for an eternity.

And her heart swelled at the thought of her part in it, of Archer’s part. They were doing holy work. Nothing so dirt-common as fulfilling a prophecy, but rather they were guiding people onto the True Path. Every nutcase who ever took a knife to little girls and boys claimed they had a hotline to God. But Archer was the real thing, the Second Son, God in the flesh.

She paused at the threshold of the vestry. Archer stood with his head bowed, eyes closed, the candles throwing golden light on his peaceful face, the deep brown of the wooden walls busy with shadows. Tears came to her eyes at the beauty of the scene. She could give him up.

See, God, how strong I am? I know You need to take him, that’s the Way and the Word. But I hope You got some idea just how much it pains me. If I didn’t know the stone would soon be rolled away forever, I’d throw myself down at Archer’s feet and not let him go through with it.

Then Mama Bet realized she hadn’t been totally truthful to God. She was actually looking forward to the cleansing. Sure, most of the old biddies who had whispered about her unexpected pregnancy were long dead, were under the cold dirt and damp grass of the cemetery. But she had a feeling that those long-dead weren’t out of the woods yet. They still had a part in Archer’s plan. Archer would sink his claws into them, one way or another.

Thy will be done, amen, she silently added as a catch-all apology to God. Just in case He was one to hold a grudge. He had a long memory, that much was plain. The whole history of the human race was one everlasting bout of suffering.

She opened the door and slipped into the sanctuary of the church. The murmurs quieted, then picked back up again as the parishioners realized Archer wasn’t coming out. She glanced at the dark shape on the floorboards of the altar, saw that it had grown larger and sharper, that the Death’s Angel was nearly formed. Just a little more blood and it would be whole. Mama Bet lifted her skirt so that the hem didn’t brush the floor, then raised her chin proudly and walked across the dais to take her place in the front row.

Nearly thirty of the faithful had gathered. The candles mounted on the wall bathed their faces in unsteady shadows. Mama Bet was pleased to note that the Abshers lined the pew in the second row, Sonny looking uncomfortable in a button-down shirt and bow tie. Becca Faye sat beside him, the vee of her dress offering up the pillars of her flesh. At least the slatternly hussy had worn a bra, even if it was one of those push-up kinds that made a woman look more womanly than was proper.

Becca Faye was wasting her time. Archer had no need for such offerings, and Mama Bet wouldn’t let him sample the vile fruits even if he was of a mind to. Sonny could drool over that harlot all day, but Sonny would pay and pay and pay for the privilege, maybe with his tongue, maybe with his eyes, maybe with other things, according to God’s will.

“Don’t see why we have to put up with this foolishness,” Sonny muttered just loudly enough for Mama Bet to hear. “I got better things to do than hobnob with you God-fearing folk.”

“Shush,” Becca Faye said, though she giggled. Haywood cleared his throat uncomfortably.

Mama Bet turned around and looked Sonny in his oily eyes. “You’d best open them big ears, mister,” she said. “You don’t get many chances at salvation in this life. So you best be ready when the light shines on your stupid greasy head.”

Becca Faye looked around nervously, like a cat caught in a hedgerow, a whiff of her fear carried on the scent of department-store perfume that probably went by the name of Passion Flower or Wild Meadows or such. Sonny’s eyes grew bright and fierce.

“I ain’t the one that hung Wendell McFall,” he said. “None of us are. So why do we got to pay for it?”

Mama Bet shook her head, her mouth wrinkled in weary amusement. “You ain’t heard a single word Archer’s said. Sacrifice is the currency of God. It ain’t a sacrifice if all you’re doing is paying what you owe. No, you got to pay more than you owe.”

Haywood tried to change the subject. “Did y’all hear about the car that run off the road? Jim Potter says it just went over the side for no good reason. Probably a drunk or something.”

“Nobody went to help them?” his wife Noreen said.

Haywood glared at her. “They ain’t of the old families, so what’s it to us?” He added, as if to himself, “Wonder if they had insurance?”

Mama Bet glanced past them to the other rows, at Alma Potter, Lester and Vivian and Stepford Matheson, the Buchanans in the back row, where their barnyard smell barely reached her, Whizzer sullenly chewing on the stump of a half-smoked cigarette. And across the aisle, oh, yes, there they were.

The Day family, minus that meddling David, the boys wide-eyed and fidgeting, the mother glowing with an expectant pride.

There he was, the one Archer needed.

A warmth expanded from Mama Bet’s chest to the rest of her body. Let the cleansing begin.

###

Icy coffin black.

Drifting, on beyond black. So easy.

So cold.

At Samuel’s viewing, Frank had touched his little brother’s hand. Samuel had looked lost in the splendid folds of the casket, a little too pink-skinned and hollow-cheeked. His lips were unnaturally red, a shade they had never been in life. But worse than the interrupted smile was the coldness of Samuel’s skin, colder than November air, colder than shaded marble.

That same coldness gripped Frank now. It flowed through his veins, clasped him in its shocking dullness, enveloped him in its numbing shroud. He was dimly aware of the currents around him, the water softly swirling around his skin. The river murmured in his ears, telling him to drift, to surrender, to submit to the embrace of long sleep.

Years passed in that near-perfect state, years in which Frank remembered the roughness of his father’s hands, callused and cracked from farmwork, hands that could break a locust rail if they had to. Those same hands had met, tucked under chin in desolate prayer, during Samuel’s funeral. A week after, those same hands had threaded and looped one end of a thick rope. Then the hands’ owner joined his youngest boy in whatever afterlife they each deserved.

And Frank’s mother followed six months later. She also killed herself, though she wasn’t cowardly or brave enough to take a direct route like her husband. No, she was subtle. She went into the darkness by fading a little at a time, losing appetite and health and soul to the great erosion of apathy. And only Frank had carried on, the weight of all their deaths on his shoulders, pressing down on him as heavy as a cross, the guilt a constant, cold lump in his heart.

And now he followed them into darkness. He could almost hear their whispers drawing him forward, pulling him more deeply into the numbing cold. They were waiting.

He almost smiled in his sleep. So many years of waiting, so many more years of journey ahead.

But what would be waiting?

The bright light of heaven, as promised by his parents and the Baptist preacher and practically everybody in Pickett County.

But if heaven was bright and warm and welcoming, then the change should start occurring any moment now. Because if God and Jesus wanted the eternity of worship they deserved and demanded, then they were being robbed of Frank’s servitude by this extended dark purgatory. This cold and peaceful drifting. This slow suffocation.

He was aware of hands reaching, hands darker than the darkness, gentle hands. He relaxed, glad for the end to this interim end. Anxious for heaven. Anxious for the love and light and heat.

Then the hands clamped onto his wounded shoulder, and he screamed into the darkness.

His eyes snapped open against wetness, and he realized he was underwater. Then he remembered the crash. He struggled against the current as the years of drifting became seconds of chaotic tumbling and thrashing and pain. His body was trapped in the submerged car.

The hands on his shoulder . . .

Sheila.

The hands worked down his arm, and Frank stopped flailing, realizing she was trying to help him. The seat belt loosened across his chest. He reached for her, and his fingers brushed her softly flowing hair, and then she was gone.

He blinked into the blackness, his limbs stiffening from the intense chill. His right hand found the door, then the opening of the shattered window.

The water he’d inhaled burned in his lungs as he kicked through the window. A small pocket of air in his chest told him in which direction the surface lay, and he fought toward it.

The car had tumbled into a deeper part of the river, so the current was sluggish, but the weight of his wet uniform limited his progress. Bright streaks of lime and fluorescent orange rocketed across the backs of his eyelids as he paddled upward. Then he broke through the skin of the river, his lungs greedy as he gulped at the night air.

The air tasted of muck and mud and fish, and he spat to clear his mouth, then drew in another gargling gasp. The current tumbled him lazily against a boulder, then another, the rush of the river like white noise.

In the glimmer of the moon, he saw the scarred ground and broken saplings where the car had rolled down the bank. He spun around in the water, looking for Sheila. Nothing but black stones and the white phosphor of the current.

He spat once more, took a deep breath, and dove toward the twin streams of yellow light that rippled ghostlike in the riverbed.

The current pulled him away from the underwater lights. He frantically paddled toward the bank until his feet hit bottom, then waded back upstream, his teeth chattering. He’d been up for nearly a minute. Could Sheila hold her breath that long?

When he reached the spot where the car had gone under, he dove in headfirst. His hand hit smooth metal and he opened his eyes. Judging from the position of the swirling headlight beams, he was on the roof of the car. He let the current drag him to the driver’s side. Luckily, the car had settled nearly flat on the riverbed, so he didn’t have to worry about the door’s being jammed.

Frank forced himself deeper, his lungs already longing for a taste of oxygen and nitrogen. He found the door handle, opened his eyes again, and thought he made out a shadow in the front seat. But the water was dark, as dark as his drifting dream of death.

He yanked the handle up, and the dented door opened with a burp of released air. Reaching inside, he felt the vinyl of the seat, the warped steering wheel, the freely drifting seat belt.

He probed deeper, holding himself suspended in the cold water with his left hand on the chassis. He found her draped halfway across the seat, her legs dangling limply.

How long had she been under? Had she reached the surface, then come back to rescue him? Or had she been submerged all along? Frank was losing track of time, his thoughts gone fuzzy from lack of air, and he knew they were in trouble.

He squirmed his body into the cab and reached for her torso. Wrapping his arm around her, he tugged her toward the door. His knee caught on the steering wheel and the horn emitted a pathetic, drowning bleat. He pulled again, and the current nudged them out of the vehicle. Vomit and fear forced Frank’s mouth open, and rank, muddy water rushed between his teeth.

He spun lazily and acrobatically with Sheila in his arms. He thought of Friday night hoe downs at the Gulp ‘n’ Gulch, how he’d never had a partner this graceful. He nearly laughed. Choking on Potter’s Mill River, with the ghost of his dead brother waiting for them up on the road, with the red church owned by whatever nightmare inhabited Archer McFall’s transient flesh, with everything he’d ever held as sane and right and normal now as distant as the sweet night air above, he’d finally found a dance partner.

At least I’ll die in somebody’s arms, and not all alone, like I always figured would happen.

And he almost surrendered again, almost opened his mouth and let the river sing its song, almost let the cold black in-between sweep them both away to the endless sea. But just as he thought of it, just as he realized that your life doesn’t flash before your dying eyes, only the very end of it does, he pictured Sheila. He pictured her behind her desk, and him standing before it, explaining to her why he’d given up.

A little bit of pain? she would say. You were cold and tired and just wanted to rest? It was easier to give up than face a world where things were topsy-turvy gone-to-hell, where spirits walked and shape-shifters drove luxury cars and you had to stare your embodied guilt in the eyes? You gave up on me, you gave up on yourself, you gave up on us, just because you didn’t have faith?

And her imagined anger flooded his wet and scalding chest, lit a fire in his rib cage, made him angry. Frank kicked until his feet found solid purchase. He shoved upward, his arms tightly clutching Sheila around the waist.

He silently prayed as they rose through the water, though he could not decide to whom to send his prayers or what he should ask for. His limbs were so numb he wasn’t even entirely sure it was Sheila in his grasp. It could easily have been an old sodden stump.

And then they broke the surface, the air as sweet as a ripe plum, the moon as welcome as a smile, the million bubbles of froth on the river joyously whispering in Frank’s ears.

He tilted Sheila’s head back so that her mouth and nostrils were clear of the water, then half swam, half drifted to a sandy shallow. He carried Sheila to a flat outcropping of rock and laid her gently on her back.

He had learned CPR as part of his officer certification, and leaned over her face, ready to pinch her nose and force breath into her lungs and reach inside her shirt to massage her heart back to action.

But suddenly she coughed, spat, and blew a clear viscid fluid from her nose. She coughed again, and Frank called her name, then rolled her onto her side so that she wouldn’t choke. Her skin was white in the moonlight, almost glowing in its bloodless pallor.

“Sheila?” he called again, louder this time, so that his voice carried over the rushing waters. Her eyelids fluttered weakly, and she coughed again. Then her eyes snapped open and she raised herself on one elbow, her hair trailing water onto the gray stone.

“C—cold,” she said, teeth chattering. That reminded Frank of his own chill, settling as bone-deep as a toothache. But he brushed aside his discomfort in the face of this miracle. How long had she been under? Two minutes? Three? Five?

“Are you okay?” he asked, knowing how stupid his words sounded even as he said them.

“Next time . . . you take me for a swim . . .” she said, panting, her throat rattling with trapped liquid, “can you make it . . . a heated pool?”

She sat up, tucking her knees against her chest and hugging them. Her body trembled, and Frank pressed against her, even though he had little body heat to offer.

“You saved my life,” he told her. She felt good in his arms, even with cold flesh.

“No . . . you saved my life,” she said. Her shoulders rose and fell with her deep, even breathing. She was recovering quickly.

Too quickly.

There must have been a pocket of air trapped in the car, perhaps near the back windshield where her head had been. That was the only explanation. That, or else maybe there really was a God, prayers sometimes did get answered, sometimes miracles happened.

Frank glanced at the deep black sea of sky overhead, at the winking blue-white stars that stretched out and out forever. Then he cleared the brackish aftertaste of the river from his mouth and spat into the dark water. Sure, God just happened to break from His constant job of keeping the stars burning to actually save a human being. That was a laugh.

God hadn’t bothered with saving Samuel, or Frank’s father and mother. He hadn’t saved Boonie Houck or Zeb Potter or Donna Gregg. Hell, if you got right down to it, He hadn’t even saved His only son, Jesus. God was cold and uncaring, as distant as the blue behind stars. God didn’t even deserve Frank’s hate, only the apathy He showered upon those who would love Him, so Frank spat once more and turned his attention to Sheila.

“Are we dead yet?” Sheila said, her eyes bright with her old sarcasm and verve and maybe that little glint that comes only from seeing the light of life’s end.

“No, but you’re going to have so much paperwork, you might wish you were,” he said. “You wrecked a Pickett County patrol car, and the taxpayers are going to want an explanation.”

“And the worst part is, you’re only half joking,” she said, followed by a laugh that turned into a cough.

“That Frankie, he’s a laugh a minute,” came a voice from the shadows along the riverbank.

Frank’s blood temperature plummeted the rest of the way to zero. Sheila tensed beneath his embrace.

A milky shape came out from the dark trees.

“Samuel?” Frank said.

“Thought you were going to get baptized for sure that time,” the dead boy said. “Somebody up there must like you.”

Frank had often dreamed of the apologies he wished he could make to Samuel, all the ways he could try to put things right, a hundred ways to say he was sorry. But now that he had the chance, all he could do was respond dumbly to his brother’s ghost. “You mean God?”

Samuel’s laughter drifted across the river like a mournful fog.

“No,” came the hollow voice. The ghost turned its head up the embankment toward the hill, where the orange lights of the church windows flickered between the trees. “I mean Archer McFall. Him what owns God.”

“Samuel?” Frank held up a quivering hand as if to touch the thing that couldn’t be there, that couldn’t possibly exist. “Is that really you?”

“What’s left of me.”

Sheila squeezed Frank’s forearm. Frank wanted to ask Samuel so many things. But his dead brother spoke before he could think of anything to say.

“Why did you let me die, Frankie?” The hollow eyes became part of the greater night. The wispy threads of the ghost rippled as if fighting a breeze. Then the ghost turned away.

Samuel drifted up the steep bank and disappeared between the mossy boulders. Frank stood, his wet clothes hugging him like a second skin. He was to follow. He knew it as surely as he knew that all the roads of his life led to the red church, led back to that night of his greatest failure, led forward to Archer and the Hung Preacher and the Bell Monster with its Halloween laugh. As surely as he knew that even the dead weren’t allowed to rest in peace. Until Archer said so.

And the thing behind Archer?

Did it have a name, or did it have its own Archer, its own God to obey?

No matter. All that counted now was the arrival of midnight. He took Sheila’s hand and helped her to her feet. Wordlessly they began the climb to the red church.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Ronnie’s nose hurt.

Not so badly that the pain drove away the throbbing in the side of his head where Whizzer had punched him, but plenty bad enough. Whizzer had glared at him when the Day family entered the church, had even tried to stand, but one of Whizzer’s moronic brothers held him back. Whizzer grinned around his cigarette butt in an I’ll see you after church expression.

Ronnie flipped him a secretive finger and followed Mom to the second row. Tim sat between Ronnie and Mom, looking around the church with an awe struck expression. Tim wasn’t that hard to impress. Ronnie had trembled a little coming up the church steps, but now that he was inside and could see this was just a church like any other, only a little bit older, he was able to bite back his fear.

He recognized most of the people in the church, though he didn’t know everybody’s name. There sat creepy Mama Bet McFall, who had stopped by last week to sell Mom a few jars of pickled okra. Anybody who ate okra at all, much less pickled it, must be batty. Plus she was Archer McFall’s mother, and Ronnie knew that Archer had something to do with the trouble between his parents.

“Sit still,” Mom whispered to Tim, who had been kicking his legs back and forth in his excitement. He sat back in the pew and held himself stiff for about twenty seconds, then started swinging his legs again.

Ronnie looked at Mom. She seemed happy, her eyes shiny in the candlelight, a little smile wrinkling the corners of her mouth. She hadn’t smiled this much in years, not ever in the Baptist Church, hardly ever at home, not even at the Heritage Festival at the school when Dad made her get out on the floor and do a little flatfoot dancing. But she was happy now, her hands held over her heart as if she were going to reach in and grab it, then give it away.

The other parishioners whispered to each other, as agitated as Tim. Something was up. You could feel it in the air like a mild dose of electricity, sort of like the shock you got when you touched a wire between the posts of a car battery. Not bad enough to hurt, but enough to make you uneasy.

This felt like one of those turning points. Ronnie didn’t like so many turning points popping up in such a short period of time. If you turned in too many different directions, you got twisted up in knots and couldn’t tell which way you were headed.

Mama Bet turned around in her seat and smiled back at the Days. She was missing three of her teeth, and the grin looked like that of a sick jack-o’-lantern. “Glad you could make it tonight, Linda,” she said, her words liquid and snuffy.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Mom said, smiling in that empty and satisfied way.

“See you brought the boys.” Mama Bet nodded at Ronnie, then reached out to pat Tim on the head. “Little Timothy Day. What do you think of the church?”

Tim shrank back from her gnarled fingers, then shook his head from side to side as if to shed himself of her lingering touch. “It ain’t so scary,” he said in that defiant nine-year-old way. “They said it was scary.”

Mama Bet’s eyes narrowed, and some of the Mathesons at the other end of the pew stopped whispering and stared.

Tim went on. “I mean, it’s supposed to be haunted, but it’s just like the Baptist church, only it smells funny. Like wax and old meat and-”

Ronnie elbowed Tim in the side.

“Your mom did a lot of work on it,” Mama Bet said. “Cleaned it up right good, along with some of the other folks. Made it worthy of Archer’s glory.”

Ronnie frowned. Archer’s glory? In the Baptist church, they always talked about the glory of Jesus and God. People weren’t supposed to be glorious, at least not until they were dead. But here was Mama Bet saying bad stuff right in the middle of the church. And God didn’t come out of the woodwork and strike her dead.

Mom’s smile faded. “What’s wrong, honey?” she asked Ronnie.

“Preacher Staymore says that everything is for the glory of Jesus.”

Mom and Mama Bet laughed in unison.

“This church is a little different,” Mom said.

“You mean like the Methodists and Catholics and all those other people that Dad says don’t know any better?” Tim said.

“Sort of like that, yeah,” Mom said. “Only here, when the plate is passed, you get to take instead of having to give.”

“Cool,” Tim said.

Ronnie had a bad feeling in his stomach, as if he had swallowed a boot. “Mom?”

“What?”

“You ever been to California?”

Mom and Mama Bet exchanged glances. The Mathesons had gone back to whispering among themselves, but suddenly fell silent again as the little door off to the side of the pulpit opened. Mama Bet turned and faced forward. Even the candles stopped flickering, as if not daring to absorb any of the preacher’s precious oxygen. The night beyond the windows turned a shade blacker. A stillness crowded the church like water filling a bottle, and thirty pairs of eyes fixed on the man in the doorway.

Archer crossed the stage like an actor. Mom’s mouth parted slightly, as if she were witnessing a miracle. Ronnie studied the preacher’s face, trying to see what the others must see, the special quality that held the congregation rapt. Archer met his gaze, though surely that was Ronnie’s imagination, because the preacher was looking everywhere at once, meeting every eye in the church.

Ronnie had seen eyes that intense only once before. Painted eyes. In the color plate of his Bible, on the portrait of Jesus. Sad, loving eyes. Eyes that said, I’m sad that you must kill me, but I forgive you.

Ronnie shivered. He wished Preacher Staymore were here. The preacher would tell Ronnie in a calm yet strong voice that Jesus was the light and the truth and the way, that the Lord was aknocking and all you had to do was open up. But Preacher Staymore was miles away, and this wasn’t even Sunday. Ronnie didn’t even know if you could be saved on any day besides Sunday.

If only Preacher Staymore had told him all the rules. Then this new preacher with his peaceful face and wise eyes and graceful hands gripping the lectern wouldn’t scare him so much. If Ronnie knew the rules, if he didn’t need the preacher to help show Jesus the way into his sinning black heart, then maybe Ronnie wouldn’t dread the words about to come from the preacher’s mouth. If Ronnie could be positive that Jesus was still inside him, then nothing else would matter. Except Mom and Tim and Dad.

But he wasn’t sure.

Archer smiled from the lectern, his teeth gleaming in the candlelight. And twenty-nine people smiled back, Mama Bet and Whizzer and Lester Matheson and Mom and even Tim. Only Ronnie doubted. It seemed in all the world, only Ronnie failed to understand and believe.

And Ronnie wondered if he was the only one who heard the stirrings and scratchings in the church belfry.

###

“Sacrifice is the currency of God,” Archer said to the flock, gathering the prepared communion from a shelf beneath the lectern. The plate was covered with a dark cloth, but stains were still visible on the fabric. Archer inhaled its sweet aroma.

Conducting the ritual was Archer’s favorite part of playing messiah.

Rituals were important to the congregation. It was as true for the Catholics and the Baptists and the Jews and the Muslims as it had been for the unfortunate members of the Temple of the Two Suns, and now, the fold of the red church. This was the act that bound them together and bound them to Archer, that made them willing to pay the currency of sacrifice. And the preacher’s job was to make the show worth the price of admission.

“And God sent the Son, who led the world astray,” Archer said, lifting the communion. “And that Son, the terrible, blasphemous Jesus, who was called the Christ, gave his flesh to the people, that they might be tainted. And God looked down, and saw that evil had been set loose upon the world.”

Archer looked out at the congregation. The “old families.” The living flesh of those who had murdered Wendell McFall so many decades ago. They deserved their cleansing. Anger burned his chest, but he kept the beatific smile on his face. One corner of his mouth twitched, but he doubted that anyone noticed. The lambs were too intent on the offering.

“And because we have been tainted, we must be cleansed,” he continued, raising his voice, working toward the payoff.

He sensed the stirrings in the belfry, and knew that his shadow had chosen a new victim. Tonight it would be the boy.

But first, the families must taste the bitterness of their treason. They must know the depth of their iniquities. They must prove themselves worthy of cleansing. He would feed them. Matheson, Buchanan, Potter, Day, all.

He looked down at his mother in the first row. Even dear Mother must be cleansed. Perhaps she was more deserving than anyone. The ritual was his sacred duty, the reason he had been fashioned into flesh. He would not disappoint her.

Archer held the plate before him and gazed upward.

For you are a jealous God.

He bowed his head to hide his smile, then stepped off the altar and gave the plate to his mother. He removed the cloth and watched her face as she took some of the communion in her fingers. She opened her mouth and slid the host between her rotten teeth.

Outside, the world slithered toward midnight.

Frank and Sheila were on the roadbed below the church when the congregation fell silent. Then a sermon began, filling the wooden shell of the church, and though the words echoed together into an indecipherable wall of sound, Frank recognized Archer’s voice.

Through the trees twenty feet ahead, the washed-out flesh of Frank’s brother floated among the bright tombstones. In the still night, Frank could almost hear the whisper of the clouds that brushed the face of the moon. The sheriff gripped Sheila’s hand tightly, as much to reassure himself that she was real as to ease his fear. She squeezed back.

Samuel turned, Frank’s dear, departed brother, Frank’s greatest failure. “You gotta kill me again, Frankie,” Samuel rasped. Though the ghost smiled, the blue eyes revealed nothing.

“Kill you?” Frank stumbled into the border of weeds and saplings that surrounded the cemetery. He knew where Samuel was now. He recognized the curve of the granite marker, the two tombstones beside it. Home. Samuel’s home.

“Samuel?” Frank said, keeping his voice low. He had talked to his dead brother many times, kneeling in that lush grass whose roots were fed by his brother’s decay. But he never dreamed that Samuel would one day talk back.

“Kill me, Frankie,” pleaded the ghost, and suddenly Samuel was a small boy again, not a thing to be feared, just a scared and lost and lonely little boy. A brother. “You got to set me free.”

“Why me?” Frank said.

“Because it will hurt you,” Sheila said. Samuel’s mouth parted in a wicked grin as he nodded agreement.

“What the hell does that mean?” Frank said, angry at his own helplessness and confusion. Guilt and fear were in a battle that rivaled the great bloodfests of the Old Testament.

“Because it’s the hardest thing you can ever do,” Sheila said. “Killing Samuel again would be your greatest sacrifice.”

“And sacrifice is the currency of God,” Samuel said.

“You got your gun?” Frank asked Sheila.

“No. Lost it in the river.”

Frank crashed through the brush, not caring if the congregation heard him. Sheila was right behind him. Frank felt foolish, thinking of killing a ghost. But what else could he do? He finally had a chance to fix a past mistake, but all he could do was repeat it. He had to kill Samuel for real this time, up close and personal. He had to take Samuel away from whatever or whoever owned the boy’s spirit.

Samuel spread his arms in supplication, awaiting whatever would happen after the afterlife. His mouth writhed and bulged with the worms that crawled among his teeth. One slipped out and poked its sightless head around, and Frank fought back the revulsion that curdled his stomach. He crossed the grass, weaving between grave markers and monuments. As he came nearer he could smell Samuel, the odor of maggots and loam hot in the air.

He reached Samuel’s grave, saw the shadow of the bas-relief lamb engraved on the marker, read the words “May God Keep and Protect Him,” felt the coldness radiating from his dead brother’s flesh as he reached his hands up to grip Samuel’s neck. And his hands met empty air as the apparition flickered and faded before his eyes.

Frank fell to his hands and knees and ripped at the grass, heedless of his shoulder wound.

“Samuel,” he yelled, his voice breaking. He clawed at the soil, ignoring the pain as his fingers raked over small stones. He dug like a starved dog after a buried bone, throwing dirt high in the air. Finally he collapsed on the marred grave, the deep reservoir of his tears overflowing, the water of pity and self-pity backed up for too many years.

Archer’s sermon was building in intensity inside the church. Frank listened to the mad rhythm of the words as his sobs subsided. After a long, slow thunder of heartbeats, Frank felt a hand on his head.

“It’s okay, Frank.” Sheila’s voice was as soothing as an evening summer breeze, silk on a sunburn.

He lifted his face from the mud he had made. “I failed him again.”

“What could you do? Just then, or twenty years ago? It’s not your fault.”

He met her eyes. They were understanding, forgiving, sympathetic. All things that he had never seen in a woman’s eyes. All the things he had never looked for, until now.

“I don’t know why, but Samuel still needs me,” Frank said.

A shadow fell over Sheila as a dark hulk blocked out the moon. Frank stiffened. What madness was the night sending next?

“You have to kill these things more than once,” said the looming figure.

David Day.

The barrel of David’s rifle caught the moonlight and sent a menacing glint into Frank’s eyes. Sheila tensed beside Frank, ready to attack. The sheriff clutched her arm to restrain her.

“Only, I can’t be the one who does the killing,” David said.

Frank suspected the carpenter had a screw loose. David had already pulled the gun on him once today, had already proven himself dangerous. But there was something conspiratorial in David’s tone, and his eyes were focused on the church instead of on Frank and Sheila.

“What are you talking about?” Frank asked him.

Sheila interrupted. “He’s crazy, Frank.”

“And what ain’t, around here?” David replied, crouching behind a concrete angel whose wings were so rain-worn that the feathers had lost detail. David aimed the rifle toward one of the windows of the church and squinted through the rifle’s scope. He seemed to have forgotten all about Frank and Sheila.

Inside the church, Archer’s voice rose to a fevered pitch, though the words were unintelligible. It reminded Frank of those old film clips of Adolf Hitler’s speeches he’d seen, the same thundering and maniacal tirade. He’d always wondered how people could be so stupid as to fall in with anybody so obviously insane. Now he knew the kind of odd power and charisma that could totally pull the wool over people’s eyes, power that could make them forget their own hopes and hearts and even humanity.

It was the kind of power that Archer possessed. Or that possessed him.

Power that no human should have, because no human knew how to wield it. But then, Archer wasn’t human. Frank looked at David’s form huddled around the rifle and wondered if anybody was human. Then he felt Sheila’s hand in his.

Yes. Somebody was human.

Somebody lived and breathed and loved.

“What did you mean by ‘You have to kill these things more than once’?” Frank asked David.

The man turned from his aiming, the shadows eerie on his eyes. “Remember what I said to you out at the house today? About killing Archer as many times as it takes?”

“Yeah?”

“When he took all those local girls out to California, he set up the Temple of the Two Suns. Don’t know if you knew that part of it, but I expect it was just more of the devil’s work. I went out there to bring Linda back. She was eighteen. Hell, she didn’t know what she was doing. I guess I didn’t, neither. All I knew was that I loved her, and I wasn’t going to give her up without a fight.”

“Some people don’t need to be saved,” said Sheila.

“No offense, Detective, but them twenty-dollar opinions won’t buy you a dirty cup of water in these parts,” David said. “I went out to California for Linda’s good, not my good. That’s when I saw what happened to one of them girls that went out there with Archer.”

Frank’s stomach tightened. Archer’s voice ranted, roared, reached heights of frenzy that even a Baptist evangelist at a tent revival couldn’t match.

“He killed her,” David said. “Cut her up. Took her heart, and maybe some other things. I shut my eyes after that first part. But not before I seen them pass around the plate of meat.”

“Just like he did the ones here,” Frank whispered. Then he remembered the odd taste that had filled his mouth after attending Archer’s service. What had happened during those lost hours?

“No,” Sheila said, shaking her head in disbelief.

But nothing was beyond belief anymore. They had both seen Archer McFall change shape before their eyes. They both had watched as Sheila shot him five times at point-blank range. Yet here the preacher was, tending to his flock, culling the stray lambs, feeding them the Word.

“That’s why I shot him,” David said. “Killed him, or so I thought.”

A thick cloud passed over the face of the moon, momentarily darkening the hill. The candles burning in the church cast the only visible light. There were no streetlights in Whispering Pines, and the scattered houses were hidden by the hills. Frank felt as though they were the only people in the world, that everything outside the cemetery and the surrounding mountains had fallen away into a dark emptiness. And all that remained of civilization, of humanity, hope, and sanity, resided right here. Frank and Sheila and David. Archer and the congregation.

And the church.

The red church, with its golden eyes.

The church that had swallowed Samuel.

The church that also claimed Frank’s father and mother.

The church that held secrets in its stained and stubborn boards.

The church that had hoarded the iniquities of the old families, that had leered at their weddings and eavesdropped on their funerals and absorbed the soft, spirited seepage of their prayers.

The church that housed the ghosts of memories.

The cloud drifted on and the moon again gave its baleful glare. The steeple thrust toward the sky, the awkward broken cross barely visible against the night sky. The dogwood’s branches dangled in the gentle breeze, brushing the steeple like a mother caressing a babe. The shadows shifted in the belfry, the darkness dividing itself.

“You see it, too, don’t you?” David said.

Frank nodded.

“What?” Sheila said.

“The Bell Monster,” David said.

“The thing that killed Samuel,” Frank said.

Yes, the church was to blame, not Frank. If the church hadn’t stood all those years, gathering legends like a stone gathered moss, then Frank, Samuel, and the others wouldn’t have been there that fateful Halloween night. If not for Wendell McFall’s sins, none of the tragedies would have occurred. If, if, if.

If Samuel were still alive, he wouldn’t be dead. If Samuel were still dead, he wouldn’t be a ghost.

David’s next words interrupted Frank’s thoughts and brought back the river chill that he’d been trying to ignore.

“You’re the one that’s got to do the killing, Sheriff.”

“What are you talking about?” Sheila said.

“You’re of the blood,” David said, ignoring her. “You’re of the old families. That’s why my bullets don’t do nothing. It’s got to be done by one of Archer’s own.”

Maybe. Sheila didn’t say anything, but Frank knew what she was thinking. Her bullets hadn’t killed Archer, either. Maybe that was the way this thing worked.

Wendell McFall had been killed by his own people. And if Wendell was behind this, if Wendell was a restless spirit that was tied forever to the church, then maybe the scene had to play itself out again. . . .

Frank balled his hand and ground his fist into his temple. The pain drove away the foolish thoughts. What was the use of trying to figure out why Whispering Pines was go-to-hell inside out? The important thing was to make it all go away.

“He’s right, Frank,” Sheila said. “I know it sounds silly- hell, you know I don’t believe any of this- but if there are rules to this game, that one makes as much sense as any. That’s what Samuel was trying to tell you.”

“My boys are in there,” David said, nodding toward the church. “You’ve got to save them. And Linda, too. I reckon if the Lord can forgive her, I can, too. I guess when you save somebody once, you owe them.”

David handed the rifle to Frank. He glanced at the belfry, at the quivering fabric of darkness. Frank took the rifle.

It was heavy and awkward in his hands. He’d never liked guns much. He’d hunted as a boy, had shown enough targeting skill to earn his police certification, but had rarely fired a gun since. He’d stopped wearing a holster piece when he’d been elected sheriff eight years ago.

“What if you’re wrong?” Frank said to David.

“He’s not wrong,” Sheila said. “Archer says sacrifice is the currency of God.”

Frank’s jaw tightened. “What did you say?”

Sheila fell silent, her face pale in the moonlight. Frank was about to ask her again, to slap her, to do something to drive her words from his memory, to make her take them back and swallow them, but the day died as he stood before her.

Midnight.

The air screamed with the first toll of the bell.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

This is just like the Baptist church, Ronnie thought. Nothing to be scared of here. They’re just passing the plate, taking up money for God. So what if Reverend McFall’s sermons are a little wacky? When you think about it, Preacher Staymore’s gone off the deep end a time or two.

In the pew in front of him, Mama Bet took the plate, her hands trembling. The reverend pulled the cloth from the heaping plate. Tim wrinkled his nose, then pinched it closed. Other members of the congregation craned their necks, trying to see the offering.

“Shoo,” Tim said. “Something smells like donkey crap.”

Ronnie elbowed Tim at the same time that Mom squeezed Tim’s forearm. “Ow,” he yelped.

“Shh,” Mom whispered. “Show some respect in church.”

That was just what Dad always said. This place was getting more and more like the Baptist church with every second. If you could forget that it was the middle of the night and that the red church was haunted, why, you might as well be in any of them. You still had to be quiet whenever somebody performed some ritual or other. You had to pretend like you were paying attention, and you couldn’t talk or laugh. You had to sit up straight and stay awake.

And sitting up straight was getting harder and harder to do. The pain pill Ronnie had taken before bedtime was kicking in. His thoughts spread fat and happy, the joy juice was sloshing around in his brain, the hard wooden pew felt like cotton candy under his bottom. He was almost having fun in church. If old Preacher Staymore could see him now, then Ronnie would be in for a serious session of heart-opening, head-bowing penance.

Mama Bet held the plate, then bent and mumbled what sounded like prayers. Becca Faye’s and Sonny’s faces both curdled in disgust. Stepford held his nose closed as if he were diving into a swimming hole. If something stank that bad, Ronnie was glad his nose was packed with gauze. He almost giggled. That pain pill was sure doing a number on his head.

Mama Bet reached into the plate, and Ronnie leaned forward for a closer look. Mama Bet was putting whatever was in the plate to her mouth. Dad said that the Catholics ate bread and pretended it was Jesus’ body, and drank wine pretending it was the blood of the Lamb. But this looked even weirder than that.

A string of thick fluid escaped from Mama Bet’s fingers. It glistened in the candlelight, looking for all the world like . . .

The happy pill was definitely messing with him. Because it looked like blood dripping from her hand, but before he could get another look, she had put the stuff in her mouth and started chewing.

“Gross,” Tim said.

Mom didn’t even pinch him this time, because she was gripping the back of Mama Bet’s pew so hard that her fingers were white. She had a strange smile on her face. Mama Bet smacked her lips as she worked the offering.

“The body of God,” the reverend said.

“Amen,” Mama Bet responded, the word sloppy because of her chewing.

Archer McFall took the plate from her and stepped to the end of the next pew. Mom eagerly looked up at him, and he held out the plate to her. Tim edged away from her until he was pressing against Ronnie. Mom reached out, her eyes bright as ice, and Ronnie saw what was in the offering plate.

Clumps of tattered meat.

Moist, raw, and stringy.

Barf-out. She’s not EATING that stuff, is she?

Mom took a morsel between her fingers and brought it to her lips. She bit down and turned and smiled at Tim and Ronnie. Bits of the pink meat dangled between her teeth. Ronnie’s stomach tumbled and knotted.

“The body of God,” Archer McFall said. He reached out and patted Tim’s head. Then he looked at Ronnie. McFall’s eyes were as deep as quarry holes, black and hiding secrets. Ronnie shivered and tried to look away, but the man’s gaze held him hypnotized.

It’s the PAIN PILL, dummy. You’ve fallen asleep and you’re just having a stupid dream. Little snakes are NOT squiggling in his eyes.

“Amen,” Mom said in response to the reverend’s blessing. She passed the plate to Tim, who slid back in his seat away from it. Ronnie moved away, too, but Sonny Absher pressed against him from the other side.

“Where you going, runt?” Sonny said, his lips curled in menace.

Ronnie looked wildly about the church. Whizzer made a chewing motion with his mouth and leered at him. Mama Bet nodded encouragement, her rheumy eyes like pails of rainwater. McFall leaned forward, his mouth hanging open.

Worms. Worms between his teeth.

“Come on, Timmy,” Mom said, her voice creepy and soothing. “It’s good for you.”

She nudged the plate against his arm. Some of the grue slopped over onto Tim’s flesh, and he stared it. He looked at Mom, eyebrows raised.

“Do it, honey,” she said. “Let the reverend bless you.”

Tim reached toward the offering plate.

No. NO. NOOOO.

Ronnie reached out and slapped Tim’s hand away. The plate flipped out of Mom’s hand, hitting the back of the pew and splashing into Mama Bet’s face. The viscid blood clung to her wrinkles, small tatters of pulpy flesh on her checks.

McFall roared, his voice thundering, the wooden shell of the church vibrating with his rage.

And the bell struck.

###

The coppery, heavy taste of the communion filled Linda’s mouth, her heart, her soul. She felt strong, reborn, just as she had in California in the Temple of the Two Suns. Just like always.

She lovingly held the offering out to Tim, and he was almost convinced, almost saved, almost there, when Ronnie knocked the plate away.

Archer’s anger was radiating in waves of heat beside her. He wasn’t angry over the spilled offering; no, there was plenty more where that came from, and a little dirt never hurt the sacramental flesh. But Archer couldn’t abide betrayal in any form.

Neither could Linda.

God knew she loved her boys, but Ronnie was getting to be a real pain in the rump. Ronnie was displeasing Archer. Ronnie was sitting there with that defiant look in his eyes, looking so much like his dad did when he set his mind to something. It was that same stupid Christian stubbornness, the look that said, Don’t tell ME there’s another path to God.

Well, she wasn’t going to let Ronnie get into the clutches of that devil-worm Jesus without a fight.

But she wouldn’t have to fight alone.

She smiled as the bell’s long arcing note rattled her eardrums.

Now would come the cleansing, the true reason Archer had been sent to this earth.

Perhaps it didn’t matter that the vessel had not been fully prepared, that the sacred meat had not passed his lips. He still needed to be given to God.

Ronnie needed to die for the glory of Archer, of Wendell McFall, of the old families. He needed to pay for the iniquities of the Days. Most of all, he needed to die for the greater glory of herself. God would surely smile upon this great sacrifice she was making.

Around her, members of the congregation were rising, some heading for the door, some shouting in anger at Ronnie’s betrayal. Sonny Absher grabbed Ronnie’s sleeve, but Ronnie pulled free and scrambled to the floor.

“Come on, Timmy,” Ronnie screeched, tugging on Tim’s right arm.

No. He can’t get away.

She grabbed Tim’s left arm and held on with all the strength borne of desperate love. A mother’s love.

For a brief moment, Tim was caught in the middle of the tug-of-war, and Archer reached over, talons extended, to take the boy. But then Tim was gone, stolen by the meddling Ronnie.

The boys scurried underneath the pew as Linda’s anger rose to match Archer’s. She wouldn’t let Ronnie rob her of this chance to win Archer’s favor. She’d wanted the reverend for so long. Not just in the lustful flesh, though that would be fine with her, but she wanted to join in spirit.

And now Ronnie was depriving her of the gift that would buy Archer’s undying love.

Her oldest son had always been a troublemaker, now that she thought about it. Always reading books and getting ideas and asking dumb questions when there was really only one question. And the answer to that question was Archer.

She added her voice to the clamor and vaulted over the front pew, where the boys had gone. She lost her balance and slammed against Mama Bet, and the old woman fell heavily to the floor. Mama Bet moaned in pain, but Linda ignored her. Mama Bet may have given birth to Archer, but she was just another vessel, just another piece of meat used by God to bring Archer to Linda. Mama Bet mattered no more than rain mattered to a river.

Ronnie pulled Tim to the dais and helped him over the railing. Linda followed. Where was Archer? Didn’t he see that Tim, the youngest descendant of all the old families, was getting away? Didn’t he care? Didn’t he want to accept the sacrifice as badly as she wanted to offer it?

Wasn’t sacrifice the currency of God?

She crossed the railing and looked down at the shape on the old boards. Wings, claws outstretched, a terrible angel of dark blood.

Back again.

The work that Wendell McFall had begun was now nearly complete. Only one more sinner’s blood needed to be spilled to flesh it out and bring the Bell Monster’s spirit from shadow to fully formed life.

Only one more cleansing.

She yelled at the boys to stop, but they didn’t even look back. They ran into the vestry and the door slammed shut. Linda clenched her fists until her knuckles ached, then turned to look back at the congregation.

The Buchanans had spilled out the front door, their spell broken. Sonny and Becca Faye were edging toward the side of the church, away from Mama Bet, who had risen to her knees and lifted her arms.

“Look what you done to me now,” Mama Bet yelled to the ceiling. She paused to lick at the offal in the corners of her mouth, then said, “You ain’t made me suffer enough, now you got to go and mess up my Sunday-go-to-meeting dress. I can’t wait to get my hands on you.”

Linda glanced across the rapidly thinning crowd. Where was Archer?

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Sonny yelled to Becca Faye. “This bunch is crazier than a bug in a bottle.”

Mama Bet chanted again, a toothless prayer: “I can’t wait to get face-to-face with you, mister. Then, by God, there’ll be hell to pay. Cause you owe me big.”

Oh, them of little faith, Linda thought, but Archer would deal with them later. After tonight’s sacrifice, Archer would have all the time and power and anger in the world.

She shivered with rapture and went to the vestry to fetch her boys.

“Holy hell and D-double-damned,” David muttered.

The bell’s clangor rolled across the hilltops, slapping the mountain slopes and reverberating back in a trapped tide. The vibrations wriggled against David’s skin, a thousand live things.

“There’s no rope,” Sheila said to herself.

She was starting to get on David’s nerves. Damned woman ought not be a cop, anyway. Women were too sensitive, too caring. Too easily fooled. And that thing she’d said about sacrifice being the currency of God, why, she’d said it exactly the way Linda did.

Kind of worshipy and dreamy, in-love, like.

But she was the sheriff’s problem, not his.

Because his problem was What in hell do I do about that shadow-shape thing coming out of the steeple?

But maybe that was everybody’s problem, because the thing swooping down was full of sharp edges.

The shadow swerved and skimmed across the roof of the church, then tangled in the branches of the old dogwood. David glanced away to look inside the church. The congregation was scattering and shouting, and for a brief instant David saw Ronnie and Tim scrambling toward the front of the church.

And behind them, Linda.

He saw Ronnie lead Tim into the vestry.

“Get Archer,” David shouted at the sheriff, who stood as stiffly as any of the stone angels around them, the rifle like a weight in his hands.

Sheila said, “It’s not Archer’s fault. He’s just doing God’s work.”

“What in hell?” David shouted at her, and now the church door had slammed open and people were spilling out onto the cool dewy grass.

Sheila had turned. Archer had gotten to her somehow. Softened her up. Fed her the big lie and shut the door to her heart away from the saving grace of Jesus.

But the sheriff . . . well, the sheriff would take care of business.

Except he was from one of the old families.

Same as Linda, same as Mama Bet, same as Donna and Zeb and Boonie.

Same as them that was running away from the church like rabbits from a brushfire.

And David had seen Sheriff Littlefield at last night’s service.

Chowing down with the rest of them.

Eating what Archer offered.

Damn.

Was everybody on the side of Satan?

And David had given him a rifle.

About the smartest thing you ever done, Mr. David Day. Now you’d best forget about him, forget about all of them. Save the only things that matter.

Save the boys.

And to hell with the rest.

He raced across the graveyard to the rear of the church, keeping one eye on the dark branches of the dogwood and the other on the sheriff.

###

Frank watched David disappear into the shadows behind the church.

The congregation, Frank’s constituents, the people who had once been his neighbors, scattered across the graveyard, some getting into their cars. Others disappeared into the trees. Haywood and Nell Absher crouched behind a large marker near the sheriff and Sheila.

“You’ve got to kill him,” Sheila said.

“Haywood?”

“No, Archer.”

“I . . . I don’t know if I can.”

“That’s the way it has to be done. For God so loved the world, He gave His only other begotten son. Kill Archer, and set Samuel free. Set all the sinners free.”

Frank shook his head. He clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. His wet clothes gave off a mist in the moonlight.

“You got to, Frankie,” came a muffled, hollow voice from the ground, the sky, nowhere. Samuel’s voice.

Frank gripped the rifle, stood and strode toward the church. Stepford Matheson ran toward him, saw the rifle and froze, then fled in the opposite direction. The night was filled with the gargle of car ignitions and excited shouts. Twin beams swept over Frank as the Buchanans’ pickup turned around. Frank didn’t even blink as the headlights pierced his eyes and the truck growled its way to the main road.

He came to the foot of the old dogwood and stared up into its black branches, to the scattered white blossoms at its top.

Where is that damned brother-killing shadow?

But he knew that the shadow wasn’t the real monster. The real monster was the one who cast the shadow.

The Reverend Archer McFall.

Frank climbed the steps and entered the church foyer. He heard Sheila behind him. She would want to see. She was part of it now. Though she wasn’t of the old families, she had been touched and changed by Archer.

In Archer, they were all one big happy family.

Frank entered the dimly lit sanctuary. Some of the candles had blown out because of the open door, and it took Frank’s eyes a moment to adjust. Someone moaned near the front of the church. Another person—it looked like Linda Day—stood to one side of the altar, her back to him.

“You got to do it, Frankie,” said Samuel.

He spun, and Sheila smiled at him. “Sacrifice is the currency of God,” she said in Samuel’s voice.

“What the hell are you?” Frank said, the muscles in his neck rigid.

Sheila batted her eyelashes. She spoke in her own voice this time. “Just a woman, Frank. Just somebody else for you to love and lose. Just another piece of God’s great puzzle.”

Her face twisted, dissolved, shifted into Archer’s.

“Just somebody else for me to take away from you,” Archer said.

Frank swung the butt of the rifle at Archer’s smirk, wanting to drive the bright, secretive glee from the monster’s eyes. Just before the wood struck flesh, the face shifted back into Sheila’s.

Her eyes widened in surprise and anticipated pain.

###

Dark.

So black that Ronnie couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

He was in a box, a coffin, with nothing but the hard thud of his heart to mark the passing of time.

“I’m scared,” Tim whispered.

“Shh,” Ronnie said. “They’ll hear us.”

Though they already knew the two of them were locked in the vestry. It wasn’t as though there were a whole lot of places to hide inside the red church.

Ronnie finally opened his eyes. The weak gleam of moon fought through a small window set high in the back wall. He could barely make out Tim’s pale face, though his eyes and mouth were steeped in shadows. He pressed his ear to the door again.

She was out there.

Waiting.

Wanting.

Ronnie shivered, remembering the deep and creepy look in his mother’s eyes as she ate the raw meat, as she passed the plate to Tim, as she screamed at them for running away from Archer McFall.

Mom knocked again. “Let me in, boys.”

Ronnie put his hand over Tim’s mouth before his younger brother could cry out. Tim’s hot, rapid breath passed between his fingers.

“Mommy won’t hurt you,” she said.

Ronnie put one finger to his lips to shush Tim, then slid quietly around until his back was against the door. To get inside, she’d have to bust the old metal lock. But they couldn’t stay here forever. Some of the other church people might help her. Like Mama Bet. Like Whizzer.

They’d have to find a way out.

The window was too high to reach. Ronnie wasn’t sure if he could even fit through it. But maybe Tim could.

The door rattled. “Come out, my honeys. I’ll protect you.”

Said the spider to the fly.

But that was Ronnie’s mom out there, the one who had raised him and burped him and kissed the scrapes on his knee and stood up for him when the school counselor said Ronnie wasn’t playing well with others.

This was the only mom he had.

He fought back the tears that burned his eyes and wet the bandages on his nose.

Think, think, think. You’re supposed to be smart, remember? At least, that’s what all those tests say.

What would Dad do?

Something shuffled in the corner, a light, whispery sound.

A leaf?

A mouse?

This was supposed to be a fancy mouse motel, after all.

That was what Lester Matheson had called the church. But Lester also said, It’s people what makes a church, and what and all they believe.

The people here believed some pretty weird stuff.

People like his mom. And he was so scared of his Mom that he wouldn’t open the door.

The soft, dry rattling came again, so quietly that he barely heard it over his pounding pulse.

He’d have to do something fast.

“Ronnie,” Mom said from the other side of the door.

He tensed.

“Listen,” she said. “It’s Tim that Archer needs. Open the door and let me have Tim, and you can go. Mommy promises.”

Tim gasped.

Mom usually kept her promises.

Ronnie looked into his brother’s face, saw the glint of tears on his cheeks, the weak reflection of the moon in his glasses.

This was the dingle-dork who pestered him and tore the covers off his Spiderman comics and said that Melanie Ward wanted to give him a big, sloppy kiss.

Tim was the biggest pain-in-the-rear of all time.

And this moment, this choice, was another of those turning points that were popping up so often lately. This was some kind of test.

Everything was a test.

And to win, to make an A-plus, all he had to do was stand up, turn the brass catch, and let the door swing open, let Mom give Tim a big, bloody hug and carry him off to Archer. And Ronnie could walk right down the road to the rest of his life.

Yeah, RIGHT.

Mom knocked again, more firmly. “Ronnie? Be my big boy.”

“Mommy,” Tim whimpered, a bubble of mucus popping in his nose.

“Tim?” Mom said. “Open the door. Come to Mommy.”

Tim’s hand snaked toward the door handle, trembled, and stopped halfway. Ronnie reached out and caught it, then pulled Tim to his feet.

The thing in the dark corners shuffled again.

Mice.

He led Tim underneath the window, then put his mouth to his brother’s ear. “When I boost you up, break the window and crawl out.”

Tim’s glasses flashed in the moonlight as he nodded.

Ronnie stooped and cupped his hands, and Tim put a foot in them. Ronnie grunted as he lifted, and Tim grabbed the small splintered ledge and pulled himself up to the glass.

“Close your eyes and hit it with your elbow,” Ronnie commanded. “Hurry.”

Ronnie didn’t worry about remaining quiet, because whatever was in the corner was growing louder and larger and darker than the shadows. Tim hit the window once, and nothing happened.

“Harder,” Ronnie yelled, his voice cracking.

Tim smacked the window again and the brittle explosion was followed by the tinkle of showering glass.

“What are you boys up to in there?” Mom shouted, banging on the door.

Ronnie pushed Tim higher. “Watch out for the glass,” he said, as Tim scurried through the small frame. When Tim had tumbled through, probably landing shoulder-first on the grass outside, Ronnie jumped as high as he could. His fingers scratched inches short of the window ledge.

At least Tim made it.

He leaned against the wall. Alone. He would have to face the darkness alone.

The darkness moved away from the lesser darkness, and the moon fell on its face.

His face.

Preacher Staymore.

Ronnie exhaled a lungful of held fear as the preacher’s voice reached and soothed him. “With the Son of God in your heart, you’re never alone.”

The preacher stepped forward, calm and smiling.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Wait a second.

What’s the preacher doing here? During the First Baptist services, he said time and again that all the other churches led people straight to hell.

Ronnie stepped back from the man’s broad, grinning face and fervent eyes.

“You’re wondering what I’m doing here, aren’t you, my child?” Preacher Staymore spread his arms and held his palms upward, like Jesus in those Bible color plates.

“Let me in, Ronnie,” Mom yelled, rattling the door again.

“I hid back here so I could help save you, Ronnie,” the preacher said, ignoring her. “God sent me special just to watch you. We knew you’d be tempted.”

“Tempted?” Ronnie glanced at the window.

“Yes. You know there’s only one true way.”

Mom pounded on the door.

“Can you hear Him aknockin’, Ronnie?”

I can try for the window one more time. Maybe if I get a running start—

Mom flailed at the door. “You boys had better get out here right this second,” she said, her voice a mixture of anger and hysteria.

“Escaping won’t save you, Ronnie.” Preacher Staymore took another step closer. “You can run to the ends of the earth, but you can’t get away from your own sorry heart. Only one person can cleanse you.”

Ronnie pressed against the wall, clawing at the wood behind him.

The moon bathed the preacher’s face, almost like a dramatic spotlight on some crazy stage.

“Can you hear Him aknockin’?” the preacher repeated.

Mom pounded on the door. “Ron-NEEEEE.”

The preacher reached out to touch Ronnie’s forehead, just as he had done the dozen or so other times he’d helped Ronnie get saved. Ronnie closed his eyes and bowed his head slightly, the way he was supposed to do.

At least I’ll get saved one last time before Mom and Archer and the Bell Monster get me. And dear Jesus, when you come in this time, please stay awhile. Please don’t let me have more of those sins of the heart that make you so mad. And please, please, please, let Tim get away.

“You got to throw open the door, Ronnie,” the preacher whispered, his hand moist and cool on Ronnie’s forehead. “You got to let Him in.”

The feeling came, that mixture of warmth and airiness expanding in his chest.

The good feeling.

The kind of feeling he got when Mom hugged him or Dad mussed his hair.

A feeling of being wanted, of being loved.

Of belonging.

He smiled, because he was going to tell Preacher Staymore that the door was open, that the Lord had come right on in and then slammed it shut so that no sins could sneak in behind Him.

Ronnie opened his eyes to thank the preacher, but the preacher wasn’t there.

A slick stack of something that looked like gray mud stood before him. Touching him.

Some of the mud slid down his forehead and clung to his bandaged nose.

The mudstack made wet noises, a bubbling like snotty breath.

Ronnie choked back a scream. The darkness took shape, the shadow behind the mud gaining sharp edges.

The Bell Monster.

Ronnie slapped away the branch of mud that stretched to his head. It was like punching a giant slug.

Mom screamed his name again from behind the door.

The mudstack jiggled forward, the shadow looming behind it.

It’s moving, oh, sweet Jesus Christ, it’s MOVING.

Ronnie tried to tell himself it was the pain pill, this was a stupid dream and he’d wake up with a pillowcase tangled around his head. That he’d wake up and the only problems he would have were Mom and Dad’s arguing, Tim’s pestering, Melanie Ward’s hot-and-cold flirting, and all the hundreds of ordinary problems that boys across the world faced every day.

Oh, yeah, and the big one: whether Jesus Christ was going to stay with him and help him get through it all, or whether He was going to cut and run at the first tiny sin of the heart.

But the mud monster moved again, pressing against Ronnie, and he could no longer lie to himself. This was real.

And the worst got worser, as Tim would say.

Because the thing spoke.

“Come into me, Ronnie,” came the slobbery, mumbling voice. “Give it up. It’s the only way to get cleansed forever.”

Ronnie didn’t ask how getting smothered in a nasty, creepy mound of walking, talking mud would make him clean.

“I need you,” the mud monster said. The shadow grew larger behind it, filling the room, blocking the window. “Give yourself to me.”

Yeah, RIGHT.

It’s all about sacrifice, ain’t it? I give myself up, and you let Tim go. That’s the deal, huh?

Ronnie struggled against the crush of mud.

But then you’ll be back, and it will be TIM’S turn to sacrifice. And then Dad’s, and then everybody else’s. And everybody loses but you.

Because YOU don’t have to sacrifice anything.

All you do is take and take and take.

The weight of the mud pressed Ronnie to his knees. The slimy fluid soaked through his clothes. Mom called again and pounded on the door, the sound a million miles away.

All he wanted to do was sleep. He was so tired. It was so much easier to just give yourself up than actually try to fight.

So much easier.

###

Frank tried to pull back on the rifle, but his swing had too much momentum.

Sheila’s eyes widened as the rifle butt struck her cheek.

Oh, my God. No, no, NOOOO.

The wooden stock glanced off her jaw, and for a split second, Frank had the illusion that the butt had passed through her skull. But he’d been suffering a lot of illusions lately, and the slapping sound echoed off the church and tombstones.

Sheila dropped like a sack of wet seed corn, and Frank dropped to her side almost as rapidly, calling her name.

A red splotch spread across her cheek. Frank put his fingers gently against the bruise. “You okay?” he whispered.

Her eyes fluttered open and she groaned.

“I didn’t . . . you were Archer . . .”

She gripped his shoulder, the one she had shot hours earlier. Frank winced but swallowed his grunt of pain.

She worked her jaw sideways twice, then said, “It still works.”

So maybe he’d held back enough.

“You were Archer,” Frank repeated stupidly.

“Gee, thanks for the compliment,” she said. “Have I told you lately that you’re ape shit crazy?”

“Not in the last five minutes or so.” Frank glanced into the branches of the dogwood above, making sure nothing sharp and black was moving around up there.

Where was Archer? And how was Frank going to kill something that couldn’t be killed when he couldn’t even trust his own eyes?

Sheila sat up, rubbing her jaw. “Guess that was payback,” she said, pointing at the blood seeping through his bandage.

“Yeah,” he said, gripping the rifle. “Now we’re even, but somebody else has a debt to settle.”

He rose and headed for the church. Most of the congregation had scattered, and the church was silent except for Linda Day’s shouting. Frank stood before the door and stared at the belfry, then into the dim interior of the church.

Twenty-three years ago, at Samuel’s funeral, Frank had entered this structure with only one comfort: that God would take care of Samuel in the afterlife.

And that comfort had kept Frank going all these years, even though a tiny niggling voice in the back of his mind never let him forget what the Bell Monster had done. God had been with Frank then, had helped him deal with the sorrow of losing his family, had laid by him and with him and inside him during a thousand sleepless nights.

But now, as Frank entered the church, he knew the kind of tricks that God liked to play. And that God’s closeness was only another illusion.

This time Frank walked alone.

###

Mama Bet crawled on her hands and knees across the floor to the altar. The muck that had been Donna Gregg’s internal organs soaked into Mama Bet’s Sunday dress and coated her skin. She didn’t mind the sticky blood on her face or the rank, coppery taste that clung to the inside of her mouth. This was an offering, after all. A sacrifice.

There’s nothing as glorious as the flesh of one of the old families.

The others had fled, those of little faith who shied from the brilliance of Archer’s power. But not her. No, she would follow to the end. And the others were only delaying what was meant to be, what was ordained by God. The only thing that heavenly son of a snake ever did right was to give Archer to the world.

To her.

She licked her lips and raised up in worship of the crooked cross. The wood caught the dying light from the candles, standing as defiantly as a true believer on a devil’s playground. The Jesus-demon had been nailed to such a cross, and people had fallen all over themselves to get on the bandwagon. But when the real thing, the true messiah, came unto their midst, they scattered like a bunch of hens running from a fox.

Except Linda Day.

The woman banged on the vestry door like there was no tomorrow, screaming Ronnie’s name over and over again. Mama Bet chuckled to herself.

I reckon faith is either all or nothing. Linda’s gone whole hog for Archer, giving up her boys without a second thought just so Archer will pat her on the head and flash that television smile. And people think I’M crazy.

She wiped a fleck of flesh from her chin and stood on trembling legs.

I’m getting too old for such foolishness. About time I took Archer up on that eternal peace he keeps promising. As long as God stays way over to the other end of heaven, I don’t think I’ll mind one bit. I believe I’ve earned a little rest.

But first they had to nail down one little piece of unfinished business. Business by the name of Ronnie Day. Mama Bet looked at the dark shadow on the dais, at its flickering edges, at the blackness that seemed to burn through to the belly of the earth.

She started laughing.

Linda turned from the door, her face wet with hysterical tears. “He won’t let me in.”

Mama Bet was enjoying the woman’s misery. After all, the blood of the old families ran through Linda’s veins. Linda was one of them—them that had hung Wendell McFall, because they were just as blind to glory back then as they were today. Them that deserved all the suffering that Archer could dish out.

You showed them the way, you lit the path, you spoon-fed them the truth, and they spat in your face.

People didn’t change.

“You didn’t say the magic words.”

“Magic words?” Linda blubbered, her eyes roaming wildly over the church as if a message might be written on the walls. “What magic words? Archer didn’t say anything about magic words.”

“I believe the words are ‘Let me die,’” boomed a voice from the back of the church.

Mama Bet turned.

Sheriff Frank Littlefield strode up the aisle, carrying a rifle, his eyes narrowed and his face clenched in a strange smile. Blood soaked the left half of his uniform shirt. In the foyer behind him, the detective woman leaned against the wall.

Mama Bet laughed again. “You think Archer will fall down for a bullet? You’re crazier than a liquored-up Absher.”

“Archer wants to be killed. And it’s got to be done by one of us. One of us who belong to Archer.”

Maybe so. Maybe Littlefield’s been chosen. Though he didn’t seem all that gung-ho at the service the other night. Just nibbled on a bit of old Zeb’s stringy flesh like it was a piece of black licorice. Didn’t put a whole lot of gumption in it.

But Archer had his own ways, and who was she to question his workings? One Judas was as good as any other. Let the sheriff come.

“He’s in there,” Mama Bet said, pointing past Linda to the door. “Doing a little holy work.”

Linda gasped and put her hand to her mouth.

As the sheriff stepped before the vestry door, Mama Bet said, “You ain’t got it quite right, Sheriff. The magic words ain’t ‘let me die.’ They’re ‘let me die for you.’”

The sheriff pounded on the door. “Open up, McFall. I got a message for you. From a boy named Samuel.”

Mama Bet rubbed her hands together, smearing the coagulated blood. This was going to be good.

The old brass handle turned and the door swung open.

###

David crept from the woods behind the church, keeping his eyes on the dark canopy overhead. But one of those hell holes might be under his feet, one of those gateways that allowed the devil to crawl up out of his hot pit in the center of the Earth and stir up a ruckus. God had kicked the devil’s hind end a thousand times over, but still the red-faced son of a skunk kept on trying. You had to hand it to the devil: long odds never dampened his enthusiasm one bit.

David almost felt guilty about sending the sheriff into battle. You couldn’t fight a holy war unless you were serious about the “holy” part. The sheriff hadn’t been to church of late, and never had been a regular. David had seen the man baptized when they were both children, but sometimes the water didn’t soak completely through.

Branches snapped about a hundred feet to his right, and he tensed and crouched behind a thick oak. The sound faded. Probably one of Archer’s folks. One of the stray lambs, bolting the pen now that the gate was unlatched.

David reached the clearing behind the church just as glass shattered. The moon flashed on the jagged pieces that flew from the high window. Then he heard Ronnie’s frantic voice.

David ran from the trees, not caring that he was out in the open where the devil could strike him down. All he cared about was that his two children, the dearest things a father could have, were inside that church with the devil’s incarnation. And, almost as bad, they were with Linda, who was so cross-eyed over Archer that she couldn’t tell right from wrong.

He almost shouted, but the devil’s keepers were all around. Some of those stray lambs might have a few teeth. They might just want to get a good bite of God-fearing flesh, so they could chew it up in mockery of dear sweet Jesus. Just like they had in California, and just like they had in the red church.

And then David put it all together.

The boys.

Linda was going to give them to Archer as an offering. As soul food.

He ran, sweat bleeding through his pores faster than the night could chill his skin. Tim’s head appeared in the broken window, then his shoulders and arms, and he was falling head first ten feet to the ground.

Tim gasped in expected pain.

But David was there to catch him. He’d always be there to protect his boys. Him and Jesus.

“Shhh,” David said, putting his hand over Tim’s mouth before the boy could scream. Tim’s glasses bounced away, settling softly in the graveyard grass.

“It’s me,” David said, then moved his hand away.

“Ronnie,” Tim whispered, his throat tight. “It’s got Ronnie.”

“Who?” David said, though his heart sank like a stone down to his belly.

“The preacher.”

Littlefield had better have enough faith. Littlefield had better do what the Lord required. Littlefield had better make the sacrifice.

Because even though God always won the battle of good and evil, sometimes innocent blood was shed. That much was plain through all the books of the Bible.

“Ronnie will be saved,” David said, as convincingly as he could manage.

Slurping noises from inside the vestry spilled through the window. Talking. Ronnie and someone whose voice was familiar.

Naw, couldn’t be.

“You said the preacher got Ronnie?” David asked.

“Yeah. Preacher Staymore.”

Staymore. David smiled and looked to the sky. God always sent a champion when times were tough, when the good guys had their backs against the wall.

A real preacher, a bathed-in-the-blood Baptist preacher.

Ronnie would be all right.

“Mom’s in there, and she’s acting really weird,” Tim said. David set him down and the boy knelt to retrieve his glasses.

“She don’t know what she’s doing, son. The Lord will set her straight.”

Just like He had twice before. Once when Linda was young and pure, and once after she had returned from California. Third time’s a charm, they said.

David led Tim past the gray tombstones to the edge of the woods. They could wait there, in the safety of shadows, for the battle to end and the Lord to come out on top.

Just like always.

###

Frank nearly dropped the rifle as Ronnie came from the dark vestry. The boy’s face was pale, his eyes feverish on either side of the soiled bandage that covered his nose. His lips moved as if to speak, or maybe he was whispering something to himself.

It was the same look Samuel had worn the moment he realized that the Bell Monster was behind him and was going to get him, get him, get him. Frank’s heart twisted in rage, but he instantly forgot Samuel.

Because behind Ronnie shambled a creature that was the crowning glory of a day full of impossibilities. The mud and clay of the thing’s flesh glistened in the candlelight, its limbs an awkward and perverted imitation of a human’s. Worst of all were the black slits that hinted at eyes and a mouth.

The mouth flapped, the edges like cold gray syrup.

Mama Bet and Linda gasped in unison, and Linda grabbed Ronnie to pull him away.

“Welcome,” said the thing, and even though the word was drawn-out and slushy, Frank knew it was Archer’s voice.

“Archer?” Mama Bet said, her withered face taut.

“Mother,” the thing said. The clay rippled, shifted, and for a split second, the preacher’s face appeared, the powerful eyes sweeping over them like a lighthouse beacon over a troubled sea.

Linda drew back from the preacher, Ronnie tucked behind her. The preacher turned his smile to her and then the flesh fell back into corrupted mud.

“Linda, give me the child,” the thing commanded.

She shook her head, speechless and numbed.

“Give me the child,” it repeated.

Frank lifted the rifle.

“You’ve got to kill it, Frank,” Sheila said from behind him.

How could you kill . . . this?

But he pointed the rifle anyway, lodged the stock against his shoulder and looked down the barrel. The rifle weighed a thousand pounds, and he felt as if he were still underwater.

“Give me the child,” the thing said a third time.

Mama Bet fell on her knees before the mudstack.

“You . . . you’re not Archer,” Linda said.

“Does it matter what face God wears?” the thing said in Archer’s smooth and seductive voice. “You promised. And I ask so little, after all.”

Linda backed away another couple of steps. “Not like this,” she said. “You’re not Archer. You can’t have my baby.”

The mudstack trembled, dropping bits of itself on the dais. The tiny clods writhed like worms on the blotched dark angel that stained the boards.

“Sacrifice is the currency of God,” it said. “And Ronnie is the sacrifice.”

“I won’t let you kill him,” Linda said.

The thing gurgled a laugh. “Oh, I’m not going to kill him. You are. That’s what sacrifice is all about. Blessings are better given than received.”

Linda looked at her son, whose eyes were wet with tears.

“Mom?” Ronnie whispered. He gulped.

Frank fought the strange gravity that wrapped him like a thick skin. He could kill it. Sure, he was of the old families. He had a right. It was his job.

“Do it,” Sheila whispered in his ear, a little too gleefully.

Frank remembered how the rifle butt had seemingly passed through her cheek, how she had been underwater for far too long. How she recited Archer’s words in a chilling and worshipful way.

He glanced back at her. For just a moment, so briefly that before this recent madness he would have chalked it up to illusion, she wore Archer’s eyes, deep and brown and brimming with secrets. She blinked them back to blue.

“You heard what Samuel said,” she whispered, her eyes never leaving the quivering pile of clay. Her doting eyes, her eyes hot with a faraway and deep and inhuman love. A fervor that went beyond the flesh.

She was Archer’s now.

Frank’s throat tightened.

They were all Archer’s. They always had been. Frank had tasted, and found it sweet. He had swallowed his way into the red church and he had let the monster into his heart. And he hated his own weakness almost as much as he hated Archer.

Yes, he could kill it.

But as his finger tightened on the trigger, the mud rippled again and shrank. Samuel stood before him with pleading eyes.

“You can do it, Frankie,” his dead brother said. The boy pulled a worm from his mouth and held it up. It squirmed between white fingers.

Samuel put the worm back in his mouth and chewed noisily. “Archer ate me, you know. He eats all of us.”

Then Samuel blossomed hideously into the mass of putrid clay.

Archer wanted to be killed.

As if somehow being killed by one of his own would give him great power. Just as Judas had given up Jesus. The sons of God always needed a betrayer. Even though Frank no longer believed in God, it was just the sort of logic that ruled in an insane universe.

And he wouldn’t obey. He wouldn’t give Archer what he—or it, whatever it was—wanted most of all. Frank wouldn’t make the sacrifice.

He dropped the rifle and it clattered across the hard floor.

The thing let out a damp moan, its thick arms reaching for Ronnie.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Mama Bet gazed up at the thing she had made, birthed, delivered unto the world.

A flawless monstrosity.

Her perfect, sinless child.

She reached out and touched the moist clay. This was the flesh of her flesh. Had she ever dreamed she would be part of something so glorious, so big?

And I done it all by myself. I brung it out myself, taught my Archer all about the wicked ways of the world, about the evil of the old families. I passed down the story of Wendell McFall, about how preaching was in the blood, how it was Archer’s job to bring salvation to these heathen Jesus followers.

She slid her hand down the slope of the mud shape. Dimly, she heard Archer’s golden-throated voice demanding the Day child.

Let them be cleansed, young and old. Then, when we’re done with the Days and the Mathesons and the Potters, we can go on to bigger work. Because Jesus is legion. A whole lot of hearts got to be plucked out of tainted chests. A whole heap of iniquities got to be paid for.

The Archer-mud shook and became the boy, the one whose corpse she had dug up and pickled and then canned in glass jars so that young Archer could have offerings throughout the year. There had been other corpses along the way, a Day here, another Littlefield there, the whole graveyard like a fresh, sacred garden. Even the embalmed ones were worthy.

But getting them fresh was so much better.

The cold mockery of flesh rippled again and changed back into the mud shape.

The rifle that the sheriff had been carrying landed on the floor beside her. The sheriff was weak. That was just like a Littlefield, to fold like an accordion when there was work to be done. Well, he’d get his in due time.

Mama Bet sank her fingers into the mud and pulled a clump free. She put it to her face and rubbed it over the blood that had coagulated on her cheeks. Her boy. Her son and savior.

She pressed it against her lips, savoring the humus, this flesh of the earth.

It was between her lips, her tongue probing the holy matter, when she recognized the texture. She froze.

That night.

Nearly forty years ago.

When she gave away her virginity and took the seed.

And she remembered how, the next day, she’d found the stone rolled away, the stone that sealed off the hole in the back of the pantry. The hole that led down into the dark, moist tunnels of hell.

The clay squirmed between her gums. She tried to spit it out, but it thrust toward the opening of her throat, wriggling toward her belly.

As its rank flavor flooded her mouth, she tasted the bitter truth.

It wasn’t God that had impregnated her.

It was . . . this.

No.

Archer was her flesh, her body, her blood. He was born of the heavens, not the earth.

Not like this thing.

But this was Archer. Her only son.

The word made flesh.

The flesh made mud, from that which crawled up through deep holes in the ground.

How could she ever have loved this thing?

This thing that walked among humans like some gift from above, throwing off lies and laying out tricks that made Jesus look like a two-bit street magician.

This thing that stood at the pulpit, slick and foul and throwing off a fungal rotten smell. The odor of the grave.

A deceiver.

Just another in a long line of false prophets and God-pretenders.

May God forgive me, I HELPED it. I gave it LIFE.

She clamped her legs together, as if she could change the past and keep the thing’s head from appearing, to prevent its birth. But it was too late. It had always been too late.

The McFall secret was even more secret than she had known.

The thing, the hideous coalition of accumulated sin and pain and sorrow, moved toward Linda and Ronnie.

It wanted a last supper.

Mama Bet looked at the thing that was its own father, the thing that had fooled her more deeply than it had fooled anyone, and anger burned her from the inside out. It began in her chest, where the small clump of mud had lodged, and expanded out to her skin. Her head felt as if it were glowing, as if some power from beyond had lit her hair like a torch.

Strength flooded her aged limbs, a strength born of self-loathing.

Sacrifice was the currency of God.

And damned if she didn’t know what sacrifice was all about.

###

Ronnie stepped in front of his mother, protecting her, though the creepy mountain of mud was the worst nightmare ever made.

Mom tried to pull him back, but he shrugged her hands away. “I got to do this, Mom,” he said, trying to keep his voice from cracking, but failing.

“No, Ronnie,” she said.

“If I give myself to it, maybe that will be enough. That’s all it wants.”

So I hope and pray. Because if it takes me in, and I’m full of Jesus, then it will be filled with Jesus, too.

Though Ronnie’s vision blurred with tears, he knew he was doing the right thing. After all those sins of the heart, all those selfish things, this was something he could do for the whole world. He would give himself so that the world could live. And if Mom loved him enough, she would give him up, too.

His heart, which had been shriveled with fear, now felt light and warm in his chest. A strange calmness came over him. This thing could eat him, smother him, rip him apart, whatever it wanted to do, but it could never touch the real him.

The part of him that floated in his heart.

With Jesus.

Because Jesus was there, all right, big and happy and brave. Jesus had always been there, only Ronnie realized sometimes you couldn’t see Him because you got caught up in your own little sorrows and worries and dreams. All your little selfish things.

But Jesus stuck right there with you, no matter what.

And Ronnie knew that Jesus wouldn’t step in and save him from the monster.

Because Jesus had already saved him.

He twisted away from Mom and stepped forward to meet the monster’s embrace, a smile on his face, the pain in his nose and heart now as far away as heaven was near.

###

Mama Bet picked up the rifle.

She had no doubt that Archer could die, would die. And only she, who had given it life, could free it. Hers was the greatest sacrifice, after all. She was giving up her only begotten son.

Her cataracted eyes fixed upon the mass of mud that was only inches from taking the boy.

Sure, that boy deserved cleansing- he had that awful and tainted Day blood in him- but the sins of the old families were nothing next to the blaspheming joke of an angel that slopped before her.

Angels didn’t fall from heaven. They rose up from the meat of the earth.

Her guts ached at the thought that this thing had been harbored in her belly, had grown by sapping her strength, had come forth under the lie of a miracle.

“Archer,” she called with all the strength she could muster. Her diabetic limbs trembled as she aimed the rifle. The mud shape turned, its slab of face rippling. The mud changed, slid into Archer’s human features.

“Mother?” he said, eyes wide and pleading and oh so damned innocent. Like he’d never had a nasty thought in his life. Like God was the one lighting up his eyes, a holy filament burning inside that glorious, handsome head.

Mama Bet wavered. She’d suckled this thing. She’d told it bedtime stories. She’d fed it from a hundred worthless sinners. Why, surely there was one good thing about it, one thing worth a mother’s love.

“Archer,” she whispered. The rifle tilted down toward the floor, and she saw the dark stain moving, rising up like a fat and sinuous snake, draping Archer like an oversize shadow. Something else moved out of the corner of Mama Bet’s eye—the sheriff jumping over the railing.

“The Bell Monster,” Ronnie screamed.

The Bell Monster.

The real evil.

Because evil didn’t wear flesh. Evil didn’t need substance.

As the black shape settled over Archer and sank into him, soaked through his smooth suit and styled hair, Mama Bet’s son smiled at her.

“I love you, Mother,” the preacher said, though his teeth said exactly the opposite.

His teeth said, You’re about due for a turn in the offering plate, you stupid blind bitch. And let me tell you something: you’re worse than all the others put together. Because you served me, and you LOVED it. You loved having your face pushed into the corrupted flesh of the old families. You swallowed the body of God like a pig snorting at the trough.

And the horrible truth of it slammed into her like a twenty-pound Bible dropped from the heights of heaven.

She lifted the rifle and pulled the trigger, and the stock kicked against her shoulder as the report bounced off the wooden walls of the red church.

###

Frank eased over to the railing. The others had forgotten him, all except Archer, who knew everything and seemed to always have a gleaming eye on the sheriff. Even in his mud incarnation, the preacher owned the red church.

But when the shadow of the Bell Monster had risen, Frank knew that Archer had always been here, in many forms, troubling the people of Whispering Pines since the first family had settled in these hard hills. Maybe it had been here since the first sun rose. Maybe it was an evil older than hope, older than religion, older than everything that people thought they understood. And since Frank no longer believed in God, he no longer believed in the devil, either.

Those things didn’t matter. Who cared about some nameless, faceless eternity? What counted was that he could save Ronnie, right here and right now. Frank had failed Samuel, but maybe this was a chance at redemption.

The sheriff jumped over the rail and grabbed the boy, lifted him and carried him away from the preacher. Archer didn’t even glance at them, his hands spread wide in acceptance as he spoke to his mother. Linda stood in shock at the edge of the altar, slowly shaking her head as if someone had told her that the emperor had no clothes, and she had just noticed the nakedness.

Shoot it.

Frank couldn’t kill it, because that would only bring the thing back, more powerful than ever. But Mama Bet was its creator, in a way. At least in the human way. If the Archer-shadow-thing was an ancient evil, it must have started somewhere. And everything that had a beginning also had an end.

Ronnie was light in the sheriff’s arms as they fled from the altar and down the aisle. Sheila, or whatever Sheila had been, was gone. Frank thought of her touch, but only briefly. He was getting better at forgetting.

The shot exploded when he was in the middle of the church, and he couldn’t help himself. He had to turn and look.

Archer, arms wide, palms up, eyebrows raised, mouth stunned open, a messiah on an invisible cross.

A small red spot appeared on his white shirt, just to the left of his tie.

Shot in the heart.

Archer’s lips moved, but no words came. The face shifted rapidly, to mud and mountain lion to Samuel and then to a dozen, no, a hundred faces that Frank didn’t recognize. Then it settled back into Archer’s face.

“Jeez,” whispered Ronnie.

Archer’s eyes rolled heavenward, as if looking for some large, compassionate hand to come down and collect him. But above them was only the dark ceiling of the red church.

Then the bell rang, a belch of hellwind ripping the night.

“Mom,” Ronnie called, struggling in Frank’s grasp.

Linda looked from Ronnie to Archer, then back again, as if making a hard choice.

The wound on Archer’s chest blossomed wider, leaking a gray gelatinous substance along with the blood. Frank thought he saw bits of stone and root in the seepage. Archer lurched toward Mama Bet as the bell rang a second time.

“Why hast thou forsaken me?” the preacher-thing said to its cowering mother. The words were as thunderous as the tolling bell, but Archer was smiling. As if getting killed was all part of some perverted sacrament.

“Come on, Linda,” Frank shouted.

“Ronnie,” she called, holding her arms up and running from the altar. This time they were a mother’s loving arms, not the snatching arms of a conspirator.

Frank set Ronnie down, and the boy hugged his weeping mother.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Frank said, leading them down the aisle.

He turned one last time, just before they went out the door. Mama Bet had stood and was meeting her son’s embrace. Except her son, her savior, her hope for the world, was a glistening mass of clay. The mudslide swept over her and suffocated her screams. Frank’s feet were in the graveyard grass when the bell rang for the third and final time.

###

This is it, Ronnie thought. The all-time, Whopper-with-extra-cheese turning point, the up-close-and-personal end of the world.

And the weirdest thing was, he was no longer afraid. No matter what happened from here on in, he knew he wasn’t alone. Because when Jesus came into your heart, He signed a lifetime contract with a no-trade clause. Ronnie wished someone had told him how simple it was, that you didn’t need Preacher Staymore or an angel or even Dad to tell you God was right there all the time.

He gripped Mom’s hand as they ran across the graveyard. A smattering of starlight and the half-faced moon threw the shadow of the dogwood tree over them. The black branches swayed in an unfelt breeze like fingers reaching to grab them.

“Are you okay?” Mom asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“I- I’m sorry,” she said, but Ronnie barely heard her, because the bell rang for a third time and the ground trembled beneath his feet.

“Over here,” someone shouted.

Dad!

Ronnie dashed for the trees at the edge of the woods. Dad stepped from the darkness and grabbed him, hugged him, and pulled him into the underbrush.

Tim squinted from behind a laurel.

“Timmy,” Ronnie said, his heart lighter than it had ever been. Prayers worked. Prayers kicked ass.

“What happened?” Tim asked.

“Did the sheriff kill him?” Dad asked, before Ronnie could answer Tim.

“She did.”

“She? The detective?”

“No, Mama Bet.”

“Did they hurt you, son?”

“No,” he said, wanting to tell Dad about his new discovery, that Jesus was a pal and an ally, and who cared about an old stupid Bell Monster when you had the top gun on your side?

But he forgot about Jesus.

Because Mom was standing in the graveyard, and so was the sheriff, and the grass stretched open and the ground cracked and tombstones shivered.

Archer appeared in the doorway of the red church, the hole in his chest miraculously healed, the shirt unstained. He was bathed in a strange light, a sick yellowish orange the color of a dying fire. His face was sad and peaceful, and once again Ronnie was reminded of Jesus’ face in the Bible pictures.

Ronnie swallowed hard. Because what if this was the Second Coming, only this time God did it in a roundabout way, the ultimate big-time test of faith?

“What’s happening?” Tim said, nearly blind without his glasses.

“God only knows,” David said.

Archer walked—no, floated—down the steps. Mama Bet was behind him, looking nearly the same as she had, the dried blood and dirt streaking her face. But her eyes were somehow wrong, looking past the seen and known world.

Then the ground quivered again. The dirt at the base of the grave markers roiled, and pale, wispy shapes slithered up into the night air.

Arms topped with clawing, grasping hands.

Arms followed by heads, whitish lumps that were half skull, half milkish vapor.

Then more, rising up from the ground like heavy fog. A sound like a hurt breeze wended through the forest.

The shapes solidified, became translucent people. Some wore old clothes, long dresses and bonnets, some of the men in Confederate Civil War uniforms, their blanched faces stretched and sagging, mouths yawning mournfully as they moaned. Others wore clothes of more recent vintage, suits and cravats or ties, with or without shoes. Ronnie recognized some of the more freshly dead.

There, Willie Absher, who had been crushed to death while working on a truck last year. Jeannie Matheson, an old schoolteacher who had finally given in to cancer. And Grandma Gregg.

The same Grandma who used to perch Ronnie on her knee and tell about the old ways and the old stories. Now she shook the dark dirt from her burial gown and moved forward, feet hovering above the ground, vacant eyes shadowed.

A dozen, a hundred dead, all rising up from the grave, answering the call of the bell.

Summoned by Archer.

The preacher was beneath the dogwood now, reaching out with his luminous hands to rip the air in front of him. A separate entity shimmered into being.

“The Hung Preacher,” whispered Ronnie.

“May the good Lord protect us and keep us,” Dad prayed aloud.

“What about Mom?” Tim whimpered.

“She bargained with the devil. Now she’s got to pay the price.”

“No,” Ronnie said. “She changed. When Archer got shot, she became one of us again. We can’t give up on her now.”

Ronnie couldn’t explain. Mom was Mom. Mom belonged to them, not Archer. And Archer wasn’t the devil, anyway. For the first time ever, Dad was wrong.

Ronnie looked for her in the herd of haunted figures. At first he saw only the aching dead collecting around Archer. Then he saw Mom, hiding behind Grandma Gregg’s tombstone. The sheriff was with her.

“There she is,” Ronnie said. “You got to save her.”

“Only Jesus saves, son.”

“But you love her. You can’t let Archer have her.”

“She was more than ready to give you up. She thought she was making that sacrifice for love.”

“What’s happening to Mommy?” Tim said.

“Please, Dad,” Ronnie said. He was nearly ready to run out there himself, out in the middle of those dead creepy things, to help Mom. “Jesus will run with you. Archer can’t touch you if you’re carrying Jesus in your blood.”

Dad said nothing. As they watched, the Hung Preacher materialized, his plump bloated face beaming with joy. Archer embraced his ancestor, lifted him as three of the new congregation removed the noose. The sinuous threads that comprised the Hung Preacher’s revenance collapsed onto Archer, and the two coalesced into one body.

Then the crowd of corpses parted, and Archer headed across the corrupted cemetery. The others fell in line, a ghostly caravan.

The sheriff shouted and ran from his hiding place. He caught up to one of the figures, a young boy.

“Samuel,” the sheriff screamed. “Don’t go.”

The sheriff grabbed at the apparition, tried to embrace it, but he might as well have been harvesting the air. The boy didn’t even turn, just kept marching in that solemn regiment. The sheriff fell to his knees, weeping.

When the last of the dead disappeared into the brush, Dad said to Ronnie, “Stay here with your brother. I’ll get your mom.”

Ronnie looked at the dark gaps in the bushes where the dead had gone, wondering where Archer was leading them. Then he looked at the belfry, at the unmoving shadows that filled its hollowness. The candles burned low in the red church, the eerie flickering making the building seem alive.

“I can’t see nothing,” Timmy said. “My glasses broke. Tell me what’s happening.”

“Exactly what you see,” Ronnie answered. “Nothing is happening.”

The sheriff crawled into the shrubs. Below him, the road and the valley lay spread beneath the grim moon. The congregation drifted down the embankment, and there, near the end of the speechless column, was Samuel.

His dead brother, now and forever Archer’s.

Frank watched as Archer reached the great stones bordering the river. The monstrosity stepped into the water. No, not into—onto. Because the preacher walked on water.

Archer turned and waited as his congregation followed, first Mama Bet, then others old and new, including Frank’s grim parents, all entering the black river. The water swallowed them, took them under its frothy tongue and carried them back to the ancient belly of the Earth.

Frank hoped Samuel would look back and wave, do anything to show that he remembered, that part of Samuel’s human life would remain even in this bleak new eternity. But Samuel slipped beneath the currents as silently as the others had, and when the last ghost faded, Archer himself dissipated and sank into the water.

Only the river mist remained, like the shroud of a final burial. The water laughed as it carried Archer’s people to the deadest sea.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Frank returned to the red church three weeks later.

The cemetery was quiet, the grass thick from gentle rains, the earth undisturbed. Birds chirped in the nearby forest. Wildflowers erupted along the road, black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace and winding morning glories. At the feet of the giant slumbering mountains, the river rolled on.

They’d found Sheila’s body two miles downstream. Hoyle said that sometimes fish or turtles nibbled on the flesh when it became softened by prolonged exposure. Frank tried to believe that. At the hard edge of midnight, as he convinced himself that haunted congregations didn’t exist, Hoyle’s little forensic tidbit gave a tiny comfort.

But right now, he didn’t need comfort.

He pulled the cord, and the chainsaw leaped to life, its racket drowning out nature’s blissful stirrings. As he dug the spinning blade into the base of the dogwood, his teeth were clamped so tightly together that his jaw ached. The sawdust was bitter on his lips and in his nostrils as he sliced into the wood. Finally the deformed tree fell, and the sun bathed the red church with its cleansing rays.

He’d filled out a missing persons report on Mama Bet and Archer McFall, writing that he suspected they’d moved to California. He also postulated that Archer had murdered Boonie Houck, Zeb Potter, and Donna Gregg. Never mind that no solid evidence had ever been recovered, and that the state medical examiners were left as baffled as everybody else. Who cared if the FBI spent ten years tracking down a person who no longer existed, who may never have lived?

Frank sawed the dogwood into smaller lengths, then carried the brush to the edge of the forest. The work raised a good, honest sweat. Lester rode by on his tractor, gave a neighborly wave, and kept driving. The people of Whispering Pines were good at keeping things to themselves. Sonny Absher had tried to blabber, but everybody chalked it up to liquor-induced delusions.

When Frank was finished, he took off his gloves and went into the church. A pile of dry, gray dirt lay in the spot where Archer had been shot. Frank kicked at it, and dust spun in the air. The stain on the altar was gone.

He had thought about burning the church. Arson was a difficult crime to trace. But a church couldn’t be good or evil—only people could. Or things that walked as people. Without people, and what they believed, a church was just a bunch of wood and nails and stone and glass.

Maybe someday God would return to this church. Maybe pure-hearted people would take up psalms and hymns and prayers here. Maybe a preacher would come here as God’s servant, not as a jealous rival.

Maybe.

Frank went outside and gathered some wildflowers. He put some on the grave of his parents, then knelt before the stone that contained the engraving of a lamb.

If only God truly did keep and protect people.

If only.

###

Forgiveness.

That was something Jesus taught.

So Ronnie figured it was only right that he forgive Mom for trying to sacrifice him to Archer. Besides, Dad said that Jesus had already forgiven her. If Jesus, with all His problems and worries and duties, had room in His heart for Mom, then surely Ronnie had room, too. It helped that Mom and Dad had made up, and that Mom had joined the choir at Barkersville Baptist, and life was almost back to normal.

His nose was healing nicely, though he suspected he’d have a small hump on the bridge. Gave it character, Mom said. He looked forward to being able to smell flowers again.

Because he’d also forgiven Melanie. They sat together every day at lunch, and maybe in a week or two, he’d be able to smell that sweet little smell that her hair gave off. Melanie had asked him several times about what had happened at the church, but he’d never told her. At least, not yet. Every time she batted those long eyelashes and made his heart float, he weakened. Maybe someday he’d tell her, as soon as he figured it out for himself.

Summer was coming, the days long and full of sunshine. And the sun had a way of killing darkness and dark thoughts. He still walked past the red church, and he still shivered when he was near it. The Days didn’t talk about what had happened at the church. Forgetting was part of forgiving.

But sometimes, when the sun was burying itself in the cut of Buckhorn Mountain, Ronnie couldn’t help glancing at the belfry. And he couldn’t help remembering how, that night of the ghosts when the Hung Preacher moved into Archer, the black shadow had slipped away and seeped into the old dogwood tree.

But surely that was only his overactive imagination trying to get him in trouble again. The sheriff had cut the tree down. Besides, Ronnie had Jesus, didn’t he? Jesus would protect him. Doubting would be a sin of the heart, and Ronnie had suffered enough of those to last a lifetime.

So he kept his eyes away from the shadows and looked ahead to a life where dead things stayed dead, except for good things like Jesus.

###

These humans were the source of endless joy, endless fascination.

The thing had played many games throughout the billion passages of the sun, but this new one, the one of godhood, was the best.

With their belief in miracles, with their faith, with their frailties and failures, humans were a rich and abundant playground. From the beginning, when it had first burrowed up from the core of the Earth, it had inspired awe among those who wore flesh. The thing had taken many forms, many faces, and they had given it many names, but most of all, they had fed it fear and worship, and it craved those things that had been reserved for the gods.

And though it had been many things, trees and rocks and wind and meat, all those things were of the Earth. As it settled into the sandy riverbed and seeped back toward the hot magma of the earth’s core, it considered the human thoughts it had stolen.

The time as Archer McFall had been pleasurable, as had its venture as Wendell McFall. But so had a thousand other forays into the flesh. So had many other possessions. Perhaps it would return one day, to shape clay into human form, to breathe life into hollow vessels and again bring a McFall among the people who lived in those old mountains. Or perhaps it would rise somewhere else, to play havoc in a new place, or revisit the site of other former miracles.

Because miracles never ceased.

Sometimes, when it owned thoughts, it wondered if its own existence was a miracle.

No. That would mean that greater things, greater forces, existed.

And the thing did not believe in anything greater than itself.

In the riverbed, it surrendered thought.

The master of the world returned to the dirt from which it had arisen.

THE END

Return to Table of Contents

###

DRUMMER BOY

By Scott Nicholson

Copyright ©2010 by Scott Nicholson

Scott’s Amazon Author Central page

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

The Jangling Hole glared back at Bobby Eldreth like the cold eye of the mountain, sleepy and wary and stone silent in the October smoke.

“Th’ow it.”

Bobby ignored Dex’s taunt as he squeezed the rock and peered into the darkness, imagining the throbbing heartbeat that had drummed its slow rumble across the ages. The air that oozed from the Blue Ridge Mountain cave smelled like mushrooms and salamanders. He could have sworn he heard something back there in the slimy, hidden belly of the world, maybe a whisper or a tinkle or the scraping of claws on granite.

“Th’ow it, doof.”

Bobby glanced back at his heckler, who sat on a sodden stump among the dark green ferns. Dex McCallister had a speech impediment that occasionally cut the “r” out of his words. Dex was so intent on pestering Bobby that he failed to note the defect. Good thing. When Dex made a mistake, everybody paid.

“I hear something,” Bobby said.

“Probably one of them dead Rebels zipping down his pants to take a leak,” Dex shouted. “Do it.”

Vernon Ray Davis, who stood in the hardwood trees behind Dex, said, “They didn’t have zippers back then. Nothing but bone buttons.”

Dex sneered at the skinny kid in the X-Men T-shirt and too-tight, thrift-store jeans that revealed his pale ankles. “What book did you get that out of, V-Ray? You’re starting to sound like Cornwad,” Dex said, using the class nickname for Mr. Corningwald, their eighth-grade history teacher at Titusville Middle School.

Bobby hefted the rock in his hand. Though it was the size of a lopsided baseball, it weighed as much as the planet Krypton. Probably even Superman couldn’t lift it, but Superman wouldn’t be dumb enough to stand in front of a haunted hole in the ground, not while he could be boning Lois Lane or beating up Lex Luthor.

Dex and Vernon Ray were thirty yards down the slope from Bobby, in a clearing safely away from the mouth of the cave. Not that any distance was safe, if what they said was true. The late-afternoon sun coated the canopy of red oak and maple with soft, golden light, yet Bobby shivered, due as much to the chill emanating from the cave as from his fear.

“I’ve been to the camps,” Vernon Ray said. “My daddy’s got all that stuff.”

“That’s just a bunch of guys playing dress-up,” Dex said.

“It’s authentic. 26th North Carolina Troops. Wool pants, breech loaders, wooden canteens—”

“Okay, Cornwad,” Dex said. “So they didn’t have no goddamn zippers.”

“Daddy said—”

“Your daddy goes to those re-enactments to get away from you and your mom,” Dex said. “My old man drags me along, but you always get left behind with the girls. What ya think of that, Cornwad?”

During Dex’s bully act, Bobby took the opportunity to ease a couple of steps away from the mouth of the cave. The noise inside it was steady and persistent, like a prisoner’s desolate scratching of a spoon against a concrete wall. The Hole seemed to be daring him to come closer. Bobby considered dropping the stone and pretending he had thrown it while Dex wasn’t looking. But Dex had a way of knowing things.

“Bobby’s chicken crap,” Vernon Ray said, changing the subject away from his dad and deflecting Dex’s attention. “He won’t throw it.”

Good one, V-Ray. I thought we were on the same side here.

Dex tapped a cigarette from a fresh pack, then pushed it between his lips and let it dangle. “Ah, hell with it,” he said. “You can believe the stories if you want. I got better things to worry about.”

Relieved, Bobby took a step downhill but froze when he heard the whisper.

“Uhr-lee.”

It was the wind. Had to be. The same wind that tumbled a gray pillar of smoke from the end of Dex’s cigarette, that quivered the bony trees, that pushed dead autumn leaves against his sneakers.

Still, his throat felt as if he’d swallowed the rock in his hand. Because the whisper came again, low, personal, and husked with menace.

“Uhrrrr-leeee.”

A resonant echo freighted the name. If Bobby had to imagine the mouth from which the word had issued—and at the moment Bobby was plenty busy not imagining—it would belong to a dirty-faced, gaunt old geezer two hundred years dead. But like Dex said, you could believe the stories if you wanted, which implied a choice. When in doubt, go with the safe bet. Put your money on ignorance.

“To hell with it,” Bobby said, throwing extra air behind the words to hide any potential cracks. “I want me one of those smokes.”

He flung the rock—away from the cave, lest he wake any more of those skeletal men inside—and hurried down the slope, nearly slipping as he hustled while feigning nonchalance. One more whisper might have wended from the inky depths, but Bobby’s feet scuffed leaves and Dex laughed and Vernon Ray hacked from a too-deep draw and the music of the forest swarmed in: whistling birds, creaking branches, tinkling creek water, and the brittle cawing of a lonely crow.

Bobby joined his friends and sat on a flat slab of granite beside the stump. From there, the Hole looked less menacing, a gouge in the dirt. Gray boulders, pocked with lichen and worn smooth by the centuries, framed the opening, and stunted, deformed jack pines clung to the dark soil above the cave.

A couple of dented beer cans lay half-buried in a patch of purple monkshood, and a rubber dangled like a stubby rattlesnake skin from a nearby laurel branch. Mulatto Mountain rose another hundred feet in altitude above the cave, where it topped off with sycamore and buckeye trees that had been sheared trim by the winter winds.

He took a cancer stick from Dex and fired it up, inhaling hard enough to send an inch of glowing orange along its tip. The smoke bit his lungs but he choked it down and then wheezed it out in small tufts.

The first buzz of nicotine numbed his fingers and floated him from his body. Relishing the punishment, he went back to mouth-smoking the way he usually did, rolling the smoke with his tongue instead of huffing it down. His head reeled but he grinned toward the sky in case Dex or Vernon Ray was looking.

“We ought to camp here sometime,” Dex said, smoking with the ease of the addicted. He played dress-up as much as the Civil War re-enactors did, though his uniform of choice was upscale hoodlum—white T-shirt and a windbreaker that had “McCallister Alley” stitched over the left breast pocket. Three leaning bowling pins, punctured by a yellow starburst indicating a clean strike, were sewn beneath the label. Dex’s old man owned the only alley within 80 miles of Titusville, and about once a month Mac McCallister was lubed enough from Scotch to let the boys roll a few free games.

“It’ll be too cold to camp soon,” Vernon Ray said, constantly flicking ash from his cigarette like a sissy. Bobby was almost embarrassed for him, but at the moment he had other concerns besides his best friend maybe being queer.

Concerns like the Jangling Hole, and whoever—or whatever—had spoken to him. The wind, nothing but the wind.

“Best time of year for camping,” Dex said. “I can get my old man’s tent, swipe a couple six-packs, bring some fishing poles. Maybe tote my .410 and bag us a couple squirrels for dinner.”

“There’s a level place down by the creek,” Bobby said.

“Right here’s fine,” Dex said, sweeping one arm out in the expansive gesture of someone giving away something that wasn’t his. “Put the tent between the roots of that oak yonder. Already got a fireplace.” He booted one of the rocks that ringed a hump of charred wood.

“I don’t know if my folks will let me,” Vernon Ray said.

“Your dad’s doing Stoneman’s, ain’t he?” Dex dangled his cigarette from his lower lip. “Since he’s the big captain and all.”

Stoneman’s Raid was an annual Civil War re-enactment that commemorated the Yankee incursion suffered by Titusville in 1864. The modern weekend warriors marked it by sleeping on the ground, drinking whiskey from dented canteens, and logging time in the saddle on rumps grown soft from too many hours in the armchair.

If they were like Bobby’s dad, they spent their free time thumbing the remote between “Dancing With The Stars” and “The History Channel,” unless it was football season when the Carolina Panthers jerseys came out of the bottom drawer.

“Sure,” Vernon Ray said, voice hoarse from the cigarette. He flicked his smoke twice, but no ash fell. “Mom will probably go to Myrtle Beach like usual.”

“The beach,” Dex said. “Wouldn’t mind eyeing some bikini babes myself.”

There was a test in Dex’s tone, maybe a taunt. Perhaps Dex, like Bobby, had been wondering about Vernon Ray. “What ya think, Bobby? A little sand in the honey sounds a lot better than watching a bunch of old farts in uniform, don’t it?”

Bobby’s gaze had wandered to the Hole again and he scanned the crisp line where the dappled sunlight met the black wall of hidden space that burrowed deep into Mulatto Mountain. As Dex called his name, Bobby blinked and took a deep, stinging puff. He spoke around the exhaled smoke, borrowing a line from his dad’s secret stash of magazines in the tool shed. “Yeah, wouldn’t mind some sweet tang myself.”

Dex reached out and gave Vernon Ray a chummy slap on the back that was loud enough to echo off the rocks. “Beats pounding the old pud, huh?”

Vernon Ray nodded and took a quick hit. He even held his cigarette like a sissy, his pinky lifted in the air as if communicating in some sort of delicate sign language. Vernon Ray, unlike most of the kids at Titusville Middle School, already had a hair style, a soft, wavy curl flopping over his forehead.

Bobby wished he could protect his best friend, change him, rip that precious blonde curl out by the roots and turn him into a regular guy before Dex launched into asshole mode. When Dex got rolling, things went mean quick, and Vernon Ray’s eyes already welled with water, either from the smoke or the teasing.

“I heard something at the Hole,” Bobby said, not realizing he was speaking until the sentence escaped.

“Do what?” Dex leaned forward, flicking his butt into the cold, dead embers of the campfire.

“Somebody’s in there.”

Dex twisted off a laugh that sounded like the wheeze of an emphysema sufferer. “Something jangly, maybe? Bobby, you’re so full of shit it’s leaking out your ears.”

Vernon Ray looked at him with gratitude. Bambi eyes, Bobby thought. Pathetic.

Bobby put a little drama in the sales pitch to grab Dex’s full attention. “It went ‘Urrrrr.’”

Dex snorted again. “Maybe somebody’s barfing.”

“Could have been a bum,” Bobby said. “Ever since they shut down the homeless shelter, I’ve seen them sleeping under the bridge and behind the Dumpster at KFC. They’ve got to go somewhere. They don’t just disappear.”

“Maybe they do,” Dex said. “I reckon those wino bastards better stay out of sight or they’ll run ‘em plumb out of the county.”

The shelter had been shut down through the insidious self-righteousness of civic pride. Merchants had complained about panhandling outside their stores and the Titusville Town Council had drafted an ordinance against loitering. However, the town attorney, a misplaced Massachusetts native who had married into the fifth-generation law firm that had ruled the town behind the scenes since Reconstruction, dug up some court rulings suggesting that such an ordinance would interfere with the panhandlers’ First Amendment rights.

Since the town leaders couldn’t use the law as a whip and chair, they instead cut off local-government funding and drove the shelter into bankruptcy. Vernon Ray had explained all this to Bobby, but Bobby didn’t think it was that complicated. People who didn’t take the safe bet lost the game, simple as that.

“Even a bum’s not stupid enough to sleep in the Hole,” Vernon Ray said. “Cold as a witch’s diddy in there.”

Dex grinned with approval. “That why you didn’t th’ow the rock, Bobby Boy? Afraid a creepy old crackhead might th’ow it back?”

“Probably just the wind,” Bobby said. “Probably there’s a bunch of other caves and the air went through just right.”

“Sure it wasn’t the Boys in Blue and Gray?” Dex said, thumbing another smoke from the pack. “Kirk’s See-Through Raiders?”

“Like you said, you can believe the stories if you want.” Contradicting his bravado, Bobby’s gaze kept traveling to the dank orifice in the black Appalachian soil.

They should have stuck to the creek trail and not followed the animal path into the woods. The trail was the shortest distance from the trailer park where he lived and the Kangeroo Hop’n’Shop, a convenience store run by a family that Dex called “The Dot Heads.” Bobby wasn’t sure whether the family was Indian, Pakistani, or Arabian, though one of the daughters was in his English class and had a lot of vowels in her name. Dot Heads or not, it was the closest place to buy candy bars and football cards, not to mention sneak a peek at the oily, swollen breasts flashing from the magazine covers.

Half an hour before, the boys had made their ritual Saturday visit, flush with pocket change collected over the course of the week. While tobacco had become a controlled substance on the order of liquor and Sudafed, even in the tobacco-raising state of North Carolina, not all packs were kept on shelves behind the cash register.

A promotional two-pack of Camels, shrink-wrapped with a lighter, was perched on the edge of the counter by the ice cream freezer, and as Bobby had paid for a Dr. Pepper, Dex swept the package into the pocket of his windbreaker. Bobby caught the crime out of the corner of his eye, but the middle-aged woman at the register, who had a slight mustache riding her dark, pursed lips, was focused on counting pennies.

“Let’s smoke ‘em at the Hole,” Dex had said, once they were out of sight of the store. Neither Bobby nor Vernon Ray had the guts to protest.

The Jangling Hole was half a mile’s hike up rocky and wooded Blue Ridge terrain. Bobby had been there before with his two pals—after all, who could resist the most notorious haunted spot in the county, especially during Halloween season?—but they usually just eased around it and went to the headwaters of the creek where you could hook rainbow trout all year round, because no wildlife officers ever hoofed it that far back into the hills. That was back before Budget Bill Willard, the famous local photographer, had bought the property and posted “No Trespassing” signs all over it.

Dex had knocked down the first such sign he’d seen, unzipped his trousers, and urinated on it. Then he’d cajoled his reluctant merry band of pranksters to the Hole. After Dex had dared him to “th’ow” the rock, Bobby had no choice but to march up to the crevice, which was as wide as a pick-up truck. Nobody in his right mind would go near the cave that harbored the spirits of—

“Bobby?”

At first he thought the voice had come from the cave, in that same reverberating whisper that reached into his ears and tickled the bottom of his nasal cavity. But it was Dex, arms folded, chin out, squatting on the deadfall like a gargoyle clinging to the edge of some old French cathedral.

“You going to pretend it was them Civil War ghosts?” Dex said, letting one eyelid go lazy as if suggesting they could play a good one on Vernon Ray.

“I’m bored.” Bobby’s mouth was an ashtray, tongue dry as a spider web, nicotine ramping up his pulse. He’d wished he’d saved some of the Dr. Pepper, but Dex had knocked it from his hands as they’d crossed the creek.

“What you guys doing tonight?” Vernon Ray said.

“Your momma,” Dex snapped back.

“I claim sloppy seconds,” Bobby said, though his heart wasn’t in it.

“For real,” Vernon Ray said. “Think you can get out for a movie?”

“What’s playing?” Dex said, faking a yawn and showing his missing molar.

“Tarentino’s got a new one.”

“We can’t sneak into that, dumbass,” Dex said. “It’s rated ‘R’ for racks and red blood.”

Bobby was about to suggest a round of X-Box, anything to get away from the cave, when Vernon Ray held up his hand.

“Shhh,” the curly-haired boy said. “I hear something.”

Bobby couldn’t help sneaking a glance at the Hole, wondering if Vernon Ray had heard the whisper. Dex groaned. “Jesus, not you, too, V-Boy.”

“Serious.”

“That’s the roaring of your own fat skull.” Dex stood and looked down the slope into the woods, where the animal path widened. He blinked and flung his cigarette away as he turned and bolted.

“Over here!” came a shout. The rhododendrons shook along the edge of the clearing and a man in a brown uniform burst out, breaking into a run. Bobby caught the gleam of metal on the man’s belt.

Cop. Crap.

His heart jumped against his ribs and fluttered like a bird in a cat’s mouth. His dad would bust his ass good if he got in trouble with the law again. Dex headed for the back side of the mountain, where the steep slope bristled with brambles and scraggly locust trees, cover fit for a rabbit but little else.

The overweight cop was after him, wheezing, shouting at him to stop. Vernon Ray, who had fled down the path toward the creek trail, froze in his tracks at the command. While Bobby was still deciding which way to run, a second cop emerged, the brown-skinned store owner beside him.

“Is them,” the store owner said. The cop, a young guy whose cheeks were blued with stubble, put his hand on his holster, no doubt weighing the wisdom of drawing on a couple of kids.

As the second cop hesitated, Vernon Ray cut to the right, through a shaded thicket of hardwoods and jack pine. He was soon out of sight, though his route was discernable by snapping branches and rattling leaves. The cop took three steps in pursuit, and then apparently realized Bobby would be easier prey.

Bobby took a backwards step. As a Little League All-Star, he could dash ninety feet between bases with no problem, and the safety of the woods was only half that distance. Dex would get away clean, he was as slick as a snake in a car wash, but the swarthy cop would probably net Vernon Ray if Bobby fled. And Vernon Ray was Honor Roll, the pride of the trailer park and Bobby’s best friend.

“Hold it right there, son,” the cop said, though he was barely a decade older than Bobby. The stem of his sunglasses was tucked in one pocket, the lenses like a second pair of accusing eyes. Sweat splotched the cop’s underarms, and the badge caught a stray bit of sunlight as if God had signaled a secret moral message.

Bobby wanted to tell the cop he was innocent, to sell Dex down the river and take a plea, to beg the hairy-eared store owner’s forgiveness. But no words came, his feet had grown roots like the trees around him, and his senses were as heightened as they’d been during the first rush of nicotine. Had there been so many birds before?

The cop smiled in condescension and triumph, and Bobby blushed with anger. Titusville was full of meth addicts, lock bumpers, and check kiters, and Bobby was pretty sure Louise Templeton was running a trailer-park whorehouse three doors down from his home, yet the local peace officers had nothing better to do than hassle kids.

Of course, his jacket already had three lines in it, and though as a juvenile he’d had it all written off because the courts called him an “at-risk youth,” bad habits had a way of coming back to bite you on the ass.

“Don’t worry,” the cop said, reading the anxiety in Bobby’s eyes. “We just want to talk.”

“I make charges,” the store owner said in his high-pitched, thickly accented voice. “I run fair trade.”

The cop waved him back. “I’ll handle this. It’s only a misdemeanor, not a hanging offense.”

It was the same smug crap the probation officer, the school counselor, and the principal all dished out. They’d poke around for some reason to explain the delinquent behavior, and though Bobby had only a passing knowledge of Freud, he’d picked up enough to feed the crap right back. Unhappy home, poverty, what they liked to call “an adjustment disorder,” and the likelihood of substance abuse became not reasons to whip his ass into shape, but excuses for screwing up. Not only was his troubled streak explainable, it was practically expected. And who was he to disappoint so many others who had such a deep interest in his future?

The cop was close enough that Bobby could smell his aftershave, Old Spice or some other five-dollar-a-pint pisswater they sold at Walmart. The store owner’s pudgy fists were clenched, his dark face flushed with the anger of small-change violation. Hell, Dex could have paid for the smokes, that was no prob, Dex not only had a generous allowance but he was the biggest weed dealer at Titusville Middle School. He always had some spare jack in his pocket. But what the Dot Heads and the cops and the do-gooders didn’t understand was that stealing was just more fun.

And Bobby had nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon than sit through a booking and a lecture and then Dad’s trip to bail his ass out of trouble again. Beat the hell out of X-box any day. And, he had to admit, an arrest would get him away from The Jangling Hole and the cold whispers and—

“Aieeeeeee.”

A scream ripped from the other side of the ridge, where the cop had chased Dex. It was followed almost immediately by a gunshot, the sharp report silencing the birds and riding up above the wind.

The young cop’s face erupted in what might have been shock, but Bobby saw just a little pleasure in it. The cop was as bored as Bobby, and “Shots fired” was almost as good as “Officer down” when it came to law-enforcement hard-ons.

The cop grappled with his holster and had his mean-looking piece in his hand by the time he brushed past Bobby and headed around the Hole. Bobby and the store owner were left looking at each other, neither knowing what to do.

Bobby shrugged. “It was just some smokes, man.”

The store owner stamped his foot and started jabbering a mile a minute in some exotic language, but he shut up quick when the second shot rang out.

CHAPTER TWO

Vernon Ray was nearly to the creek, wondering if it was safe to pop out onto the trail, when he heard the shot. Surely they wouldn’t shoot anybody for shoplifting, would they?

Unless Dex had been packing. Dex McCallister had a bad rep to maintain, but his record was pretty clean. That had more to do with the bully’s instinct for self-preservation, as well as his dad’s lawyer, than it did criminal cunning. Vernon Ray was Dex’s pet target, but Bobby’s defense was worth all the “Batman and Supergirl” comments Dex dished out. Vernon Ray had to admit, nobody else at school picked on him these days, and though Dex still got in a little jab now and then, it was a better deal than have a hundred other goons riding his case. All because he was different.

Just because . . . .

Just because nothing.

Now push had come to shove, and Vernon Ray could either be a piss ant little coward the way Bobby and Dex expected, or he could circle back out of the safety of the woods and see what had happened. He wasn’t up for bravery, the kind of action-movie horse dookie where the wimp suddenly overcame his inner nature out of loyalty, love, or just plain recklessness because it fit the plot. But maybe he’d have a cool story to tell his classmates, and if Dex did eat an appetizer of hot lead followed by a dirt sandwich, Vernon Ray could put a great spin on it.

Even better, maybe Dex had shot one of the cops. Vernon Ray could get a lot more mileage out of that, put it out there as a Bonnie-and-Clyde story. Of course, inevitably he’d be cast as Bonnie, but better to live forever as a marred legend than to sit in the corner with his thumb in his mouth until the end of high school. A shooting was a much bigger attention-grabber than a bunch of ghosts that probably didn’t exist, and even his dad would want to know the gory details. Even if it was just for a week, there would be something in Titusville bigger than Stoneman’s Raid and Capt. Jefferson Davis’s brass balls.

He was still weighing his options when the second shot rang out.

Bobby?

Vernon Ray wiped the sweat from his palms and began retracing his steps. The forest was in full flush, hung in that verdant phase of late autumn when the leaves screamed of death, and he had to push the pine and undergrowth away from his face. A scratch on his cheek stung with the promise of infection, and his chest heaved from exertion. But this wasn’t about him and his suffering. This was about buddies, the Three Musketeers, the Unholy Trinity, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, every little comic-book fantasy he’d ever concocted.

Hell, it was about belonging. Bobby and Dex were the closest things he had to friends. Sure, his parents were still together, unlike practically every other kid in the eighth grade, but they might as well have mailed in their parental love like cereal box tops to Battle Creek, Michigan, for all the good it did him. So if Dex and Bobby needed him, he’d be there.

And, truth be told, he was pretty damned ashamed about bolting and abandoning his best bud. An arrest on his record would earn him some props at school and a lecture from his dad, the Captain. Then again, inner nature was nature after all, and maybe you couldn’t really change the boy you were or the man you were bound to be. He was a chicken-tailed, limp-wristed little sissy like they all said.

Dapples of sunlight made a crazy disco ball in the treetops overhead as he ran. A couple of sirens wailed up from the valley below, probably half of Titusville’s on-duty contingent cutting its way to Mulatto Mountain. Vernon Ray strained his ears for the crackle of cop walkie-talkies. No follow-up shots had been fired, suggesting that Dex probably hadn’t staged a dramatic “They’ll never take me alive” showdown. Dex would make a perfect subject for a Frank Miller graphic novel, the cautionary tale of a good boy gone wrong, assuming he hung around long enough to grow a personality and then was able to come back from the grave and seek vengeance.

By the time Vernon Ray backtracked the quarter-mile uphill to The Jangling Hole, the old campsite had been abandoned. Maybe Bobby was already headed to the sheriff’s office, sitting in the back of a cruiser and cussing under his breath. They could charge him with being an accomplice or receiving stolen goods–if sucking down stinky, chemical-soaked tobacco counted as “receiving.” But even the clod-headed ex-jocks who populated the field of law enforcement were smart enough to know chasing juveniles was a thankless and fruitless chore that rarely led to conviction.

A shout came from beyond the trees, maybe three hundred feet away. Dex must have stirred up the cops, provoked them, craving all the attention like a suicidal drama queen at a drag show. Sometimes it just didn’t pay to hang out with a goon. But Vernon Ray would lose either way: a black mark on his record would help stifle the “sissy” label, but for sure Dad would bust his ass and Mom would go into one of her patented sulks.

But the deal breaker was his buddies’ reactions. He was a little ashamed for running off like that, but instinct had taken over. It was probably too late for redemption, and Dex had a long memory for such things, but Bobby was a little more flexible. Bobby had been his best pal since daycare, when they’d snickered through Mrs. Underwood’s version of “Three Billy Goats Gruff,” or what Dex had called “Th’ee Billy Goats Gwuff,” at least until Lori Stansberry laughed at him and he bloodied her nose, after which Dex never mentioned that stupid old story again. Nor did any of his classmates.

So Dex could sink or swim on his own, nobody had a problem with that, especially Dex, but Bobby—

“Psst.”

Vernon Ray looked around, peering under the heavy thatch of laurel, galax, and briars and across the jumbled shelves of gray granite. But he knew the sound hadn’t come from the forest. And the cops would have bellowed, not whispered. Vernon Ray whispered in return. “Bobby?”

“In here.”

Confederate Christ on a battle flag, was he really dumb enough to hide in the Hole?

Vernon Ray squinted against the afternoon sun, which had reached a low-enough angle that it slanted through the canopy, throwing a mystical, ethereal light against the leaves. By contrast, the dark slit of the crevice was as foreboding as a woman’s womb. “Where’s the cops?”

“I dunno. The other one took off after the second shot.”

“Come on out of there,” Vernon Ray said.

“I can’t.”

“Why the hell not?” Vernon Ray strained his ears, but all he heard was the caw of a solitary crow and the wind crawling low in the pines. He expected the cops to jump out from cover at any moment, or maybe the foreign store owner with his incessant, rapid-fire vexation. He couldn’t believe Bobby would corner himself like that. Maybe his pal was waiting it out, hoping to ride the darkness until sundown, then sneak down the mountain and head for home. A high price for a lousy cigarette.

“You gotta see this,” Bobby said, and it sounded like he had moved deeper into the mouth of the tunnel, because the echo died with a stifled sigh and Vernon Ray had trouble hearing him.

“I’m not going in there,” Vernon Ray said. “That’s the Hole, for crying out loud.”

Bobby didn’t answer and Vernon Ray took a reluctant step closer. He was now maybe fifteen feet from the opening, closer than Bobby had been earlier when Dex had urged him to throw the stone. Even from that distance, he could smell the Stygian stench of the cave as its clammy, insidious air oozed around him and embraced him, pulling him closer.

Depending on which version of the myth you believed, The Jangling Hole was either an inviting refuge or a sinister maw that would swallow all who entered. According to his dad, the Hole had been a Civil War hideout for deserters of both camps, a gang of raiders brought together by a schizophrenic Yankee colonel. In that cramped darkness, there was no room for conflict, as neither the Confederacy nor the Union stirred much loyalty among the isolated mountaineers, who had little use for government of any kind. Apparently no artifacts had ever been found there, so the legend was mostly written off as the wistful folly of those who found the past more alluring than the bloody, televised tempest of their own times. People like Capt. Davis.

But lack of evidence had never killed a good legend. The cave had earned its name from reports of clinking tools and the jangling of knives against mess kits and canteens. Vernon Ray, who had read plenty of Weird War and Tales From The Crypt comics, figured the cave was as likely to be haunted as any other piece of ground, and Civil War battle sites were notorious for their paranormal activity.

He’d been plenty curious, but never brave enough to enter. Until now.

The thick air seeped from the cave’s mouth and blended with the healthy, green atmosphere of the forest. He wondered how Bobby could even breathe in there, much less move around without a flashlight.

He raised his voice, figuring the risk of cops was lower than the risk of getting closer to the cave. “Hey, Bobby!”

No answer. His pal had disappeared like Alice down the zombie rabbit hole.

Okay, Straight-A Brain, give me something useful here besides algebra functions and the roster of Gettysburg commanders.

He had a few choices. He could go find the cops, wherever they were, and report Bobby missing, which would leave Bobby hating his guts; he could high-tail it home and call Bobby’s dad, which would probably put Vernon Ray’s own ass in a sling; or he could go inside the cave—just a few feet—and summon his friend again.

He was still undecided, though he’d edged another step closer to the narrow entrance, when he heard the soft patter of rain on leaves. That made no sense, for though the weather in the Blue Ridge mountains could change dramatically, sometimes delivering the worst of three different seasons in the same day, the sky was mostly clear at the moment. Yet another faint rumble rolled across the black dirt of the mountain, suggesting a thunderstorm on its way.

Great. A few bolts of lightning at this altitude and I’m pretty much guaranteed to be trapped in the Hole with Bobby. Or zapped to Asgard and Odin’s throne.

The pattering grew louder, and Vernon Ray looked up, expecting water droplets to splash in his eyes. But the air was dry and free of static, though cooling with the approach of sundown. The rumble swelled, taking on a resounding quality, but it was topped by a steady staccato. Now Vernon Ray placed the sound, though it had no place in this primal environment.

The rattle of a snare drum.

Often in the Civil War re-enactments, one of the counterfeit soldiers’ kids was decked out in a little uniform, round-topped kepi tilted low over the forehead, leather boots dusty and scuffed. The kid would either be the drummer boy or, less often, the flag bearer, since flags were heavier and slightly more dangerous in simulated battle. A flagstaff could dip and knock a foot soldier on the head or joust a cavalryman out of the saddle. But a drum—well, a drum was just plain cute.

Not that the Captain had ever invited his son into the camp, or let him wear one of the miniature uniforms in the memorabilia collection. Years ago, they used to travel to the events together, though Vernon Ray and Mom were strictly spectators. From Manassas to Spotsylvania to Harpers Ferry to Marietta, they had kneeled in the shade eating picnic lunches while mock battles raged and a layer of black-powder smoke settled over the field. Though most re-enactments featured a civilian attachment in period clothing, the women in cumbersome hoop skirts and the children in knickers and ragged cotton blouses, Vernon Ray was soon consigned to being a spectator only, and eventually his dad stopped taking him along altogether.

Vernon Ray had been jealous of those boys who actually got to participate, especially the drummers. Sometimes, an entire corps of boys, some of them with wrists barely as thick as their drumsticks, would stand in the morning sun and roll out marching cadences. When the action began, a few of them even got to die, flopping on the ground while carefully tossing their snares to the side or dragging themselves toward enemy lines as if sporting deep, imminently fatal wounds. Vernon Ray, who probably knew more Civil War history than all of them put together, had yet to put a boot on such hallowed territory.

But he had taught himself how to roll out a snare cadence, his right wrist turned upward, his left wrist flexing gently. His sticks on the nylon skin made the same percussive rhythm as the one now welling from the cave. He knew the drill, and this was its beat.

Somebody in the Hole was tapping out a marching tempo, and as far as Vernon Ray knew, Bobby had never touched a drum in his life.

CHAPTER THREE

Two shots. Them peckerwoods were at it again, poaching on the low backbone of land that ran up Mulatto Mountain. Hardy Eggers started for the shotgun in the closet, but then remembered two unfortunate details that he’d done a decent job of burying over the last couple of months.

One, the sheriff had pretty much warned him against hauling out the shotgun every time trouble showed up, ever since he’d run off that last batch of suits from Elkridge Landcorp, LLC. Hardy figured the initials stood for “lily-livered cowards,” but the legal documents probably spelled out some long-winded horse manure drummed up in a Yankee law school.

Hardy hadn’t been aware that it was a crime to step out on the porch armed for protection when a bunch of squirrel-eyed strangers pulled up in a long, shiny Cadillac. The sheriff explained that such shenanigans constituted “communicating a threat,” which apparently trumped the trespassing charge Hardy could have sworn against the suits. To Hardy, it had simply been a case of marking territory and cutting the need for chatter. They wanted him to sell and he wouldn’t sell for a barn’s worth of gold bullion and a lifetime’s supply of Louise Templeton, not that he had much demand for her particular ware in his old age.

Two, the upper side of the mountain was no longer in the Eggers family. Brother Tommy and sister Sue Ellen had sold off their portions of the family birthright to Budget Bill Willard, who built his fortune as a photographer with pictures on calendars, postcards, and the pages of “Southern Living” magazine. Budget Bill, who was second-generation local, parlayed his makeshift camera shop into a cottage industry and then had gone into land development. The stumpy, bald-headed peckerwood was known for his scenic shots of old-timey mountain farmsteads, but now he was using the money to bulldoze those very sites and turn them into second-home subdivisions for flatlanders who drove too slow and talked too fast.

Hardy figured he was probably the only coot in Pickett County to see the irony in Budget Bill’s career trajectory; only a hypocrite would pretend to celebrate the thing he was actively destroying. But that was Budget Bill for you, and his type of crime was not only tolerated but written up big in the papers and showered with plaques from the Chamber of Commerce, like he was some sort of hero. Just went to show you could get away with murder as long as you did it with a camera or a bank note or a bulldozer instead of a gun.

Two shots, though.

October was too early for squirrel hunting, and the elk that gave the developers their fancy-pants subdivision name had been extinct for two centuries. Daniel Boone and his pack of musket-toting tourists had accomplished in ten years what the Cherokee hadn’t managed to do in a thousand. And Hardy figured by the time Budget Bill’s group of bankers and lawyers were done, not even a skunk would be left on Mulatto Mountain.

There was one other possibility, but he liked that one even less. The Hole had been quiet for years—ever since they’d taken a piece of his son—but who could say what would happen when bulldozers scraped and gouged ill-rested ground? And whether the family’s skeletons might rattle and dance free of the closet?

Hardy parted the curtains and peeked out, just to play it safe. He still clung to a herd of short-horns, even though the Republicans had stomped out farm subsidies and pretty much guaranteed farmers would have to sell off their property eventually. The cattle were grazing in the blue-green grass under the soft autumn sky, all accounted for, so nobody had been taking pot shots at the livestock. And nothing hungry had come out of the dark cracks in the mountain to haul off some fresh, writhing meat on the hoof.

A thump came from the stairs, the irregular clatter of shoe leather on wood. His wife Pearl was limping down, arthritis and all. Hardy had tried to talk her into moving their bedroom to the first floor of the farmhouse, but she was having none of it. Their four-poster bed, hand carved from cherry, had withstood forty-three years of loving and fussing, and she saw no reason to go rushing into change. Besides, Donnie was on the second floor and moving him would be a mite harder.

The thumping stopped and her face peered over the banister, eyes as bright as marbles despite the lines around them. “What’s going on?”

“Somebody shooting on the mountain.”

“No need to go whipping out your pecker. It’s none of your affair.”

“It is if they’re hunting out of season.”

“You can’t have it both ways, hon. You expect people to mind their own business when it comes to your land, but when it’s the neighbor’s, you got to go sticking that big snout right in it.”

Hardy touched his nose. It wasn’t that big. Besides, the feature ran in the family, and the Eggerses had been prominent back when property and healthy livestock, not money, were the measure of a man. “Well, it ain’t been their land long.”

“Tommy and Sue Ellen did what was best for their futures. They got kids in college. Not everybody’s as hardheaded and stuck in the past as you are.”

“Shit fire,” Hardy said, letting the curtain drop and not bothering to mention Donnie’s chances of attending college were about the same as a pig playing banjo. “I guess I need something to get riled over in my old age.”

“You’re better off tending to your blood pressure,” Pearl said, finishing her descent of the stairs. He went to her and gave her a kiss on the cheek, despite the fact that he’d kissed her no more than an hour ago, when they’d been fooling around up in the marriage bed. Hardy hadn’t been able to work up enough to give either of them satisfaction, but he figured he ought to try once a week or so whether he felt like it or not. Pearl, loyal partner that she was, never once complained or ridiculed him, just said a long snuggle was plenty enough intimacy for her. Hardy had hinted she might try out some of those battery-operated contraptions they sold right out on the drugstore shelves, but she only giggled and said an old dog like her was way past any new tricks.

He was about to ask if she wanted a cup of tea—she liked her Lipton’s warm with a teaspoon of sugar and a dash of half-and-half, which he thought was Massachusetts foolishness she’d got out of some magazine or other, but it was her only vice and not much of one at that—when she held up a hand.

“You didn’t like that kiss?” he asked.

“You’re getting better with practice, but I think somebody’s coming.”

A couple of seconds later, he heard the low whine of a car engine and the chink of gravel kicking off a steel undercarriage. Loss of hearing came with the years, he supposed, but it still sucked mule eggs. Sounded like a big ride, maybe another Caddy full of Budget Bill’s monkeys in neckties, but he decided to give the shotgun a pass for now. Pearl followed him out the front door.

The sheriff’s beige-and-white cruiser slewed to a stop, its bubble-gum machine strobing blue on the roof. Frank Littlefield climbed out of the driver’s seat, leaving the door open and engine running, meaning he was either hellbent for leather or else had a warrant burning a hole in his pocket.

Littlefield had gone a little soft in the belly and patches of gray marked his temples. His eyes were pouched and bloodshot, but that was only natural for a man who had lost a couple of detectives along the way, not to mention his kid brother. People gossiped about Littlefield, since freak accidents tended to dog his every step, but Hardy had pulled the lever for the man come every election day, Republican or no.

“Howdy, Sheriff, what can I do you for?” Hardy shouted, Pearl pressed close behind him and smelling of clean Ivory soap.

“Mind opening your cattle gate, Mr. Eggers?”

Ordinarily, Hardy would have made a joke about his cows being the law-abiding sort, but Littlefield’s expression and clipped tone discouraged tomfoolery. This was a man on a mission. “Sure enough,” he said, heading down the steps and breaking into a gimpy trot.

Littlefield got back behind the wheel and by the time Hardy swung the steel gate open, the sheriff had pulled the cruiser to the dusty twin tracks that led past a couple of hay barns and into the hills. Littlefield paused, his driver’s-side window down.

“I’ll need to go through the upper gate, too, but I’ll close it behind me,” the sheriff said.

“That one’s stickier than a widow’s honeypot,” Hardy said. “You might need a hand with it.”

Truth was, Hardy just wanted to poke his big snout into Littlefield’s business, and they both knew it. But Littlefield nodded his head to the passenger door. “Let’s roll.”

Just before Hardy ducked into the car, he gave Pearl a reassuring wave, but it didn’t diminish the deep worry lines on her forehead.

“Keep an eye on Donnie,” he said.

“And you keep an eye on yourself,” she shouted back before he closed the door.

The car bounced up the old roadbed that had once been used for logging, back before the timber clear-cutting of the early twentieth century. A lot of the access roads had been abandoned and gone back to saplings, and though Grandpappy Eggers had sold off logging rights, he’d kept open the main road across the mountain, even though it was now best navigated by four-wheel-drive vehicles. The sheriff seemed plenty determined, however, and Hardy didn’t think a few dents to the oil pan would slow him any.

“Manhunt in progress?” Hardy ventured, a line he’d probably picked up from a TV show.

“I’m not sure yet,” Littlefield said. “And I couldn’t tell you if I knew.”

The radio crackled. A laptop computer was fastened to the dashboard with Velcro, and a pump-action .20-gauge rested in the crotch between the two front seats. Littlefield picked up the handset and spoke into it. “Any word on Perriotte?”

“Nowhere in sight,” came the reply, the sibilant lost in a spray of static.

“I heard two shots,” Hardy said. “Is some nut up there with a gun?”

“Like I said, I can’t say.”

“Can’t say, or can’t tell?”

“Neither one.”

The sheriff ditched the handset and locked both hands on the wheel. The October heat and stress were squeezing sweat from his scalp. As they gunned up the incline, the herd of cattle gazed with disinterest, as if figuring that even if the car were edible, it was moving way too fast to munch.

“Might be one of them hippies,” Hardy said, enjoying his brief turn as an accidental deputy.

“What hippies?” Littlefield said, checking the digital readouts on the dashboard.

“Tree huggers. The ones trying to stop Budget Bill and the developers, claim Mulatto Mountain is an environmental treasure.”

“They aren’t the violent kind,” Littlefield said. “They’re more likely to pass out flyers and hold rallies on the library lawn, not pull an ecoterrorist number. They’re too busy smoking pot to figure out which end of a firearm is which.”

When they reached the upper gate, they found it as rusty as Hardy had promised. Littlefield pounded the sole of his boot against the latch until it finally broke free, and then the two men lifted the gate and shoved it against a reluctant tuft of blackberry briars until the opening was wide enough for the car.

“Thanks, Mr. Eggers,” the sheriff said. “Sorry I’ve got to leave you here, but this is official police business.”

“Go get ‘em,” Hardy said, slapping his palm on the roof. As the wide Buick cruiser weaved through the forest, branches slapping at the car’s flanks, Hardy wrestled the gate back into place. He looked down at the farmhouse and outbuildings nearly half a mile below, where they were tucked in the valley like a child’s alphabet blocks on a rumpled green rug. He imagined Pearl was still standing on the porch, hand shading her eyes, her thin lips pursed in worry. At a time like this, Hardy was glad his eyesight was as gone-to-shit as his hearing and his pecker.

He waved, on the long chance that she could see him, and started hoofing it up the roadbed in the wake of the cruiser. Sure, this constituted trespassing, as he was officially on property belonging to Budget Bill Willard and Elkridge Landcorp, and given his game legs and short wind, he probably wouldn’t make it another hundred feet, but he hadn’t had a thrill since the armed showdown with the developers and damned if he wasn’t looking forward to some action. Besides, his one-eyed rattlesnake twitched a little in the moist den of his boxers, as if maybe it wasn’t yet resigned to permanent hibernation.

Too bad he didn’t have his shotgun. But no way in hell was he going to walk down to the house and get it. He’d just have to improvise, if worse came to worse.

Littlefield might be able to handle the drug addicts and petty crooks of Pickett County, but Mulatto Mountain was an entirely different story.

A whole bunch of stories, come to think of it.

Hardy just hoped, for the sake of all that was good, right, and holy, that he’d make it to the top in time to keep everybody away from The Jangling Hole.

He’d not been there for his own son, but maybe he could scare off the next bunch before the Hole spewed more of its wickedness into the world.

CHAPTER FOUR

Shots fired. Officer down. Maybe.

I hate the unknown.

Too bad there’s so damned much of it.

Sheriff Frank Littlefield punished the cruiser, bouncing up the eroded twin ruts that passed for a road. Most of his counterparts in surrounding mountain counties drove

Humvees or oversize SUV’s, but Littlefield’s departmental budget had been stressed by the opening of a new jail and demands for beefed-up security at the courthouse. It seemed judges didn’t like the rash of nutballs passing down their own sentences in court, punctuated with the bang of hot steel instead of a cool wooden gavel. Besides, Littlefield’s self-image required he drive the most beat-up, high-mileage vehicle in the fleet, and the whining Buick had been ridden hard enough to earn a place on the scrap heap.

Some would put its driver in the same category. Littlefield had won the last election by 12 votes, and that was only after a recount. Pickett County hadn’t endured a Democratic sheriff since the 1970s, but political unrest had trickled even into the most remote and conservative pockets of the South. And folks still whispered about the red church and how Littlefield’s younger brother had died, as well as his chief deputy. Trouble cast a long shadow over the sheriff, not a good circumstance for someone in his line of work.

He didn’t dwell on the past, because the past was mostly a string of failures. A less-arrogant man would have turned in his badge, or fail to campaign vigorously enough to win. Littlefield, approaching 47, figured he still had a few good years left, since modern police spent more time at the computer than chasing bad guys. The sad truth was, he didn’t have anything else to do with his life, and the opportunity for redemption always hung before him like a sagging Christ on crooked dogwood.

Maybe this was the chance. The report of “Shots fired” had kicked his heart into high gear, especially since his deputies were involved. Morton and Perriotte were recent hires, both with criminal justice degrees, and the Saturday-afternoon shift was a good way to break them in. Domestic violence calls and drunk drivers were the most common log ledgers, but this was Pickett County, and Littlefield had been around long enough to know things could take a sudden turn into the strange, especially on Mulatto Mountain.

The radio had been spitting static for the last two minutes, and Littlefield had no idea of his location. Like most native males, he’d hunted the mountain as a youngster, but the terrain had changed a bit since then. The hardwood forest became more dense, slabs of granite shelves had given way in places, and the old logging roads were slowly reverting to their natural state. Leaves slapped the windshield, and a branch slammed the side mirror against the chassis, cracking the glass. The front wheels of the Buick dropped into a ditch, and Littlefield decided he’d better go the rest of the way on foot.

Littlefield called dispatch and ordered the other responding deputies to stake out the foot of the mountain. If there was a shooter on the loose, better to keep the stray bullets away from town. Two roads girded the mountain, but anybody with a half a lick of sense could slip through the woods and stay out of sight. Littlefield’s order was designed to keep people out of the firing line, and he told himself it was smart strategy.

But the fringe benefit was that no witnesses would be around if things went weird.

Littlefield was out of the car and trying to get his bearings when a third shot rang out. Shouts arose from somewhere to his left, maybe a few hundred feet. His deputies must have tracked a suspect into the woods and now the parties were in a standoff near the ridge.

Good versus evil, right against wrong, light and dark in their eternal dance, all bleeding in a blind gray struggle that kept people like Littlefield motivated and employed. Littlefield cursed under his breath, wondering which side he truly served, and then eased between the trees, hunched low and stepping lightly.

Why hadn’t the boys used their field radios?

The last transmission had been their standard 10-20 check, reporting their response to the shoplifting call. Maybe they figured to perform a quick search and make the store owner happy, knowing shoplifters who left the premises were rarely apprehended. That didn’t matter now. All that mattered was getting everybody off Mulatto Mountain in one piece.

“Over here,” Morton shouted.

Littlefield drew his Glock, the first time he’d gripped the pistol in months, and risked giving away his location by answering. “You okay?”

“It’s Perriotte.”

“Is he down?”

“Sort of,” Morton shouted.

Littlefield worked past trees and up the slope, breathing harder than he cared to acknowledge, his chest a little tight around his ribs. He eased around a boulder, bits of lichen breaking loose and tickling down his collar.

“Sort of? A man’s either up or he’s down.”

“He’s down, but he’s not shot. Not that I can see.”

Littlefield was now close enough to talk without shouting, though the deputies were still concealed from him by the evergreen growth. “Where’s the gunman?”

“That’s the odd part. I don’t see one.” Then, lower, “Hang on, J.R. It’s going to be okay.”

Littlefield skirted behind a low thicket of cedars, the Glock heavy in his hand. He hadn’t shot anyone in years, not since Archer McFall, and he still wasn’t sure whether McFall counted as “anyone” or not. The jury was still out on that one. When your victim up and drifted into the river, leaving only a pile of dry mud behind, you couldn’t rightly carve a notch in your gun.

Winded, he leaned against an oak, bark scraping his cheek. From his new vantage point, he could look down on his officers, who were crouched behind a jumble of granite that jutted from the ground like the broken teeth of giants. Morton, the youngest, his chin red from a severe shave, peered over the stones and up the slope to Littlefield’s left. Littlefield surveyed the foliage. He saw no movement.

“Psst,” Littlefield called to Morton, figuring the element of surprise was shot to hell anyway. The distant sirens had surely tipped off the gunman that the cavalry was riding in, and not many roads led off Mulatto Mountain.

“Up there, Sheriff,” Morton said, waving his own pistol toward the peak.

“Did you see anything?”

“Movement, nothing much. Could have been a deer for all I could tell.”

“How’s Perriotte?”

“Peculiar.”

Peculiar? What the hell kind of diagnosis was “peculiar”?

Littlefield squinted into the forest, where gnarled limbs hugged the darkness and ancient things slept beneath the rotten crust. “Did he fire his weapon?”

“Three times. The last time, I was here, but I don’t know what in hell he was shooting at.”

“Hell with it,” he muttered under his breath. “Guess it’s always now or never.”

Littlefield approached the ridge, edging out from cover enough to let the gunman see him without getting a clear shot. If Perriotte had fired three times, the gunman might not even be a gunman at all. The correct term was “suspect,” but the target had not been identified by anyone but Perriotte. So that made it what they liked to call “a person of interest,” the lingo lawmen fell back on when they didn’t know their asses from a hole in the ground. And he was up-to-date on what constituted a hole in the ground, because The Jangling Hole was just such a creature.

“Creature,” shit. There I go personifying inanimate objects again. Should have checked into the loony bin the first time I ever saw a talking, shape-shifting stack of dirt. That would have spared lots of people lots of trouble, and maybe kept a couple of them alive.

Littlefield looked down to see his pistol hand was shaking. So much for all those Louis L’Amour novels. The sheriff’s only comfort was in knowing the Hole was on the far side of the mountain, hundreds of yards from the ridge and Perriotte’s apparent target.

“Cover me,” Littlefield said to Morton. The kid’s eyes were wide and wet like oily olives, but he nodded in something approximating confidence. A sheriff’s hiring practices rarely came down to a life-and-death roll of the dice, but Littlefield hoped Morton lived up to the bluff and bluster on his resume. Littlefield took three steps, then lost his footing in the slick leaves and fell on his rump. A fart escaped his clenched rectum.

He bit back a curse and rolled to his hands and knees. Keeping low, he scuttled to Morton’s and Perriotte’s concealment. Perriotte’s eyes were wide and blank, staring through the canopy as if scanning for angels against the high clouds. The downed officer was an Iraqi war vet, had served two tours with a National Guard unit before finishing his criminal justice training. Maybe he was suffering delayed post-traumatic stress disorder and had lapsed into some sort of bizarre episode, though the North Carolina ridges were far removed from flat sand, crumbling mosques, and roadside bombers.

“You okay, J.R.?” The new generation of deputies went by initials while on duty, an annoying habit that had migrated from the ranks of the state highway patrol. Littlefield would have preferred to call the man “Jimmy,” which would have seemed a little more humane. The deputy looked like he could use all the human connection he could get, because his lips were stuttering soundlessly and his eyelids twitched in broken focus.

“He’s been like that ever since he fired the third shot,” Morton said.

“Did you see what he was shooting at?”

“No, he just yelled, ‘See that?’ and cut loose. He dropped his gun and curled up in a ball, and he’s been like this ever since.”

Littlefield put two fingers to Perriotte’s jugular. The pulse was strong and rapid. No physical injury. But the deepest wounds were invisible and a lot of soul juice could leak from them before the protective scars formed.

“We were in pursuit of them kids,” Morton said. “J.R. went after the fastest brat, chased him around the ridge.”

“Were you guys near the Hole?”

Morton’s eyes narrowed and he rubbed at the raw skin of his close-shaven neck. “We could see it, but we didn’t go in. You think somebody was hiding in there? A fugitive, maybe, who got spooked when he saw cops?”

“Did he say anything after the first two shots?” Littlefield played his gaze along the ridge line but saw nothing. Even the crows had been startled into silence.

The ridge was like the backbone of a dinosaur, lined with boulders and spiky trees, the branches shorn and stunted by the endless winds. The Appalachian Mountain chain, the world’s oldest, was worn by eons, but parts of it had resisted age, as if beholden to laws besides the natural. Mulatto Mountain was such a place, and Littlefield could have sworn the mountain throbbed. He checked his watch and saw the numbers hadn’t changed since he’d stepped from the cruiser. He shook his left wrist and tapped the watch with the butt of his gun but the red numerals winked in a mockery of mortality: 5:53.

“When I reached him, he said what sounded like ‘He’s walking on nothing.’ What do you think that means?”

Sounded to Littlefield like a quote from some book or movie, but Perriotte wasn’t exactly among the culturally hip. He was more of a pork rinds-and-roller derby kind of guy. Though the deputy had a fondness for videogames, he mostly stuck to the shoot-’em-up kind where the line between the guilty and innocent often blurred and both were acceptable in piling up body counts. Perriotte was a registered Democrat, though you couldn’t tell it by his shop talk, and he attended the big new Baptist Church in Whispering Pines. Littlefield wasn’t one to meddle in his people’s private lives, unless there were suggestions of behavior that might come back to haunt his department.

Right now, Perriotte looked to be suffering from a problem bigger than psycho girlfriends and party politics, and Littlefield wondered how he would spin this to keep the deputy’s jacket clean. Anytime an officer fired shots in the line of duty, the State Bureau of Investigation stuck its beak into the situation and it became a race to see who could whip it out the fastest and measure it the longest. Under normal circumstances, Perriotte could defend the shoot. But this time there was no inciting action and no target.

Which probably meant Littlefield could cover it up. But he wasn’t sure he could wipe the slate of Perriotte’s memory as easily, because the man hadn’t blinked since Littlefield’s arrival two minutes before.

“He wasn’t shooting at the kid, was he?” Littlefield asked Morton.

“No, sir. The brat was long gone by the time I caught up.”

“Did you get a look at him?”

“All those brats are the same. Skater punks. There were a couple on the other side of the ridge but they took off when we heard the shots.”

“We?”

“Me and Ammanahiya whatever. The store owner.”

“So there’s another witness to worry about.” Though Littlefield wondered if it counted as “witnessing” if there had been nothing to see.

“I doubt it. He took off faster than the kids, squealing like a teenybopper at a Clay Aiken concert.”

Littlefield looked down the slope, which was quiet, not even the breeze rustling the trees. He was glad now that he had ordered the deputies to stake out the main roads. The fewer who knew about this the better, at least until he came up with a good story.

He had more than just Perriotte to worry about. The suits of Elkridge Landcorp had a lot at stake on Mulatto Mountain, and the county commissioners were wetting their pants over the potential tax revenue that would roll in when the slopes were stacked with million-dollar summer homes. A little bad publicity might slow down the project, and three of the commissioners were coming up for reelection. They couldn’t fire him, but they could jerk his chain and make roll over and beg.

“Let’s get him up,” Littlefield said, pointing out the overgrown logging road. “My cruiser is closer than yours. About a hundred yards that way.”

Perriotte swayed like a drunken sailor but stayed on his feet, flopping against Morton’s shoulder. Littlefield got them balanced and wobbling in the right direction.

“Want me to call an ambulance?” Morton said.

“No, we’ll deal with it at the office. I’ll catch up in a second. I got to check out the ridge first. Can you handle him?”

“Hell, I’ve had dates groggier than this, and I got them to bed just fine.”

“Well, treat him like a lady, not a woman.”

Morton tried to crack a grin but the strain and uncertainty were evident on his face. “What do you think he was shooting at?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll come up with something. Bear, dog with rabies, hell, maybe even a wild, man-eating goat. Stranger things have walked this goddamned mountain.”

As the two deputies negotiated the stumps, fallen trees, and jagged stones, Perriotte leaving long black strips of mud where his patent-leather shoes dragged, Littlefield climbed the last hundred feet to the slope. The pines, oak, and beech trees at the top of Mulatto Mountain were bleached by acid rain, the limbs jagged and broken from savage winds and ice storms. While the woods below were comforting, the kind that evoked images of cute little chipmunks and dewy-eyed deer, the ridge was raw and bristling, full of sharp edges and broken chunks of granite.

From the top, which was about a thousand feet in altitude above the valley floor, Littlefield took in the 360-degree view. Titusville spread out in a chaotic grid, the streets squeezed together to accommodate the uneven topography. The main strip was a four-lane boulevard that looked like Anywhere, USA, with a Walmart, Western Steer, Taco Bell, Burger King, Auto Zone and enough different banks to foreclose on half the county. When Littlefield was a boy, the town had been little more than a motel, general store, and a Greyhound bus terminal with a gas station attached. Now Titusville was the biggest town in three counties, evolving into a business park for Realtors, lending institutions, and lawyers, who were basically all hogs at the same trough sucking down the swill of vacation-home owners.

But not everything was new and glistening with white concrete, glass, and steel. Mulatto Mountain had stood watch over all of it, and its legends had seeped into the dirt and run down the gullies like spring freshets spawned by melting snow. The forest, despite having been logged heavily a century before and now squarely in the sights of a development group, still had a primal feel, as if extinct predators might emerge from cover at any moment and give a hungry grin. Though the town was an hour’s hike away, it might as well have been a thousand miles.

Littlefield walked the ridge, looking for any signs of recent passage. He found a lump of animal spoor, most likely from a deer, but it was too dried and desiccated to have dropped from Perriotte’s target.

“He walked on nothing.”

That didn’t sound much like a deer, either. Being dead didn’t always account for much in Pickett County. The dead could rise up and walk, though not many people remembered the last time it had happened. And those who remembered tended to keep it to themselves.

He was about to give up and head back to the cruiser when he saw a series of long gouges in the soil. It looked like feet had dragged across the ground and kicked up small piles of leaves. The line of footprints tracked from a deadfall to a fern-pocked cluster of rocks. Littlefield followed the trail, one hand on his pistol, but when he reached the rocks, he saw only a mound of dirt. The footprints had abruptly ended, and no feet were in sight. Nor any face, body, or soul.

Littlefield knelt and rolled the cool, dark dirt in his hand. If it came to it, how could you fight a mountain and its most sacred and sick secrets?

CHAPTER FIVE

Bobby struck a match and held it aloft, the momentary stench of sulfur overpowering the fungal, wet-fur smell of the cave. “You hear that?”

Vernon Ray nodded, and then realized Bobby couldn’t see his face. They were about twenty feet inside the Hole, and though they could still see the jagged opening and the forest beyond, daylight didn’t penetrate to where they stood. The floor of the cave was uneven and peppered with tiny rocks that glinted in the bobbing flame. Vernon Ray wanted to grab Bobby’s sleeve for comfort, but didn’t want his best friend to think he was a sissy. That’s why he’d entered the Jangling Hole in the first place, despite every cell in his body screaming at him to run.

The rattling snare had faded a little, as if the drummer were marching deep into the bowels of the mountain. “Maybe it’s some geology thing,” Vernon Ray said. “A settling of tectonic plates or something.”

The explanation sounded feeble even as it left his lips, because as the world’s oldest mountain range, the Appalachian chain had seen its earthquakes and volcanic activity epochs before. The upward thrust and breaking of mantle was ancient history, the Earth cracking its knuckles, and now all that remained was the slow sinking under the gentle persuasion of time. Besides, the cave had collapsed when Union troops blasted it with cannons. If you believed the stories.

“No, man, that’s a drum,” Bobby said.

“You think it’s a ghost?” Vernon Ray wanted proof, something to tell his Dad—You’re right, Capt. Davis, the Civil War never ended—and maybe there was nothing more to being a man than sticking your neck into unnecessary danger. If it would make him a man, he’d march down into the Jangling Hole until he came to the ass end of Hell.

Though he’d keep his eyes closed, just in case.

“Why would a ghost play a drum? Ouch.” Bobby dropped the match, throwing them into near-pitch darkness. A pungent waft of burnt flesh teased Vernon Ray’s nostrils.

“They got anything better to do?” Vernon Ray’s false bravery failed as his voice cracked. “Light another match. Hurry.”

“Shh.”

The drumming had faded to a muted drone, the staccato beats blending together in the distance. A match scritched and as the yellow light flared, Vernon Ray glanced at the ceiling. Were symbols carved up there, or were the shapes just the flickering shadows cast by cracks in the stone?

“This is where the soldiers camped,” Bobby said, kicking at a rock.

“My dad said they did an archaeological survey,” Vernon Ray said. “No artifacts were found besides a few Cherokee tools and flint. If any troops were ever here, they must have been way down in the hole and got trapped.”

“Who are you going to believe, a bunch of pencil pushers like Cornwad or your bestest bud?”

“Who do you expect me to believe?”

“I saw one of them.”

“One of who?”

“Them. Why do you think I came in here?”

The second match went out and they stood in the dark, which pressed against Vernon Ray’s flesh like stagnant water. The space was silent except for their breathing and the soft rustle of wind through the trees outside. Vernon Ray’s heart was racing as fast as it did when he touched himself under the midnight covers of his bed, fueled by the same fearful anticipation of something that couldn’t be missed, no matter the consequences.

“Don’t dick with me, Bobby.”

“Serious. One of them called me. Well, actually, he said ‘Early,’ but you know.”

“I’ve heard of ghost whisperers, but I never heard of a ghost whispering back.”

“I heard it, plain as day,” Bobby said. “When I was running from the cops, he called again.”

“Who called?”

“Nobody. I mean, he was barely there.”

“Did you and Dex smoke a joint behind my back? Because you’re acting like a freakozoid.” Vernon Ray shivered. He didn’t like having this conversation in the dark, and the cave seemed to be sucking down the sunshine and digesting it, because now the entrance looked forty feet away even though they hadn’t moved.

“People say ghosts hide out in the Hole, but this person had flesh and bones,” Bobby said in a flat tone, as if reciting a line from a half-remembered movie. “It moved around and talked and smelled like chewing tobacco and coffee.”

“Hit another match.”

“Asked me if Stoneman had passed through yet. Asked me if the war was over. Asked if he could go home.”

Vernon Ray took another step closer, at the risk of being called a homo, until he bumped into Bobby. “Give me the matches.”

Vernon Ray found Bobby’s outstretched hand and took the matches, fired one up, and tore two more matches from the pack. Tiny twin flames reflected off Bobby’s eyes, giving his face the appearance of a hell-spawned demon. As the match burned low, Vernon Ray lit another and bent low, looking for tracks. Though the light didn’t penetrate much of the cave, the muddy floor appeared to show only their two sets of footprints.

“I don’t see nothing now,” Bobby said.

“Maybe you heard a fox or something. Or bats.”

“It was a soldier.”

“It’s dark in here. Easy for your imagination to run wild.”

I’m trying to talk you out of it because I want to believe it so bad.

Bobby turned away, toward the back of the cave. Vernon Ray looked over his shoulder, stepping closer, toward his friend’s comforting body heat. A solid wall of murk stood before them, and somewhere beyond it lay the bones of soldiers. Vernon Ray could picture the pale skeletons, bones picked clean by vermin, mold and moss sinking spores into the dried marrow. Whatever Bobby had seen, it was best to let it rest in peace in this stifling tomb.

“Let’s get out of here,” Vernon Ray said, lighting a third match and holding it until it nearly burned his fingers. Despite his academic assessment of Appalachian tectonics, the walls looked fragile, rock stacked on a whim, glistening with the moist sweat of the world. He could imagine primordial reptiles slithering in its crevices, the first furry creatures huddling for cover.

Bobby pointed toward a dark stain on the wall, a splotch of faintly fluorescent indigo. “That looks like dinosaur crap.”

The air was ripe with must and decomposition, as if the cave were in constant decay, the world rotting from the inside out. Stones were bones, after all, just dying at a different speed. It was all star stuff, and cosmic nonsense aside, the cave was a graveyard, a garbage hole, a place where light and life were sucked toward the inevitable. And maybe that consumption, the bottom of the hole, was the final resting place of all that walked and breathed and prayed.

Vernon Ray tossed the final match down, plunging them into darkness again, and glanced back at the entrance to the cave. He hadn’t taken a single step, but now daylight appeared fifty feet away. He closed his eyes and saw lime-green flashes where the flame had imprinted his retinas. When he blinked several seconds later, the cave seemed darker, as if the sun were going down outside. But it was probably only six o’clock, an hour before dusk.

“Come on, the cops are probably gone by now,” Vernon Ray said. The cops had become an abstraction. Even a jail cell would be better than the unseen but constricting walls of granite around them.

He was glad to feel Bobby’s hand on his arm, though the fingers were cold and moist. He only wished his friend hadn’t gone so silent. He could no longer hear Bobby’s breathing.

A faint ticking filled the air. Ratta-tat, ratta-tat.

The snare drum became audible in the same way it had faded out, swelling as if the invisible, impossible drummer were marching toward them from the depths.

“Come on, Bobby!” Vernon Ray tugged his friend’s hand, leading him toward the safety of the forest outside. But he lost traction in the mud and the air had grown heavy, and he fought against it as if wading through a receding tide. The mouth of the cave now appeared uphill and despite taking a dozen slow, straining steps he was no closer to safety. The drumming gained in volume, echoing off the wet walls.

The cave is sealed off. Nobody can come up from the dark.

Especially not dead soldiers.

Bobby’s hand slipped off his arm and Vernon Ray was unmoored, drifting in a morass that pressed against him on all sides, a sour molasses that clogged his nose and throat. The cave mouth not only looked farther away but smaller, as if he were looking down the fat end of a telescope. The forest beyond, suggested only by swathes of green and gold, had taken on the aspect of fantasy, as if this cloaked realm were the reality and all else a dream. The snare drum rattled, the reverberation booming like a cannonade.

Claustrophobia. Sure, that made sense.

Anxiety was distorting his perception. The snare was nothing more than the pounding of his heart. The cave shut off all noise from outside, creating an isolation tank of almost total sensory deprivation.

“Bobby?” Vernon Ray took two steps toward the mouth of the cave, only he must have gotten turned around in the dark, because the mouth of the cave was now behind him. Had he gone deeper into the cave instead of leaving it?

He flailed his arms in the dark, reaching for Bobby. He didn’t care if his friend thought he was a faggot, he didn’t even care if he bumped into Bobby’s butt, all he wanted to do was hug the only anchor of sanity left in the black and smothering abyss. His hand made contact and he clawed at Bobby’s shirt.

Bobby clamped down on his wrist, squeezing hard, and Vernon Ray yelped. Bobby yanked him off balance—and deeper into the cave—and Vernon Ray tried to plant his feet, but the Earth beneath him was ebony butter and he skied forward, slapping and tearing at Bobby’s hand. When had Bobby gotten so strong?

The ratta-tat rose and filled the cavity, penetrated Vernon Ray’s ears and rolled around the arc of his skull. The thunderous drumming was so loud that it would surely trigger an avalanche. And Vernon Ray would be trapped in this sepulcher of stone and slime, buried with the soldiers, doomed to forever march to the beat of a deceased drummer.

But he wouldn’t die alone. He would be with Bobby, and in the dark, with time against them and no one to ever find out, who knew what might happen?

Except Bobby’s grip was fierce, like thick and cold handcuffs girding his flesh, roping him deeper into the bowels of the world and closer to the drummer.

“Bobby, the other way.” Vernon Ray leaned back, throwing all his weight as resistance, but still Bobby dragged him forward into an unknown antechamber of hell. But the preachers said hell was hot, a place where sinners and homosexuals and liars and boys who had bad thoughts all burned for an eternity. If so, and surely plenty of others had been fed to the eternal flames over the centuries (he wasn’t alone in that, too, was he?), then why was the cave so cold?

The drumming became a cacophony, roaring in a mad range of tones and timbres. Or maybe it was the winds of the underworld rushing through some unseen open door. Vernon Ray twisted his neck, yearning for a last glimpse of the safe and sunlit world.

The silhouette of a man was framed in the cave mouth. A cop had found them. They’d be safe after all.

“Help!” Vernon Ray shouted, competing with the drums, yanking against Bobby, the pack of matches damp and crumpled in his palm. They could blame it all on Dex. The cops would fall for that easy. It would all be okay now, sane and normal and brightly lit.

But the man showed no sign of entering the cave and Bobby wasn’t letting loose. Vernon Ray slid another five feet deeper into darkness, digging his heels against the mud. Surely they’d reach the back of the cave soon, the place where the ceiling had collapsed and stacked the granite in an impossible jumble.

And then what would happen? Would Bobby continue dragging him down, through the narrow cracks in the rock, to the cavity where the bones of the soldiers lay?

Ratta-tatta-tat. What if the percussion was made by bones, skeletal fingers beating an insane rhythm against rock?

Where was the cop? Weren’t they supposed to risk their lives to protect the innocent? Didn’t the cop watch “NYPD Blue” or “T.J. Hooker” or even “The Andy Griffith Show”?

Vernon Ray, the last kid picked in sandlot football games, the part-time right fielder on his Little League team, the reigning chess camp of eighth grade, couldn’t count on brute strength, and his brains were pummeled by the snare cadence. He was reduced to blubbering Bobby’s name over and over until it came out as “Buh-buh-buh,” and to his horror he found his syllables had fallen in synch with the snare.

In the fifth grade, Vernon Ray had gotten into a fight with Whizzer Buchanan, a goon from across the county. Well, it hadn’t really been a fight, more of a Close Encounter of the Turd Kind. Whizzer had set aside his skateboard to go behind a tree and live up to his nickname, and Vernon Ray had picked up the abandoned skateboard and spun its wheels. He wasn’t going to steal it or anything; he was too chicken to board even if he’d owned one.

Whizzer had snuck up behind him, grabbed him, and threatened to smack the skateboard across his lips. Vernon Ray had pretended to go slack for just an instant, in a sissy fainting spell, and when Whizzer relaxed his grip, Vernon Ray had wriggled and yanked at the same time. The movement had surprised the goon, whose strength-and-size advantage was not only negated but worked against him. As Vernon Ray pirouetted away, Whizzer fell to the ground, smacking his own face on the board. By the time Whizzer regained his wits (both of them, Vernon Ray had smirked in the aftermath), his quarry was long gone.

Vernon Ray tried the same maneuver now, flattening his feet so that he slid in the mud while simultaneously leaning forward, falling toward Bobby. It was like skating on owl grease. He lost his balance and slammed into the dank mud. Up close, the floor of the cave smelled like rainy-day dogs, black powder, and rotted canvas.

Bobby stayed right with him through the fall, the meat lasso tightening. Vernon Ray slapped at his friend’s hand, and then clawed at it, the flesh peeling away like peach skin beneath his fingernails. Bobby didn’t utter a peep, not that Vernon Ray could have heard him over the swelling ratta-tatta-tat.

When had Bobby gotten so goddamned strong?

Vernon Ray tried a variation of the Great-Whizzer-Escape, springing forward from his knees, but all he did was propel himself deeper in the cave, banging his shins against rocks. Bobby was playing him like a sport fish, reeling him not toward shore but into a drowning black lagoon.

Where was that Christ-forsaken robocop?

Whatever gleam of light had trickled down the kaleidoscopic tube of stone and dirt was now stifled, like a reptilian eye blinking shut. Had they turned a bend? Worked through the fallen stone of the cave-in? The drum line now roared to thunder, threatening another landslide.

And he’d be trapped in here with . . . .

Bobby? The dead troops, unsung heroes whose common grave bore no marker? Or the Little Drummer Boy from Hell, pounding pounding pounding until Vernon Ray’s skull exploded and his brains scattered like grapeshot.

He had one more trick up his well-gripped sleeve, and it was less a conscious flop than a mild seizure of panic. He wriggled his elbows as if he were doing the funky chicken, at the same time driving his palms together in one smack of sick applause. The skin lasso loosened, and Vernon Ray scrambled backwards, bumping into something unseen and mushy, and a bat brushed his face—not another hand, certainly not a third hand—but by then Vernon Ray was clawing his way toward the warmer air, and now light suffused him, a bruised balm at first and then a solid gob of yellow-white.

And there was the silhouette, the cop at the mouth of the cave, and Vernon Ray was ready to confess to every unsolved crime in the Pickett County log book, just as long as the bars were thick and the cot warm and he could see each wall.

He stumbled, staggered, headless-funky-chicken-strutted his way toward the light, and he reached out his arms like a punk rocker diving into the front row, going for the cop. Faggot or not, he was ready to hug the hell out of the man, cling to the cop until they had to scrape him off with a shovel. Because the cop was solid, warm meat, not like the cold, dead things behind him . . . .

As he fell, he realized the ratta-tatta-tat had died, though its echo rolled around the curved bone of his skull like a metal ball on a roulette wheel.

“Dude, what were you doing in there?”

Didn’t sound like a cop. Vernon looked up from the grass, squinting against the red death of day. “Bobby?”

“Been waiting here five minutes. Didn’t you hear me yelling?”

“I was . . . .”

Vernon Ray looked at his hand. It clutched a scrap of ragged gray wool.

CHAPTER SIX

“What you boys doing on private property?” Hardy Eggers stepped from the concealment of the underbrush and tried to look like a crotchety bastard, the kind who would grab a nurse’s ass at the old folks’ home and pretend he had Alzheimer’s to get away with it. After the uphill hike, he had the heavy-breathing part down cold.

He didn’t recognize the boys, but they didn’t bolt when he challenged them. The runty one had the vacant-eyed stare of a videogame addict, or maybe he’d been snorting model airplane glue or sucking on wacky weed. The other boy was a little taller and better built, and his face pinched in a sullen expression as if he were used to getting his ass chewed. They were both blond and could pass for brothers.

“Nothing,” the tall one said.

“What’s your names?”

“I’m Bobby and this is Vernon Ray.”

“Don’t he talk?”

Vernon Ray gazed off into the woods as if naked elephants were parading among the trees. Bobby put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “He just had a scare.”

Shit. They went into the goddamned hole. Stupid kids.

At least they made it back out.

But it looks like maybe the runt, like Donnie, left a little bit of himself in there.

“You boys hear the shots?” Hardy didn’t know how long he could pretend to be menacing. He wished he’d carried his shotgun, because the weapon would have added to the picture of the addled hillbilly, but he figured his white stubble and filthy long john shirt were enough of a prop if he played it right.

Bobby nodded. “The cops ran through the woods. We hid in the cave because we were afraid somebody would shoot us.”

“You look familiar. Who’s your daddy?”

“Elmer. Elmer Eldreth.”

“Eldreth, huh? He work in construction?”

“Plumbing contractor.” The boy’s face tightened. “We need to be getting home. Our moms are going to be worried.”

“I know your daddy,” Hardy said. “If I see you boys snooping around up here again, he’ll be hearing about it.”

Bobby didn’t blink. “Are you with the developers?”

“No. This land’s been in my family since King George. Got it in a land grant.”

“I heard some Florida dipwads bought it. You don’t look like you’re from Florida.”

Goddamned brats these days. Don’t they teach ‘em not to talk back to their elders?

Vernon Ray wasn’t doing any kind of talking, but for the first time he snapped out of his daze, looking at his hand. He was holding something Hardy couldn’t make out.

“Don’t get smart with me,” Hardy said, approaching the pair. “I’m friends with the sheriff.”

“You’re trespassing the same as we are.”

“You got no business messing around up here. You could break your necks and nobody would even hear you scream.”

“Don’t worry,” Bobby said. “We know all the spooky stories. It’s just a bunch of trees and rocks to me. I don’t give a crap if they bulldoze it flat and paint ‘Save Our Planet’ in mile-long letters. Come on, Vernon Ray. Let’s get out of here before this geezer has a stroke.”

As Bobby led Vernon Ray down to the hill toward the trail, Hardy went to the edge of the Hole and peered inside. Even from ten feet away, the odor of old sulfur and sin oozed out like the belch of a long black snake. Maybe the boys had seen something they would tell their friends, and hopefully it wouldn’t make the little turds dare each other to come back. Hardy felt an obligation to keep people away, sort of a self-appointed guardian of the gate. But the gate was about to be busted open by Bill Willard’s big-money investment team and Hardy couldn’t do a thing about it except pray.

Hardy cocked an ear. Sometimes it sounded like breathing, which he could chalk up to the wind slipping between cracks in the stone. Sometimes it sounded like a deep and faint heartbeat, like when the doctor put the stethoscope to Pearl’s swollen belly and let him listen to the life inside. Other times, it was the rumble of a nightmare train rolling up from the depths of Hell. Now it resembled the drone of an International Harvester reaping hay, chugging black air and chewing up whatever the ground had to offer.

Except the noise wasn’t coming from the Hole.

The kids were out of sight, so Hardy figured he’d put a little distance from himself and the oily throat of the cave. He’d been inside the place as a kid, several times, it was practically a rite of passage in these parts, but he’d never stayed for more than a minute and each time he’d emerged with the feeling that he’d donned a second skin, a black film that even a plunge in the creek couldn’t wash clean.

Anyone who stood too long looking into that place, or listening to the mad music of the Earth’s hidden secrets, would end up like Bennie Hartley, who’d been found lying half in the Hole, stone dead from a heart attack, his legs lying in the shadows as if he hadn’t quite reached the sunlight in time.

Hardy circled the rocky knob that housed the cave, expecting to meet up with the sheriff. The rumbling engine grew louder, a thing of the real world and not some confabulation of a superstitious mountaineer. A vehicle was droning up the path on the west side of the mountain, moving through the woods where construction crews had carved the first dark stretch of road into the slope. The vehicle was big and slow, cracking saplings, the engine hiccupping as it powered over stumps and rocks.

Hardy moved between the tangles of rhododendron. The sheriff must have already cleared the scene, meaning Hardy would have to hoof it all the way back home without benefit of a lift. That meant nobody had been shot; otherwise, the place would have been crawling with rescue personnel and sirens would fill the valley below.

Unless the monster climbing Mulatto Moun tain is some newfangled kind of emergency vehicle, sucking down taxpayer diesel.

It rolled out of a stand of underbrush 100 feet below Hardy, its black crash grill pocked with broken branches. The customized silver Humvee rode five feet off the ground, sitting on tires that were fatter than a killing-season sow. The SUV was girded with roll bars, looking more like a cage designed to hold a rabid rhinoceros than a mode of conveyance. The windshield was tinted, but there was only one man in Titusville who would dare operate such a shitty and showy hunk of rubber and steel.

The Humvee roared into a stretch of grassland, a bald where the high winds kept trees from taking root. In the vehicle’s wake, the vegetation had been flattened and Hardy could see almost to the end of the newly graveled access road. Looked like Phase II of the Mulatto Mountain rehabilitation project was well underway.

Hardy raised a hand to the tinted driver’s-side window. It descended and Bill Willard’s round face broke into a grin. If his skin were shaded just a little more toward orange, he’d have made a dandy Halloween jack-o-lantern. As it was, he flashed jagged teeth that even the best in modern dental care couldn’t shape up and set square. Though the teeth were white, the eyes above them were every bit as black as the inside of a pumpkin, or the Jangling Hole for that matter.

“You Eggerses are all the same,” Bill said. “Can’t let it go. You’re all pissed because your property got chopped up and sold off over the years. But if your ancestors hadn’t liked screwing so much, there wouldn’t have been so many heirs.”

Hardy didn’t have an answer to that, because it was true. An Eggers male would stick his pecker into just about anything, as attested by his own Jewish-Cherokee bloodline. Some claimed it was a good thing that goats and sheep couldn’t take human seed, or there might be some little four-legged Eggerses running around. But Hardy had nothing to say on that subject, either.

“I heard about the ruckus,” Hardy said. “A man’s got an obligation to keep an eye on his neighbor’s property.”

Bill gunned the engine once, as if in defiance of high gas prices compliments of gutless politicians and endless war, and killed the ignition. “That’s more of Littlefield’s talk,” Bill said. “He’s as jumpy as a frog on a hotplate.”

Hardy nodded at Bill’s contrived colloquialism, the kind of backwoods buffoonery he considered folksy wisdom. Thought it made him one of the gang, but instead it only showed the man was trying way too hard. He’d buy Arveleta Perkins’s chow chow at the farmer’s market and pretend like he actually ate the mess, whereas only tourists and college hippies were dumb enough to buy the green mash of pickled onions, tomatillas, radishes, and cucumbers.

“The sheriff’s a good man,” Hardy said, keeping the defensiveness out of his voice. No use disputing Bill, because the baldheaded money-grabber never lost an argument. Like any man, he was wrong about half the time, but he mistook surrender for weakness, whereas any fool knew that sometimes it was better to run like hell and live to fight another day. Then again, Bill owned about five percent of Pickett County and it didn’t look like the bank was foreclosing anytime soon.

“Sheriff out to be enforcing these ‘No trespassing’ signs,” Bill said, the grin staying in place to add, “I’m just joking, but I don’t have to be.”

“Nobody wants any trouble up here.”

“Yeah, I know. We did that dance. The North Carolina Historical Society didn’t find one trace of Kirk’s Raiders, and all the do-gooders at Westridge University didn’t find a damned thing, either. Just some stories that make the rounds every Halloween when folks want to scare their kids into good behavior.”

“Them names had some basis in history.”

“There’s no record that Earley Eggers joined the raiders, but I know you’re little touchy about it.”

“You would be, too, if your family’s reputation was shot to hell.”

“That was a century and a half ago.”

“People bury the past, but some things stick around long after they ought to be forgot.”

Bill opened the Humvee door and rolled out of it. Economic prosperity had spread to his waistline. Standing, the top of his balding head barely reached the door handle, but his belly was as inflated as his tires. He smacked his lips as if chewing sunflower seeds. “I know you were the only heir that fought against selling the family property, but I also noticed you didn’t offer to give up your share after we cut the check.”

Hardy swallowed hard. “Turns out people keep buying up property around here and building big homes, driving up their neighbors’ taxes until they either have to sell out or go bust. I needed the money or I’d have lost my land.”

Bill’s grin widened, throwing wrinkles across his forehead and scrunching his bulbous nose. “Growth happens whether you’re ready or not.”

“Yeah, well, shit happens, too, but you don’t see me diving in headfirst and telling everybody the water’s fine.”

“Titusville’s not a secret anymore. It kept popping up on those national lists the magazines keep, the ‘Top 20 best places to retire,’ ‘50 best outdoor adventure towns,’ and all that. After Westridge upset Duke in basketball, you could make it a reasonable question on a geography test.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say your pictures might have made a difference.”

Pride made the grin shift into a smirk, the eyes growing even darker. Budget Bill swept his arm out to indicate the view of the mountains that rippled soft and blue-gray in the distance, evidence that the Earth was a work in progress, a shifting landscape that only appeared fixed and firm from a man’s temporary perspective. “I’ve got the eye, my friend. But I had great material.”

“I’m not your friend.”

“Neighbor, then.”

“Got your camera with you? Thought you might want to get a few shots of the knob before your bulldozers do their trick and knock it down forever.”

“It’s already well documented, neighbor.”

“Or maybe you want a picture of my rosy red asshole.” Hardy twisted his head and spat into the leaves, wishing he hadn’t given up chewing tobacco so he could squirt a strand on the man’s fancy and squeaky-clean Timberland hiking boots. “I don’t got no legal cause to stop you. Them ‘Save the Knob’ hippies couldn’t get anywhere with their long-haired Yankee lawyer, so what good could I do?”

“You sound just like them, making it ‘Good versus evil.’ But I’m providing a product and contributing to the community. Funny, in all the kiddie movies these days, developers are the bad guys. Why is that, Hardy?”

Hardy nodded toward the ridge that covered the cool, black tunnel of subterranean secrets. “I don’t know what ‘evil’ is, but I know when something ain’t right.”

Bill took a couple of brisk steps forward and slapped Hardy on the shoulder. Hardy looked down on the beaming cherub in the catalog-ordered flannel shirt.

“Take it easy,” Bill said. “I wouldn’t subject a stranger to the sinister mysteries of The Jangling Hole. It wouldn’t be neighborly. That’s why I’m putting my house right there on top. Once I clear the trees so I can get the view.”

“You mean, so everybody can see how big your house is.”

Bill gave a laugh that sounded too big to have come from his belly. “If there are any Civil War ghosts, restless Cherokee spirits, hillbilly horrors, or tap-dancing babies of Satan, then they’re welcome in my living room anytime. I might even rig up an infrared camera and see if I can get any of it on film. Those would fetch a pretty penny, don’t you think?”

“Enough for you to buy another mountain.”

“Hey, don’t take it too hard. We won’t have the road cut all the way to the top until next week. Plenty of time for all the wild turkey, rabbits, and deer to scamper off into the valley. Or maybe down to your pasture. You still hunt, don’t you?”

Hardy didn’t want to acknowledge that he’d given up hunting Mulatto Mountain one misty November morning after he’d gotten the feeling that something was hunting him. “Mountain’s been here since the Book of Genesis.”

“I tell you what,” Bill said, pressing on Hardy’s shoulder to guide him toward the Hole. “You find me a verse that says a man ought to ignore a calling. And it’s not like I’m going to pave every square inch. We’re working with a land trust to place a few acres under conservation easement.”

“So you can get the tax breaks on land too steep to destroy and spread even more cost onto the shoulders of the working folk,” Hardy said, shrugging off the man’s hand and walking beside him.

Bill gave the irritating laugh again. “If I didn’t know you were a registered Republican, I’d swear you’re turning into a Commie. Come on, admit it. The truth of the matter is you don’t want me to ruin your view. Within five years you’ll be selling out and moving into one of my condominiums near the hospital.”

“Over my dead body.”

“That’s one way of doing it. I’m sure the missus isn’t quite as hard-headed as you. Not so opposed to change.”

A hawk soared overhead, a dark silhouette against the high clouds. The maples had turned early this year, the leaves dark purple and brilliant red. The buckeyes and poplars were golden, and the oaks were in the first throes of going dark green. A squirrel darted along a hickory branch, then leaped into a pine and cut a candy-stripe route down the trunk. The traffic from the distant highway was softened to a distant whisper, and the wind played its own voice through the trees. Hardy wondered how much of his anger was due to his inability to stop the spinning hands of time.

Change is fine with me, as long as it’s not change for the worse. But some things are better left alone. Like whatever’s sleeping in the Hole.

Hardy followed the developer, wondering how many times the man had poked his head in the Hole. Maybe Budget Bill Willard didn’t have enough imagination to get into trouble with it. Then again, Bill hadn’t lost kin to it like Hardy had. Hardy feared the Hole for good reason: it had stolen his son from him.

They were within twenty feet of the Hole, near where the two boys were standing when Hardy had first arrived, when Sheriff Littlefield stepped out of the woods.

“Howdy, Bill,” the sheriff said, nodding at Hardy and narrowing his eyes and giving a small shake of his head. Nothing, the look said.

“Big day for trespassers,” Bill said.

“I checked out the property. We didn’t find a trace.”

“I heard one of your boys got a little loose with his pistol. Maybe he was shooting at one of Hardy’s spooks?”

Littlefield stepped between the two men and the Jangling Hole, overtly avoiding glancing into the chilly depths. His hand rested on the butt of his sidearm as if he were guarding gold bullion. “A lot of funny stuff goes on in this place,” Littlefield said.

“Yeah, like what happened in the red church in Whispering Pines? People are still snickering about that one.”

“Nobody who lived through it is doing much laughing.”

Bill looked at the sheriff, then at Hardy, and he gave his thigh an animated slap. “You fellows are serious about all this, aren’t you? I can understand it from Hardy here, being a seventh-generation, pig-porking hillbilly. But you’ve got education, Sheriff. You know there’s no such thing as boogeymen.”

“I know what I see and I know what I know,” the sheriff said, before pursing his lips into a stubborn line.

“Your chief deputy died in a car crash,” Bill said. “Those other deaths were just what the coroner said: animal attacks. And, anyway, just because you’ve gone goosey in the head doesn’t mean I have to change my plans any. I’ve got approval from the planning board and I’ve followed every line in the building code and subdivision ordinance. Hell, I practically know them by heart, since I helped draft them.”

“Maybe there’s a higher law,” Hardy said.

“Don’t thump the Bible on my head, Hardy. You haven’t been to church much since the day your boy went squirrel-shit nutty.”

The blood rage filled the backs of his eyelids. Hardy, who was two decades older, launched himself at Bill and wrestled him to the ground. The farmer’s limbs were tough and leathery, like strips of beef jerky, but they bulged with muscle around the bone. He climbed on top of Bill, who squealed in surprise and tried to roll away. Hardy’s arthritic knees sent blue lightning to his skull but he rode the developer as if the man were a wayward bronco in need of busting.

Hardy’s hands were tightening around the man’s throat when Littlefield reached down and yanked him away by his long john collar. The fabric stretched and the elastic snapped as Hardy clawed his way back toward Bill’s face, but Littlefield got one of his arms in a wrestling lock and tried to restrain him. Hardy pulled free of the sheriff and was about to ram his knotty fist into Bill’s fig of a nose when the voice wended low from the cave.

“Earley.”

The two combatants froze, and the sheriff stepped back from the fray. Bill rolled away and scampered to his feet.

“He . . . I’m filing on this one, Sheriff,” Bill said between slobbering gulps of air. “You witnessed it. Assault.”

“Didn’t you hear it?” Littlefield said.

“All I heard was the wind.”

“Something in there talked.”

“Arrest him, Sheriff.”

Hardy eased away from the Hole, wondering if his son had heard that same voice on a long-ago summer day. He looked down at his hands as if they belonged to a stranger. “I’m guilty,” he said. “Of a lot of things.”

Sheriff Littlefield picked up his hat and pulled the brim down so it threw his eyes in shadow. “Looked like you slipped to me, Bill. I don’t see any probable cause.”

“You’re both crazy,” Bill said, breaking into a jiggling jog back toward his Humvee. “See if I support your ass in the next election.”

As the oversize engine gunned to life and the vehicle circled, smashing into a two-foot wild cherry in the process, the sheriff moved to Hardy’s side. “Maybe he’s right,” Littlefield said. “Maybe we’re both crazy.”

“I wish,” Hardy said. “That would make a whole lot more sense.”

They shared a gaze into the silence of the Hole but looked away before whatever might be in there had a chance to look back.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Wood and lacquer exploded in a white cascade, a cannonball thundering through the ranks.

“Mother fuck,” Elmer Eldreth said, balancing on one toe like a ballet dancer after two pitchers of Old Milwaukee. He squared and faced the 6 and 10 pins, which wobbled with just as much unsteadiness as the man who’d tried to knock them into the next county. Hands out, Elmer pointed his index fingers at the pins like a gunslinger in a street showdown.

“Split like a whore’s legs on payday,” Jeff Davis said. “Too bad Mac’s gone high-tech redneck with those electronic scoreboards, or I’d cheat you a pin on the card.”

Elmer holstered his fingers as the rack swept the fallen pins away and replaced the two outside pins. Only one way to play it, knock the 10 with a reverse spin and hope it kicked off the wall and across the lane to the other gutter. But that was a shot only a lefty could pull off, and only under the blessing of a blue moon, or by selling his soul to the Gutterball God. And damned if Elmer’s soul wasn’t already maxed out, run-to-the-red bankrupt.

He trailed Jeff by seven pins in the last frame, and unless he nailed the split, he wouldn’t get that final bonus roll that might push him over the top. Tonight’s bet was for tickets to the Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Charlotte. The big NASCAR races were heading west and north, following the corporate money, and all the Southern tracks were stuck with the Tru Value Hardware Monster Truck Mash and rinky-dink shit like that.

Not that Elmer was opposed to watching mountains of steel and rubber pile up in a giant, smoking scrap heap, he just didn’t feel like driving two hours to do it. He could get the same experience right at home in the trailer park and have a fridge full of beer at his fingertips to boot.

Still, a ticket was a ticket and a win was a win.

Not that a win was likely. Jeff had drilled two strikes in a row to come storming up from behind. That little jab about Mac McAllister’s new computerized scoring system was pretty much dirty pool, except Jeff usually kicked his ass at pool, too. Elmer suspected Jeff had laid back and coasted in his draft, fell behind on purpose just to make a last-second run and blow Elmer’s head gaskets while dashing for the checkered. Elmer was running on fumes but he was going to punch the pedal to the end. He realized he was mixing racing and bowling in his head but he figured one beer-drinking activity was as good as the next.

“I’ll nail this one,” Elmer said, licking his thumb as the ball rolled up the return and clacked against Jeff’s in that macho ball-knocking ritual that no heterosexual male would ever acknowledge for what it was.

“You can’t even nail Mac’s wife,” Jeff said, loud enough for their pal to hear over the clatter of pins, the rumble of wracking machinery, and a twangy, boozy Kenny Chesney blaring from the jukebox speakers.

Mac lifted the aerosol can he’d used to sanitize a row of rental shoes, pointed the nozzle at Jeff, and shot a pine-scented mist that mingled with the popcorn-and-pungent-pork stench from the concession stand. “That’s about the best blow job you’ll ever get, Captain,” Mac said.

“Serious,” Elmer said. “Let’s make it double or nothing. If I get the split, you owe me four tickets.”

“And if you miss?” Jeff said, his squirrel-gray eyes toting up the odds in his favor.

“You get game and I throw in a freebie at Dolly’s Dollhouse.” The dollhouse was a private club featuring what the tourist trade referred to as “exotic dancers,” but Elmer and his friends called “titty wigglers.” Because of the anti-porn sentiment of the Baptist South, the girls had to wear thongs, but anybody with half an imagination (and Elmer often used his imagination both during the visit and later on in bed, squeaking one off while Vernell snored and drooled beside him) could see enough to get his money’s worth. Though Elmer’s oral hygiene was limited to Slim Jims and toothpicks, he’d seen thicker dental floss than the moist fabrics that ran between the dancers’ ass cheeks and up their clean-shaven diddies.

“Freebie, shit,” Jeff said. “Looking’s free but touching ain’t.”

“I’ll get you one in the back room.” Rumor had it a C-note would buy you a hand job in one of the private rooms that rented by the minute. Elmer never had enough bills to test the theory that a full menu was available from Chucky, the former Hell’s Angel who served as bouncer, harem king, and part-owner of the gentlemen’s club. Elmer wasn’t getting much action from his wife, but he figured he was paying out more for it than if he’d stayed single and bought his companionship straight up.

Vernell kept bitching and whining about the two yard apes that always had strep throat or needed new shoes or some shit. Worst part was only one of the brats was for-sure his. The youngest, Bobby, a tow-headed, sleepy-eyed kid who looked like he’d been squirted from a Scandinavian, was no way in the world pumping Eldreth blood.

Could be worse, though. Poor Jeff’s kid was a blooming faggot, sizing himself up for pantaloons and mascara before he was barely old enough to beat off. And Elmer tried not to bring it up, but sometimes when a good pal had an oozing scab, you couldn’t resist scratching it a little.

Jeff held his arm straight, thumb up, sighting down the lane like an engineer building a bridge. “Considering your odds are maybe the same as a Democrat taking the courthouse, you’re on,” Jeff said, then hollered at Mac, “Hey, what’s the mathematical probability of sparing out a six-ten?”

Mac slapped a pair of red-and-green clown shoes against the counter top. “Mathematical probability, my ass. If you roll perfect, odds is one in one. Roll bad and you got no odds.”

Elmer hefted his ball, a royal blue 16-pounder with sparkles in its smooth finish. He gave one biceps curl, flexing his wrist. The backspin would be a bitch. Elmer had no intention of ever making good on the bet if he lost, but he needed to take at least one pin out or Jeff would rib him for the next three weeks. Bitch of it was, you could settle for the one but that would pretty much knock out all chance of getting the spare. This was one of those all-or-nothing rolls.

Plus he needed that extra roll or Jeff took the game and the tickets anyway.

In the next lane, a fat man whose gray jacket failed to bag the vanilla pudding of his gut sat like the Buddha of Bowling, a cigarillo in his slack mouth. Mac had not yet given in to the anti-smoking sissies, and though Elmer didn’t smoke himself, he loved the poke in the eye to all those fucking liberals who dared tell a man how to run his business. Elmer had an insane urge to rub the Buddha Dude’s belly for luck, but the guy might sit on him and roll him out like the Pillsbury Doughboy in a laundry press.

“I’ve made a couple six-tens before,” Elmer said. The lie tasted like the chalk on his fingers.

“This ain’t before, it’s right now,” Jeff said.

Just because Jeff had a two-year certification in heating and air conditioning from the local community college, the bastard had to lord his book-learning over everybody else.

“Hey, better put that on a T-shirt,” Mac said. “That’s cosmic.”

“You wouldn’t know ‘cosmic’ if your balls turned the color of Mars,” Elmer said. He blinked against the Buddha’s gray smoke and stepped toward the lane. It was probably just his imagination, but it felt like the whole alley had gone into freeze frame and all eyes were on him. This was as close to the spotlight as folks like Elmer ever got. Too bad he was pretty much guaranteed to trip over his purple shoelaces and dick it up.

He closed his eyes, and the freeze-frame illusion passed, the cacophony of shellac and shouts rushing back at full volume, Chesney warbling about some old heartbreak or another, as if any guy actually had a heart. The ball hung in perfect balance above his wrist, his sweating palm a couple of inches off the surface, fingers hooked in the holes like they were a teenager’s twat on a second date, when you drove them 10 miles out to Baity’s Lake and told them to put out or get out.

He took a breath, testing his knees, and a spark of early-onset arthritis flared from his right joint. He’d have to compensate, bend with his back, make sure his wrist turned in counterweight. No excuses left, no prayers, no last-second reprieves, no upping the ante.

At least Elmer had scored himself a visit to Dolly’s, even if he wouldn’t have enough money to cram a twenty in one of the tiny waistbands, maybe getting a wet knuckle in the process. Sure, all the tits were inflatable, but he’d take a rubber ducky over his wife’s sagging sacks of elephant hide any day. Not that he’d much chance for the taking lately. Seemed like the bitch was on the rag three weeks out of the month and rashed up the other week.

“You gonna roll or you gonna tie up my lane all night?” Mac shouted.

“You’re breaking my flow,” Elmer said.

“The only flow you got is the trickle down your two-inch pipe.”

Elmer lowered the ball. Buddha smiled with all the wisdom a six-pack could deliver, teeth yellow around the plastic tip of the cigarillo. Elmer backed up until the shaft of blown air on the ball return drifted up the sweat line of his spine. “You want in on this, Mac?”

“I got nothing you want,” he said, his Mario Brothers moustache wriggling as if it were packed with sneeze powder. “You already bowl for free, and you ain’t fucking my wife.”

Elmer actually wouldn’t mind a go at Mrs. McCallister. Mac had traded down for a younger model, a peroxide bimbo with dead-deer eyes and a rack that would spice up any man’s trophy case. But she was church all the way, one of those three-times-a-weekers who passed out religious tracts featuring cartoon drunks burning in hell. No matter how many times Mac drilled her, Elmer doubted her husband ever reached as deep inside her as Jesus did.

“Okay, then,” Elmer said, rubbing his fingers together as if itching for cash. “How about if we go for captain of the troop?”

Jeff, who had risen to the rank of captain of the imitation army in the same manner as those in the real military, shook his head. “No way. You don’t know the drills, you don’t know the protocol, and you don’t know the history.”

“All you gotta do is stand around saying ‘Ten-hut’ and ‘At ease,’ and throw in a couple of Stonewall Jacksons here and there.”

“Stonewall Jackson was long dead by the time Stoneman’s cavalry rode through Titusville,” Jeff said, unconsciously twirling one end of his midget handlebar mustache. “This was late 1864, near the end of the war, the final refrain to ‘Dixieland.’”

Elmer rested his bowling ball against his hip and chugged an amber swig of Old Milwaukee from a plastic cup. Jeff was about to go into one of his boring rants about Sherman’s march, and how Stoneman split off to break Confederate supply lines through the mountains. As Stoneman found out, there weren’t many supplies of any kind in the South by then, and certainly not in the remote Southern Appalachians.

Elmer didn’t give a damn for history, but he’d been in the N.C. 26th Living History Society for eight years and had sat through Jeff’s lecture a dozen times. As long as Jeff was buying the beer, Elmer could spare an ear.

“Home Guard met them up the valley,” Jeff said, eyes getting that faraway glaze as if he were looking through the neon-lighted walls and back into time. “The boys in gray were outnumbered five to one but they gave as good as they got.”

Which wasn’t exactly true. For one thing, the boys didn’t have uniforms, much less gray ones. For another, the Home Guard lost seven men and the Yankees suffered only one casualty, and that one occurred when a green private drank too much whiskey and was thrown by his horse, breaking a leg on the jailhouse steps. And Kirk’s Raiders had split from the Yankee command and set up their own private little war, one where Rebel daughters got knocked up and livestock got stolen. So there was no cause for Rebel Pride in Pickett County. But damned if Jeff would admit a mistake, especially when he got rolling.

Speaking of rolling, I better put the twist on this baby and nick it a cunt hair to the left.

“All right, we’ll stick to a ticket to Titty Palace,” Elmer said, patting the ball. “You’re the captain and the rest of us volunteers ain’t nothing but cannon fodder. But that’s on the field. Here in the alley, you don’t give no orders.”

“Unless it’s for another pitcher of beer,” Mac said.

“That mean one on the house?”

“You’re going to drink me to the old folks’ home,” the bald man said.

“Mac, you’ll be nickel-and-diming on the shuffleboard court,” Elmer said. “Your basic situation won’t change a bit.”

Mac’s eyes twinkled. The guy had a good air about him, never let crap stick. Maybe that’s why he got a looker for a wife and Elmer was stuck with the saggy-tit version of the Elephant Man. Sure, Mac’s kid Dex was a little hooligan, swiping his old man’s rubbers and riding his skateboard in town without a helmet, but he was smarter than Elmer’s oldest son, Jerrell, the genetic Eldreth. Bobby had them all beat on grades and looks and batting average, but then you got to that little problem of him maybe being somebody else’s kid, so Elmer couldn’t muster much pride in that.

“You bowling or jerking your roosterneck?” Jeff said. When the conversation had shifted to the upcoming Civil War event, he’d sat a little straighter and squared his shoulders. Jeff’s posture remained ramrod at the scorer’s table, his wavy hair a little like that Elmer had seen in pictures of General George Armstrong Custer, who had cut his teeth as a Yankee officer before riding to infamy in Sioux country. Blonde, almost-girlish hair. Blonde like Bobby’s.

Focus on nicking the ten.

“Okay, maybe this will make you choke on your grits.” Elmer backed to the lip of the wooden platform, sizing up his run. He rubbed his left forearm for luck and glanced down at the glossy finish. His distorted reflection stared back, the neon lights throwing an aurora borealis across the curved landscape. He tilted his head so he could see the Buddha Dude in the ball’s surface. The chair was empty.

He looked over to the next scorer’s table. The Buddha Dude was gone, probably headed for a chili dog and cheese fries. So much for sucking karma from somebody else.

Jeff tapped his 7-Up can against the scorer’s table. “Stalling won’t save you.”

Elmer glanced at his shoes. The strings were neatly knotted. But the psychological edge was getting to him. You couldn’t roll when you were hallucinating, and he hadn’t done any hard drugs since high school. Still, he’d learned a lesson during those teen years, back when hope wasn’t hopeless and the future stretched out like an eight-lane highway lined with cheap gas pumps and cheaper highway hookers.

When things got fuzzy, you focused right in front of your face. Which was what he did. The ball became his universe, its weight the solid evidence of reality, the straining fingers clutching the holes as if they were the clefts leading up out of a dark well. He had a bumper sticker on his truck that said, “When the going gets weird, the weird go bowling,” a slogan Mac had printed up when the alley first opened five years back.

Now Mac was driving a Beamer and Elmer was driving a rusty-assed truck. Jeff was captain in the regiment and Elmer was a common private. Buddha Dude was off somewhere talking to a tree and Elmer was aiming for a thousand-to-one shot. Didn’t get much weirder than real life.

He breathed, centering, letting his muscles tighten and relax. The ten-pin seemed larger now, bloated, as if it had taken on water. He felt eyes on him, several eyes, and he knew the bowlers in the next lane over had stopped to see the outcome. Somewhere, maybe from the other side of the tinted windows or the dark chaos of the videogame room, Buddha Dude was probably plotting Elmer’s reincarnation as a toilet seat.

“Fuck ‘em all,” Elmer whispered, taking the first step and bending from the waist. His wrist curled in a slightly unnatural position, sweeping down so he could roll the ball off his fingers with a little reverse English. As he snapped his fingers free and kicked his right heel behind him, balancing on his left foot, he thought he had a chance.

A little one, maybe down to only five-hundred-to-one, but still a chance. The ball spun out as smoothly as if he were shooting a marble, fighting to get a bite on the slick wood of the alley. Halfway down, it began a gentle break and hooked toward the gutter.

A gutter ball was just as bad as a single pin. Both worthless.

Elmer planted his feet and stared after the ball as if he were a gunfighter about to draw. The alley had fallen silent during his roll, except for Chesney’s crooning about a woman who should have treated him right.

“He’s got it,” Mac said, with the surety of someone who’d seen a few six-tens in his day.

“Bull run,” Jeff said, just as the ball glanced off the edge of the pin. The pin whispered with the contact and kicked to the left, wobbling as it fell. It gave three pathetic spins, like a crippled break dancer at a high school prom, and then rolled across the lane into the six. The six staggered and fought gravity, then lost.

Elmer turned and wagged his fingers at Jeff as if they were hot pistols, then did a half pirouette and thrust his fat ass at his nemesis. “Got you, Possum Face. Smoke that shit for breakfast.”

The metal sweeper descended as the last pin dropped, setting up a virgin rack for Elmer’s last ball.

“Don’t go singing to the fat lady,” Jeff said, mangling the pet phrase of those who never gave up. “I’m still up by five.”

“I can get five in my sleep,” he said.

Mac had come from behind the counter to watch from the edge of the scorer’s area. “Sleep’s about all you’re getting in bed these days. Nice roll, though.”

Elmer removed his ball from the return queue, giving it first an affectionate pat, then a dry kiss. He usually blamed the ball for bad rolls and never gave it credit for the strikes, but after nailing his first-ever six-ten, he was in a generous mood. And he’d be in an even better mood after winning those race tickets.

He curled the ball, relaxed, and approached the line, falling into a smooth motion.

The man in gray appeared just in front of the lead pin. Elmer thought at first it was one of the alley employees, fishing out a stuck ball or unjamming a rack. Except when Mac was on duty, the cheap son of a bitch ran the show all by himself. And this guy wasn’t messing with equipment, he was walking up the buffed and shining lane toward Elmer in dusty, cracked boots that had more holes than leather.

Elmer’s fingers were already relaxing and he couldn’t stop the momentum of the ball. He gave out a croak and lost his balance, the ball bouncing two feet in front of him with a bone-crunching thwack.

“Hey, no dribbling allowed,” Mac snapped. “I’ll sweep up the splinters with your ass if you do that again.”

Elmer stared at the sudden man, seeing more of him, the ragged scratchy-looking clothes—uniform?—and a cap tilted over his face. And beneath the brim of the hat, nearly lost in shadows, was the gleaming bone of a fleshless grin.

The ball meandered another twenty feet before it slipped into the gutter and into the mysterious depths where pulleys and levers pushed the ball back uphill to the scorer’s table.

The man in gray had disappeared.

“You see that?” Elmer said.

“Yeah, pretty damned pathetic,” Jeff said.

“The man—he got in my way.”

“Yeah, and the sun was in your eyes and the dog ate your homework and you forget to throw money in the plate at church.” As the metal arm descended and swept the pins away, Jeff stood and grabbed his jacket. “I’ll take a rain check on Titty Palace, but you can bring the race tickets Monday.”

The end of the lane held only pins, not a bone-faced man in scarecrow battle gear, and an electronic banner on the scoreboard scrolled the words “Push for next game.” Elmer wasn’t going to do any pushing. Now that he’d had a moment to process the image, he realized the man had been wearing a ratty kepi, a Civil War cap. And the uniform had been wool, like the replica clothing Captain Jeff Davis insisted his men wear for the living-history re-enactments.

“I’m going to start charging if you’re going to stink up the joint like that,” Mac said as Jeff strutted away in his tight-assed officer’s march.

“That guy was walking in the lane when I rolled.”

“Some bastard steps on the parquet I spent all week polishing, I’ll shoot his ass.”

Elmer knew Mac kept a gun hidden behind the counter, but he wasn’t sure bullets would do much good against the unknown soldier. “You didn’t see him?”

“Hell, Elmer, you only had two pitchers. Not near enough to justify a hallucination.”

Elmer finished his beer, hand shaking so much he spilled foam down his chin. If he drank enough, maybe he’d wash the vision of the soldier from his brain. If not, at least maybe Vernell and the brats wouldn’t be so dog-fucking ugly when he got home.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Room.

His dad usually kept it locked, but Vernon Ray had checked out the Internet and learned a trick called “lock bumping” that had allowed him to snap open the flimsy hollow-core door without breaking anything. He saved his break-ins for special occasions when he knew his parents would be away for an hour or more. Mom was out shopping and it was Dad’s bowling night, so he had some time.

Plus, since the weird incident in the Hole, he’d felt a calling to The Room as if some deep religious secrets lay behind the door. “The Room” had never been officially named; it was the spare bedroom in their three-bedroom mobile home, and Vernon Ray figured that was probably why his parents had never given him a sibling: Dad would have had to move his collection. Since Dad always referred to it as “The Room,” that’s how Vernon Ray thought of it.

The mobile home was quiet, and it seemed the whole trailer park had taken the night off. Usually Saturdays were an around-the-clock cacophony of stereos, drunken laughter, revving engines, and TV sets, punctuated with the occasional shattering glass or fistfight. A clock ticked in the kitchen, its rhythm recalling the ratta-tat-tat of the snare drum he’d heard in the Hole.

Vernon Ray bumped his hip into the door, twisting the knob as the wood yielded slightly and the tumblers rattled. The lock sprang and he swung the door open. Vernon Ray switched on a bedtime reading lamp that emitted a diffuse glow. The strange, bluish light made the contents of The Room even more unreal, like exhibits in a museum.

Books with leather-bound covers, many of them rare and fragile, lined shelves covering one side of the room. Among his dad’s collection were one-of-a-kind personal items like diaries and letters, as well as history books and biographies with low print runs. An autographed copy of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s memoir, one of the first tell-all celebrity bios ever published, was also in the collection, sealed behind a sheet of Plexiglas. The aging paper gave The Room an aroma of decay and must, much like what Vernon Ray imagined Grant’s Tomb smelled like.

Vernon Ray had read many of the books. Not from Dad’s collection, of course, but modern reprinted copies he’d found in the public library or public-domain scans posted on the Internet. Vernon Ray ran the soft light over the shelves, but he wasn’t interested in two-dimensional history at the moment. He took a few steps deeper into The Room, careful not to step on anything fragile.

An obstacle course of period antiques covered the floor: hand-hewn chairs, a maple church pew, blacksmith’s and furrier’s benches. A saddle rode the blacksmith’s bench, moth-eaten wool blankets and rusty cast-iron tools stacked beside it. The other furniture was parted to make way for a black cherry roll-top writing desk that his dad used for the sole purpose of penning out marching orders for the N.C. 26th Living History Regiment. It was as if his dad’s fantasy life intersected with these solid relics only when vital to the mission, an act of discipline that proved Capt. Jefferson Davis was the only man fit to command the regiment.

The smell of old wood and leather blended with that of the paper, but it aroused nothing in Vernon Ray. Instead, he navigated between the pieces of furniture and reached the Grail. He tilted the light up so that it glinted off the muskets, revolvers, bugles, medals, insignia, and a cavalry sword with an ornate brass handle.

Several of the pieces were replica, but one of the medals bore the deep dent of a musket ball, suggesting it might have once saved the life of the wearer. Powder horns and sheathed Bowie knives dangled from rawhide strings. A tin canteen in a canvas satchel hung by a strap, and underneath it a mess kit, coffee pot, and other steel cookware were arrayed as if readied for breakfast.

A card table bore a papier-mâché diorama designed to mimic Titusville, complete with the surrounding mountains carefully labeled with their traditional names: Cracker Knob, Eggers Ridge, Calloway Mountain, Tater Hill, The Balds, and, rising over the valley like a tsunami wave, Mulatto Mountain. A tiny white flag, bearing a meticulously rendered image of the Home Guard’s insignia and glued to a toothpick, was poked into the highest point of Mulatto Mountain, in the approximate location of The Jangling Hole. His dad had invested six silent months working on the diorama, alone with the door closed.

The last two months had been spent arranging lead-cast miniature soldiers, ordered through collector’s catalogs. An HO-scale train track ran through the valley to mark the narrow-gauge tracks that had once carried Tweetsie into town. The real rails were still there, running along the foot of Mulatto and parallel with the back street of downtown and an old creek, but the last train had run in 1931, when the dwindling profits of timber clear-cutting collided with the Great Depression.

Vernon Ray had learned about that in the Pickett County history book his dad had written and self-published. All of Dad’s remaining copies were tucked away on the top shelf of The Room, pages still pristine and spines intact. Vernon Ray had borrowed his reading copy from a school teacher. Dad had made a few grammatical errors but overall the prose was pretty solid.

In the diorama, the Home Guard was divided into two platoons. One small group of gray-painted soldiers was huddled in a camp in a field near the old courthouse, the building indicated only by a painted cardboard box. Other small boxes marked the downtown area, though Titusville during the war had been little more than a couple of banks, a mercantile, a tobacco warehouse, a train station, and a jail. The camp had been designed to protect the train station, and in that mission, the real troops had succeeded, though the courthouse had eventually been burned by Yankees and the jail used to secure their Confederate prisoners.

The second platoon of cast-lead Confederates was spread across the face of Mulatto Mountain, recreating the position the real troops had taken above the narrow pass that provided the easiest access into the valley from the West. From there, the troops had hoped to surprise Gen. Bill Stoneman and his marauding Bluebellies. They had obviously failed, though historians disagreed on the reasons.

Vernon Ray’s dad said the troops had been poorly commanded, but most people believed the ragtag platoon had simply turned chicken and scattered in the woods without a fight. Some of the deserters had joined the renegade band led by Col. George Kirk, and Kirk’s Raiders had hidden away in the Hole, waiting for Stoneman to leave so Kirk could impose his own law on Titusville. According to legend, the raiders had refused to surrender and Stoneman’s cannon had blasted their cave into a tomb, but historians had never presented a convincing case for the unofficial court martial and death sentence.

Jefferson Jackson Davis, Captain of the 26th North Carolina Troops Living History Society, known to his friends as “Jeff” and his wife as “Hon” (except on those special occasions when she called him “a carpet-bagging asshole”), had arranged the toy Confederate troops in defense of a town lost in time.

And Vernon Ray had lost his father to that time, a casualty that bled as deeply as any victim of Bull Run or Gettysburg. The war’s outcome would never change, only spawn more revisionist histories until the truth no longer mattered. And while winners usually wrote the history books, plenty of Southerners felt their side had never lost, merely run out of time, money, and men.

Vernon Ray was in the mood for a little revisionist history of his own. He touched the nearest of the toy soldiers on Mulatto Mountain and moved it closer to the road in the pass, near where Stoneman’s mounted cavalry were poised for a make-believe ride into Titusville. No doubt Dad had memorized the positions in which he had placed the troops, but Vernon Ray had spent almost as much time himself studying the battle lines.

“Private Joshua Ames,” Vernon Ray whispered, picking a name at random from the muster rolls. “This is Capt. Davis. Hold your position down by the road and don’t let any Yankees in. You know what they’ll do to your wife and kids if they get a chance.”

The darkness seemed to press against the windows of the room, like black water kissing the side of an aquarium. A little bit of orange streetlight leaked between the curtains, just enough to give the impression of a false dawn. Vernon Ray propped his reading lamp over the tableau so he could maneuver the troops with both hands.

He dropped into a deep Southern accent, drawing in breath to hit the lowest registers of his adolescent bass. “Aye-aye, sir, them devils will even rape the sheep if they got the chance, and God help the guilty if they break through.”

Vernon Ray went back to his normal Captain voice, almost unconsciously imitating his father. “I’ll get Squire Taylor to cover your flank, and Dooley Eggers will take the other side of the road. Got it, men?”

He moved two more of the soldiers away from the Hole, placing them as sentries against the approaching cavalry troop. With nimble fingers, he positioned a line of the in-town platoon across Main Street, placing the rest on the tops of the buildings. The men were frozen in an assortment of poses, some of them poised in a bayonet charge while others stood at attention with their rifles on their shoulders.

Now Vernon Ray was falling into the fantasy, becoming as self-absorbed as his father, only dimly aware that this was both the closest emotionally he’d ever get to his father and, in an odd way, the best way to get revenge for the years of neglect—he was overriding his father’s orders. He commanded three more soldiers off Mulatto Mountain, chiding them for nearly missing the action to come.

“Do you gentlemen want to live forever, or do you want to be laid out in glory with your brothers?” No good officer ever asked his men to tackle any danger or hardship he wouldn’t face himself, and Vernon Ray knew when Gen. Stoneman came thundering through the pass, he’d be standing in the dirt road himself, pistol in hand, a wide-open target. Vernon Ray could almost smell the dust, the rot of the oak leaves, the horse manure, the sulfuric tang of fresh gunpowder, the faint coal smoke of the last steam locomotive.

“Sgt. Childers, take three men and cover the west side of the mountain so they don’t dismount and follow Skin Creek into town,” he said, snapping off the palm-up salute in response to his sergeant’s salute. A few more orders and the remaining men had advanced down the slopes of the mountain and into harm’s way.

“Capt. Davis,” said Sgt. McGregor, his most trusted noncom. “If enemy troop strength matches the reconnoiters, we’re set up for a slaughter.”

Capt. Davis gave a grave nod of his head. “War is hell, Sergeant.”

“If we fall, we lose the town.”

Vernon Ray nudged the toy sergeant toward the fence line, where he would die shortly after his captain. “We don’t get to win this time. Our job is to slow them down.”

“The men are sticking with you, sir. Even the conscripts.”

“Good. That will be all, Sergeant.”

“Aye-aye,” the soldier said. He was Scottish, and such men were foolhardy and brave as long as you kept them sober. Leadership came with its own worries, and though Capt. Davis had already accepted his fate, the certainty of his followers’ deaths weighed on him, making him feel much older than his 13 years.

The ground shook with the distant rumble of a hundred hoof beats. The Room fell away, and it was 1864, October, birds taking wing as they sensed the coming calamity. The dirt roads of Titusville would be stained red before this day was done. Capt. Davis was almost ready to take up his position in the pass.

But there was one more soldier, a special volunteer, who was awaiting orders.

“Vernon Ray, you can’t sit out on the side forever,” Capt. Davis said. “You’ve got to join the dance sooner or later.”

He fondled the toy drummer boy, the one he’d touched so often that its lead was shinier and less tarnished than the other pieces. It was half the height of the other soldiers, his little kepi askew, head bent down to his instrument. The snare was cocked on his right thigh, angling the drumhead so his dull gray wrists could roll out the signals.

“I’m ready, Dad,” the drummer boy said in a small voice.

“Might get dangerous, son. Keep your head low.”

“I won’t blink an eye, no matter what. I’ll make you proud.”

“I know you will. You already make me proud.”

The drummer boy smiled at this, at least in that autumnal fantasy land, though the grim lead face stayed as set as it had been since the day it was cast. He’d drum even if he lost his sticks, even if a cannon blast took his hands. He’d beat his splintered bones against the leather head of the snare, pound until his sinews and ragged flesh fell off, he’d roll reveille until the gates of Hades opened up and the soldiers followed his cadence into the pits of Gen. Grant’s infernal prison.

Because Daddy had given him a duty.

Vernon Ray was lost in the imaginary battle, the sun filtering through the yellow-and-red forest, the wind running soft through the meadows, the creek tinkling between slick stones, the hoof beats getting louder, the whinny of horses and the clanking of harness growing louder in the narrow pass. They’d be coming around the bend any minute, horses and riders alike breathing fire, red eyes promising a swift punishment for rebellion.

And Vernon Ray found himself before the open closet, where his dad’s uniforms hung. The captain’s crisp wool uniform with its braids and epaulets, the coarse tow-linen shirts for period civilization reenactments, the white cotton blouses, the regular gray buck private’s outfit with its frayed cuffs and bullet holes. At the end of the row was the one that would soon be too small for Vernon Ray, the drummer boy’s suit with its bone buttons and knickers. As he had many times before, he touched the scratchy fabric of its sleeve.

“I’ll make you proud,” he whispered, and it was neither the captain’s nor the toy soldier’s voice, but his own.

He slipped out of his Incredible Hulk T-shirt, the cool air of the room sharpening his nipples to tiny purple points. He kicked off his bedroom slippers and shucked down his pants. The underwear would have to go, because though the briefs were cotton, the waistband was a synthetic blend covering rubberized elastic, neither of which was extant during the War.

With trembling fingers, he wrested the uniform from its hanger. It smelled of campfire smoke and cobwebs. He slid his one bare arm into the woolen sleeve, enjoying the delicious scraping inflicted by the fabric. It was a little tight in the shoulders, but he shrugged into it until it rested comfortably. He was aware of his runaway heartbeat—

ratta-tat-tat

—as he buttoned up the front of the coat. Next he stepped into the matching knickers, sliding them up until the cloth tickled his penis. All the leather boots were adult size, and most rural children in those days wore no shoes anyway. He took the small kepi from its place on the rack, where it was tucked between a grandiose French cavalry hat and a felt fedora. He perched the slanted Rebel cap on his head, the brim tipped low just the way the toy soldier wore it.

Vernon Ray stood at attention for a moment, as if undergoing the captain’s inspection. Then he gave the Confederate Army salute and opened the cedar cupboard.

The snare drum was on the middle shelf, the largest object in the collection. The horsehide head was girded in place by a steel band, which itself was attached to the wooden shell by neat rows of brass tacks. A series of pig-gut strings held the head tight and could be adjusted to change the tone of the snare. A bridge of woven steel ran just beneath the head, designed to give off the signature rattling sound as the drumhead vibrated.

He lifted the drum carefully by its canvas strap, slinging the strap around his neck and almost knocking off his cap in the process. The drum’s weight felt comforting against his abdomen. He collected the hand-carved drumsticks and gave them an experimental twirl. He had his own drumsticks, rubber-tipped ones bought in the music store at the mall, but these had an entirely different balance and feel.

Like the bones of war.

“I’m ready, Dad,” Vernon Ray whispered.

He turned toward the table and the mock battle. Capt. Jeff Davis would die this day, but he would die proud.

Vernon Ray turned his left wrist up and rested the tip of the stick against the snare head. He clenched the stick in his right hand and raised it several inches above the horsehide.

“Awaiting orders, sir,” he said.

Do it, Earley.

Tears welled in his eyes, but soldiers didn’t cry, only scared little boys. He wanted to blink, but he promised his dad he wouldn’t. A freshet of salt water threaded down his left cheek and he licked it when it reached his lips.

Stoneman’s unit was closer now, the horses hammering out their own cadence, static in the air as if the sky were holding its breath.

Vernon Ray drove the right stick solidly against the drum, following with a snap of the left, then again with each stick, letting the pattern roll into a flourish. He would sound the advance, encourage the troops against long odds, stand firm in his duty amid the cries of agony and rage and panic.

He slapped out the cadence—

ratta-tat-tat

—the drumsticks blurring, the air moving with the action of his hands, the beat echoing off the cheap paneling, punctuating the bravery of those who repelled the invaders who sought to destroy the homes and hearths the Home Guard stood united to defend. The tears flowed freely, cooling on his face, but he was smiling.

The toy soldiers on the table didn’t hold their positions, though. They retreated, their stiff lead bases vibrating back away from the road and into the cover of the forest, winding up the slopes of Mulatto Mountain. Vernon Ray pounded harder, certain that if he stayed strong in the face of flying steel, the men would rally and return to their posts. But the soldiers turned tail in the face of Stoneman’s superior force, or their fear of looming death, or their lack of faith in the Confederacy. They scrambled madly up Mulatto Mountain, scaling the papier-mâché until they huddled around the Jangling Hole, seeking entrance among the mouse-gray boulders.

They would hide today in the Hole and live through Stoneman’s Raid, but their end would come soon enough.

The important thing was for Vernon Ray to hold his line, drum until the Grim Reaper harvested with his steel blade, stand tall, make his dad proud—

The Room exploded with the bright fury of a cannonade, and Vernon Ray blinked.

His dad stood in the doorway, hand on the light switch. “And just who do you think you are, you sorry little sack of civilian shit?”

CHAPTER NINE

“Look at this long list of environmental violations,” Cindy Baumhower said, spreading the sheaf of papers on Littlefield’s desk.

The sheriff sat back in his chair, the hinges squeaking and driving rusty nails into his skull. He rubbed his crew cut, hoping the headache would magically rise into the ceiling. Cindy Baumhower was normally more of a thorn in the side than nails in the palms, but tonight her crusading-journalist bit was merely annoying. If The Titusville Times wasn’t such a convenient mouthpiece when he wanted to crack down on any type of public nuisance, he would show her the door and lock it behind her.

But besides her drooling desire for a Pulitzer, or at least a few state press association awards, Cindy wasn’t so bad. At least she had ethics and when he gave her information off the record, it stayed off the record. In a small town, gossip could mean the difference between reelection and unemployment.

“You know that’s not my jurisdiction,” Littlefield said. “That’s the state’s problem.”

“Christ, Frank, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources is just a rubber stamp for developers and industrialists. The lobbyists in Raleigh are practically blowing the governor. And who wants teeth when you’re getting a good hummer?”

“You forget, Bill Willard is a Republican and the Democrats have had a hammerlock on the capitol since Reagan.”

“This is about rich and richer, not right and left.”

Cindy jutted out her chest, but Littlefield forced himself not to look at it. She wasn’t much younger than Littlefield, but her freckles and sun-bleached hair, along with her ardor, gave the impression of a college co-ed. Her blue eyes were radiant and piercing, and Littlefield knew better than to meet them for too long at any one stretch. She reminded him of Sheila Story, and that hurt way too much.

“I’m sorry, Cindy,” he said, regretting that he’d let their relationship get on a first-name basis. As always, that made lying a lot more difficult.

Cindy swept up the papers and shoveled them into her hemp tote bag, which bore a pot leaf and the slogan “Legalize It.” She claimed not to smoke the stuff herself, and Littlefield was inclined to believe her. He’d arrested more than one bong-huffing member of the Hemp Liberation Movement, but all things considered he’d much rather have ganja gangstas in his holding cells than meth junkies or dry drunks. Stoners tended to stay mellow and never complained about the food.

“Okay,” Cindy said. “What about financial wrongdoing?”

The sheriff kicked his boots up on his desk and crossed his legs. “Depends. If it’s interstate, it’s federal, and these days practically every white-collar crime involves the Internet in some way.”

Cindy snorted in derision. “So I should check with your fraud division?”

Littlefield’s staff consisted of 12 officers, and between four and eight were on duty during any given shift. With J.R. looking like he’d be on a long leave of absence, there would be a gap in regular patrols, and drug investigations would have to be scaled back. While drug busts made for good photo ops, people generally were more concerned about their houses being broken into, the old “Hitting close to home” theory of law protection. No way could the department afford an extra shift or two devoted to Cindy’s latest vendetta against Budget Bill, even if there had been some decent evidence.

“Bill Willard’s never been accused of anything shady,” Littlefield said. “Truth is, I think you don’t like him just because his photographs have gotten more recognition than yours.”

Like many small-town reporters, Cindy took her own photographs, and though she clearly had an eye for composition, Willard’s equipment was thousands of dollars finer than what the Times could provide. “That’s not fair, Sheriff.”

The only thing worse than being on a first-name basis was when she shifted into that cold, professional demeanor. He tensed a little as she came around the desk, thinking he’d rather be anywhere else at the moment, even at The Jangling Hole after sundown.

“Are you in Budget Bill’s pocket, too?” she asked, standing over him, hands on her hips.

“Why in the world would you say a thing like that?”

“You sure buried my sexual assault charge.”

“Hell, Cindy, your own paper was afraid to run that incident report. There was just not enough evidence to make an arrest, much less get an indictment from the Grand Jury. He would have sued you and half the county.”

“Well, I hope one day he squeezes your tit and see how you like it.”

Littlefield let his gaze flick to her chest. Not that he had to do much letting. His eyes seemed to take off of their own free will, like other parts of him did whenever crazy women infected him with sweet madness. “Budget Bill’s an upstanding citizen,” Littlefield said. “He’s got a right to develop Mulatto Mountain. Maybe people like you think it’s immoral—”

“People like me? And just what kind of people is that, Sheriff?”

The sheriff took his feet off the desk and sat forward, but she didn’t back away as he’d expected. She was less than a foot from him, much too close for a professional relationship or to respect personal space.

The sheriff swallowed hard. “All I’m saying is he follows the law, and I follow the law. Check with the planning department. He has all his permits and he even took out a bond for the road.”

“Can’t you block the site in the interest of public safety?”

“What are you getting at?”

Cindy twisted her lips and sighed out one corner of her mouth, spreading fine tendrils of her hair. Maybe she knew how fetching the mannerism was and used it to keep him off guard. But the sheriff got the impression she wasn’t as calculating as some women he’d known. She genuinely seemed not to notice the effect her simmering, subtle sex appeal had on men.

Or maybe Littlefield was just an old pervert. He’d been called worse.

“I monitor the scanner, remember?” Cindy said. “Crime beat? So how’s Officer Perriotte?”

“Fine. He’s under observation. But I guess you knew that already.”

Her smile would have made the Grinch proud. “Privacy laws kept the hospital from giving out his condition,” she said. “But I have my sources.”

Bat your goddamned eyelashes and you could win over Marcus Welby, House, and Dr. Doolittle. “No visible injuries.”

“Just some head trauma. On the inside.”

“That’s undetermined at this point. Could be stress, epilepsy, hell, even low blood sugar.”

“Three shots fired.”

“That’s undetermined, too.”

“Doesn’t that trigger an internal investigation? I’m assuming your officer was the one who fired the shots, since Sandy in records said no incident report had been filed.”

Littlefield had not yet got around to filing an incident report simply because he wasn’t sure which lie to put on it. He’d been hoping to avoid it altogether, even though Hardy Eggers, Mr. Ayinari the Pakistani store owner, and Willard all knew the police had been on the property responding to a complaint. And those three boys . . . .

He stood, towering a foot over Cindy, and she backed up half a step. “I’m looking into it,” Littlefield said through tight lips.

“You looking into the Jangling Hole while you’re at it?”

Littlefield forced a laugh that sounded like he was choking on a biscuit. “Not you, too, Cindy. Why don’t you save that one for your Halloween feature? You know, where you crank out some cheesy local ghost story and pretend it’s in the interest of serious paranormal research.”

Her blue eyes sparked ice and then fire. “I do my job and you do yours.”

“That’s all I want.”

“Just like you did in Whispering Pines in 2002,” she said.

The sheriff’s lips worked like a trout trying to learn French.

“I did some checking,” she said. “You covered that one up pretty good, but I found a few people willing to go off the record. So is Archer McFall still considered a missing person?”

“That case is cold,” he said, though in his heart it was as closed as a coffin lid on a rotten corpse. Not that McFall had been considerate enough to actually leave a body. Well, he’d left behind several bodies, but not his own, though Littlefield believed he didn’t really own one, just borrowed them from time to time.

“You have a lot of holes, Sheriff. In your stories, and in your soul.”

She turned and marched to the door, her tote bag pressed against her side.

Please, God, don’t let me look at her ass.

Even though he didn’t believe in God any longer, the prayer was answered. Or maybe he was just upset enough that whatever odd light she’d aroused in him had been darkened by the curtain of self-doubt and fear.

He rummaged around in the bottom drawer of his desk. His fingers brushed against the cool bottle with its greasy liquid. This would be a hell of a time to give in to the habit.

No, not a habit. ‘Habit’ is for normal people and nuns. I’m a plain old garden-variety, C-grade drunk. For people like me, it’s not a habit, it’s an occupation.

Littlefield shuffled some papers on top of the bottle and continued digging. The newspaper clippings on the McFall case were sparse and mostly centered on Sheila Story’s accidental death in the line of duty. In fact, McFall was barely mentioned in connection with the death. The incident report said Littlefield and Story had been responding to a public disturbance call at McFall’s church when Littlefield’s patrol car plunged into the river. The newspaper and the incident report both contained the truth, but Littlefield had been around long enough to know the truth never told the entire story.

He glanced at the color photo of Sheila that had run on the front page of the Times. It had faded with the years, and the Times had never been known for its print quality, but those honest blue eyes seemed to appraise and taunt him from beyond the grave: “Come on, Frank. Something weird is going down and you’re pretending everything’s normal. But I know you too well. You’ll just close me up in the drawer and leave the past in the dark where you think it belongs.”

He dropped the clipping and slammed the drawer shut.

Drop it, Frank. There’s probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for a set of footprints that ends in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah, and the Tooth Fairy was coming to steal everybody’s Halloween candy, too. He put on his Stetson cowboy hat and pulled the brim down so it shaded his eyes. He’d donned the headgear during the last campaign and his popularity had swelled. Now he wore it on all but the most blustery day, and it didn’t hurt that the stiff suede covered his ever-expanding bald spot. The hat also had the effect of improving his posture because he found himself holding his shoulders back so the headgear was better balanced.

He’d wanted to check on J.R. before turning in, but he had one more stop to make first. Two of the boys were unidentified, but the store owner had tabbed Dex McAllister from a mug shot. Of course, misdemeanor shoplifting rarely merited such a time-consuming investigation, but Littlefield wanted to get this little mystery under wraps and pray that Bill Willard and his silent partners blasted the Hole to hell and gone before anything went poking its head out.

“I’m on call tonight, Sherry,” he said to his dispatcher as he headed for his cruiser.

Despite a smoking ban in all public facilities, Sherry kept the office in a menthol fog, compliments of Kool 100’s. Since she’d been on the county payroll longer than the politicians who’d voted in the policy, no one had ever had the guts to take her on. The smoking had given her face a tough, leathery quality, and two brown acorn eyes stared back like those of a cigar-store Indian.

Sherry would gossip but only with people she could trust, and that particular circle was small. Fielding calls during 32 years of night shifts, she’d heard dirt on every family in Pickett County at one time or another. But Littlefield wasn’t ready to share his theory that something supernatural was stirring on Mulatto Mountain. For real, not legend.

“Any word on J.R.?” she asked.

“No, but I’m going to check on him and pay a visit to the McAllisters.”

“I never had no use for that Dexter,” she said, taking a draw on her cigarette that left a good half-inch of ember. “The little twerp would just as soon skin a cat as pet it.”

She let the ash dangle for a moment and watched the sheriff as if daring him to challenge her on either the civil violation or her unprofessional opinion of a juvenile delinquent.

Littlefield adjusted his hat. “The most we can get him for is trespassing and shoplifting. And the shoplifting charge probably wouldn’t stick. He took a pack of smokes and that kind of evidence disappears fast.”

She sucked again and now the ash was over an inch long and sagging. Her hand was poised over the computerized dispatch equipment. Littlefield didn’t understand the technology, but it had to be upgraded every few years, when he practically had to get down and blow off the commissioners during budget season to secure the funding. A blizzard of gray flakes probably did little to enhance the equipment’s longevity.

“Well, you tell J.R. I’m going to drop him by a sweet potato pie tomorrow,” she said, managing one more draw before tapping her cigarette in a ceramic cat ashtray. Her hand was so steady, she probably would have made a decent surgeon, except her patients would turn up with high rates of lung cancer. As for J.R., if he consumed some of her award-winning pie, he was likely to see a cholesterol boost and a heart attack before he was discharged.

“10-4 that,” he said. “Got five on the night shift?”

“Yeah, Wally’s running late but he’s got the hemorrhoids so he’ll probably be doing a lot of standing around.”

“That’s comforting.”

“Cindy Baumhower sure is a bitch, ain’t she? What kind of name is that, anyway? She a German, or a Jew?”

Since Sherry had no use for the smoking ban, he figured there was little use in bringing up anti-discrimination policies. Besides, in Sherry’s view, being a reporter trumped any shortcomings inflicted by race or religion.

“She’s just doing her job.”

“But does she have to do it so damn loud?” The cigarette was back in her mouth as punctuation.

“Call me if there’s anything big, or anything to do with the Willard property,” he said, reaching for the door.

“The Hole, you mean. Call if anything crawls out of the Hole.”

He parted his lips, trying to grin, but instead spoke through stiff lips. “Halloween’s still a couple of weeks away.”

“The Hole don’t wait for Halloween.”

“Good night.”

She stabbed out her cigarette and was firing up another by the time he entered the cool, clear air of Titusville. The town twinkled with green and orange light, the Main Street businesses long since closed but the display windows casting their commercial allure onto the pavement. The sheriff’s office was on the edge of the municipal limits, and Titusville proper was the jurisdiction of Chief Rex “Boney” Maroney.

If only the town had annexed more land and expanded its borders, then Mulatto Mountain and the Hole would be Maroney’s problem, not Littlefield’s. Once the million-dollar homes in Bill Willard’s development were constructed, no doubt the greedy town council would want to tap the tax base there, but whatever was hiding in the Hole would be stirred up by then.

And it would happen on Littlefield’s watch.

The McCallisters lived on the west end of Titusville in a little community known as Greasy Corner because of the three gas stations and mechanic’s garage that used to mark the intersection. Two of the gas stations had gone belly up and, after the expensive process of digging up leaky underground tanks and removing contaminated soil, the properties now featured a McDonald’s and a Mitsubishi dealership. The mechanic’s garage was still there, but the business had been converted to a quick-lube joint that changed your oil while you read crinkled sports magazines. The lone intact business had changed corporate overlords several times, and the pumps that had once sold gas for 19 cents cash on the barrel now took credit cards and offered a discount on Super Slurps.

As he turned onto Taylor Lake Road, Littlefield decided that Bill Willard had the right idea: take what you could and then catch the next stage out of Dodge. If he kept driving, he’d hit the Tennessee line in half an hour, and Tennessee was a long enough state that he’d put Mulatto Mountain and its weird tinkling noises far out of earshot. But he’d stuck it out through the death of his little brother and Sheila Story and a handful of other people over the years, and he figured that whatever was up there in the sky moving around the stage pieces was hungry for a showdown.

And Littlefield was one of the pawns on the board.

“Howdy, pilgrim, I’m the law around here,” he drawled in a parody of Saturday-matinee actors who’d donned the tin star long ago.

But he wondered what would happen if he took his brand of law up to the dark peak of Mulatto Mountain and shouted a challenge into its cold cleft of stones. He kept the cruiser over the speed limit to burn off some adrenaline.

The bowling industry must be booming, because Mac McCallister’s house was a good 3,000 square feet, with a three-car garage on one end, a neat row of rose bushes and oleander girding the brick walls, and a new bass boat tucked under a canvas cover in the back yard. But exterior order and value didn’t always extend into the living room or family closets. Littlefield had knocked on many nice white doors and delivered bad news, court summonses, or arrest warrants.

Nan McCallister opened on the first knock, squinting due to her cheeky smile. “How are you, Sheriff? You come for a contribution to the Benevolence Society?”

The sheriff looked down, hat in his hands. It seemed Nan had been under the knife again, and her chest was up there around 44 or so. No way could he step inside without brushing against one of the inflatable marvels.

“Is Dexter here?”

The smile faltered only slightly. “He’s playing videogames in his room.”

Littlefield looked up at the second story, but all the windows there were dark. By the time he’d finished his visual reconnoiter, Mac had appeared behind his wife, signature bowling-ball belly stretching out a tank top, a sweat-beaded beer in his hand. “Howdy, Sheriff, got time for a tall cold one?”

“Not really.”

“Not my wife,” he said, swatting her on the ass and causing her to jump, though her smile stayed in place. “I’m talking about a beer.”

Littlefield swallowed. “No, thanks. I don’t drink.”

Mac peered from under bushy eyebrows. “Since when?”

Littlefield saw no reason to go into his sobriety date and subsequent recovery, but damned if that beer didn’t smell sweet and yeasty. “Can you get Dexter for me?”

“Dex? What’s he done now?”

“I just want to talk to him.”

“That’s what you said the last three times, and once he left in the back seat of your patrol car and the other two bought my lawyer a new Harley-Davidson.”

“He’s suspected of shoplifting,” Littlefield said. “A store owner ID’ed him. Since this is his first time, I can probably let it swing light, since I doubt we’ll have any evidence besides one person’s word. But there’s something else.”

Mac stepped in front of his wife. Neither had invited him in. “This ain’t about the Hole, is it?”

“Pardon?”

“Dex said he and the boys were up there fiddle-farting around and all hell broke loose, cops with guns firing shots and such.”

“We had…an incident.”

“I thought he was pulling my leg,” Mac said. “He’s got his old man’s sense of humor. Ain’t that right, Nan?”

Nan smiled as if everything was always right. She fondled the golden cross that hung down onto her obscenely enhanced bosom. “He sure doesn’t get it from his mother.”

“If I could just have a word with him,” Littlefield said.

“I don’t know about that,” Mac said. “Seems like I might have grounds for some sort of reckless endangerment or something. A civil suit. You can’t just go around shooting at innocent boys.”

“Police have immunity when in the legal pursuit of their duty.”

“Well, you ain’t talking with him until I’ve talked with my lawyer. Unless you got a warrant.”

Littlefield could probably round up a magistrate and cobble together a warrant on the cigarette heist, but by then it would be after midnight. It wasn’t like Dex McCallister was a flight risk.

“Can you bring him by my office tomorrow? I promise the shoplifting will go on the scrap heap, but I would like to talk with him. He’ll be in and out in time for ice cream.”

“Sure, sure. And come by the alley sometime. Roll one on the house.”

“I’ll do that.”

Nan beamed at that, as if anyone who enjoyed bowling was a child of God, goodness, and light. Then again, the sport had paid for the bowling balls behind her nipples, so Littlefield figured she’d done her time behind the counter. Bent over or not.

As Littlefield returned to his cruiser, he gave one more glance at the house. Dex was clearly silhouetted against a lighted upstairs window, nose pressed against the glass. The boy pointed his index finger at the sheriff, thumb raised in the universal symbol for a gun. He mouthed three popping noises and grinned as if he’d actually gotten his sense of humor from a serial killer instead of his father.

CHAPTER TEN

Cue the midget and send in the clowns, let’s get ready to rumble, the freak show is about to begin.

Daddy was drunk again, and Mom had strapped on the battle ax and gone in like the female version of “Braveheart,” and Bobby expected blood to flow as freely as it did in any Mel Gibson-directed epic. Bobby thought about sticking his head under the pillow or clamping on the headphones and turning up the stereo to Def Plus. But, like the sound of a cruise ship’s bow scraping along the brutal edge of an iceberg or a car’s braked wheels squealing before impact, the Eldreth warm-up act sparked that same compelling electricity. You could cash out your ticket for a ringside seat, but the show went on just the same.

Bobby pushed away the comic books piled on his desk. As creepy and weird as Neil Gaiman’s Sandman was, it couldn’t compete with the Elmer and Vernell Variety Hour, and the opening act had something to do with a pack of matches Mom had found in Daddy’s jacket pocket. Which was even funnier because Daddy didn’t smoke.

“Dolly’s Dollhouse,” Vernell shouted, loudly enough that it might have carried through the thin aluminum walls of the mobile home and out across the trailer park. Not that anyone would be shocked at the latest knock-down battle royale. There weren’t many secrets in a trailer park.

Bobby knew what Dolly’s was, of course. No kid could reach the eighth grade of Titusville Middle without hearing about the local boob joint. A few of the kids claimed to have witnessed exotic exposure of the flesh there, but Bobby was inclined to doubt the tales. He was less able to dismiss the thought that his dad had paid a visit there, since a not-so-secret stack of magazines in the tool shed gave testament to the man’s taste for naked women.

“Jeff gave me those,” Elmer said, mushy and growly enough to display some fight. “The pilot light went out on the gas grill when we were grilling dogs last week.”

“Oh, yeah? Then how come none of the matches is struck? The book’s full.”

Nice one, Mom. Colombo would be proud of your deductive reasoning, though you’d look fruity in a trench coat.

Bobby pulled his ear away from the door. There was no need to eavesdrop now. The armies had sounded their trumpets and the cavalry had charged, and now the sides were fully engaged. His brother Jerrell was lucky enough to have a part-time gig at Taco Bell, and though his clothes stank of beans and that weird yellow goo that squirted from big caulking guns labeled “cheese food product,” at least the job offered some escape from home. Bobby, meanwhile, had only school and football practice as an excuse to be gone.

The boys shared a room, with Jerrell taking the top bunk, which meant those oily bean farts oozed down during the night much like Bobby imagined chlorine gas drifted over the trenches during World War I. But what Jerrell lacked in fragrance, he made up for in generosity, having proclaimed his comic collection “kid’s stuff” and passing it down to little bro’ for nothing more than a well-placed lie or two when Jerrell felt like cruising or playing hooky. Jerrell could have turned some decent coin on eBay with the collection, which included complete runs of obscure curios like Jonah Hex and Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery. Now they belonged to Bobby, who had read them all at least twice before sealing them back in their archival-quality, acid-free plastic sleeves.

If only he could stow away his real life as easily, or close the pages when the cartoon got weird.

“So what if I did go to Dolly’s?” his dad shouted in the living room. “It’s not like I see much skin around here lately.”

“Bastard,” Mom responded, the word she went to when Daddy either drove home a valid point or she’d run the gamut of put-downs and had reached the bottom of the barrel. “How much did you throw at them whores?”

“Nothing. I just sat there and had a few.”

Bobby knew from experience that “a few” probably meant a dozen. The way Daddy was slurring his words, he was lucky to wheel the pick-up home without getting blue-lighted for a DWI. Daddy had been caught a couple of years ago, giving Mom the opportunity to rag him about high insurance premiums and having to haul his sorry fat ass around while his license was revoked. She hammered him on money despite the fact that she preferred to be unemployed and complain that Mexicans had taken all the good jobs.

“You probably pissed away a month’s work of paychecks,” Mom yelled, a quaver in her voice that was almost gleeful.

“I got more coming from the Collins job,” Daddy said. He got defensive when his role as provider was challenged.

“You know Bobby’s going to need some braces,” she said, not dropping her volume despite Daddy’s apparent surrender. She’d landed the right cross square on the jaw and they both knew it, but this dance was old. Daddy still needed to dangle on the ropes and take a few before he dropped to the canvas.

Bobby resented being dragged into the ring. Sure, he was self-conscious about his crooked teeth, especially when Karen Greene or Andrea Hill smiled at him in algebra and he couldn’t smile back. All he could do was grimace a little, afraid his lips would pop open and advertise his white-trash status. If you wanted to see class division in action, you didn’t study genealogy trees or stock portfolios. A visual dental inspection was all it took to separate the Haves from the Have-nots.

“I told you, I’ll have the Collins job finished next week,” Daddy continued, his voice raising just a notch. “The weasel-eyed son of a bitch put in a change order for half-inch PVC and that threw my bid off. Plus the carpenters put a wall in wrong and I’ve got to rearrange the fixtures in the master bath. Fucking David Day, he couldn’t nail Christ to the cross with an air gun.”

“Blame blame blame. Always somebody else’s fault.”

Bobby knew some of the mistakes Daddy made were Mom’s fault, and once in a while Daddy screwed up all by himself, but Bobby had a feeling Elmer Eldreth had made the decision to go to the skin joint all on his own. Well, the tag team of Anheuser and Busch probably had a little to do with it, too.

A flurry of verbal counterpunches followed. Then the television switched on, which meant there were two possible outcomes for tonight’s battle. Either they’d sit in silence through a couple of hours of canned laughter, Mom going to bed early and Daddy polishing off a few more to guarantee a raging hangover in the morning, or Mom would scream over the TV and hostilities would escalate.

Bobby studied the latest graphic novel from Boom Studios, wondering if it was already under option for motion picture development. This one was about weird zombie astronauts and the vampire space pirates that hunted them down, which meant it was just stupid and cool enough to pass for “high concept” in an era when the lamest remake was heralded as “an instant classic.”

Mom yelled over a toothpaste commercial and, for the first time ever, Bobby grasped the idea of entertainment as escapism. If a vampire space pirate had at that moment driven a titanium-tipped rocket through the spit-and-tin wall of the mobile home, Bobby would gladly have climbed the gangplank and set sail for the Andromeda Galaxy.

“Bobby’s teeth are going to cost six grand,” Mom said, “How many beers and titties does that add up to, Mr. Genius?”

“If you don’t shut up about teeth, I’m going to knock some of yours right down your throat.”

Daddy had never hit Mom, as far as Bobby knew, but volcanoes sometimes smoked and gurgled for years before they finally blew. The sparring continued, though it dropped down to mix with the sitcom dialogue so that Bobby could no longer keep score.

Bobby went to the window and turned the cheap crank, letting cool autumn air into the room. The screen had long since been ripped from the frame, and in the summer when the room got stuffy and Jerrell’s anal expulsions reached critical mass, Bobby was faced with the choice of asphyxiation or exsanguination by hordes of mosquitoes. For some reason, the little vampires weren’t the least bit repelled by Jerrell’s personal brand of “Off.” But cool weather sent them to wherever bloodsuckers went to die.

A 100-gallon oil drum stood on short metal stilts below the window. It made for easy escape, but getting back in was a lot harder. Bobby rolled his sleeping bag like a lumpy burrito and covered it with blankets on the lower bunk. The spontaneous effigy would pass inspection if one of his parents happened to glance in and check on him, but wouldn’t stand up to the scrutiny of a caring guardian. Luckily, his parents were too wrapped up in their own civil war to notice an empty seat in the audience.

He slipped on jeans over his dorky boy-briefs, crawled across the desk, and skinnied out the window. He scraped his shin then he was perched on top of the barrel, squinting past the streetlights and their swirling moths to the faint stars beyond. The October air was crisp, tinged with distant wood smoke and the exhaust from the sputtering muscle car Ned Dieters was tuning a few trailers down. Dieters changed spark plugs like he changed girlfriends, tossing them at the first sign of fouling.

Bobby scooted off the barrel and hit the ground running. The menu of destinations was limited. He could hop his bicycle and pedal to the mall, but it would be closing in half an hour and his pocketful of coins would barely get him one round in the game arcade. Planet Zero Comics would probably let him hang around until closing time since he frequently traded there, but it was a good three miles away and he’d have to ride the railroad tracks in the dark. He could go to the shed and get some of Daddy’s magazines and go play with himself in the strip of woods that separated the trailer park from the highway, but the thought of naked breasts made his stomach hurt.

Maybe Vernon Ray’s awake and up for an adventure.

The Davises lived four trailers down, their mobile home set at the end of the park, turned perpendicular to the two rows of trailers that lined the gravel drive. Vernon Ray’s folks acted like what Daddy called “the High Lord and Lady of Manufactured Housing.” Theirs was a double-wide modular home, built on the spot, which gave it a slight cache over the ones that had been wheeled in, and it had a fake brick skirt on the bottom. Mrs. Davis put a lot of energy into a flower garden out front, but stray dogs and poor soil made for a losing proposition.

Bobby made his way around the back ends of the trailers, eager to talk with Vernon Ray about what had happened in the Hole. His memory of the events had taken on a surreal quality, as if they’d been CGI tricks of the Dreamworks film team: the nicotine rush of the cigarette, the adrenaline jolt of the cop chase, the shock of gunshots, and those weird few moments hiding in the Hole that had somehow felt like days. He rubbed his arms as he recalled the way the darkness had covered his skin as if he were submerged in oil, grateful that the mountaintop was hidden in the night.

The lights were on in the Davis house, and both cars were parked in front, the Jeep Wagoneer closest to the low porch. A flagpole on the railing sported the famous Confederate battle flag, a symbol of either heritage or hate, depending on which political or social wind seemed to blow most favorably at any given moment. Elmer stuck a Rebel flag decal in his window just to piss off armchair liberals, but Vernon Ray said most Appalachian Mountain families had been Union loyalists because the Confederacy had conscripted soldiers against their will. As much as mountain settlers hated the idea of licking dust from boots that had walked in from Washington, D.C., they resented it even more when the bossing came from their own neighbors.

Bobby didn’t think it was that simple, and even if it was, it sure as heck didn’t matter beans in the Twenty-First Century, when half the residents of Pickett County had New York accents or Florida license plates, and a good portion of the rest sported green cards and brown skin.

Vernon Ray gave such matters grave import, as if he’d memorized his dad’s lectures or history books. When all the normal kids at school were reading Sports Illustrated, Teen, Spiderman, or Harry Potter, Vernon Ray had his nose in books by Bruce Caton or Ken Burns. Bobby wondered for the hundredth time why he had to pick the weirdest possible kid for a best friend, but maybe best friends, like premeditated murders, had more to do with motive and opportunity than free will.

The scrubby stretch of forest came nearly to the back of the Davis home, providing superb cover. Vernon Ray’s light was on, which didn’t mean much, since he slept with his light on. Bobby climbed a familiar young dogwood and peeked through Vernon Ray’s window.

There the dweeb was, belly-down on his bed, thumbing through a thick book. Vernon Ray had a cell phone, another one of the Davis status symbols, but Bobby couldn’t text him because the Eldreth computer was right next to the television and currently part of a free-fire zone.

Bobby climbed back down and chucked a pine cone against the glass. He tossed two more before the window opened.

“What are you doing here?” Vernon Ray whispered.

“What does it look like? I’m standing in the woods throwing pine cones.”

“Smartass. You know what I mean.”

“Can you get out?”

“I don’t know. My dad’s pretty pissed at me.”

“That’s a switch.”

“You’re sure funny tonight. Your dad must be pissed, too.”

Bobby shrugged, even though he wasn’t sure the motion was visible in the shadow of the trees. “I was just restless. I mean, this is our lives, ticking away second by second. Before you know it, we’ll wake up one day and be eleventh graders, with jobs and SAT tests and girlfri—I mean, whatever—and the good times will be over.”

“Saturday night fever. Yeah, I know.”

“So, you coming or not?”

“I don’t think I can get permission. It’s after curfew.”

“Christ, you didn’t enlist, you were born to him. And last I heard, the War Between the States settled that little issue of slavery.”

Vernon Ray looked around, mostly at his bedroom door, and then nodded. “Okay, but if I get busted you owe me your Fantastic Four movie poster.”

“Sure. That one was lame anyway.”

“Comic-book movies are always lame because they treat them like kids’ stuff instead of serious art.”

“Whatever, Bookworm. Save it for your term paper. Now come on.”

Vernon Ray’s screen was intact but could be removed from the inside. Bobby stood under the window so Vernon Ray could straddle his shoulders and prop the screen back in place. Once they were safely moving through the woods, Bobby raised his voice to a normal level and said, “Did you put a dummy in your bed?”

“Nothing as dumb as the one that usually sleeps there, but I’ve got a good one. The life-sized inflatable vampire my parents got me last Halloween.”

Bobby stopped. “Wouldn’t it be cool if vampires were real and one stopped by your bed to suck your blood but then found it was an inflatable vampire?”

“That, my friend, is the very definition of ‘irony.’”

“Yeah. Blood is irony. Get it?”

“Put that pun on the scrap heap.”

“Hey, that was a good one.”

“Okay, two points for trying. So, what do you want to do?”

They had been pushing through the trees, the soft night glow of Titusville casting its suffused light around them. Bobby noted that, with neither of them saying anything, their feet were carrying them toward the creek that skirted the highway.

Running alongside Norman Creek was the dead railroad and then the trail that wound up Mulatto Mountain. The Jangling Hole was too far to reach without flashlights, and Bobby was pretty sure he didn’t want to go there ever again, much less when midnight was lurking and the woods would be full of mysterious chattering and fluttering.

“Looks like something is summoning us to the Hole,” Vernon Ray said.

“I thought we agreed not to talk about it.”

They came out of the woods but followed the shadows so headlights of passing cars wouldn’t sweep over them. Motorists were unlikely to pull over, but the local cops might be on the lookout for kids wanted for questioning in a shooting. Not that anybody had actually been shot, as far as Bobby could tell. The TV news hadn’t mentioned it, and his mom was part of the trailer-park party line that helped good news travel fast and bad news travel faster.

“You think Dex ratted us out?” Vernon Ray said as they came to a concrete pipe that carried the narrow creek under the highway.

“No, he’s golden,” Bobby said, and adopting a James Cagney wise-guy accent, he added out one side of his clenched mouth, “He’s a tough nut to crack, shee, and the cops ain’t got no nuts.”

“I wouldn’t know what to tell the cops, anyway,” Vernon Ray said.

Bobby imagined his friend in a small concrete holding cell, the harsh light on his face, deputies hitting him with the Good Cop-Bad Cop routine. He could easily see Vernon Ray breaking down, weeping, wetting his pants, confessing to the murders of Jimmy Hoffa and JFK and Anna Nicole Smith and whatever other crimes had gone unsolved during the last century.

And after all the cold cases were closed, the coldest of all would come up. Some kindly, paternal plainclothes detective would put his hand on Vernon Ray’s shoulder and say, “Okay, kid, now tell us what happened at the Hole.”

Bobby had a feeling the truth wouldn’t be good enough, because it would sound like a kid making up goofy stories to bug the cops. Bobby hopped into the drainage pipe and straddled the water that sluiced through it. “You know where we’re headed, right?”

Vernon followed, his voice echoing above the soft lapping of the creek. “Into hell?”

They stooped to keep from banging their heads, then duck-walked into the black depths of the pipe.

“Going to ask the devil for a match,” Bobby said.

“Shh, I heard something,” Vernon Ray said.

“Hell-oooooooooo,” came a disguised voice from the other end, the word reverberating through the tube. A flashlight switched on, blinding them, and Bobby raised his elbow over his eyes.

“You girls going somewhere without me?” the voice added.

“Dex!” Bobby said. “Who let the monkey out of its cage?”

“I’m clean, no thanks to you two losers,” Dex said, dipping the beam down so that it sent yellow snakes of light up the creek.

“We were afraid the cops got you,” Vernon Ray said. “Or shot you.”

“I can tell you’re in mourning, V-Ray. I bet you’re wearing your black dress and everything.”

“Something freaky happened at the Hole,” Bobby said.

“Yeah,” Dex said, beckoning with the light. “Just wait until you hear what happened after you chickens ran like your heads were cut off.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hardy put down the portrait when Pearl entered the bedroom. He thought about shoving it under the stack of farm bulletins on the night stand, but Pearl didn’t miss much and would make a bigger deal out of the face than it deserved. Besides, memories were one of the few salves of age, a balm when tendons creaked and eyesight was failed and the years shrank like the skin around clouded eyes.

Looking at an old family portrait is normal, especially when you’re as old as Methuselah’s grave dirt yourself. But what happens when the memories go, too? When it’s nothing but adult diapers and horse pills? What’s the measure of a man then?

“How’s Donnie?” he asked.

“Asleep. He barely touched his dinner.”

“At least he ate some.”

“The doctor said if he stopped eating on his own, they might have to put him on a feeding tube,” Pearl said, wiping her thick hands on her apron.

“And you know what that means.”

“We’ll keep him here as long as we can.”

“Probably longer,” Hardy said.

“What you looking at?” Pearl said.

“Just some pictures. I guess we ought to hang them up one day, since we seem to be settled in here pretty good.”

She reached for the old daguerreotype in its round frame. The silvery photo finish had faded to sepia over the century-and-a-half since the portrait had been taken, and the subject wore the sober, frozen expression typical of the era. Beetle-black eyes stared up at Hardy, and as his wife took the frame from him, the picture tilted and for a moment the light refracted Hardy’s image over the face. Not much difference he could see, besides the man’s mustache and sideburns.

Pearl held it in her hands, wiping dust from the rim of the frame. She took pride in her homemaking, and she always grew fidgety after dark anyway. Hardy had begun leaving his socks and underwear on the floor so she’d have something to do. “Corporal Earley Eggers of the Pickett Home Guard. What brought this on?”

“I’m just getting sentimental in my golden years.”

“Golden, my foot. If anything, these years are brassy. Or maybe pewter. I go in for pewter, since it’s a little duller and doesn’t take as much polishing.”

“He’ll be all right,” Hardy said. “God gives us these trials to see how much we set store by Him.”

“I guess they don’t have any more gizmos to stick our boy’s head in,” she said. “No more shots, no more medicine, no more high-dollar therapists from the health department.”

She sat on the bed and laid the portrait on the quilt she’d stitched with her own hands. Hardy was relieved she hadn’t pressed him about Earley, but on the other hand, she could have used a distraction. Her resentment went around and around like a waterwheel at an old grist mill, grinding and creaking even after the grain was long gone. Worst of all, she’d lost the glimmer of faith, and that troubled Hardy. Sure, things were bad now, but how would she shoulder the even-heavier burdens piled just ahead?

“It’s in the Lord’s hands,” Hardy said.

“I wish the Lord would lift a little,” she said.

He got out of the wicker chair, his back flaring with the effort, and sat beside her. The bed gave a rusty squeak that might have mirrored the fainter sound of his knee joints. He took her hand in his, noting the blue veins that had swollen to subterranean rivers over the years and the freckles that age had mapped.

If hands could talk, these would spin a yarn or two.

“Honey, we’ve been blessed beyond measure,” he said, knowing it sounded lame the moment he spoke. He took his own comfort in the Lord, but he’d never been much for words. All he could do was spout Preacher Staymore’s tidings, feeling like the gaudy, overgrown parakeet he’d seen at Animal Alley downtown that begged for crackers and sported a $295 price tag. Hardy figured the parakeet probably put as much feeling into its memorized lines as Hardy did, and was probably just a tad more warm-blooded, too.

“I guess I should give thanks that it ain’t a brain tumor,” she said. “Except it would almost be better to know, even if it was something terrible, than to go on like this for years.”

“He might get better,” Hardy said. “The doctors said since they can’t find nothing wrong, it might—what’s that word they use?—’resolve’ itself.”

“Nothing wrong, my foot. Not speaking, barely able to blink, drooling, scratching at the walls until he’s bleeding from under his fingernails…yeah, not a thing wrong with that.”

Hardy squeezed her hand again, ashamed that his palm was sweating. So much for standing strong in his faith. Since hoofing it up Mulatto Mountain and back, his feet pulsed as if they had nails driven in them. He could barely toe the line, much less walk it.

Maybe he should tell her the truth. She probably wouldn’t believe him, but at least it might help spread the blame around a little. After all, the secret had bent his spine these last two decades, and the Lord hadn’t lifted that particular sack any, not even to shift its weight.

“I reckon it’s time,” he said.

“You know you don’t want to sell.”

“Bill Willard already put a decent offer on the table. Once Elkridge gets rolling, the taxes will go through the roof, and we never chipped in much to Social Security.”

“Oh, Hardy,” she said, sliding the portrait away from between them so she could rest her head on his shoulder. She smelled of Ivory soap and woodstove smoke.

“We got our third of the Elkridge money,” Hardy said. “Even after we pay down the doctor bills, that can get us a place in town, maybe one of them spanking new condos Willard built. Walking distance to the motion picture show and the grocery and the feed store and—”

“You won’t need the feed store if you sell the farm,” Pearl said.

“Yeah,” he said. His throat was dry as November corn.

“We don’t have to decide that yet.”

“Well, I ain’t looking forward to having a bunch of strangers for neighbors.”

“People are only strangers until you get to know them. And nothing could be much stranger than what’s already up there.”

He stroked her hair and put his mouth near her ear. In happier, younger days he might have nipped on the lobe and set off a round of lovemaking, but his teeth were in a jar on the dresser and love seemed to have withered like the arteries in his heart. “I best tend to the critters,” he whispered.

She lifted her head and nodded, eyes already searching the room for a new way to kill time. She straightened up, making the bed squeak. “Mr. Eggers. I thought I had you broke in good. I’m sure those socks didn’t walk off and plop down in the floor all by themselves.”

As she stooped to sweep them up, Hardy walked barefoot to the dresser to get a fresh pair. She fussed with something in the bathroom while he wrestled into his boots. As he was heading to the door, she hollered, “Look in on Donnie, will you?”

She knew he would, but it was one of those habits of language that came with constant companionship.

Donnie’s room was right across the hall. A simple latch bolted the door from the outside, hardware made necessary when Donnie had started sleepwalking, or what Dr. Mendelson had called “presenting somnambulism,” and Hardy had mimicked that diagnosis over and over in his head like a parakeet until it lost all meaning. Even familiarity had not changed the oddness of the phrase, nor the accompanying “sleep terrors” that Mendelson had added to the chart.

Hardy slipped back the bolt, swallowing hard. Locking my son up at night like he’s livestock.

Preacher Staymore had gone on about starvation and hardship one Sunday, dipping into verses from the King James Bible to give people inspiration in lean times. One in particular had stuck out, and Hardy had asked about it after the handshaking at the end of service. Staymore, pleased as a peacock that someone had actually paid attention and not drowsed off or flashed forward to images of the Redskins-Cowboys kickoff, had written the verse down on the back of a tract.

“From the Book of Joel,” the preacher had said, pride evident on his red face. “Anybody can cite from Psalms or Ecclesiastes, but God gave us the miracle of the Internet so we might know Him better.”

Hardy had read that verse until he’d memorized it as well as he had the word “somnambulism”: How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.

His son was a desolate sheep, and Hardy was a grim shepherd.

The door opened with a squeak, letting light spill into the room. Since Donnie had developed what Mendelson had called “photophobia,” the shades were usually drawn in Donnie’s room, unless the day was overcast. Night was no real problem, since there were no lamps in the room, only a single overhead light sunk in the ceiling and sporting a 20-watt bulb. Hardy had moved the switch so that it was in the hall, not that Donnie had enough muscle control to grab the switch on purpose. However, he might go into one of his flailing spells and bump into it, and the sudden cascade of light would send him even farther off the edge.

Because of the strange epilepsy, the room had little furniture: a thick wooden desk whose corners were rounded and padded, a mattress on a low wooden frame, and plenty of papers and crayons. For some reason, Donnie only seemed calm when he was doodling, and since he could never see well enough to finish and his fingers were nearly as useless as sausages, his black stick figures, box houses, blue clouds, and big orange suns resembled the work of a five-year-old.

Donnie was 27.

Hardy wondered if Mendelson had any fancy-assed, twenty-dollar words for “livermush head.”

But you loved your son no matter what, through adult diapers and rain, tears and expensive medical tests. Since the day Hardy had found his teenaged son on the side of Mulatto Mountain, shuddering under a tree near the Hole as if frozen by the balmy July air, Donnie had been stuck with needles, strapped down and placed in big hollow tubes that hummed and glowed, poked with glass instruments and gauges, and generally treated like the prized pig at a 4-H livestock competition. And the doctors just shook their heads and came up with “somnambulism” and “photophobia,” or Mendelson’s favorite, “catatonia,” until Hardy’s head was maybe spinning faster than his unresponsive son’s.

After nearly a decade, Hardy had pretty much lost faith in miracles, no matter what he told Pearl. As he nudged the door open, he was ready for anything, because Donnie was as likely to be standing on his hands and leaning against the wall as he was to twist himself in the blankets. Hardy squinted into the gloom.

He heard a soft tapping sound, almost like a rat running behind the walls. When Donnie was pitching a fit, he usually hammered and clawed at the pine paneling like a man awakening from a coma to find himself sealed inside a coffin. Donnie’s vocal chords had given up on language, and instead he projected a staccato series of barks, grunts, and clucks, all of which amused him greatly and led to parakeetish squawks of laughter.

But tonight there was only the tapping.

Hardy eased into the room, careful not to startle his son. Donnie was hunched over the desk, and though his mental level had regressed to that of a kindergartner, his physique was that of a young man raised on a farm, muscles bunching on his shoulders. Sitting on the bed so that his back was to the door, Donnie seemed intent on whatever lay on the desk. He could be coloring, but that usually made a scratching sound as he held the crayons in his fist and scraped their tips along the paper.

Papers were scattered all over the floor, maybe a dozen pages. Given Pearl’s neatness, the drawings must be newly rendered, because she’d been in half an hour before to get him ready for bed and she would have cleaned the floor.

“Donnie?” Hardy said in a low voice.

Donnie kept tapping. Hardy came around the bed and looked at the desk and his son’s head tilted down to stare at the dull cherry surface. Donnie was tapping the wood with the pads of his fingers, rolling them in a coordinated pattern that seemed beyond his abilities.

His first instinct was to call Pearl, but she’d suffered through so much false hope that Hardy couldn’t bear to bring her more. He knelt on cranky knees and looked across the desk at his son, but the man-child might as well have been on the surface of the moon for all the attention he paid his father.

Tap tap tap. Tappa tap.

Too repetitive to be a random muscle twitch. Donnie’s lips moved as if trying to provide vocal accompaniment to his cadence.

The Lord promised miracles, and though Preacher Staymore said miracles were often hard to recognize while they were happening, Hardy figured this one qualified as much as the turning of water into wine.

“Donnie?” Hardy kept his voice low and even, though his heart was racing in tandem with the offbeat rhythm of Donnie’s fingertips.

Donnie shuddered and lifted his head, as if jerked back from a happy dream to the claustrophobic box where he spent most of his day. His mouth pursed as if aware of his return to misery, but his eyes stared ahead as dead as polished coal. Eggers eyes, the same as those in his Confederate ancestor’s portrait.

Donnie’s fingers tapped once more and then flopped against the surface of the desk. His face went slack and his body slouched like a marionette whose strings had been clipped. Any sign of concentration or awareness was gone, if indeed it had really been there and not just a wishful projection.

“Muh-wak,” Donnie said, and then gave his parakeet chuckle.

At least he’s not slamming himself against the wall. That little tappa-tap could have just as easily been his skull saying ‘Howdy’ to the desk.

And it would give Mendelson yet another reason to push for Donnie’s going into a group home. “He’ll get the care he needs,” the doctor would say for the thirtieth time, and Pearl would glare as if her own nursing skills, attention, and love were under criticism.

Hardy reached a hand to his son and touched his cool cheek. The black eyes flicked over his face, but there was no joy or recognition in them. Maybe he and Pearl were being selfish after all, the way some had suggested. They were keeping Donnie a prisoner here out of their own guilt and shame.

And Hardy ate a double helping of guilt, because he hadn’t told Pearl about Donnie’s trip to Mulatto Mountain. He’d told her he’d found Donnie lying by the fence, suffering an apparent seizure. And though Hardy had no proof that the Jangling Hole had sent out a messenger to recruit Donnie into the army of the lost, Hardy took some comfort in the notion that he could shift some of the blame to a thing he couldn’t see or know. Better than blaming the Lord, and better than letting the pain eat him from the inside out.

He helped Donnie into bed, making sure his pajamas were still clean. Donnie was pretty good about the potty, even though he had the occasional accident. He was able to sit at the dinner table, but he often had to be spoon fed.

Hardy sometimes walked him to the barn and back, but once in a while Donnie would launch into a floppy spell, as if his limbs had turned to rubber, and Hardy was getting too old to haul him back to the house. But sleeping was pretty straightforward, and though Donnie was apt to rise up and walk while his eyes were closed, he was usually safest and calmest in the night.

Hardy bent and picked the loose papers off the floor, glancing at the swirls of blue and gray. The scrawls looked like tangled skeins of loose yarn. He stacked them on the desk, then decided Pearl might like to see them, make a fuss over them, and maybe even put one on the refrigerator with a big cow magnet.

“Good night, son,” Hardy said as he paused by the door. “Hope you have yourself a good dream.”

Dream you’re a normal man and can walk and talk and breed and spit like a man instead of letting it drool down your chin. Dream you can run and jump and tap your fingers like you’re beating the drums. Dream you can play the fiddle and whittle and—

Hardy glanced at the top page. The random squiggles made his brain itch. The patterns whispered of a recognizable shape, but he didn’t think Donnie had suddenly turned into Leonardo da Vinci. The drumming had been a flight of fancy, and there seemed no room for miracles tonight.

He switched off Donnie’s light as he closed and bolted the door.

As he eased down the stairs, boot leather and wooden treads creaking, he wonder if maybe he and Pearl should move their bedroom to the bottom floor. It would mean moving Donnie, too, which would require a little renovation. Hardy wasn’t in the mood to make extra work, so he figured as long as he was still able to make it up and down the stairs, things were better left alone.

Alone, the way Donnie was.

Alone, the way he was with his shame and his knowledge of the Hole and what it might have done to his son.

Hardy tossed the drawings on the kitchen table, where the pink pig salt-and-pepper shakers danced with each other in a celebration of seasoning. Their cherubic faces, like those of the happy porkers that adorned signs for barbecue joints, seemed oblivious to their ultimate destiny.

The end always cut to the bone, and under the blade you died alone.

He stopped at the back door, put on his jacket, and rummaged a flashlight from the closet. He had livestock to feed.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Sheriff Littlefield stood in the bay lights of the ER exit and dashed the remains of his cold coffee into the gutter. The brown liquid looked like blood in the reflection of the red exit lights.

My cup sure runneth the fucketh over with that. And the more innocent the blood, the better.

The hospital was one of the fastest-growing enterprises in Pickett County, spreading like a malignant tumor, and currently a parking deck was under construction behind the west wing, a spindly derrick standing in silhouette over it like a witch guarding a stack of bones. A few spaces near the emergency room were reserved for police, since sudden trauma was often accompanied by illegal activity. Littlefield had technically been off duty, but he figured visiting an officer was good enough justification for hogging one. Besides, the hike around Mulatto Mountain had cramped up his legs.

He was sliding behind the wheel when the radio sputtered and hissed, then sputtered again. Sherry’s voice came out amid a spray of static, as if she were exhaling cigarette smoke over the dispatch microphone.

“Sheriff, we’ve got a 10-32 on Water Street,” Sherry said.

He picked up the mike and thumbed the button. “‘Suspicious person’? I’m on my way home. I told you I didn’t want any routine calls.”

“I don’t think this is routine,” the dispatcher responded. “And how many suspicious people do we get around here, anyway?”

“That’s downtown, isn’t it? It’s Maroney’s jurisdiction.”

“Yeah, but I got a feeling he wouldn’t know how to handle it.”

Though Water Street was in the opposite direction from the cabin he’d bought near the gas-station-and-post-office community of Simms, it was only four blocks from the hospital, and besides, Sherry would keep bugging him until he checked it out.

“What did Morton report?”

“That’s the thing. He said he was checking it out but didn’t request backup.”

“He left his cruiser?”

“Either that or he’s fast asleep in the back seat and not answering. Harrington and Greer are patrolling Taylor Lake and Markowitz is doing the paperwork on a drunk and disorderly.”

“Where’s Wally?”

“He had a flare-up so he’s on foot patrol at the high school. His rump’s so swollen he can’t sit down in a patrol car.”

That was about as much as Littlefield cared to know about one of his officer’s rectal tissues. “I’ll swing by, but I told you not to bother me unless something crawled out of the Hole.”

“If Wally gets any worse, might be something crawling out of a hole that none of us wants to see.”

“Thanks for that visual, Sherry.” Littlefield eased out of the parking lot, amazed at how much it had expanded and at the dozens of cars that filled it. Dying was a growth industry, and since the hospital had tacked on a cancer wing, business was booming. Littlefield figured there was a joke hiding somewhere in that observation, but he was too weary to parse it out.

After a pause, the radio static cut out and Sherry’s voice came on. “How’s J.R.?”

“He was in and out, not much new. The doctors said there was no sign of serious injury but they wanted to keep him under observation for a few days.”

“Did you tell him about the pie?”

Littlefield had forgotten, but he said, “Sure. He perked up and I swear there was some drool running out the corner of his mouth.”

At least he hadn’t lied about the drool.

“Good thing I’m around or this department would fall to pieces.”

“You got that right, Sherry. I’m switching channels to see if I can raise Morton. What’s that 10-20?”

“Between the lumber yard and the old depot. Where the hippies opened that coffee shop with all the books in the windows. What’s it called?”

“The Depot.”

“Damned smart-aleck hippies.”

“10-10, I’ll check back later. Keep monitoring.”

“Aye-aye, boss.”

Littlefield saw no reason to turn on his flashers, especially since he was invading another department’s bailiwick. No doubt Sherry was jittery because of all those legends about the Jangling Hole, and because one of the hen’s chicks had been injured, but it was unlike her to send Littlefield on minor calls. Littlefield had never asked for special treatment, but he felt his officers should be trusted to use their own discretion in their duties.

Morton, despite the incident at the Jangling Hole, had been scheduled to work a double shift. Though Littlefield had offered him the chance to skip out, Morton said they might be shorthanded for a while since J.R. was down. The department was under a tight budget ever since the Democrats had retaken the county commission in the last election. Calling in an extra officer would have padded the overtime line item.

Even though it was Saturday night, traffic was dead downtown. Titusville was in the middle of an identity crisis, with the banks, the hardware store, and the general store that had sprung up during the railroad heyday finally closing or moving out to the boulevard strip that linked the town with Barkersville, Westridge University, Hickory, and then on down to Charlotte.

Now the town was revitalizing as a series of craft shops and art galleries, with three coffee houses to keep the clientele juiced. Though town voters had approved beer-and-wine sales, most of the drinking was done in Beef O’Brady’s and the other chain restaurants clustered around Walmart. The downtown had been inherited by business owners, even those with sandwich shops, who liked to be home in time for dinner.

Littlefield turned onto Water Street, conducting casual surveillance. The abandoned railroad bed ran parallel to the street, which featured the backsides of old brick buildings. The depot stood by a bridge, its rough-cut porch timbers still blackened from the coal smoke of long-gone steam locomotives.

Morton’s cruiser was wedged off the road and against the chain-link fence that girded the lumber yard. Though the wood business had shriveled up with the railroad’s demise, long dark sheds still dotted the property. Dunes of gray sawdust made the shadowed lot resemble the surface of an inhospitable alien planet.

Littlefield parked behind Morton’s car and tucked a long flashlight in his belt. Though Morton’s bar lights were off, his engine was running, which meant he either didn’t expect the errand would take long or he’d made an abrupt exit from his vehicle. Littlefield checked the padlock at the main gate. It was rusted shut.

Littlefield circumvented the fence, passing behind the depot and its smell of scorched Folgers and bran muffins. The streetlights didn’t reach beyond the bridge, so Littlefield switched on his flashlight and headed for the back of the lot. He found a rip in the seam of wire fence and ducked through. Once inside the lot, he played the light around the stacks of warped lumber.

A darker shadow stood beside a rusted hulk of milling machinery.

“Morton?”

The shadow was still. Annoyed, Littlefield headed toward it. A vagrant or trespasser would at least have had the decency to flee and let Littlefield know he should give chase.

He raised the light and though the shadow didn’t move, couldn’t have moved, the beam revealed only the metal skeleton of dead equipment, its wheels, gears, and bands frozen in time.

Shit, where did he go? Just what I need, another goddamned invisible suspect.

He wanted to wrap up the 10-32 and get to bed before it became a more serious set of numbers. He doubted if he’d get any sleep—memories of Sheila Story and Archer McFall would erase any hope of that, not to mention whatever stirred in the Hole—but he was a man of habit, and six hours spent restlessly wrinkling the sheets seemed like the best way to cap off the day. Mulatto Mountain was miles away, and though its solid black form dominated the western horizon, whatever mysteries it harbored had no reason to touch the town.

Littlefield circled the shed, the decaying sawdust muting his footsteps. Anyone fleeing wouldn’t have made a giveaway sound.

Assuming they fled by foot.

The flashlight beam dodged over dented sheet metal. The wind picked up and as it cut through the shed, it whined and moaned, carrying the scent of the creek and rotted wood and the pungency of rust. The bandsaw blade was still on its pulley, straddled by a flat steel table where logs once slid into the jagged teeth. Littlefield came to a steel ladder that led up to a glassed-in cab where operators could run the big bandsaw with minimal risk.

The cab would offer a good vantage point to survey the grounds. If Morton were in the lumber yard, Littlefield would be able to see him, assuming the deputy carried a flashlight. The steel rungs were cold under his palms as he climbed. A flutter of motion erupted to his left and brushed his cheek, nearly causing him to fall.

Littlefield regained his balance and leaned against the rungs, catching his breath. The creature flapped into the night then dipped into the glow of a security light where moths swarmed in random patterns.

Fucking bat.

He studied the backs of the buildings on Water Street, some of the windows glowing yellow but most boarded up or covered by curtains. Many of the upper floors had been converted to apartments, with slum lords doing a booming business in rodent reproduction.

Littlefield surveyed the lot, though the scattered stacks of lumber shielded his view of some sections. Nothing.

Littlefield finished his ascent, now 20 feet above the ground. He steadied himself with the light tucked under his arm as he reached for the cab door. The latch was either locked or rusted shut. He yanked once more, the light bobbing up.

A face pressed against the glass.

Littlefield almost fell a second time. He braced his legs and directed the beam toward the face, but it was gone, just like the shadow earlier.

“Screw this cat-and-mouse crap,” he said.

Whoever was in the cab had no other way down, so it was simply a matter of waiting until the perp came down. If it was indeed a perp. By now, Littlefield was determined to slap a charge on the person, out of annoyance if nothing else. Besides trespassing and loitering, he could probably tack on obstruction of justice and delaying an officer. Those charges were usually dropped by the District Attorney during plea negotiations, but they sure were satisfying to write on the arrest report.

Littlefield banged the glass with the bottom of his fist. “Come on out,” Littlefield said. “I just want to ask you some questions.”

Like “Where in the hell is my deputy?” and “How did you get in there through a locked door?” and “By the way, have you seen any invisible people?”

He tried to reform the face in his mind. It was haggard and pale, with a sparse brush of beard, but the glimpse had been too brief to offer much more. Certainly nothing a sketch artist could work with, if it came to that.

Jeez, Sheriff, a little melodramatic, don’t you think? Morton’s probably sitting in the coffee house right now, talking up some college coed and hoping she digs a man in a uniform. Pushing his luck. But the biggest risk he’s facing is a lap full of warm coffee at four bucks a cup.

Littlefield peered through the bottom pane on the cab door, shining his light into the dim interior. It featured a seat like that of a tractor, and a series of gear levers protruded from the floor. An instrument panel featured a few dials and buttons, but obviously predated the era of microelectronics. Dirty rags littered the floor, and a length of rusty chain was coiled in the floorboard like a sleeping snake.

Otherwise, the cab was empty.

Littlefield fought an urge to ram the butt of his flashlight into the glass. Before the McFall incident and his latest failure, he would have figured himself for a head case on the verge of a breakdown. The shrinks would say it was only natural, a delayed post-traumatic reaction to the death of his younger brother when they were children.

Just a little guilt trip catching up with him, nothing to worry about, take a few weeks off and it should clear up on its own. With a little intensive therapy, of course, and possibly a little medication to keep the brain wires firing toward a desired result. All in the name of returning to normal.

But there was something shrinks would never acknowledge: once you’ve peered into the black heart of hell, once you’d ridden the nightmare rainbow all the way down, “normal” no longer existed.

And disappearing faces no longer were mere figments of his imagination.

Just like the footprints on Mulatto Mountain that had faded into thin air…

He glanced down into the milling area, where large steel claws arched upward. Years ago, they had sunk their jagged tips into oak and poplar and cherry, pushing their prey into the grinding, chewing jaws of the saw blade. Now they flexed open like the upturned palms of a metal martyr. Chains dangled from the rough-cut rafters, clinking softly as they swayed in the October breeze.

A pile of slabs, covered in ragged gray bark, lay to one side of the sawmill bench. Littlefield ran his light over them. He spotted a pair of eyes and steadied his beam, only to find a couple of knots protruding from a warped hardwood burl.

Then one of the slabs separated from the pile and moved into the orange circle of his beam. It approached him.

“Morton!” Littlefield scrambled down the ladder, feeling a little silly at his relief. He was able to dispel the vision of the face a little more with each rung, and by the time he reached the bottom he had convinced himself the incident had never happened.

As he jogged toward the end of the long steel saw table, he called to his deputy. “Did you see anybody?”

Littlefield stopped short, almost losing his balance and pitching into the raw teeth of the saw blade. It wasn’t Morton after all, not with those black eyes that soaked up the light and the scruffy beard that swayed in the wind like dried corn stalks. It was the man from the cab, probably the one who’d cast the silhouette he’d seen as he’d entered the lumber yard. The man was undeniably solid, though he was gaunt, checks sunken, ragged clothes draped on his body as if someone had hastily dressed a scarecrow.

“Who are you?” Littlefield said. Thank God for vagrants and trespassers, safe, normal, everyday bums and creeps.

The gaunt-faced man stood at the end of the saw table, looking around as if not recognizing his surroundings. Littlefield had a chance to study him in profile now that he was relatively motionless. He had the drawn cheeks of a meth addict and looked like he’d missed a few turns at the soup kitchen. His dark brown hair ran just past his collar, and when he grimaced, there were black gaps between his yellow teeth.

His clothes appeared to be natural fiber, dusty and stained, the cuffs of his shirt frayed. He wore a vest that was pocked with holes, and his gray cotton trousers had a rip in one knee. The leather boots were dusty and cracked, the heels coming loose and the toe of the right one lolling open like the mouth of an exhausted hound.

On his head was a peculiar cap that seemed two sizes too small and looked as if it had been mashed lopsided.

Since the man had not acknowledged Littlefield’s challenge, the sheriff took three steps toward him and spoke again. “This is private property.”

“Churr,” the man said, and it was almost like a question.

“You been drinking?” The encounter was moving back onto familiar footing and Littlefield gained confidence. His right hand, which had reached to the butt of the pistol holstered on his belt, now relaxed.

The man finally stared into the burning glare of the flashlight, not squinting or blinking. The eyes appeared to swell with darkness, and the light didn’t glint off them, as if they were bone dry and as dusty as his boots.

Where the hell is Morton?

Littlefield was not just concerned about his deputy, he didn’t like the idea of being alone with this weather-beaten scarecrow of a man. If it weren’t for Sherry’s dispatch record of the call, Littlefield would have been tempted to just mosey back through the gash in the fence and drive away.

The lumber yard offered little satisfaction for vandalism, and as a decent sleeping quarters for Titusville’s scattered homeless, it rivaled the Living Waters Mission’s stiff steel cots. And, the sheriff reasoned, if the department made a precedent of rousting one wino, Sherry’s 9-1-1 hotline might be flooded with reports of other emaciated and hollow-eyed wanderers.

Chickenshit rationalization. The same justifications that had led him to past mistakes, some that ended with a shovel, flowers, and a preacher’s solemn eulogy.

“Churr,” the man repeated, turning and walking toward the back of the lot.

“Stop, or I’ll…” Littlefield let the threat trail off because he didn’t know exactly what to say. He certainly wasn’t going to shoot, and he didn’t think the suspect was making what could be called a high-speed attempt at escape. In fact, Littlefield wasn’t even sure the man had heard or seen him. His reaction to the light might have been the instinctive response of a mindless animal.

The man walked with the stiffness of a scarecrow, as if his limbs had been long unused. He moved between two dunes of decaying sawdust, clothes swathed against a skeletal frame.

“Churrrrr,” the man said then rolled the syllable into “rrrrain” as if learning a new language.

The sound was as slow as everything else about the strange man, and Littlefield followed, slogging through the mix of wood chips and mud. That’s when he noticed the man’s boots left no prints.

“Stop!” Littlefield shouted, and now he wasn’t even sure he wanted the man to stop or if he’d simply fallen back on professional protocol when faced with the extraordinary.

The gray scarecrow didn’t heed, if it had heard in the first place, and just kept flopping its broken boots toward the fence.

Littlefield drew his gun and steadied the flashlight beam against the Glock until the circle of light was centered on the man’s back. The vagrant was carrying a haversack, slung low and dangling with old equipment.

“Churr-rain,” the man said, a little faster this time, as if a termite-riddled tongue had learned to speak.

Train?

Littlefield’s finger tickled the trigger, but he knew he wouldn’t shoot. For one thing, his hands were shaking and the light bobbed up and down, and a stray bullet might zing through the chain-link fence and ricochet toward the run-down section of Titusville, where houselights and flickering televisions glowed behind the kudzu-draped trees. The town’s few Mexicans, employed in the Christmas-tree fields because of their willingness to work hard and ignore warning labels on pesticide containers, were clustered in the clapboard shotgun shacks, and a random shooting promised a flood of Charlotte news crews. On the other hand, one more non-arrest on a suspicious-persons call would flush into the ocean of forgotten paperwork.

Thank God Morton was still nowhere to be seen, because Littlefield didn’t want to explain why he holstered his weapon. Unable to totally neglect his duty, he gave half-hearted pursuit, maintaining a distance of 30 feet.

When the man approached the chain-link fence, where the rusty and abandoned railroad track ran parallel to Norman’s Creek, Littlefield was left with a skipped heartbeat at the thought of the man’s turning and staring into the flashlight.

But, as might be expected of something that had probably tromped across Mulatto Mountain and eventually given up the need for footprints, the man didn’t pause when he reached the steel fence. Instead, he passed through it and stopped in the middle of the tracks, looking both ways as if listening for a distant steam whistle.

Then the wind blew and he was gone.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Vernon Ray had to stretch his legs and take unnatural steps to walk the crumbling creosote crossties. Railroads were made for the travel of big steel monsters and not boys, though Dex seemed to be doing fine with his hopping motion. But Dex was a jock, a linebacker who could already bench press 10 reps of his body weight, and owner of enough bowling trophies to melt down and cast as a statue of a general on horseback. So he could hop and get away with it.

If Vernon Ray tried to hop, it would probably look like some prissy little ballet move, so he settled for what felt like a manly stride, even though the motion strained the backs of his knees.

Bobby somehow floated along with an easy grace, but then Bobby made every action look cool. And though Dex could probably beat up both of them with one hand tied behind his back, Bobby was in the lead, moving down the track like a locomotive that was right on schedule. Dex followed, fanning the light along the rails and crossties ahead. Vernon Ray, the caboose, could come uncoupled and the train would keep rolling. Except, probably, Bobby would feel the loss of weight and the new ease of acceleration.

As if everything had to be a metaphor . . . .

“And then that doofus Deputy Dawg shot at me and I heard the bullet whistling through the trees over my head,” Dex said.

“Bet you about crapped your pants,” Bobby said.

“Hell, I was too scared to be scared, if you know what I mean. I was running like I was going in for the winning touchdown and Kitty Hawkins was waiting at the goalpost with her legs spread.”

“How do you know he shot at you?” Vernon Ray asked.

Dex stopped and Vernon Ray had to brace himself and get his balance to keep from pitching forward into Dex’s back. Bobby continued down the track, even though he must have noticed their shoes had stopped flapping behind him in that rollicking train rhythm. Vernon Ray would have to deal with this one alone.

“Because I was the one they were chasing,” Dex said without turning. “I was the only one who had enough balls to go for it. You sissy-boys sat there whining for mercy. You ain’t figured out yet that the system don’t allow no mercy.”

Though Dex had meant it as a challenge for Bobby as well, Bobby kept right on motoring. The lights of Titusville cast a gray gauze against the black ceiling of night sky. The creek clinked and gurgled, sounding merry despite the runoff from the town’s parking lots and gutters. The wind was soft in the trees and Vernon Ray spun a metaphor of gently beating wings until Dex yanked him back to reality.

“So he shot at me because I’m worth shooting,” Dex said. “But the second time, I don’t think he shot at me.”

Bobby, now 50 feet ahead, stopped and yelled back at them. “Come on, guys, we can make it to Planet Zero before it closes.”

Bobby tossed rocks from the gravel rail bed into the tide of encroaching kudzu until the two boys caught up. Dex said, “I was just telling V-Girl here about getting shot at. It was a better rush than sniffing glue, I can tell you that.”

“If he had hit you, you’d probably be singing a different tune,” Bobby said.

“Yeah,” Vernon Ray said, emboldened. “Like ‘Precious Memories’ or whatever else they do at a funeral.”

“Big deal,” Dex said. “I ain’t scared of dying. The preacher saved me so I got a free ride from here on out.”

Vernon Ray was about to dispute Dex’s theological justification, but it was hard to argue with a true believer. And Vernon Ray was jealous, because Dex had a destination after death, a shimmering, pillowy heaven where everyone was happy and nobody was different.

Plus he got to commit all the sins he could pack into a lifetime and not alter the eternal outcome one tiny bit. Vernon Ray had nothing waiting after death, no peaceful rest that he could anticipate, and his soul was a train rolling into a strange, misty tunnel that—

“What was he shooting at, then?” Bobby asked, spinning a rock into the trees that lined the creek. Lights from passing cars on the highway blinked amid the dying foliage. The smell of roadkill skunk drifted over.

“Nearest I can figure, it was that weird wino dude,” Dex said.

“Wino?”

“Yeah. Kinda makes you wonder why cops get to carry guns and normal folks don’t. If they’re that freaking loopy, they ought to join the Army where they can kill all the people they want.”

“As long as they’re brown,” Vernon Ray said.

“You don’t know nothing,” Dex countered. “Them ragheads attacked us on our own soil and—”

“What about the wino?” Bobby said, cutting off Dex’s favorite jingoistic rant, no doubt learned from his father and endlessly recited down at the bowling alley.

“Well, after that first shot, I ducked under a big shelf of rock,” Dex said. “You know how up on the ridge the boulders poke out of the ground. I figured, barring a ricochet, I’d be safe until the cops got tired of looking. I mean, I can outrun any cop in the county, but I haven’t figured out how to outrun a bullet yet.”

“Keep training,” Bobby said. “Maybe you got muscles somewhere besides your head.”

“Hey,” Dex said. “I’d rather run than try to talk my way out of it. Vernon Ray can use them big words and do okay in front of a juvie judge, but I been down that road before. Daddy’s lawyer is smart, but at the end of the day those pig porkers all kneel down at the same trough.”

“What’s that got to do with the wino?” Vernon Ray asked.

Dex gave him a shove, and Vernon Ray’s ankle caught on the rail. He nearly tumbled backwards off the bank and toward the creek, but Bobby grabbed his shirt sleeve.

“Come on, Dex,” Bobby said. “Don’t be a dickhead. Just tell us the story.”

“This creepy old guy was walking around on the ridge,” Dex said. “Probably been hanging out in the Hole and knocking back bottles of MD 20/20 and malt liquor 40’s.”

“That’s dumb,” Bobby said. “The place is two miles from the nearest package store and there’s plenty of places to tip a bottle downtown.”

“Well, he’s white, and only niggers and Mexicans can get away with loitering downtown.”

Vernon Ray wondered what would happen when Dex got to heaven and realized that blacks and Hispanics had been saved as well, and that the blood of Jesus had also washed away the sins of people who didn’t bowl 230 or listen to Toby Keith. God’s unconditional love extended to everyone except the homosexuals, that much was clear.

“Okay, so how do you know it was a wino?” Bobby asked, obviously trying to change the subject.

“His clothes looked like junk you’d pick out of a dumpster at a thrift shop,” Dex said. “All raggedy and dirty, like he’d been sleeping in them for a hundred years.”

Or maybe 150? Vernon Ray wasn’t sure exactly what he’d encountered in the Hole, but if the mountain was coughing out whatever dead things it had swallowed during the war, then maybe one of the deserters was walking loose. Or floating, or whatever ghosts did.

Which obviously messes up any Earth-based theology. Because if the soldier was dead, then he should have gone on to whatever afterlife had been promised by his faith. Unless he had no faith, and his was the fate of all who didn’t believe. Unless the dead soldier was a homosexual, then . . . .

Vernon Ray was still confused by all the contradictions, but he was getting the feeling that the eternal afterlife was going to be a lonely place. He moved closer to Bobby. The fall night had suddenly grown chillier.

“That don’t explain why the cop shot at him,” Bobby said.

“Didn’t you hear what I’ve been saying?” Dex said. “Those guys are nuttier than a corn turd. Anyway, the wino kept on hoofing it over the ridge, and then the cops were yelling at each other and I waited about 10 minutes and hustled my ass down the back side of the mountain and headed home. What happened to you guys?”

In the dim light, Vernon Ray couldn’t see Bobby’s face but could feel that ocean-eyed gaze on him. Bobby was waiting for Vernon Ray to spill whatever had happened in the Hole. Bobby hadn’t bought the story that Vernon Ray had bumped his head and gotten a little dizzy and confused.

Well, the “confused” part had been no lie, but babbling about being dragged into the dark depths by an unseen force might have cemented Vernon Ray’s reputation as the sole occupant of La La Land, a fairy spud in his own private Idaho.

“When they fired the shots, the other cop went running into the woods and the shopkeeper guy freaked out and ran in the opposite direction,” Vernon Ray said. “We dicked around a little until the coast was clear and then beat it out of there.”

“The only beating you do is your own meat,” Dex said.

“Dex, you’re the only guy on the planet who would eat a bullet over a pack of smokes, then brag about it at his own funeral,” Bobby said.

“All I’m saying is I’m going for it,” Dex said. “You guys can pansy-pwance around the edges but I’m walking right through the front door.”

“Come on,” Bobby said, taking the lead again. “I want to get to the comic shop before it closes. There’s a new Hulk I want to get.”

“Fine,” Dex said. “Give Vernon Ray something to look at besides his mom’s panties.”

“And no stealing this time,” Bobby called back over his shoulder.

Their feet crunched on gravel for a minute before Dex stopped again. “Sheriff came out to my house,” he said, with evident pride.

“You get charged?” Vernon Ray said, knowing Mac McCallister let some of the town’s top attorneys bowl on the house. Cops occasionally got a freebie, too, but only lawyers got the beer to go with it.

“Hell, no,” Dex said. “My old man read him the riot act.”

“He ask you about Mulatto Mountain?”

“I never even talked to him. But I’m supposed to go down to the office tomorrow. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sheriff Fiddlefart wants to pin a few charges on me just for old time’s sake.”

“Shh,” Bobby hissed. “Somebody’s coming.”

The railroad tracks were the boys’ usual route into town, unless they braved the highway on their bikes. More often, Bobby and Vernon Ray went without Dex, heading for comics, ice cream, mall loitering, or other buddy activity.

They rarely encountered anyone on the tracks, and in Twenty-First Century America, any adults conveyed by their legs instead of a fossil-fuel vehicle were considered odd and somehow subversive. Namely, cons and dregs, people too poor for cars, or those nabbed for multiple DWI’s. People to be avoided if you were a kid with a little money in your pocket.

Bobby stepped off the tracks and skidded down the bank to the vines and shrubs bordering the creek. Vernon Ray followed, sensing no real anxiety in his friend, but making the safe move nonetheless. Dex flicked off the flashlight and stood for a moment with his hands on his hips, as if welcoming a chance to prove himself king of the road.

“Come on, Dex,” Bobby said, as Vernon Ray crouched beside him in the weedy concealment.

“We got a right to be on the track,” he said.

“What if it’s a cop?” Vernon Ray said, though the notion of any officer straying half a mile from the cushy front seat of his cruiser was a little ludicrous.

“No flashlight,” Dex said. “Plus he already saw ours.”

“He won’t know where we are,” Bobby said, confirming Vernon Ray’s belief that only an adult male would be brave, foolish, or drunk enough to wander down the tracks after dark. “You can’t judge distance for crap in the dark.”

Dex paused for another moment, as if to let Bobby know that he wasn’t about to follow orders, as if Vernon Ray could be a whipped little puppy dog but Dex by God was top dog in a pack of one. Then he stepped over the rail and eased down the bank. He slipped once and landed on his rear in the damp grass, and his “Shee-it!” hissed out loudly enough to tip off whoever was coming.

As Dex wiped at the back of his jeans and stood in the kudzu and briars, Vernon Ray spun a fantasy that they were three Rebel scouts, waiting for a locomotive to come barreling down the tracks so they could get an idea of Grant’s numbers and strategy. Or, better yet, they could be spies, risking death by hanging in order to foul up Sherman’s March and Gen. Stoneman’s incursion into the North Carolina mountains. Daddy would be proud.

Vernon Ray strained to hear the approaching footsteps over the gurgling of the creek. Maybe Bobby had misjudged and it was a platoon, Union infantry rooting out rebel rabble. If so, they were dead meat for sure. But Vernon Ray wasn’t about to let his comrades swing at the business end of a hemp rope. No, he would dash right up to the platoon, yell, “Come and get me, you Lincoln-loving Johnny Yank!” and flee into the woods. Sure, they’d catch him, and he’d dance on air with his eyeballs bugging, but his buddies would have a chance to escape.

He didn’t realize he was actually about to bolt up the bank until he felt Bobby’s hand on his shoulder. “Easy, V-Ray,” Bobby whispered.

A stand of thin pines lined each side of the tracks, swallowing the approaching man in the shadows. Despite a weak grimace of moon overhead and the fuzzy glow cast by Titusville’s various storefronts and streetlights, they wouldn’t be able to see him until he reached the spot where the boys had left the tracks. The rushing creek covered any sound of footfalls.

Thirty seconds passed, with Bobby’s breath near Vernon Ray’s ear, and even the distant highway fell silent. Vernon Ray felt a surge of warmth at the closeness of his friend, and a feather tickled the inside of his stomach. The man must have stopped in the concealment of darkness and Vernon Ray imagined him waiting just as they were, perhaps also wondering who was sharing the tracks in the night. Maybe the man was afraid, too. It was easy to imagine a group of boys as a gang of hooligans out to rob and plunder.

Then the edge of the shadow swelled and a piece of it broke off. The man stepped into the graylight and moved down the tracks, his head tilted forward in determination. The hollow eyes were hard to see, but they were as black as the shadows that had spawned them, and the pale jaw was clenched into a creased dimple. This was a dude with a destination, and he wasn’t about to let anyone stop him.

“Holy freak-a-holey,” Dex said, a rare note of reverence in his voice.

“What?” Bobby whispered.

“It’s him.”

“Him?”

“The wino from Mulatto Mountain.”

“He doesn’t look drunk,” Vernon Ray said. The man’s shabby clothes hung as if they had rotted for years on a clothesline. The jacket appeared to be wool, and the cotton trousers were wrinkled and soiled. Though the jacket was open, it still had a couple of brass buttons gone green with age. A strap was slung over one shoulder, and a rounded object bounced off his right hip.

The man was close enough now that they could have hit him with a rock, but even if Dex had been in a frolicking, rabble-rousing mood, the man’s odd gait would have given him pause. The man’s feet were not visible from their low vantage point, but his legs appeared to be out of synch with his rate of motion, as if he were walking on ice and was being pushed forward by a strong, cold wind.

Then the man’s jaw hinged downward, the thin lips parted, and a black maw opened. “Churr-rainnnnnnn.”

“The hell was that?” Dex said.

“He said something,” Bobby said.

“That wasn’t a word. That didn’t even come from his mouth.”

Vernon Ray had the same impression. The sound had not been directional, and if Dex hadn’t also noted it, Vernon Ray would have assumed he’d imagined it. The man continued his peculiar locomotion, and was nearly out of sight when Vernon Ray noticed the dented tin canteen slung over the man’s pack. It glowed silver in the moonlight. A symbol was stamped into the dull tin. The distance was too great to discern the letters, but their shape suggested a familiar acronym.

C.S.A.

Confederate States of America.

Then the man was gone, and the silence that had descended in his wake gave way to night noises, the merry creek, the hiss of distant tires against asphalt, the wind in the dying leaves.

“The hell was that?” Dex repeated.

“Something from the Hole,” Vernon Ray said. “He was wearing a kepi. A Rebel cap.”

“Come on,” Dex said, raising his voice. “You ain’t pulling that noise, are you?”

“He’s headed toward Mulatto,” Bobby said.

“You taking this shrimp’s side?” Dex said. “Trying to scare me with your stupid little ghost stories?”

“I’m not trying anything,” Bobby said. “I’m just saying.”

“He was wearing a Civil War uniform,” Vernon Ray said. “Natural fiber. That looked like an army-issued canteen, and those are pretty rare.”

“Yeah, right,” Dex said. “He’s probably some loser that came in early for the reenactment. A rebel without a clue.”

“Okay,” Bobby said. “Suppose he is. Let’s follow him.”

Vernon Ray recalled the man’s weird steps and how he’d moved faster than his legs should have carried him. Dex must have been thinking the same thing, because he said, “I don’t want to waste my Saturday night tailing a wino. He’s probably up there puking a rainbow of Kountry Kwencher.”

“V-Ray?” Bobby asked, and Vernon Ray felt a sudden rush of warmth and appreciation. Bobby was giving equal weight to both opinions and letting his vote count as much as Dex’s. Vernon Ray wasn’t sure what would happen if he voted against Dex, but in truth he didn’t want to know if the man was a long-dead soldier who had crawled out of the Hole and gotten lost and was now wandering the Earth in search of a place to belong.

“Dex is right,” Vernon Ray said. “The comic store’s more fun.”

“Damn straight,” Dex said, emboldened. “Those comic-book chicks got some gazongas you could play water volleyball with and never come up for air. Plus Whizzer might be hanging around and we can score a joint.”

Vernon Ray had resisted his friends’ attempts to lure him into trying marijuana, but tonight might be different. Since reality was becoming increasingly unreliable, an altered state suggested comfort, though he was afraid that if he indulged in a trip to the outer limits of fantasy, he might not return.

Then again, he had little worth returning to: a bastard of a dad, few friends, and strange changes below his waist that didn’t seem to know in which direction to point. Vernon Ray was as lost as the Churr-rain man, whether he was a wino or a Civil War ghost.

“I’m with Dex,” Vernon Ray said.

“This don’t mean we’re going steady, sweetheart,” Dex taunted.

“Okay,” Bobby said. “Majority rules.”

Bobby stood aside and let Dex lead them back onto the tracks and toward town. Vernon Ray wasn’t sure whether Bobby was secretly disappointed or not, and he was too afraid to ask.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The morning was crisp and its breath held the threat of frost. Hardy was braced by the chill and always found the sunrise a glorious miracle that only the Lord could concoct. The only thing cockeyed about it, at least from his flesh-and-blood perspective in the opening of the barn, was that the sun made its virgin appearance each day over Mulatto Mountain, painting the peak in red and gold like it was getting licked with hellfire.

Since it was Sunday morning, the developers’ bulldozers were silent. Even the roosters seemed sleepy, crowing like they didn’t give a darn whether they impressed the hens or not. The cattle were scattered across the sloping pasture, working the sweet fall grass. Wood smoke from the chimney whisked across his face, momentarily masking the aroma of manure and the rotting tomatoes in the garden.

Donnie was playing in a stall, the one where Hardy kept clean straw. Whether inside the house or in the barn, he had to keep his son penned up. And he wasn’t sure whether the headshrinking doctors at health department were right when they said Donnie would be better off in a state hospital. Couldn’t be much worse than pacing around in a stall like a blind horse.

Hardy peered over the stall door at his son. Donnie wore overalls, a father-and-son match, though Donnie’s were two sizes larger. Pearl had secured a straw hat on his head so Donnie could pretend he was a normal boy going to help his dad with chores. But Hardy couldn’t trust him with pitchforks, milk buckets, or horseshoes. Maybe he was doing wrong, as overprotective as he accused Pearl of being, but he didn’t want to allow any more pain in his heart by allowing his son to get hurt.

“All right, Donnie,” Hardy said. “I got to go into the loft and throw down a few bales.”

Donnie looked up and grinned, lips wet with drool. He tossed some straw into the air and it spun in the sunlight that leaked between the siding planks. A piece of chaff stuck to his chin. He looked happier than any of the kids Hardy had seen hanging around down at the bowling alley or the shopping mall. Then again, Donnie was probably the world’s oldest kid.

Hardy gave a wave and Donnie raised both arms as if mimicking the gesture.

I’ll take it. Hell, better than a trained monkey, and this one gets the Eggers name and birthright.

“Someday, son, all this will be yours,” Hardy said.

“Gwek,” Donnie said.

“That’s right. With the price of beef going up, you might have yourself a future.”

Donnie’s lips fluttered as if imitating the sound of a tractor engine.

“You just stay here and hold down the fort and I’ll be right back,” Hardy said.

In the loft, he shoved bales to the south end so he could throw them down a feeding chute. Though the cows didn’t mind short grass, the two horses were particular, and the three goats were big fans of fiber, though they were so picky they only ate the seed heads.

Hardy had purchased the goats over in Solom to rid the pastures of briars, and they were so troublesome he’d wanted to get rid of them, but Donnie’s face had lit up when he’d first seen them. He’d clapped his hands and went “Gwa, gwa.” Most likely he’d only been suffering indigestion, not showing joy, but then Donnie wasn’t the only one grasping at straws these days.

Hardy tumbled a few bales down and got busy rearranging a few stacks to make room for the fall’s tobacco crop. Since the Great American Cigarette Settlement, most small growers had sold out their quotas, the latest version of farm welfare. But Hardy continued to maintain the half-acre patch his own father had once reaped.

He wasn’t sure it was due to habit, tradition, or a finger in the eye to all those liberal do-gooders who made smoking seem like the crime of the century. Whatever the reason, the income barely covered the property taxes for the dirt it grew on.

Another reason to sell out to Budget Bill and head for greener pastures. I couldn’t make that much if I grew tobacco here for the next 200 years, but at least I’d help put a few nails in a few coffins before then.

Hardy gathered the oak tobacco stakes, which were warped and gray with age. The tobacco stalks would be speared on the stakes and allowed to dry golden-brown in the sun, and then the crop would be hung from the barn rafters until it was the color of chewing tobacco spit. Long after the first frost, Hardy and Pearl would sit on buckets and crates and twist the leaves into bundles, talking over old times, swapping Bible verses, and doing everything they could to pretend they were happy and their son was normal.

The tied bundles would be hauled to the warehouse auction in Winston-Salem, Hardy making the trip alone in the two-ton flatbed Ford. The Ford was so slow that the payment check would probably beat him back to the farm, where a stack of bills would be waiting for them both.

A winter of split firewood, potatoes, and cabbage, and then they might be lucky enough to do it all again, with Donnie cooped up in his upstairs room with crayons and pillows as the blue happiness in Pearl’s eyes continued its glacial melt to gray.

Hardy tumbled some stakes through the loft door, enjoying the knocking as he played an oversize game of tiddlywinks. He was about to toss down the next armful when he saw Donnie halfway across the pasture, climbing the slope.

Headed for Mulatto Mountain and the Hole.

“Donnie!” Hardy almost tripped as he tried to run before he’d tossed the stakes out of the way, and one of them rebounded off the wall and glanced him across the side of the head. Dizzy, he wobbled to the stairs.

Donnie never tried to climb out of the stall before.

Donnie barely expressed the coordination to walk to the bathroom, much less go hand-over-hand and place his feet in the right notches to escape. But now he moved like an athlete, still a little hunched and swinging his arms low, but motoring just the same. Hardy reached the ground floor and broke into a jog, his worn lungs wheezing, wishing he’d quit the smokes himself before they’d painted a permanent skin of tar inside him.

Hardy wasn’t sure what would be worse, Donnie reaching the woods and maybe getting lost, or Pearl stepping out on the porch or looking through the kitchen window and seeing her 27-year-old baby boy escaping from the zoo.

And the one question Hardy didn’t want to ask: Why was his catatonic son heading straight for the Hole, like a migrating bird picking up the magnetic currents of the Earth?

And another question Hardy didn’t want to ask: What would happen when Donnie got there?

Hardy pushed himself as hard as he could, sweat beading on his forehead despite the cool weather. He reached to brush it from his eyes and came away with blood on his fingers. Hardy was gaining on him, but Donnie was just a few hundred feet from the fence.

“Donnie!” Hardy yelled, wasting a precious gulp of air.

Donnie’s head juddered up and down as if he acknowledged his name, but he didn’t slow a bit. A few of the cows lifted from their grazing and looked at them. Hardy dared a glance back at the house and it was still and peaceful, a thread of smoke rising from the chimney and stitching itself into the shredded clouds. Hardy wondered if he’d have been better off with the tractor instead of boot power, but it was too late for second-guessing.

As if there were any other kind of guessing.

Donnie was almost to the fence when the primrose shrubs and blackberry vines along the fence line shook as if rushed by a sudden wind. Hardy saw shapes among the undergrowth but chalked them up to lightheadedness.

Surely those ain’t people in them briars?

Then Donnie reached the fence and went up and over with the ease of a chimpanzee, barely causing the split locust posts to shiver. Even amid the fear, Hardy felt a surge of pride. His son was finally a man. Or at least a boy again.

Then Donnie disappeared into the maple saplings, silver birch, and jack pine, and the shapes along the fence solidified.

Men. Six or seven of them.

Except they weren’t quite men. More like man-sized balls of fuzz, indistinct, though they stood and appeared to monitor Hardy’s approach. Then they grew a little more solid, and Hardy noted those familiar gray uniforms and the kepis on several of the heads. Just like Earley in the portrait.

The things from the Hole.

It wasn’t bad enough that they’d beckoned his son through some kind of invisible signal, they had to come down and meet him. Like a welcome party.

A couple of the men were armed, bearing long muskets rubbed shiny with cloth. Hardy wondered what happened to you when you were hit with ghost bullets. Did they only kill ghosts, or could they work on the living, too?

The way Hardy’s heart was beating against his scrawny rib cage—

ratta-tat, ratta-tat

—he didn’t think he’d have to worry about which way he died.

The big sky squeezed.

He fell to his knees as his chest muscles clamped down hard, and though his ears clanged with that goddamned metal drumbeat and he couldn’t suck in a breath, he forced himself to crawl toward the fence.

The dead soldiers watched him with dead faces, their strange pale skin pocked with filth and their beards knotty and mottled.

Hardy put one hand in a fresh cap of cow manure and shoved forward, making it a few more feet before he collapsed. Then he dragged himself forward by wriggling like a cold serpent fresh out of hibernation, crushed clover sweet in his nostrils. He found he could breathe again, and the grip behind his ribs gave way to the punch of a dozen glowing spikes.

This was the part where he expected to hear trumpets and open his eyes to see a heavenly host of pillow-breasted angels, but all he heard was that confounded ratta-tat ratta-tat. He rolled onto his back and saw the world upside down, and the bearded soldier in the broad slouch hat floated through the fence.

Funny, the things you see when you’re dying. I always thought it would be liquid sunshine and sweet Jesus Christ driving a golf cart.

The officer moved toward Hardy, legs not moving, scuffed boots dangling inches above the ground. The man grew more solid as he approached, as if Hardy’s life force was being sucked from his heart and charging up the batteries of the long-dead spirit. He stood over Hardy and knelt down as if tending a fallen comrade.

The officer’s eyes were deep and cold, and that same bottomless chill was mirrored inside Hardy’s throat. The man reached for Hardy’s face, and Hardy felt it was safe to go ahead and surrender if the war was already lost.

Just before he closed his eyes, two sounds battled for storage space in the sodden silo of his brain.

Pearl, yelling his name.

And ratta-tat, ratta-tat, fading, fading, along with the soldiers, the October trees, the bearded officer’s face, the soft-clouded heaven that was now below, the dream of being a man.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“We should have brought Dex,” Vernon Ray said.

“Nah, I’m tired of his pissing and moaning,” Bobby said. “Besides, he doesn’t believe in any of this.”

“I’m not sure I believe it, either.”

“Keep watching.”

Bobby was lethargic, groggy from an extra hour of sleep. The laziness of Sunday morning had infected the woods as well. A church bell gave its soft toll in the valley below. If not for Vernon Ray’s obsession with whatever had happened inside the Hole–and his own memory of the whispered words from the cave–he’d be lying in bed touching himself or flipping through some Spawn comics while Mom burnt the bacon. Instead, he was on a ghost-hunting patrol.

They had staked out a position on the ridge, in a stand of laurels where they couldn’t be seen, cushioned by galax and fern. Bobby wasn’t sure whether concealment did any good if you were trying to hide from ghosts. If they could float right through tons of granite, then they could probably see through trees. Vernon Ray peered through a pair of binoculars he’d swiped from his dad’s collection, and Bobby had a digital zoom camera he’d checked out from school.

He was supposed to use the camera for a nature project, creating a slide show of fall flowers, but he figured if he nailed a ghost for “Show and Tell,” he could probably impress even Karen Greene. He’d been sniffing around Karen all semester, but she was currently hot for Josh Brannon, son of Titusville’s biggest car dealer. Bobby figured, as the son of a drunken plumber, he was barely on her Top 10 list, so any publicity was good publicity.

Vernon Ray was sprawled on a North Face sleeping bag, a Boy Scout special, while Bobby had a ratty blanket. If Dex were along, he’d have brought an entire camping outfit, with tent, Coleman stove, and probably a global-positioning compass. Bobby wasn’t really resentful of his wealthier friends, because he’d never really known his family was poor until he’d gotten into the middle grades and the division between trash and treasure grew more stark.

The trailer-park kids got free lunch at school, and Bobby was so embarrassed at getting his ticket punched that he’d stopped eating at school. Sure, the other boys hung with him because he was a pretty decent halfback and could drain three-pointers on the hoops court, but when his dad picked him up after practice in the rusty truck with scrap pipes hanging all over it, Bobby slunk away as fast as he could.

But a digital photo of the creeps from the Jangling Hole would even things up. Bobby would be featured on the front page of The Titusville Times, maybe with a headline of “Legend Buster” and a mug shot that would moisten Karen’s panties, assuming she’d passed puberty, and she sure had the look of it judging from what she was sporting upstairs.

“V-Ray, do you think a camera can see a ghost?”

“Well, sometimes digitals capture orb phenomena, balls of milky ether that represent paranormal activity. Skeptics say it’s just lens flare or the flash illuminating specks of dust.”

“You’re really into this.”

“I don’t have any friends, remember? If it wasn’t for the Internet, I wouldn’t exist.”

“Just like our imaginary friends in the Hole.”

“Oh, they exist, all right. One of them tried to grab me yesterday and drag me in.”

“Bull.”

Vernon Ray laid down his binoculars and rolled up his right sleeve. “My wrist is still bruised. See?”

Bobby didn’t think bruises were such a rare commodity. His dad roughed him up a bit, usually when drunk, and Bobby figured that stuff went on in every household, not just the poor ones. Dad had made an art of playful abuse, making sure the evidence wasn’t visible enough to be noticed by nosy neighbors or do-gooders in the public education system. But Vernon Ray’s marks were pretty ripe and impressive, the purple blotches spread out as if made by big, strong fingertips.

“That don’t make any sense,” Bobby said. “If ghosts aren’t solid, how can they grab you?”

“Manifestation.”

“Do what?”

“Manifesting into physical form. Sometimes they’re invisible, sometimes you can see them a little bit. So why couldn’t they make themselves real if they wanted? It’s not exactly like they have to follow the rules of physics. They’re obeying a different set of laws, learning as they go.”

“Right. And you want to go back in there?”

“I just feel some sort of connection. The Hole’s has been around forever, but nobody has ever offered any real proof of the supernatural. Mostly it’s just been urban legends dressed up in overalls and corncob pipes, with the Civil War flavor thrown in to play better to the audience. So why should the Hole become active all of a sudden?”

“The bulldozers ripping the mountain to pieces?”

“Maybe. Ghosts are sensitive to disturbances of their resting place.”

“Think it has anything to do with the Stoneman’s Raid re-enactment?”

“Who knows? Maybe the ghosts have been walled inside the mountain listening to those bugle calls and shouts of muster and it triggered some sort of memory. If they get energy from the things around them, they get stronger the more they get pestered. Maybe they get a charge just from us sitting out here thinking about them.”

“Man, this sounds pretty damned loopy, you know?”

“Hey, all you got to do is tell this to a grown-up, and I’m sure you’ll get a rational explanation, a warning not to trespass, and a weekly session with the school shrink. Only kids can be trusted with this kind of knowledge.”

Bobby took a sip from his Gatorade bottle and peered through the tree trunks at the grassy entrance to the Hole. “I reckon. But if we don’t see anything, this never happened, right?”

Vernon Ray looked through the binoculars for a moment, then lowered them and turned to Bobby, red rings impressed around his eyes. The brown irises and thick lashes again reminded Bobby of Bambi, and he hoped his friend wouldn’t say anything stupid and sensitive. Why couldn’t he just be a guy, for Christ’s sake?

“Thanks for coming along,” Vernon Ray said, though it looked like he wanted to say more.

“Well, I’m a sucker for anything weird,” Bobby said, hoping Vernon Ray wouldn’t translate it into an invitation of some kind. “I mean, beats hell out of sitting around watching the race or doing homework.”

“Think you’ll get in trouble?”

“I was born in trouble.”

Vernon Ray was about to respond when Bobby heard a pattering like rain on leaves. He squinted at the sky, and though some gray clouds had gathered, there was more than enough blue to patch a pair of jeans. The wind had picked up a little and the sun-speckled canopy was whispering in a parched autumn voice, limbs creaking slightly. “Shh,” Bobby said.

“I hear it, too,” Vernon Ray said.

“Ratta-tatta-tat?”

“You got it.”

Bobby lifted the camera, ready for action. “Showtime.”

The rolling thunder of drumbeats was muffled at first, echoing from deep within the Hole, oozing forward as if testing the resistance of air.

“Rolling out reveille,” Vernon Ray said, sweeping the clearing with the binoculars. “Time for the troops to fall in.”

Bobby heard the scuffing of fallen leaves before he saw the man. At least, he was big enough to be a man, a few inches over six feet and filled out, though his arms seemed a little scrawny. Maybe the overalls exaggerated the effect, but there was a childlike quality to the man’s movements, as if he had only recently learned to walk.

“It’s one of them,” Vernon Ray whispered.

“No, I don’t think so. He looks a little too real.”

“Something’s off about him.”

Bobby wanted say that everybody was a little off, especially V-Ray, but he was too intent on following the man’s movements. His wobbly steps were carrying him straight toward the Hole, though the way he cocked his head made it appear he was listening for instead of looking for his destination.

“Dude, that’s Hardy Egger’s boy,” Bobby said. Donnie Eggers had attained some urban-legend status himself, as few people had ever actually seen him. The story of a mute, senile, drooling lunatic locked away in the old farmhouse was juicy enough to launch a hundred variations.

Some told it that Donnie was the lone survivor of a summer-camp serial killer and didn’t have enough marbles left to tell the cops the killer’s identity. Others chalked it up to a weird red church over in Whispering Pines where some people had died. Vernon Ray had looked on the Internet but a Google search for “Donnie Eggers” had yielded hundreds of Web pages about Donnie Osmond, chicken hatcheries, and genealogical records of people who had died long before George Washington had dropped his trousers to the King.

“I thought they never let him out of the house.”

“Look how he’s walking. Like a spaz.”

“He’s following the sound of the drum.”

“Creepy.” Bobby clicked a picture of Donnie, figuring he would get a little attention for providing proof of the man’s existence. He checked the photo and found it was blurred, but before he could aim the camera again, Vernon Ray elbowed him.

“Holy molars, Batman,” Vernon Ray said.

Coming through the trees behind Donnie, marching in a ragged line, were a half-dozen soldiers. They reminded Bobby of the re-enactments his dad participated in, except these guys looked worn and haggard, as if they had been in a real war for years instead of a pretend one for a weekend. Bringing up the rear was a man in an overgrown felt cowboy hat, a scabbard dangling from his belt.

“They don’t look like ghosts,” Bobby said.

“Of course not. They’re actualized.”

“Do what?”

“They’ve become real.”

Bobby clicked a couple of pictures, not stopping to check them lest he miss a good shot. Donnie was nearly to the Hole now, and the drum roll swelled into a cavernous echo. “Then they should show up on the digital, right?”

“Something should. Ectopic matter, maybe, or ether.”

“They’re headed for the Hole.”

“And taking the Eggers boy with them. Just like they tried to take me.”

It sounded weird to call Donnie Eggers a “boy,” but despite his size there was a definite boyish innocence about him. Or maybe his imbecility brought a lack of motor control that made him appear vulnerable and fragile.

Bobby lowered the camera. “Damn. Think we ought to save him? He probably doesn’t know what he’s doing if he’s out of his mind.”

“What can we do? These are ghosts, for Christsakes.”

“Go get the cops.”

“And then what?”

Donnie’s halting steps led him to the mouth of the cave, where he stood swaying and blinking into the darkness. The snare reveille rattled out of the stone tunnel and filled the forest. The weary, slump-shouldered troops narrowed the distance and were approaching Donnie when the drum fell silent. The soldiers stood hunched in place, at raggedy parade rest, with only the bearded man with the scabbard moving, taking brisk but discordant steps to the front of the line.

“I don’t think the cops will do a damn bit of good,” Vernon Ray said.

“Well, if they’re solid, they can be shot and killed,” Bobby said.

“I don’t think it works like that. They’re already dead, remember?”

“So we just watch while they do a ghost version of throwing a virgin sacrifice into a volcano?”

“Well, there’s one other option. That bearded creep must be the colonel.”

“Colonel Kirk?”

“The leader.”

The man with the scabbard—Colonel Creep, Bobby decided—stopped in front of Donnie, but Donnie stared at the ground, swaying back and forth as if the snare were still rattling out its rhythm. Through the zoom of the lens, the colonel’s eyes looked like black, miniature versions of the Jangling Hole.

Bobby looked at his friend, running down the many other options besides the one he knew Vernon Ray would offer. “We can shut our mouths and pretend nothing ever happened. We can say we got photos but have no idea what happened to the Eggers boy. We can say we thought they were Civil War re-enactors.”

“I know what it’s like in the Hole. If they take him in there, he’ll never come out.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah. We can’t let that happen.”

Bobby sighed, reluctant to lose the Karen Greene hero-worship fantasy. Or possibly his life, for that matter. “Well, at least we won’t have to worry about becoming grown-ups.”

“You want to do it, or me?”

“Which way you running?”

“You’re faster than me, so you head across the ridge. When they follow, I’ll grab Donnie and drag him away.”

“What if they don’t all chase me, or if more of them come out of the Hole?”

“Nobody lives forever.”

“Except them.”

Donnie still hadn’t looked at Colonel Creep. The other soldiers sagged like handless puppets, waiting to be snapped into action. The air was charged with expectation, as if the static were building for a thunderbolt. Bobby let the camera dangle from the strap around his neck and stood up, emerging from the concealment of the laurels.

He cupped his hands to his mouth. “Up here, you dirty Connecticut Yankee dogs.”

Donnie was the first to turn his head, followed by the bearded colonel. Shaking, Bobby lifted his middle finger and shot the ghost a bird, wondering if the universal hand signal for “Screw you” had been in vogue in the 1860s.

Vernon Ray waited in the thicket, peering through the binoculars.

“What’s he doing?” Bobby asked.

“Darn. Better duck.”

The soldiers, without speaking, had turned their attention toward Bobby, some of them raising their rifles. Bobby wondered if the ghostly musket balls and minis had any power in the real world, and decided despite his bravado about not growing up, he was in no rush to get killed.

For one thing, he still had a few gaps in his Spiderman collection to fill, and for another, he was going to kiss Karen Greene before the eighth grade was over. And one more notion ran under the others: if he died, then maybe his ghost would be stuck on Mulatto Mountain, too, conscripted to an endless darkness with the cold company of Colonel Creep’s Raiders.

He dodged behind a massive gnarled oak just as thunder erupted. Lead balls ripped though the leaves over his head, answering his question about the reality of ghost bullets. The soldiers scattered and headed up the slope toward him, their feet making no noise as they passed over the carpet of dead, dry leaves.

Bobby cupped his hands and yelled. “What now, Ghostbuster?”

“Run for it,” Vernon Ray said.

“Which way?”

“Both.”

“Great plan.” Another volley sounded, and Bobby peered around the oak to check the positions of the approaching soldiers. Two stood in the clearing by the cave, smoke rising from their rifles. One was reloading.

Good thing they’re using breech loaders instead of semiautomatics, or I’d be Swiss cheese.

Donnie finally looked up, though Bobby couldn’t make out his expression, and the colonel drew his sword from its dull brass scabbard and pointed it toward Bobby in another universal “Screw you” signal.

So much for Vernon Ray’s plan of “Divide and conquer.” Time for Plan B: Get the hell out of Dodge.

Bobby broke from cover and scrambled across the ridge, the protruding granite boulders giving him cover. He wondered if the sheriff’s deputy had known he was shooting at ghosts yesterday. Since cops were trained to be good shots, it probably proved that ghosts couldn’t be killed. On the other hand, ghosts seemed not only able and willing to kill the living, but took the mission pretty seriously. After all, Kirk’s Raiders had spent a century and a half stewing on their resentments.

An explosion of powder sounded. Something pinged off a nearby boulder, throwing rock chips in the air.

Bobby stayed low and kept running, dancing between rocks and trees the way he dodged tacklers on the gridiron, the camera bouncing off his rib cage, the dying green smell of autumn forest mixed with the rot of loam. Another shot echoed through the trees. He wondered if Vernon Ray had enough sense to run away, then realized they were almost recreating yesterday’s chase, only this time it was dead soldiers and not the law that was after them.

Breathing hard, he reached the highest point of the ridge, where storm-sheared hickory trees stood in jagged brown lines. A low branch thwacked him across the cheek, nearly knocking him off his feet. He rubbed the stinging flesh and hurried onward. He was about to descend the slope, figuring to curl around the rocky promontory and wait for Vernon Ray at the bottom of the mountain, when he heard a loud, low rumble.

Too loud for rifles.

Cannon? A hundred snare drums?

He slowed and squinted at the sky. Cloudy, but not dark enough for thunder.

Bobby found a rocky, rain-cut gully and scooted down it, sliding in the black mud. The mechanical chugging grew louder. The gulley opened onto a clearing of cut trees and an open, level gash of brown soil.

Two dump trucks and a logging truck were parked along one edge of a rough dirt road, and a bulldozer was parked in the clearing, black smoke rising from its smokestack. Bobby waved his arms and ran toward the man in the baseball cap who was revving the noisy, stinky diesel engine.

The man didn’t see Bobby at first, and Bobby climbed onto the dozer’s thick steel tread. He grabbed the dozer operator’s shirt and the man spun in surprise, nearly knocking Bobby from the bulldozer. “What?” the man shouted.

“Ghosts,” Bobby said, knowing it sounded like a bratty prank, but too shocked to tell anything but the simplest truth.

“Go?” the man yelled.

“They got somebody,” Bobby said, pointing toward the ridge.

The man’s face was blotched and his eyes bloodshot. His breath smelled of beer and onions. His eyebrows furrowed in anger and he yanked down the throttle, quieting the engine to a deep throb. “What you talking about?”

“They got my friend.”

“Who got him?”

“Ghosts. From the Jangling Hole.”

The man’s face scrunched again, but he must have seen the fear and panic in Bobby’s eyes. “Who are you?”

Bobby was again too shaken to lie. “Bobby Eldreth.”

“The plumber’s kid?”

Bobby nodded.

“What you doing out here? Don’t you know this is private land?”

“We came to see the ghosts.”

“That’s just stories they make up for kids on Halloween.”

“I saw them. And they’re taking away the Eggers boy. They’re taking him into the Hole.”

The man fidgeted with the throttle. “You been smoking something?”

“No, sir. You got to help.”

“I don’t know what you seen. But the Eggers boy ain’t got enough letters in his soup bowl to spell ‘C-A-T,’ much less wander this far from home. I got work to do.”

“Please.”

The man’s mouth twisted in a “Hell with it” mime then he shut the engine down. The diesel engine chugged, chuffed, and died, acrid exhaust hanging in the air. Bobby hopped off the dozer and waited for the man to climb down.

Bobby turned and found the soldiers had tracked him down. Or maybe they’d simply materialized in the clearing.

Because this is their mountain and they don’t like trespassers.

They circled Bobby and the bulldozer operator, their rifles leveled. They were close enough that Bobby could see the tarnished insignia on their uniforms and the moth holes in their filthy jackets.

“What in God’s name?” the man whispered.

“Like I said.”

“It’s them dress-up boys for Stoneman’s.”

The man stepped toward the closest soldier, who sighted down his barrel and thumbed back the flintlock.

“I think they want you to stop,” Bobby said.

“No way,” he said, continuing. “Nobody points a gun at me and gets away with it. Even if it’s a pretend gun.”

The soldier pulled the trigger and the flintlock struck, igniting the powder charge and propelling a lead ball into the man’s face. Bone crunched and a red spray jumped from the back of the man’s head, his cap flying off from the blow. A few drops of blood hit Bobby, and he saw other soldiers were aiming their weapons.

The bulldozer operator’s head, which had snapped backward on impact, now lolled forward as his knees collapsed. He flopped face-first as if making a snow angel in the mud of the road bed.

Bobby put his hands over his eyes, figuring the next volley would rip him to shreds, expecting his life to flash before his eyes. But all he saw was Karen Greene and his sneering dad and Vernon Ray’s Bambi eyes and a scene from Shrek where Donkey first realizes he can fly. Some life. He listened for the click of a trigger, wondering if he would die before he heard the shot.

He wondered how his dad would take it, and whether Will would sell his comic collection. Would Karen cry? He was wondering about the photos on his camera–maybe a little fame after his death–when he realized he’d been wondering for too many seconds.

What’s taking so long?

He uncovered one eye and blinked.

Nothing.

The soldiers were gone.

The man from the bulldozer lay on his belly, a pool of thick red spreading from his shattered skull.

After a minute, the birds began chirping again in the high treetops.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Come give me a hand, squirt,” Elmer said, knocking on the door to his sons’ room.

The Schlitz 40s had clubbed his head but good and the last thing he needed was little Bobby adding to the headache. Sunday afternoons were for sitting on the couch and watching NASCAR, but Vernell had ragged him so hard about Dolly’s Dollhouse that he’d promised to fix the leaking sewer pipe under the trailer.

It wasn’t like he’d even copped a feel, and the closest dancer to his table was a used-up warhorse whose tits drooped like cold balloons. He could have sworn that when she clamped her thighs around the brass pole and spun, dust had floated into the air and her skin had chafed like rusty brakes. So even if he didn’t feel any particular need to make amends for that sin, he’d rather wallow in shit under the trailer than put up with shit inside the house.

The space beneath the trailer was only three feet high, and while Elmer could slither through the septic mud and find the leak, he needed Bobby to fetch the proper lengths of pipe, carry tools, and do all the wriggling in and out.

Elmer pounded on the door harder. He wasn’t surprised Jerrell was nowhere around, because Jerrell had a job and his own wheels and was banging babes all over town. His real son, a real man. While Bobby, the bastard blonde, was probably polishing the old bone to pictures of those big-titted superbabes in the comic books.

Could be worse, could be a flaming fag like Jeff’s boy.

His face broke into a triumphant grin. Jeff could kick his ass in bowling, boss him around in the Civil War games, and draw twice the income, but when it came to raising them right, Elmer had the heating-and-AC man beat all to hell.

Elmer gave the door one more hard blow with the bottom fist. “Bobby, get your ass out here.”

He tried the door handle. Locked. Elmer could shove the flimsy door in, but then Vernell would give him shit about that, too, and he’d spend the rest of the evening replacing it, and the money would come out of his beer kitty.

Elmer went down the hall and through the living room, where Vernell sat on a sofa drying her fingernail polish. Elmer never understood how a woman could fix on one thing and block out everything else in the world. When Vernell dried her fingernails, that was all she did. If some corporation could figure out how to channel that empty happiness on her face, then preachers, barkeeps, and shrinks would all go out of business.

“Where’s Bobby?” she asked, as if she’d missed the tom-tom job he’d done on the bedroom door.

“Little idiot didn’t answer,” Elmer said.

“Stubborn,” she said. “Gets it from your side of the family.”

Elmer ducked his head back in the door, but didn’t catch her face in time to see if she was jerking him around. Pushing the little secret in his face. If he had the damned money to spare, he’d send the cuckold-spawn for DNA testing and then Vernell could bounce her ass out onto the street and start walking. “At least my side can cook.”

“He might have sneaked off with Vernon Ray,” she offered.

“Well, he didn’t come through the house.”

“Maybe he got up before we did. You was snoring so loud an elephant parade could have wandered down the hall without us knowing.”

Elmer didn’t want to get into it, not right now. He brawled better with a few tall ones under his belt. There were a couple under the truck seat and it would give him a head start on the afternoon and make crawling in shit a little more bearable.

He slammed the trailer door hard enough to cause Vernell to yip and then got his tools from the truck. Like most in vocational trades, Elmer didn’t like to take his work home with him. Carpenters couldn’t be troubled to so much as hang a picture hook, painters wouldn’t color a toenail, and plumbers were pissed off if they had to slorp a plunger around in a blocked toilet to jam out some cooze’s bloody Tampax.

As he went around the trailer, he saw the open window in the boys’ bedroom. He braced himself on the oil-tank rack and stretched up to look in the room. It looked like Bobby was still asleep, curled up in the blankets on the bottom bunk. He watched for a moment, figuring if Bobby was tickling the one-handed puppet then the bunk would be shaking.

Nothing. Not a thing. Not even the slow rise and fall of breathing.

Elmer was about to punch the glass hard enough to break it when he saw a crevice in the blankets, right where they met the pillow. He peered through the window at the place where Bobby’s head should be. The skin was smooth and white, and a stitched patch of black met it.

Fucking soccer ball. The bastard pulled the old sleeping-dummy trick.

Elmer stifled a surge of pride. Though he’d played a version of that stunt on his own folks plenty of times, sneaking out on Friday nights to knock down whiskey that his friends paid winos to purchase, he couldn’t rightly claim a genetic link. Bobby was just a drain on the wallet and another pain in the ass, and if Elmer couldn’t even get a little labor out of him, then he might as well send the brat’s medical and grocery bills to the real father, whoever that was.

Bobby was probably down at the Davis trailer, dorking around with Vernon Ray. Elmer had no idea why his inherited son would want to hang around with a blooming fruit, but Bobby had always been a little too sensitive for his own good. He read too many books, for one thing.

Elmer would have worried about Bobby maybe having a little sugar in his britches, but Bobby was a jock and the little chickies seemed to dig him just fine. Too bad he spent all his time hanging around with his guy friends. He was probably missing out on a ton of stinky finger.

Well, even a bitch like Vernell can’t expect me to fix the busted pipe all by myself. I’ll go round up Bobby and maybe even get Vernon Ray to help out, too. About time Bobby learned the family trade, anyway.

Elmer walked to the Davis trailer, making sure he kicked over one of the little flagstones that girded the flower garden around the porch. Yes, suh, Captain Fucking Davis. The officer’s quarters are always a mite finer than what the troops get. Privilege of rank and all that happy horseshit.

Elmer pounded on the door, his hangover gripping his skull in the bright sun. Maybe he’d hit Jeff up for a cold one, even though it was barely past noon. Chat him about the Civil War and Elmer might even get two or three freebies, plenty of lubrication for wallowing in shitty water and fixing a pipe. Just like a regular workday.

Jeff opened the door a crack, his mustache twitching. “Hey, Elmer. You not in church?”

“I already been saved. After that, I didn’t see much point.”

“Got your golden ticket, huh? Want a beer?”

“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”

“Come on in. Martha’s gone to Barkersville to get her hair done.”

Elmer stepped inside. The trailer, as usual, smelled like mothballs and Clorox. Framed portraits of Jeff’s Civil War ancestors covered the walls, and a print of the C.S.S. Neuse, an ill-fated ironclad, dominated the wall behind the couch. Jeff’s wife had made a few decorative overtures like a basket of potpourri and doilies on the armchairs, but this was clearly Jeff’s house. It made Elmer resent him even more, because Elmer busted his ass to pay rent, but that lazy-assed Vernell called the shots.

Fuck it. He followed Jeff to the kitchen, his parched tongue licking his lips in anticipation.

As Jeff handed him a Budweiser, Elmer nodded thanks and said, “Say, did Bobby come over?”

“Bobby? I thought he was at your house. Vernon Ray said he was spending the night over there.”

“I ain’t seen either of them.”

“You mean they were out all night?”

Elmer didn’t want to think about the boys’ sleeping together. Bad enough to be raising the creation of another man’s sperm, but raising a fag would be 10 times worse. “Probably nothing. Boys will be boys. Remember when we was kids?”

Jeff gazed out the window at the trailer park, chin up in that prissy little officer’s stance he used, and Elmer doubted if the guy remembered much of anything that didn’t feed his little Civil War fantasy. “Yeah. We had some good times. Playing army, hiding in the woods, building forts.”

Come to think of it, Jeff had been a mad general even back then, always giving orders and making sure they all died dramatic fake deaths. Then he’d command them to stand up and do it all again, the outnumbered Rebs against the blue-bellied hordes of the devil. He’d even refused to play with Lincoln logs because of their connection to the Union’s leader.

Elmer took a sip of his beer, which washed down the resentment. “Yeah. Kids nowadays with their goddamned videogames.”

“They don’t know how to use their imaginations anymore,” Jeff said, twirling one end of his mustache.

Right-o, Cap’n. And some of us still live in the land of make-believe.

“Well, I got to fix a busted sewer pipe or I’ll have to listen to Vernell bitch for the rest of the day,” Elmer said.

“You going to watch the race later?”

“If I get done in time.”

“I got a new cap-and-ball pistol to try out. Want to do some shooting?”

“You bring the beer and I’ll be there.”

“Okay. I’ll pick you up after the race. We can go up Mulatto Mountain.”

Elmer blinked redness from his eyes. “That ain’t game land anymore. It’s private development.”

“We won’t hurt anything. Besides, it’s Budget Bill. He never had any problem with people hunting his land.”

Elmer had no desire to go anywhere near the Jangling Hole, but he wasn’t about to admit it. Jeff had practically built his life on notions of honor, glory, and courage, and while Elmer couldn’t give two shits about any of that, he wasn’t about to show his spinelessness. “Pistol, eh?”

“Remington .44 replica. Got a nice kick to it.”

“Set you back a bit?”

“A couple hundred.”

“I don’t see how Martha lets you get away with that. Vernell would shit a squealing worm if I dumped any more money into the hobby.”

Jeff reached up to his forehead as if to adjust the brim of his Stetson, then realized his head was bare. He touched his hair instead. “It’s all in making enough to keep her happy. Send her to Old Navy with the credit card once a month, keep her satisfied in the sack, and let her win all the arguments except the ones that matter.”

Elmer didn’t even have a credit card, and he couldn’t remember the last time Vernell had even bothered to fake an orgasm. And Vernell won every argument, whether important or not. He was beginning to hate Jeff even more than before. But another sip of cold suds washed down a little bitterness. A few more cans of Bud and good ol’ Cap’n Davis would be as worthy of worship as Stonewall Jackson and General Lee.

“Vernell’s a bitch,” Elmer said.

“You just haven’t figured out what makes her happy.”

Elmer studied the man’s eyes. They held a gleam of secret triumph. Elmer noticed for the first time they were blue-gray, the color of a gun barrel. The same color as Bobby’s, now that he thought about it.

“Why would I want her to be happy?” Elmer drained the Bud can, tilting it so the flat foam in the bottom tickled his tonsils. In his trailer, he’d throw empty cans across the room, trying to bank them off the wall and into the trash. Jeff’s house was regimented and orderly and smelled like one of those specialty gift shops in the mall, the kind that made you sneeze about as fast as it made you bored. Elmer set the can on an imitation, catalog-ordered antique tea table. “Well, time to eat some shit,” he said with exaggerated good cheer.

Jeff, still gazing out the window, held up a hand as if signaling troops to be quiet. Elmer went to the window, figuring either the 19-year-old tart Shawna Hicks was strutting around the trailer park in cut-off jeans and no bra or else the cops had driven up to the Baker double-wide with another warrant. Something worth seeing, in other words.

Instead, it was just another drunk staggering off from what was likely a sleepless night of porking Louise Templeton at 50 bucks a pop. Elmer had dipped his bucket in that well a couple of times himself, but the last time he’d reeled it back in with a dose of the clap, and he was worried what else she might have picked up in the meantime. Plus, 50 bucks was 50 bucks, and Vernell was cheaper, and his hand was free.

“You know him?” Elmer said.

“Check out that tunic.”

“Tunic? Looks like a coat that the squirrels have been sleeping in.”

“Wool. And the canteen.”

Canteen? Nobody carried canteens anymore. Even hunters had gone to bottled water. The last time Elmer had actually seen somebody sip from a canteen, they’d all been dressed up in Civil War costumes and gathering for a bivouac in Charlottesville. “He’s walking a mite wobbly.”

“Man on a mission.”

Elmer didn’t want to add that the guy’s boots didn’t appear to be touching the ground. Jeff left the window for a minute, rummaging in the broom closet, and Elmer licked his lips, wondering if it was too soon to cadge another beer. Jeff returned with some field binoculars and squinted into them.

He whistled low. “I thought it was a replica, but damned if it doesn’t look authentic. Even has the C.S.A. stamp in the tin.”

There were plenty of counterfeiters skilled at taking a replica, beating the hell out of it, then cramming a century-and-a-half’s worth of grime into the crevices until it could pass for the real thing. And the weekend soldiers who collected such items couldn’t tell the real from the fake, and they didn’t really care that much as long as they had bragging rights. But Jeff was pretty hard to fool, even from a distance.

“Maybe he’s come for the Stoneman re-enactment,” Elmer said, punctuating with a belch that mocked the contrived elegance of the Davis living room.

“This early? I know the 37th is coming in, but they won’t be here until Friday.”

“Well, if he’s not in the troop, I guess we ought to recruit him.”

Jeff smiled and lowered the binoculars. “Saddle up, soldier.”

Elmer gave a wistful glance at the kitchen but Jeff was already out the door, so Elmer followed. The wobbly wino was a good 100 yards ahead, nearing the trailer park’s entrance, where a walking path veered off to a strip mall and gas station.

Jeff broke into a jog, a benefit of Titusville Total Fitness and its $40-a-month membership. Elmer padded along in Jeff’s wake as best he could, embarrassed by the jiggle in his belly. He half expected Vernell to shriek at him from a window, but he actually would have welcomed it, because it would have given him an excuse to drop the pursuit.

Because the wino creeped him out big-time and made him think of the disappearing man in the bowling alley.

For one thing, the man’s legs were moving like he was hellbent for home and nothing would stand in his way, but his feet skimmed over the ground as if he were ice skating. Like he was moving forward faster than his steps should have carried him. And, Elmer wasn’t a nature freak by any means, but he’d noticed the birds in the neighboring trees had fallen silent. The shithead Baker pit bull, staked to a clothesline post and ready to bark every time a gnat farted, had not even uttered a growl.

Jeff was now a good 20 paces ahead of Elmer, and that was just fine by him. Elmer slowed down a little, breathing hard, acid from the rising beer gas scorching his throat.

A tractor trailer rumbled down the highway, air horn blaring because the wino was nearly to the road and didn’t follow the standard rule of looking both ways before crossing. The wino didn’t slow a step and the buffeting force of the passing trailer didn’t shake him in the slightest.

“Hey,” Jeff shouted, breaking into a jerky middle-aged sprint.

Elmer stopped and waited for Jeff to catch the man. The wino stepped onto the asphalt and kept hoofing it, and a Honda screeched its brakes to avoid him. Then he was on the other side, into the scrub vegetation bordering the creek, and he disappeared into the tangled growth with barely a rustle of leaves to mark his passage. Jeff was delayed by a string of traffic, and by the time he crossed the road, the trail was cold.

Elmer reached the creek by the time Jeff had given up. “Too bad you couldn’t recruit him,” Elmer said. “The guy had the makings of a good soldier.”

“Yeah, too bad,” Jeff said.

As Jeff turned and headed back to the trailer park, Elmer looked down at the muddy creek bank where the man had vanished in the brush.

No footprints.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Why couldn’t you wait six more months before you brought me another hard-to-figure corpse?” said Perry Hoyle, Pickett County’s white-haired medical examiner of record. “Then I’d be retired and a younger idiot would be around to clean up your messes.”

“It’s not much of a mess,” Sheriff Littlefield said. “Looks like a cut-and-dried bullet hole to the head.”

“Ain’t all the way dried yet, but it’s plenty cut,” Hoyle said, motioning to the spray of blood-stained hair and brains that were scattered across the dirty leaves. “Looks like a high-caliber bullet, but something is a little off.”

“What’s that?”

“The back of his skull is blown out like you’d expect from a close-range shot, but his forehead is cracked, too. Almost like he was struck with a blunt object instead of a bullet.”

Littlefield knelt and peered at the corpse, which now lay on its back on a stretcher. The man’s eyes stared up as if communicating his shock to the heavens. Hoyle had wiped around the wound, but it still resembled a tarry third eye that had wept mud. The edges of bone that showed were chipped and broken.

“I don’t guess there’s much chance of finding the bullet,” Littlefield said. Morton was surveying the area behind the bulldozer, checking the tree trunks for signs of an imbedded fragment, but it could just as easily have ricocheted off the bulldozer and disappeared into the leaves. That would almost literally make the task like looking for a needle in a haystack.

“I’d say you got bigger problems than that,” Hoyle said. He brushed back his wild Einstein hair and pointed to the yellow crime-scene tape that cordoned off the clearing.

“One set of footprints besides the guest of honor’s. Sneakers.”

“And they’re little, a size eight maybe. Not much of an impression in the mud, so you figure somebody lightweight.”

“A woman or a kid.”

“Why can’t you just have a normal murder once in a while?”

“Because you’d get bored.”

Hoyle waved to the ambulance attendants who stood waiting at the scene’s perimeter. Bill Willard, who had been sitting in his pickup, rolled down his window and shouted at Littlefield. “Hey, can I come in now?”

“We got to get some plaster casts of these footprints first.”

Budget Bill exited the truck and joined the attendants at the yellow tape. “Good thing he wasn’t on payroll. That would have sent my workman’s comp through the roof.”

“You’re a man of compassion, Bill.”

“Hey, it’s not like I’m the one who shot him. Carter was the best damned dozer man in the county. This will set me three days behind schedule.”

“If Christ rose from the dead in three days, I’m sure you can find another dozer operator in that time.”

A vehicle engine wound up the rough-cut road through the forest below. “Dadgum,” Bill said. “May as well set up a circus tent and sell tickets.”

Hoyle said, “I’ve got all the photos I need. May as well get this one back to the morgue and dig around in his head.”

He motioned the attendants to the body and they dragged the stretcher, its wheels miring in the mud. Littlefield checked the bulldozer’s engine and noticed it was a little warm. He was about to ask Morton if any evidence had turned up when a rusty, primer-spotted Honda sedan emerged from the trees, an “I Brake For Unicorns” bumper sticker flanking one that supported Ralph Nader for president.

“Wonderful,” Littlefield said aloud.

“Can she just drive up like that?” Bill said, his cherubic cheeks reddening. “Isn’t it trespassing?”

“Technically, this is private property, but it’s also a public crime scene,” Littlefield said. “So it’s a gray area, and I’m sure she could sic the state press association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and an army of liberal legislators on both of us if we tried to stop her.”

Cindy Baumhower got out of her car, dangling a camera with a telephoto lens, a small steno pad tucked in her armpit. “Howdy, gentlemen,” she said, her face bright enough that it looked like she might start whistling like a lark.

“You look pretty happy about a dead man,” Littlefield said.

“I don’t make the news, I just report it,” she said. “Hello, Mr. Willard. Do you have any comment for the record about the first fatality in your planned development?”

“First?” Bill was wary, heeding the unwritten rule that it was bad strategy to piss off anybody whose company bought ink by the barrel. “You say that like there’s going to be more.”

“Depends on how I spin it,” she said, bringing the camera to her eye as the attendants began loading the corpse.

“Come on, Cindy,” Littlefield said. “Have a little respect for Carter’s family.”

“Shucks, Sheriff, you know I won’t run anything red on the front page. But I have to give my editor something to prove to readers we were here.”

“Okay, then. I won’t check your images. I’ll trust you.”

“Sheriff, you touch my camera and I promise I’ll pull every public-records request in the book and tie up your staff for the next two years on paperwork. Push your solve rate way down and kill your reelection bid.”

Littlefield turned to Budget Bill. “And they say the liberal media has no heart these days.”

Cindy clicked a few photos of the attendants struggling to ferry the corpse to the back of Hoyle’s station wagon, then Littlefield affected a somber study of the crime scene as Cindy took his picture. Bill Willard put his hand over his face when she pointed the camera at him.

“So, what do you have, Sheriff?” she asked. “Hunting accident? Suicide? Maybe a crime of passion or a dispute with his boss?”

“Hey!” Bill said, raising his voice enough to cause both the attendants and Morton to stop what they were doing and look. “I don’t give a hoot about your Green Party, Green Peace, lesbian-ecoterrorist act, because I’ve got a legal right to rip this mountain down to pebbles and sawdust if I want. But a smart little reporter like you surely knows slander and libel law.”

She shrugged in feigned innocence. “I’m just generically speculating. Are you confirming that Mr. Carter was employed by you at the time of his demise?”

Bill’s face twisted as if wanted to spit out whatever poison was sitting on his tongue. He moved over to inspect the bulldozer.

Littlefield kept his face neutral, though half of him wanted to laugh despite the grimness of the death. The spilled blood had soaked into the mud and turned brown, and the next rain would erase it forever, drawing nutrients to the worms and beginning Carter’s slow return to dust. He focused on the footprints and realized what had troubled him.

Judging from the way the body had fallen, the person in the sneakers—and Littlefield was leaning toward “kid” instead of “woman”—couldn’t have been the killer. The wound was from the front, and the sneaker prints were beside or behind Carter’s prints. They were slightly deeper and more smeared where the kid had apparently dashed toward the woods, possibly after the gunshot, though there was no easy way to tell if the sneaker prints had been made before or after Carter’s death.

Cindy started to duck under the yellow tape, but Littlefield yelled at her. “We got evidence to collect still. This scene isn’t cleared.”

“I can get a better picture of you standing over here.”

Littlefield debated the value of giving her a little ground. Bill Willard was glaring at him as if promising to never contribute another dime to his campaign coffers, but with the low contribution thresholds, Willard’s money meant nothing. He faced more damage from an antagonistic reporter. Plus, despite his proclaimed devotion to bachelorhood, she was still way cuter than Budget Bill Willard.

Morton came from the woods shaking his head, carefully circumventing the footprints. “Nothing out there I could find,” he said. “We can come back with a metal detector and go over it.”

“Let Perry Hoyle dig around in the skull a little first. Sometimes bullets bounce around in there and do their damage without ever leaving. What do you think of these footprints? Maybe one of the kids you and Perriotte chased yesterday?”

“We can go over to the Hole and make some plaster casts, assuming the footprints are still there. But lots of kids come up here to party, fool around, do all the things we did when we were kids.”

Littlefield gave a terse nod toward Cindy. “That was off the record.”

She gave her grave-robber smile. “Sure, Sheriff. Anything you say.”

“Well, I know one of the kids. Dexter McAllister. His dad’s supposed to bring him by the office today for questioning.”

“Be easy to run a match on his shoes, or pull a warrant and go clean out his closet.”

“Nah. Even a homer judge like Bleucus needs a little more evidence than this to issue paper, especially with a juvenile suspect.”

“So you already have a suspect?” Cindy asked. She’d eased closer, pretending to focus her camera, and Littlefield had seen through the ploy and let it slide. He was annoyed at himself for so obviously playing her game.

“He’s only a person of interest at this point.”

The attendants had loaded Carter into Hoyle’s big Chrysler station wagon, where the man would be taking his last ride until the undertakers came to drain him and dress him for his going-away party. Littlefield didn’t know the man, but a search of his pick-up had turned up a copy of “Guns & Ammo” under the front seat, a six-pack of RC cola, a box of clean and well-oiled tools, and a plastic crucifix hanging from the rear-view mirror. No drugs, no firearms, no pornography, nothing to suggest a seedy character that would have lots of enemies.

Hoyle was right: Littlefield had a lousy record of serving up sensible corpses. At least this one had died from a bullet. Or so it seemed. This was Mulatto Mountain, and all bets were off.

“I think I’ll take a walk over to the Hole,” Littlefield said.

Morton was about to open his mouth and note the obvious, that the Hole was a quarter-mile from the crime scene and even without the trees and ridges in between, the shooter couldn’t have pegged a perfect forehead shot from such a distance. But Morton also realized this was Mulatto Mountain, and his eyes went to the leaf-covered floor of the forest.

“What about my bulldozer?” Bill Willard said. “Can I run it tomorrow morning or are you going to keep the scene clean? Besides reporters mucking around in it, I mean?”

“I thought you couldn’t find another dozer man.”

“I can run it myself if I have to. I got a schedule and a heavy bank note. The interest is eating me alive and I have to get these lots sold before the damned Democrats get us in another recession.”

“Maybe you should go back to photography,” Cindy said. “I’m sure the world could use another few hundred limited-edition prints featuring fallen-down barns and white farmhouses. Rural nostalgia for people who don’t want to leave their condominiums.”

“As soon as the sheriff clears the scene, I’m asking him to arrest you for trespassing.”

“Hold on, Bill,” Littlefield said. “You’ll get your roads carved soon enough, and it won’t hurt you to lose a nickel or two.”

Hoyle called from beside his station wagon. “I’m getting this guy back to town before he gets stiff on me. Give me a call later this evening.”

Littlefield waved and turned to Cindy, figuring he could defuse the situation by getting her away from Bill Willard. “Morton, you take over the scene. Cindy, you’re welcome to come with me and check out the Hole.”

Morton’s mouth twitched as if he wanted to snicker at the unintended double entendre. But Littlefield’s warning glance reminded him this was serious business and that somebody might have lost a husband, father, brother, fellow parishioner. He ventured into the woods, Cindy right behind him.

“So this is connected to the ‘Shots fired’ report from yesterday?” she said, struggling to keep up with his long, purposeful strides.

“I never said that.”

“Damn it, Sheriff, everything you say, you say you didn’t say. When are you going to dish me something straight?”

“I’ll give you the incident report as required by public-records law. I’ll have a statement after the next-of-kin is informed.”

“I could already write your statement, blindfolded and without fingers. Let me guess. It goes, ‘We are diligently pursuing every avenue to solve this incident and bring the suspect to justice. Since this is an ongoing investigation, I can make no further comment at this time.’”

“Not bad. If we had the budget for a P.R. person, you’d be a natural.”

“I couldn’t work P.R. I’d never be happy telling only one side of the story.”

Littlefield held back a briar vine to allow Cindy to pass. He released it too soon and it tangled in her hair. He fumbled with it, not caring that the thorns pricked his fingers. Her hair was soft and smelled like a summer meadow, and his heart felt funny, as if it had spooled loose from its arteries and was floating around the cage of his chest. By the time he’d freed her, the golden hair was streaked with his blood.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

“You got a soft touch for such a hard-ass,” she said.

He swallowed, aware that she was playing him, working him over with a feminine magic spell so she could elicit enough inside information for a good scoop. But, like any man caught in a spell, being aware of it didn’t matter one damned bit. All he could do was gape and try not to drool.

“Well, I’ve had some practice,” he said.

“Sheila Story, right?”

He felt the clouds collide and block the sunshine that no doubt had radiated from his face. “That was a long time ago.”

“The newspaper’s records go back to the early 1900s. And urban legends have a way of hitting the Internet.”

“None of that ever happened.”

She started walking again, obviously aware of the Hole’s location, and Littlefield wondered how many times she’d trespassed onto Bill Willard’s property seeking environmental violations. Or ghosts.

“Death by drowning, due to a car accident in which you were the driver,” she said. “Could have happened to anyone, right?”

“There was way more to it than what made the papers.”

“Isn’t there always?”

He followed after her, tempted for a moment to tell her the whole truth about Archer McFall and the red church, but he wasn’t sure what the truth was. That was all in the past, the dead had made their peace the best way they knew how, and the living learned to forget. “Okay. There was nothing to it. I killed her. I should have faced manslaughter charges, or at least reckless endangerment.”

“And your little brother? Dying in that tragic hanging accident?”

Littlefield stopped and let her walk ahead, over a rise that would give them a view of the Hole. “What kind of a heartless bitch are you?” he said. “You enjoy other people’s pain?”

She spun, kicking up leaves in her anger. “No, I just have a thing for the truth. And I have no respect for people who hide themselves away and sleepwalk through life. Especially when other people are counting on them.”

“Like I don’t swallow my guilt every waking minute and get a double helping when I’m asleep? You think I haven’t noticed that people around me keep dying in weird ways? I can taste it. You don’t have to shove it down my throat.”

Cindy looked down then her eyes flicked to the ridge. “Sorry, Sheriff. I guess I want to believe in something magical so much that I’ll even take ghosts and boogeymen if that’s the best I can get.”

“Well, there’s always the Baptist Church.”

“That’s not magical to me. Religion has little to do with spirituality.”

Littlefield didn’t have an answer to that one. Two years ago, he’d started attending intermittent services again, though he felt nothing inside the church except the vibrations of the pipe organ and the heat of too many perfumed bodies crammed into such a small space. “You want to believe the Hole is haunted?”

“I’ve read the clippings and I talked to Arvel down at the history society,” she said. “I’ve been in the cave with my tape recorder and digital camera and all I got was a sinus infection.”

Littlefield considered telling her about the vanishing man he’d encountered the night before, but she would either laugh in his face or else make him remember every detail, and it was just another incident he was learning to forget. Besides, he had no proof that the man—”ghost,” if you want to call it that—had any connection to the Hole.

For all he knew, Pickett County coughed up its dead on a regular basis, which only affirmed his plan to move to Florida after his retirement. He had no desire to be buried here because he didn’t know how permanent the eternal rest would be.

“Well, let’s check it out and get you off Willard’s land before he has a stroke,” the sheriff said, continuing over the wooded rise. “Two deaths on Mulatto Mountain in one day would get people talking more than they already will.”

“Don’t worry, Sheriff. I won’t play it up. I have to report the shooting death, but I’ll go oatmeal. But you have to promise me the scoop if there are any breaks. The Charlotte and Winston-Salem papers will be up here, maybe even the television vans, once the word trickles out.”

“We’ve got the body scraped up, so there won’t be much for them to shoot. And I’ll give you the best quotes.”

She moved ahead of him again, in better shape and scarcely breathing hard. The streak of his blood in her hair had dried to brown. She reached the ridge and stood among the laurels, looking through the trees. Littlefield was about to join her when he saw the pair of binoculars lying in a bed of waxy green galax.

He slipped his shirt sleeve down over his fingers and picked them up. He peered through them. The field of vision was adjusted so that it was focused on the Hole. Somebody had been watching it.

Littlefield looked around. The leaves had been ruffled but the forest carpet was too thick to yield footprints. That didn’t necessarily mean the binoculars had belonged to Carter’s killer, but it was too much of a coincidence to consider a coincidence. Since Perriotte’s mind-blowing experience of the day before, a lot of people had become interested in Mulatto Mountain. Littlefield looped the binoculars strap around his neck and headed for the Hole.

Cindy grabbed his arm. “Hear that?”

Littlefield tilted his head. He’d lost some of his high range and the doctors were threatening to plug him with hearing aids. He’d resisted them so far but soon he wouldn’t be able to pass his physical without them. Despite his aural limitations, he made out a hollow tapping from inside the cave.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I don’t know. But somebody’s in there.”

“You might have your scoop. But you better stay here.”

Littlefield wasn’t sure why the killer would be dumb enough to hang around near the scene of the crime, but criminals were usually just plain stupid. That’s why gunmen held up the neighborhood liquor store, where they knew the lay of the land, instead of robbing a liquor store in the next town or state.

He eased down the slope, hand on the butt of his sidearm. He wished he’d carried his radio so he could call Morton for back-up. It would be safer to scout the surrounding area in case the killer hadn’t acted alone, but Littlefield didn’t want to give the suspect a chance to slip away.

Maybe this would solve a lot of mysteries, and that was worth a little risk. Littlefield was fed up with footprints ending in the middle of nowhere, raggedy men fading in the dead of night, and preachers who rose from the boneyard and led their dead congregations into the river. Even if it was a kid hiding out in there, an accidental killer, Littlefield would finally be able to wrap one up.

He drew his revolver and eased across the clearing, the tapping sound swelling inside the cave and taking on a rhythmic beat. He scanned the woods and saw no movement, hoping Cindy was sharp enough to serve as sentinel.

When he reached the mouth of the cave, he knelt by a jutting crag of granite and squinted into the shadowy opening.

A man sat in the dirt, beating on a rock with a crooked stick. His movements were spastic and uncoordinated, elbow flying one way and wrist flexing another, but somehow the stick fell in a steady motion.

The man’s hair was unkempt and he was pale, as if he’d spent most of his time indoors. He was wearing jean overalls, a farmer’s outfit. His mouth moved silently as if echoing the tapping of the stick.

“Donnie,” Littlefield said.

The man played on.

“Donnie Eggers.”

Littlefield didn’t like the scene that would play out once people learned Donnie was a murder suspect. Pickett County residents were civilized enough to be beyond lynching him, but plenty would grumble about the moron who should have been sent off to the state nuthouse before “something like this happened, just like we knew it would.”

“Hardy Eggers’s boy,” Cindy said from behind him, and Littlefield wasn’t even annoyed that she’d disobeyed his order to stay back.

“This will plumb break Hardy’s heart,” Littlefield said. “And Pearl’s, too.”

He called Donnie’s name several times, but the vacant-eyed man only swung the stick harder, rocking awkwardly back and forth, staring into the inky depths of the cave where the rockslide had sealed it shut.

Littlefield bent and touched Donnie on the shoulder, flinching in expectation of sudden violence. But Donnie stood, swaying and quivering, still flailing the stick in the air like a stoned orchestra conductor.

“Let’s go, Donnie,” the sheriff said.

Donnie lifted a palsied hand to his forehead, touching his stringy hairline, and it took Littlefield a moment to realize Donnie was saluting.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Bobby expected to get his ass kicked, or at least endure a good, old-fashioned cussing, but Dad was as docile as a lamb when Bobby got home just before sundown. Dad was sitting on the couch, a small pile of empty cans at his feet, trash his dad often called “dead soldiers.” He stared blankly at the television as the clock ticked away “Sixty Minutes,” and Bobby knew something was wrong, because Dad was about as interested in current events as he was in the Dewey Decimal system. Even Mom’s high-pitched pestering barely roused him from his stupor.

“Where you been?” Dad asked without looking at him.

“Over at Vernon Ray’s.”

Dad nodded and gulped his Bud.

“Why don’t you try sipping for a change?” Mom said.

Dad took another swig in response, glassy eyes fixed on Andy Rooney’s doughy face as Andy launched into another old-fart rant. Bobby tried to slip to his room, but Mom stepped in front of him in the kitchen.

“You had any dinner?” she asked, moving close enough to sniff at him. She’d caught him raiding Dad’s beer stash over the summer, and since then she’d been on him like a bottlefly on fresh dookie. Luckily, she didn’t know what marijuana smelled like, so he could huff rope all day and she’d think it was dirty laundry. Not that he cared to get stoned at the moment. After watching the bulldozer guy get shot by the ghostly soldiers, he wasn’t sure he wanted to edge any further away from reality.

“I ate at the Davises’s,” he said.

“Roast beef? Martha always has roast beef on Sundays.” Mom said it with the frustrated air of a homemaker who had nothing more than hamburger and tuna fish to work with.

“Yeah. Mashed potatoes. That kind of stuff.”

“Well, you ought to invite Vernon Ray over here to eat once in a while. They’ll think we’re sending you over to sponge off them.” She smoothed a greasy strand of hair over her ear. The kitchen smelled like old mushroom soup.

“Sure, Mom.”

The microwave dinged and Bobby took advantage of her distraction to beat it to his room. The door was still locked, meaning Dad hadn’t gotten pissed and kicked in the handle. Bobby retrieved the key from its hiding place under the washing machine and unlocked the door, securing it behind him.

Jerrell would probably come dragging in around midnight, but Bobby hoped to be asleep before then. He wanted to rid himself of the image of the bulldozer guy’s brains exploding out the back of his skull and figured a dream, even a nightmare, would scrub some of the freshness from the memory. He tossed, thinking of Karen Greene, Vernon Ray, Col. Creep’s Jangling-Hole eyes, the sudden red spray, and finally the red blended to black.

He awoke sweating and tangled in sheets, Jerrell snoring on the bunk above him. Bobby got up and dressed in the dark. He grabbed a couple of slices of white bread, squeezed them into balls the size of marbles, and popped them like pills. He decided to walk instead of waiting for the bus, because Dad might drive by on his way to a job. And Dad probably would want to ride his ass extra hard to make up for lost time.

Bobby jogged the last quarter-mile to school, making home room just as the bell rang. The sweat made him self-conscious, especially when Karen Greene gave him the once-over and rolled her eyes away.

He made it through algebra okay, not even batting an eye when the P.A. system clicked on and the principal beckoned a list of students to the gym for honors photographs. The students were mostly the same old rich kids that won everything and caught all the breaks, and of course Karen was among them. Bobby smiled when he heard Vernon Ray’s name called.

Assuming V-Ray escaped from the Hole . . . .

Mikey Pitts in the next aisle snickered and said, “Vernon Gay.” Bobby was tempted to give Mikey a little tweak, but he bit his tongue and focused on figuring out whatever the hell x equaled.

It didn’t help his concentration when Karen sashayed down the aisle with a twist of her small hips, giving off a faint smell of soap and flowers. Bobby pressed his pencil hard against the paper until the lead tip snapped. He wondered how anybody survived the eighth grade, much less made it through high school, where the girls filled out more and their tight tops drove guys like Bobby wild.

“Look but don’t touch,” was the message radiating from between their eyeliner and mascara, and trailer-park guys were doomed to dumpy, dull girls of their own social class. It wasn’t much of a consolation that such girls typically had low self-esteem and parted their legs for any guy that grinned and bought them a Big Mac, showing their gratitude by getting pregnant at 15.

The great thing about adolescent sex was, despite the fact that it was mostly nothing but daydreams, it helped you forget about ghostly killers, haunted caves, and a home life that was right out of FOX television.

Bobby rode out the frustration until lunch time, when he saw Vernon Ray sitting alone in the cafeteria, reading a book as he shoveled mystery meat into his mouth.

Bobby slid into the plastic chair beside him. “What you eating? Looks like pterodactyl turds.”

“Beef stew. You eating today?”

“Not hungry,” Bobby lied. In truth, the stew smelled good, despite its brown, watery appearance.

“You should have called me.”

“I figured you bailed.”

“Never. What happened?”

Bobby ran down the list of possible lies and decided maybe being a coward wasn’t so bad, at least when compared to the truth. Even superheroes took off an issue once in a while, when saving the world became way more trouble than it was worth and some special guest star had to step in.

“I freaked,” he said. “When those ghosts were chasing me, I just kept running. I didn’t know how far they’d go. I mean, maybe they’re tied to the mountain or something. And their charge would drain down if they got too far away.”

“So you left me there by myself?”

“Dang, V-Ray, I figured you hoofed it, too.”

“And leave Donnie there to whatever is hiding in the cave?”

“What is hiding in the cave? Now I’m not so sure we even saw anything.” Bobby reached over to Vernon Ray’s plate, snagged a roll, and shoved it in his mouth, figuring the food would give him a chance to think before he spoke again.

“Dude, I thought the plan was to get some evidence so people would have to believe us.”

Bobby chewed and nodded, nearly choking on the dry bread. Just his luck, he’d strangle on dough not 30 feet from where Karen was holding court with half the cheerleading squad.

“Okay, chill out,” Vernon Ray said. “Here’s what happened: Right after you ran away, most of the ghosts chased you. I was about to go down to the Hole and get Donnie, but then that weird officer in the big hat was standing right in front of me, like he didn’t even take a step, just zapped himself up the ridge.”

Bobby swallowed, wishing he could take a sip of Vernon Ray’s milk. “Christ. You got Col. Creep and I got the rest of the gang.”

“It fits the transubstantiation theory. You gave off energy by running from them. Your fear fed them.”

“Then they should be fat as Julie Houck, because I about crapped my pants. But what about you?”

“I wasn’t really that afraid. More like curious, because I’m not sure these guys want to hurt anybody.”

“Umm, dude. They were shooting.”

“In quantum physics, reality is an ever-shifting set of illusions. It’s energy changing form. Nothing to be afraid of, when you think about it.”

“My head hurts,” Bobby said. But not as much as the bulldozer man’s.

“Forget all that for now. Col. Creep looked me in the eyes, I was as frozen as polar bear poop, and his lips moved under that gnarly mustache. He didn’t make any sound but I swear I heard his words in my head. They said, ‘This ain’t your war.’”

“Ain’t your war?”

“My first thought was that this creep was just like my dad. Keeping me out of the game. Out of sight, out of mind, like I didn’t matter. Like I was a nuisance.”

“Jesus, Vee. You need to see Gerhart.” Bobby wouldn’t have wished a visit to the sour school counselor on his worst enemy, but Vernon Ray had so many issues that even Dr. Phil would need an entire broadcast season to solve them.

“It ticked me off,” Vernon Ray said, his grimace revealing a strand of beef caught between his teeth. “Here was some 200-year-old dead man giving me hell, like he had any more right to be on Mulatto Mountain than me. I’d say I had more right, since I’m alive and he’s not.”

“What was Donnie doing while this was going on?”

“What do you think he was doing? He’s a moron. Drooling, spazzing, probably wetting his pants.”

“Did you try to save him?”

“You kidding? I tried to run past Col. Creep when he reached out with one hand and touched my head. I mean, his fingers went into my skull and it felt like he was tickling me. I sort of spaced out for a while—it could have been seconds or minutes, it was like swirling down a Twilight Zone toilet. Then I heard a shot on the other side of the mountain and I snapped out of it.”

“Yeah, I heard it, too,” Bobby said, which was about all he wanted to give up at the moment. “I thought the bullet was headed my way.”

“Well, you’re still alive.”

“Barely.” He glanced over at Karen and the table of twittering, giggling honeys.

“When I came back around, Donnie was gone, and I knew they had him. I could see into the Hole and figured Col. Creep had either recruited him already and he was down in there behind the cave-in or he’d wandered off. So I grabbed our blankets and got the hell out of there.”

“You weren’t worried about me?”

“No, you’re like a weasel, quick and sneaky. I figured I was easy meat.”

“Easy meat?” Dex cut in, approaching their table with his bagged lunch. “Vern, you might want to keep that kind of thing to yourself. People are already starting to talk, if you know what I mean.”

Dex smirked. Bobby flipped him a bird and pulled out the next chair so Dex could sit down.

“Speaking of talking,” Bobby said. “How did your little meeting with the sheriff go?”

“He was just putting on a show. He gave me the standard line about trespassing and how even juveniles could get in big trouble for it, especially if they already had a record. ‘Course, my dad was sitting there the whole time so I’m sure the sheriff toned it down a little. A couple of times he squinted at me like he wanted to grab me by the collar and shake the crap out of me.”

“That would take a lot of shaking, you’re so full of it,” Vernon Ray said.

“Bite me,” Dex said. “On second thought, never mind. You might like it too much.”

Bobby looked at Vernon Ray. “Should we tell him?”

“Nah.”

“What?” Dex said. “You guys got some action going on?”

Bobby brought out his digital camera. He powered it up and flipped through the thumbnails, tilting it forward so the two boys could see the images.

“So?” Dex said. “Looks like nothing but woods to me.”

“They didn’t show up,” Vernon Ray said.

“What didn’t?” Dex said.

“We went back to the Hole yesterday,” Bobby said. “And we saw them.”

“Saw who?” Dex was already bored and had turned his attention to the table full of cute girls. “Who’s the redhead sitting next to Karen? She got nice knockers.”

“Ghosts,” Bobby said. “The dead soldiers at the Hole.”

“You guys still into that?” Dex ripped open a Lunchables pack and shoved sandwich meat into his mouth. “The only hole I’m interested in right now is the one inside that redhead’s panties.”

“They’re getting active,” Vernon Ray said. “Undergoing some sort of transformation. Juicing up.”

“You guys need to get out a little more,” Dex said. “Look, I don’t mind hanging around. You’re both kind of weird, and that packs some entertainment value. But if you start taking this Jangling Hole stuff seriously, I might have to keep my distance for a while.”

“Yeah,” Vernon Ray said. “Wouldn’t want you to be judged by the company you keep. Guilt by association.”

“Whatever that means, yeah,” Dex said. “If your I.Q. is higher than your bowling average, you ain’t worth a turd.”

“Give him a break,” Bobby said. “Something weird is going on but you’re too cool for Fool School.”

Dex paused with a fruit roll-up dangling from his mouth. He looked around to see if anyone had heard Bobby raise his voice, which might have required a response that would confirm Dex’s bad-assness. Everyone was too busy with their own adolescent identity crises to notice. Dex chewed for a moment, eyes narrowed.

“You guys can diddle each other to your Ghostbuster fantasies all you want, but don’t drag me into it.” Dex began shoving his leftovers into a paper bag. “Now, if you ladies will excuse me, I got business to attend to.”

Dex sauntered over to the table where Karen sat, gave his money smile, and the redhead slid over to make room for him. Bobby’s neck grew warm when Karen laughed at something Dex said.

Vernon Ray gave an exaggerated roll of his Bambi eyes. “He’s an asshole but he knows how to work a crowd.”

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “So what’s going on with the re-enactment?”

“Dad’s polishing his brass, as usual.”

“Big deal, huh?”

“Well, they’re too old for video games, so what can you do?”

“You get to be in it this year?”

“Nah. Who wants to dress up funny and march around in the sun all day? Besides, Dad bosses me around enough as it is.”

“He gets off on being the captain, doesn’t he? And all that memorabilia and stuff must have cost a fortune.”

“Yeah, Mom would give him hell except he deals some of the duplicates and makes pretty good money. Enough to pay for his hobby, anyway.”

Bobby glanced over at the crowded table, hoping Karen would ignore Dex, but she was as enthralled as the rest of the girls. The redhead appeared to be brushing shoulders with him.

“Think that has something to do with it?” Vernon Ray asked.

“Dex being an ass-wipe?”

“No, the re-enactment. Like there’s some kind of weird vibe that’s waking them up. Maybe an echo of their war or something.”

“Where do you come up with this stuff?”

“Comic books, TV, the Internet. It’s not that weird. What’s a ghost, after all? Why do they hang out in the places where they suffered some kind of pain? What’s so strange about ghost soldiers waking up when they hear the drums of war?”

“Or maybe they don’t like the fake soldiers pretending to be them.”

“Well, who’s real? The living or the dead?”

“I wish I’d never heard of Kirk’s Raiders,” Bobby said, again thinking of the bulldozer man and the geyser of red and gray as the back of his skull exploded.

“They let Donnie escape, so they must be under orders to take no prisoners.”

“Yeah,” Bobby murmured. “Take no prisoners.”

“So we might just have to wait until the armies suit up for battle and see what happens.”

“You sound like you’re going to enjoy it.” Bobby thought of his dad in a scratchy wool uniform, marching with a replica Springfield on his shoulder, sweating beer. Dad had served four years in the Marine Corps after high school, marrying Mom the summer his furlough came through. Dad often made smart-assed comments about “Captain Jeffie,” but when the pretend battles started, Dad fell back into his buck-private days and ate whatever crap the officers dished out.

“We ought to go see the reporter,” Vernon Ray said. “She writes those local ghost stories for the paper every Halloween. Maybe she knows something.”

“Like you can trust a grown-up with this stuff?”

“We can pretend we’re doing research. For class.”

“Maybe.”

The bell rang. Time for English. Dex and the redhead left together, and Karen was surrounded by her cutie-pie consorts. Bobby eyed the last three French fries on Vernon Ray’s tray.

“You going to eat those?” Bobby asked.

“Knock yourself out.”

Bobby ate them, though they tasted as cold and greasy as the waxy fingers of a decaying corpse.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“You about scared the life out of me,” Pearl said. “Both of you.”

Hardy nodded and rubbed his chest, recalling the piercing pain and the desperate sucking for a breath that would not come. The bearded man—GHOST, you old fool, it was a ghost as plain as day—had touched him and sent him into darkness, but Hardy had awakened when the shot was fired.

He’d opened his eyes to Pearl’s worried face looming over him, and he’d smiled at her, seeing her the way she was as a virginal teenager. He’d felt young himself, invigorated, as full of milk sap as a March dandelion.

Then he’d remembered Donnie, and he brushed aside Pearl’s concerns and pleas, climbed over the fence, and staggered to the Hole, where he’d found Donnie with the sheriff and the newspaper reporter.

The sheriff had said there had been “an incident” and Donnie may have been involved, but when Hardy had figured out it was about the shooting, he’d asked the sheriff to sniff Donnie’s hands for signs of gunpowder and made the sheriff look at his son’s fingers, which flexed and twitched too spasmodically to ever be able to work a trigger.

“We’re both fine and dandy,” Hardy said to Pearl with fake bluster, winking at Donnie, who was huddled over his papers and crayons. Donnie grunted and gave a peacock’s squawk.

“Well, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to trust you with him outside again,” Pearl said. She was rolling out some scratch biscuits and had a dot of flour on her nose that, despite her serious tone and mournful eyes, made her almost unbearably cute.

“We can’t keep him in a cage all his life,” Hardy said. “Might as well turn him over to the state if we’re going to do that.”

Though Donnie’s strange autism gave the impression that words had no meaning to him, Hardy was uncomfortable talking about Donnie’s fate within his earshot. But something had changed Donnie the day before, from the mad dash up the mountain to whatever had happened to him before the sheriff found him in the Hole.

His eyes held a peculiar light, and when Pearl had dropped the rolling pin and it rattled across the wooden floor, Donnie had snapped alert and grinned, tapping on the table with his fingers. Donnie’s scribbles had also exploded with color, though the patterns seemed as random as always.

Pearl pounded her fist on the dough a little harder than was necessary. “I ain’t the only one protecting him,” she said.

“He’s my son,” Hardy said. “What do you expect?”

“I expect you to keep a better eye on him and not let him wander off like that. Who knows what might have happened if the sheriff hadn’t found him?”

Hardy didn’t want to explain that Donnie hadn’t wandered. He’d made a direct line for the Jangling Hole, as if the path were laid with golden bricks lit by the sun. And Hardy was afraid the road was still open. “Well, we best keep him inside for a while,” he said.

Inside. That meant either the special little hog pen Hardy had built for him or the kitchen with its gas stove and onions hanging from a string over the window. Steam from bacon grease had coated the ceiling yellow and a single bare bulb descended over the chipped cherry-top table.

The room smelled of coffee and cabbage, and as prisons went, Hardy supposed it could be worse. At least the windows had no bars and the fridge was open for business around the clock.

“Snurk,” Donnie said, joy splitting his face. He grabbed a crayon and worked his elbow in a dramatic flourish. He tossed the crayon aside and it rolled off the table, and before it hit the floor Donnie had another one, gashing at the page. He replaced the crayon again, and he was so aggressive with his scrawling that Pearl put aside her rolling pin and came to peer over his shoulder.

“What’s that?” she said.

Pearl had been to the Hole several times, including once when they were young and Hardy had put the moves on her, which was expected behavior for teens of his generation. “Going to the Hole” was local slang for intercourse, and though Pearl had turned him down that day and stayed a maiden until their wedding night, Hardy had made only a half-hearted attempt at lifting her skirt. He’d been too anxious about getting her away from there. So Pearl, despite knowing the ghost stories, had no real reason to ascribe any particular meaning to Donnie’s drawing.

The black crevice wedged between gray stones and red-tinted trees was a clear reproduction of the Jangling Hole, and for the first time Hardy saw its resemblance to a woman’s mysterious opening.

Donnie’s newfound skill wasn’t the only startling aspect of the artwork. Inside the waxy darkness, yellow splotches were suspended like stars against a night sky. Candles, maybe. Or the same shapes Hardy had seen flitting between the trees over the years.

“I need some eggs,” Pearl said.

Hardy swallowed hard. Pearl didn’t make out the geometry of the drawing, or else she was willfully ignoring the evidence of her own eyes. Pearl wasn’t one for flights of fancy, but neither was she one to deny the signs that God shoved right in front of her face.

“That’s a right good drawing, Donnie,” Hardy said.

His son, apparently spent from his burst of creativity, sagged in his chair, mouth open, a strand of drool hanging from his lower lip. His face had gone slack again, the brief burst of light in his eyes now extinguished.

Pearl kissed the top of Donnie’s ruffled head. “You just rest up now,” she said, reaching over him and pushing the crayons away. She picked up the drawing, crumpled the paper with her flour-dusted hands, and carried it to the cast-iron woodstove. She tossed it inside and clanked the door closed, then turned as if a dead memory had been shelved in the root cellar and was nobody’s business but the Lord’s.

“How about them eggs?” she said.

Hardy knew that marriage was a long dance without music, and sometimes the toes of one spouse or the other were stepped on. Sometimes one of them even broke a foot or got crippled, or sometimes the partners each heard a different tune. But even when the steps were off kilter, you stayed on the floor and didn’t walk out. And he couldn’t walk out and leave a lie on the table.

“Ignoring it won’t make it go away,” he said.

“The Good Lord doesn’t allow such shenanigans,” she said. “Dead is dead except for them that dwell in the bosom of Heaven.”

“The Good Lord gave us eyes to see with, and a tongue to call evil by its name,” he said.

“Don’t go giving me your kitchen-table sermons,” Pearl said. “If the Lord was so wise and mighty and merciful, why did He do this to my Donnie?”

Hardy had asked that same question himself, both on his knees in the Baptist church and in the dark, wee hours of the night when only solitude and sweat filled the space between heartbeats. Despite all the cockiness of the preachers who claimed to speak on behalf of God, the Bible pretty much set everything down as a mystery, and even Jesus seemed befuddled by it all.

The sick, the halt, and the lame accepted their misery and sought solace in the promise of peace everlasting. But first they had to drag their pain over a long road to death’s gate before they could cash in on the promise.

“This ain’t just about Donnie,” Hardy said.

“It is to me,” she said. She folded her arms and Hardy knew the argument was over. He’d known the outcome before it had even begun. Pearl was that best kind of wife, one who brooked no bull manure in her mate but knew when to allow him to salvage a little pride, but when she made up her mind, even a divine thunderbolt would hardly shake her.

Donnie tapped on the table, tongue wagging. Hardy knew the rhythm. He’d heard it a few times too many lately.

“How many eggs you need?” he asked. “The guinea’s been laying those blue eggs but they’re kind of on the smallish side.”

“Six, maybe. I’ll make enough biscuits to last a few days so we won’t have to run to the grocery store.”

Hardy stopped by the back door to shrug into his jacket. He planned on spending a little time in the barn. The kitchen was getting a mite cramped.

“Set the latch,” Pearl called after him, and Hardy was happy to oblige.

The early-evening air was crisp with autumn, and the smoke from the woodstove whisked in the breeze. The grass was sweet, its sugar breaking down under the chemistry of the first frosts. Cows grazed with their heads pointed toward the west, where the sun made its slow crawl over the Blue Ridge. The sky was bruised and brooding with clouds.

Hardy gathered seed corn and shoved a few dry ears into the grinder, turning the metal crank so the kernels spit out onto the packed-dirt floor of the barn. Chickens scurried out of their hidey holes at the familiar sound, and Hardy looked over the flock to see if any were healthy enough to serve up for Sunday dinner.

A rooster looked up, exposing its neck before strutting into the thick of the feeding frenzy. Hardy sized it up for an ax blade and decided the rooster was a good fit for the frying pan.

He was raiding the wooden boxes for eggs when a shadow separated from the corner of the barn and walked.

Hardy’s heart sputtered and he was afraid he’d have another spell, maybe a full-blown coronary, and this time there was no healing touch around to restore his breath. He dropped the basket, breaking the four eggs he’d collected.

The shadow shifted toward shape, until the raggedy man stepped more or less whole onto the dirt floor. The man’s eyes were black as roofing tar, empty and devoid of light. His clothes were threadbare, made of coarse material–a soldier’s uniform so filthy it would never pass muster.

He moved toward Hardy without a sound, and Hardy knew enough of ghosts to stand aside and hope the dead man’s business would take him off the farm. The man stopped in the center of the barn and stood in the swirling yellow dust as hay chaff appeared to float right through him. The face formed more fully and reflected back like a mirror spitting out a lost time.

“Get on, Earley,” Hardy said, voice cracking. “You got no business here.”

Earley Eggers turned toward Hardy, and Hardy backed up and fumbled along the wall for a sharp tool. No pitchfork, but he found a length of chain used to hang hogs for slaughter. He pulled it from its nail and let it clink.

Time for some jangling of my own. Oh, Lord, grant me the strength to kill what’s rightly already dead.

He let a few feet of steel links slide between his hands, the hooked end swinging back and forth like the brass tongue of a grandfather clock. Earley’s scruffy head tilted to one side as if listening to the wind leaking between the cracks in the siding. Hardy was about to offer up another prayer when the colonel came through the open barn door.

“Get on back to the Hole where you belong,” Hardy said, but the colonel didn’t even look at Hardy. If “look” was even the right word for what those midnight eyes did.

The colonel strode toward Earley, and Hardy sensed an air of odd familiarity, as if these two had shared the same dance floor in some distant past. The colonel’s legs moved but his boots scuffed up no dry manure or straw. Earley retreated, except he didn’t use his feet, he drifted as if he were sliding on a meat hook down a well-oiled cable.

The soldier had no weaponry that Hardy could see, and the colonel–Kirk, you know it’s Kirk, he was a bastard back then and he’s a worse bastard now–carried a sword tucked in its sheath. Hardy figured if it came to a throwdown, he’d put his money on the colonel, but you stayed on the side of blood kin even when it was the losing side. Through some peculiar witchery, the officer had probably saved him from a heart attack, but Hardy wasn’t willing to contemplate the motive. Better to just thank the Lord for mercy.

And he wasn’t even sure Earley qualified as “blood kin” anymore since his blood should have long since gone to dust. At any rate, the chain felt cold and limp in his hands, and Hardy felt foolish, like he’d brought a knife to a gunfight.

As the colonel closed in on Earley, other soldiers stitched themselves together from cobwebs and slivers of shadow, encircling their apparent quarry. Hardy recognized them from the fence line, the toothless man whose jaws twisted a plug of dark chaw, the gaunt teenager who looked far too young for service, the fat man with the red kerchief around his pale neck. They all wielded rifles, rusty muzzle-loaders from the looks of them but suggesting they could deliver some damage if necessary.

Earley turned in a slow circle like a lamb surrounded by wolves.

Well, you don’t have to outrun them, Earley. You can just up and disappear. And that would be fine by me.

But Hardy knew this showdown wasn’t just North versus South, slave versus free, state’s rights versus federal say-so. This was about territory, heritage, and family pride. It was bad enough when the spirits had stuck to their old haunts up on the ridge, but now they were tromping all over the proper boundaries.

Maybe no war ever really ended, not while its ghosts and echoes still hung like smoke over the land. Hardy rattled his chain, but no one noticed, so he let it drop to the dirt.

Earley’s bony head swiveled as he took in the armed troop that surrounded him, then settled his gaze on Hardy. Though the dead eyes remained stovepipe black, the face around settled in an expression that might have been confusion.

Don’t blame you none. Life is supposed to be a one-night barn dance and there you are acting like you don’t know where the door is.

The soldier with the red kerchief leveled his rifle barrel, a blunt bayonet fixed on its tip. His eyes were as blank as Earley’s but there was menace in his movement. Kirk nodded in silent command and the soldier charged Earley.

Chickens squawked and scattered, confirming that the soldiers were now solid and part of the same world that held Hardy trembling against the rough-sawn pine.

Hardy wanted to look away, knowing the images would paint his dreams for the rest of his life. But he stared transfixed as his barn became a bull run for the dead, the bayonet aimed for Earley’s heart.

“Run, Earley,” Hardy said, throat choked with chaff and fear.

Kirk drew his sword, and Hardy heard–or imagined–the snick of steel against leather. The bayonet soldier rushed forward, bent at the waist as if still beholden to gravity. Earley dived toward the horse stall, metal canteen bouncing against his hip, the toe of one boot flopping against packed manure.

The colonel moved forward with those weird, airy steps and swung his blade in a graceful arc. A swath appeared in Earley’s wool tunic and the gap gave way to the dark substance of a sick galaxy, as if the man’s form were stuffed with star crumbs and moon dust.

A howl erupted inside the barn, rattling off the support timbers, causing the hog to squeal in unease. The sound rose in pitch until Hardy thought his eardrums would pop. Then, when it seemed the stifling air could hold no more vibration, the howl ended, giving way to silence as Earley swayed in place for a moment, mere feet from the gate of the stall that likely would have afforded no escape anyway.

The only escape for the dead is to get on the Golden Road and follow where God intended, and these Jangling Hole hideaways have defied their call to duty long enough.

Die proper this time, Earley. Please God, learn how to die proper.

Earley’s face was twisted not in pain, but in the sadness borne by the lost and the lurking. His flesh faded and the dirty clothes fell, leaving the dented tin canteen lying on top of the pile. The colonel stood over the now-vacant uniform, pale lips pursed amid his beard as if toting up another war casualty.

The revenant soldiers, now at ease, faded into the gloom until at last only Kirk stood, tugging at his matted facial hair. He nodded at Hardy in dismissal. Then he, too, joined the dusk and was gone, and Hardy stood in the dying cracks of leaking sundown until the canteen and uniform vanished, too.

Hardy went back to the house empty handed. Pearl’s biscuits would just have to get by without eggs.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The newspaper office smelled like old comic books and even older coffee grounds.

Vernon Ray sat on a ratty sofa that looked like dogs and bums had shared it for a few decades. He’d never been in the Times office, at least not the section behind the classifieds counter where the typing and printing went on. He’d imagined stacks of mail, mountains of computer equipment, and rusty filing cabinets, and while he was not disappointed on those counts, the rest of the place was simply drab and cramped.

Crusading journalism was apparently a long way from Twain, Hemingway, Woodward, and Bernstein these days, with the corporate money shifting to sexier media. Cindy’s cubicle was the only occupied one of the four that were tucked away in a corner of the warehouse. The rest of the space was filled with advertising slicks stacked on pallets, broken-down vending racks, and tall spools of leftover newsprint.

Cindy Baumhower had ushered the boys to her cubicle, which was adorned with pin-ups of press awards, kindergarten art, and Carolina Panthers photographs. “I couldn’t resist an anonymous news tip from a couple of eighth graders,” Cindy said, giving a pleasant smile with slightly crooked teeth that put Vernon Ray at ease.

Bobby appeared to be eyeing her breasts, and Vernon Ray gave them a glance, too. The shapes suggested beneath the taut cotton blouse were artistically pleasing, but they didn’t give him a zing of electricity. They might as well have been decked-out party balloons for all the thrill it gave him. He felt like he was missing out on something, but he wasn’t sure what, or if he should be upset about it.

“I guess it wasn’t anonymous once we gave our names,” Bobby said.

“Well, I’m good at protecting my sources,” Cindy said. She nodded toward the glassed-in office across the room, where a bald man with a janitor-broom mustache fidgeted with a page-layout program. On the window was a sign printed in large block type that said, “Don’t Feed The Editor,” and under that, someone had scribbled with a marker “dirty copy!!!”

“We trust you,” Vernon Ray said, though he wasn’t sure they could. She was a grown-up, after all, and she seemed like the no-nonsense type, despite the collection of fast-food Harry Potter figurines lining the top of her computer monitor and her Halloween articles on local haunted hot spots,.

“Fine, then, let’s get to it,” she said. “I’ve got a deadline in two hours.”

“This might take longer than that,” Bobby said. “This might take forever.”

Vernon Ray figured it was Bobby’s way of flirting, but his best friend was too vacant-eyed and unfocused. Vernon Ray put his camera on the reporter’s desk. The thumbnail setting showed the Jangling Hole and a vague wisp of white fuzz against the dark opening. “We took this up at Mulatto Mountain,” he said.

Her eyebrows arched as she brought the camera view screen for a closer look.

“Bill Willard’s property?”

“The Hole,” Vernon Ray said, noticing Bobby was still zoned out. “You wrote about it a couple of Halloweens ago.”

“Kirk’s Raiders, yeah,” she said, peering at the photo. “Unfortunately, there’s never been any solid evidence to support the legend.”

“We’ve got plenty of unsolid evidence,” Bobby said.

“‘Unsolid’ isn’t a word,” Vernon Ray said. “I think in ghost-hunting nomenclature it’s ‘insubstantial.’”

“So you fellows are ghost hunters?” Cindy said, her smile displaying no hint of a smirk.

“I don’t think we hunt so much as get hunted by,” Vernon Ray said. “We saw Col. Kirk and his Raiders yesterday, and the night before that, we encountered a soldier we believe must have escaped from the Hole.”

“Let me download this so I can blow it up.” Cindy poked a cable into the digital camera’s port. After clicking her mouse, she said, “Assuming I believe you guys, why do you think the ghosts exist? What are they after?”

Vernon Ray and Bobby shared a glance. “We were hoping you’d tell us,” Vernon Ray said. “We read comic books and watch Ghost TV like everyone else, but we’re basically grasping air on this thing.”

Cindy clicked until the photo filled her screen. Enlarged, the wisp took on the indefinite shape of a man, though no features stood out that would have suggested he was a long-dead soldier.

“Looks like he’s trying to power up,” Cindy said. “Like he doesn’t quite have enough juice to grow meat.”

Jeez Louise, she believes us.

Vernon Ray had almost hoped she would have laughed them out of the office. Because now they had to explain what was happening, and neither of them was sure what was real and what was the work of comic-book-geek fantasy. Vernon Ray described his experience in the Hole, when he thought he was being dragged into the cold darkness while Bobby waited outside.

Then Bobby told her the story of the soldier on the tracks whose feet didn’t touch the ground—”And he had an authentic Confederate canteen,” Vernon Ray threw in—and then Bobby said someone in the cave, or maybe the Hole itself, had whispered “Early.”

They then took turns telling about their stake-out of the Hole and how Donnie Eggers had wandered up crazy-eyed and spastic, with the ghosts solidifying around him. Through it all, Cindy sat soberly, occasionally glancing at the digital image.

“And then they shot the bulldozer guy,” Bobby said, staring past Cindy at an Audubon calendar featuring the saw-whet owl.

“Do what?” Vernon Ray said, unconsciously picking up one of Bobby’s pet phrases.

“They popped out of thin air and shot him,” Bobby said. “I thought they were shooting at me, and he got in the way or something.”

“Dang it, Bobby,” Vernon Ray said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Bobby’s eyes looked sunken and glassy, as if he’d aged two decades in a heartbeat. “I was scared Col. Creep would come after me.”

“You’re saying the ghosts shot Carter Harrison?” Cindy said.

“I saw it with my own eyes, but don’t ask me for no proof,” Bobby said. “Because the proof vanished into thin air.”

“Why didn’t you report it to the cops?” Cindy said.

“I couldn’t even tell my best friend, much less sit in front of Littlefield and his goon squad,” Bobby said, defensive.

Cindy nodded. “Can’t say I blame you.”

Vernon Ray, however, could blame him. After all, the shooting proved that ghost bullets could become solid, and Vernon Ray could have been killed, too. Except—

Except I sort of think they LIKE me.

He stomped that thought down and offered up his and Bobby’s theory of transubstantiation. “Maybe they got something in the Hole charging them up,” he said. “Underground volcano, uranium, something weird like that.”

“Some say ghosts get solid by drawing on energy around them,” Cindy said. “That’s why you get cold spots—they take heat from the air.”

“But that still doesn’t explain why the bullets got real, or why they shot the bulldozer dude,” Bobby said, sagging with relief.

“Or what they want in the first place,” Vernon Ray added. Vernon Ray wanted to punch him on the arm for holding out, but it would only hurt his fingers and Bobby wouldn’t even get a bruise.

“This ghost you saw on the tracks,” Cindy said. “Was it near town?”

“In between town and the Hole,” Vernon Ray said.

“Okay, try this,” Cindy said. “Your railroad ghost escaped from the Hole somehow, and he has more energy than the others. This Col. Creep, as you call him, wants him back. Military desertion carries a death sentence, and I don’t see why that would change just because they all happen to be ghosts.”

Cindy was interrupted as a warehouse door rose in a screech of tortured metal, and a forklift motored in and took away a pallet of circulars. Vernon Ray and Bobby leaned forward as she continued.

“Now, the problem with that theory is we’d have to figure out why the deserter is able to get away from the mountain while the others can’t,” she said. “Otherwise, we’d have a rash of sightings in town.”

“The other problem is that these ghosts can kill you,” Bobby said, his face blanching a little as he recalled Carter’s death by supernatural firing squad.

Cindy gave a grim nod. “We’ll get to that later.”

“We might not have much ‘later’ if these things start spilling out all over the place with guns,” Vernon Ray said. “If people thought Kirk’s Raiders were a pain in the rump back in 1864, just wait until they get a load of this bunch.”

Cindy bent over and slid open a bottom drawer of her desk. Vernon Ray glanced at Bobby and saw that his eyes had widened and focused on the neckline of her blouse. Vernon Ray followed his gaze and observed the soft, pale swell of Cindy’s breast straining against the hem of a peach pastel bra. Bobby’s tongue unconsciously protruded a little, settling on his lower lip like Cleopatra’s asp on a warm Nile rock.

Vernon Ray swallowed a sting of bitterness and watched Cindy pull out a sheaf of yellowed papers and curled magazines. She spread them on the desk and thumbed through them.

They were local Civil War records, many of them duplicates of material tucked away in The Room. Vernon Ray had read them during his incursions into Dad’s hallowed bivouac, and though he was no expert on Kirk’s Raiders and Stoneman’s Raid, he recognized some of the faces in the old portraits.

“You said the Hole whispered ‘Early,’” Cindy said, turning her intense gaze to Bobby, who visibly flinched.

“Yeah.”

“It wasn’t ‘Early’ like ‘late,’” she said. “It’s a name. E-a-r-l-e-y.’”

She slid a document to the edge of the desk. The face with the severe eyes glared up at Vernon Ray.

“It’s him,” Bobby said.

“Corporal Earley Eggers,” Vernon Ray said. “Now I remember the name from dad’s muster rolls.”

“Member of the Pickett Home Guard,” Cindy said, reading from the records. “Reported missing in action during Stoneman’s Raid.”

They turned as a throat cleared and the editor stood at the cubicle opening, idly rubbing his hand over his protruding belly. His eyes were pooched out and bloodshot, face pinched as if he’d been deciphering hieroglyphics by candlelight. He nodded at the boys, and Vernon Ray smelled a mix of fried chicken and sweat beneath musky cologne.

“I’ve got to send this to plates in fifteen minutes,” he said to Cindy. “Anything breaking on the Harrison shooting?”

Vernon Ray glanced at Cindy, sensing Bobby’s held breath. Cindy’s face lost some of its animation and grew almost placid. “Nothing. Sheriff still has no comment.”

The editor stared past her as if imagining a bland banner headline. “‘The investigation is continuing,’” he said in a monotone.

“You got it.”

“I got nothing, you mean.”

“I’ll stay on it.”

“What’s that on your screen? Looks out of focus.”

“More nothing. A whole bunch of nothing.”

The editor settled his bleary, diffuse gaze on Vernon Ray. “So, you fellows win a Boy Scout badge or did I get lucky and you’re outing a perverted principal?”

“Boy Scouts,” Vernon Ray said.

“Safe as milk,” Bobby said.

The editor nodded, already drifting toward tomorrow’s front page and consigning them to community news on page 12. After he wobbled away, Cindy held up the portrait of Earley Eggers.

“The Eggers family was among the original European settlers here,” she said. “Migrated down from Pennsylvania in the late 1700’s. They used to own a thousand acres, reaching from the valley to the top of Mulatto Mountain. They named the mountain after a mulatto—that’s a half-white and half-black, in case you didn’t know—runaway slave who hid out on the mountain.”

“So maybe Earley’s spirit has a stronger connection to the land,” Vernon Ray said. “You always haunt the places you love or hate the most.”

“That’s dorky,” Bobby said.

“I think he’s tired of the war,” Cindy said. “He’s ready to go home.”

“Laying down his weapons,” Vernon Ray said.

Bobby shook his head, his mouth twisted to one side. “And run up the white flag? I don’t think Kirk and the boys will go for that. The question is ‘What are we going to do about it?’”

“Prove it, for one thing,” Cindy said. “I admit, I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff, but most people would dose you with some serious medications if you sold them this kind of supernatural fairy tale.”

“We’ve got the photos,” Vernon Ray said.

“I could fake that in Photoshop in 30 seconds,” she said.

“Then how do you know we aren’t spinning a whopper?” Bobby said.

Cindy gave a grim smile. “Your eyes. They’re war-torn, like you’ve both seen some stuff you wish you hadn’t.”

“Okay, we’re on the same page, even if it’s a page from Freakly Weekly,” Vernon Ray said. “What next?”

“I’m sure you guys heard in science class that matter and energy can’t be created or destroyed, it only changes form,” she said.

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Einstein and that crap.”

“So how do we prove that this energy has become matter? Spirit made flesh?”

“Well, I don’t know what counts as solid evidence,” Vernon Ray said, fishing in his pocket. After a moment’s struggle, he tossed the filthy scrap of gray wool on Cindy’s desk.

She poked it with a pencil as if it were a rattlesnake skin, then picked it up.

“Found it in the Hole,” Vernon Ray said.

“Fabric from the war would be long rotted by now,” Cindy said.

“Along with the meat that wore it,” Bobby added.

“So something’s making them real again,” Vernon Ray said.

“If we agree that these ghosts are somehow powered by emotional energy, whether it’s love or hate or pain or fear, then we need to restore balance.”

“Balance?” Vernon Ray said. He was picturing some kind of Star Wars machine, a monster-sized electronic zapper that could scramble the ghosts’ electromagnetic field and blast Col. Creep and his Raiders back to ether, where they could be sucked into a cosmic vacuum cleaner and stored until the end of time.

“If one escapes, they need to draw another soul back to the Jangling Hole,” Cindy said.

Shivers crawled up Vernon Ray’s neck as he recalled the cold hand gripping his wrist and tugging him toward the black bowels of the Hole.

“No escape,” Bobby said. “Even when you’re dead, you got to belong somewhere.”

Belong. Vernon Ray wondered if he’d ever belong anywhere, on either side of the cemetery fence.

“So we’ve somehow got to lure Earley Eggers back to the Hole,” Vernon Ray said.

“Or they’ll take a replacement,” Cindy said.

The ensuing silence was broken by a mechanical whirring and clatter as the presses kicked in behind the cubicle wall, rolling out the afternoon’s edition.

Great, Vernon Ray thought. The good news just keeps getting better.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Titusville Times had downplayed the shooting death, just as Cindy had promised. The article had suggested a hunting accident, with Littlefield quoted as believing the shooter could have been miles away and not even been aware of the accidental target. He’d issued the usual call for anyone with more information to step forward, and besides the victim’s family ringing his phone off the hook, the public seemed content with the explanation.

As for the family, Littlefield had alluded to the possibility of suicide, and despite the shame he’d felt over the tactic, it worked: The survivors gathered among themselves and whispered about the possible shortcomings, debts, affairs, or mental defects Carter Harrison had hidden for all those years.

“The incident is still under investigation,” the sheriff said, quoting himself before tossing the paper on his desk.

Because Cindy had scooped the regional dailies, they took her story for the Associated Press wire and the mystery was safely blanketed. Littlefield was getting good at cover-ups, and he wondered what other lies he’d have to spin before he retired and how many more corpses he’d leave behind. He sipped his coffee and it was as cold and bitter as the hole in his chest.

Sherry waded through the door, making a rare sojourn from her dispatch desk. Movement was unnatural for her, as if her gelatinous flesh had never quite connected to her skeleton. Littlefield wondered how her husband handled her in bed, and turned his thoughts away before he got to the point of a Sherry-in-the-buff visual.

“Jeff Davis is here,” Sherry said. “The Living History group needs a permit for this weekend.”

Littlefield wondered why Sherry hadn’t simply pressed the intercom button as she usually did. As she made her way past his desk to the little refrigerator, he understood. Morton had left some Girl Scout cookies in the freezer and Sherry liked to raid the stash, taking two or three in the belief that nobody would notice.

She trusted Littlefield not to rat her out, and the sheriff liked to tease Morton about his inability to solve the crime. At least he had back in the days when cookie crumbs were the most important business of the day.

“I thought they got that through the town,” the sheriff said.

“That’s for use of public property,” Sherry said, stuffing a coconut cookie in her mouth.

The re-enactment events were usually held at Aldridge Park, a piece of donated land at the base of Mulatto Mountain. Littlefield wasn’t sure he wanted a few hundred people piled up within spitting distance of the Jangling Hole, and wondered if he could concoct some sort of problem that would allow him to change the location.

Maybe an anonymous threat of violence, somebody protesting the Confederate flag, or a Homeland Security alert. Feed people the image of a brown man with a bomb and you could pretty much get them to do anything you wanted.

“You got all the paperwork?” he said.

“Yeah, but he needs a permit for the guns. They use real guns in the event.”

“All right, send him in,” he said. “And thanks for keeping Morton’s weight down. He’s got his physical coming up.”

“My pleasure,” Sherry said, and Littlefield got the sense that cookies were one of her few pleasures besides crankiness. “I got some cherry jubilee for you to take to Perriotte.”

“Will do.” The deputy had made no progress, though his physical signs were stable and normal. Perriotte still manifested a strange form of waking coma, and though his eyes were open and he responded to some stimuli, he had not spoken since his admission.

The doctors were calling it a delayed form of post-traumatic stress disorder, probably caused by Perriotte’s tour of duty in Iraq. Littlefield hadn’t bothered to add his own theories to mix, but the discovery of Donnie Eggers at the Jangling Hole had caused him to form his own diagnosis.

Jeff Davis was wearing work clothes but he topped it off with a felt cavalier’s hat, a dandy peacock feather dancing from the headband.

“Don’t tell me they wore that in the Civil War,” Littlefield said. “Seems like the feather would make it easy for sharpshooters to pick off the officers.”

Jeff adjusted the hat. “Those were different times. Officers usually were at the front of the charge, sometimes carrying nothing but a sword. The days of paper-pushing captains didn’t come until later, when the military became a tool of the industrialists.”

Littlefield gave a salute and indicated an empty chair before Jeff could launch into a lecture. “You fellows are using Aldridge Park, I hear.”

“Yeah. We bivouac on Thursday, have open camp on Friday, and conduct the battle on Saturday.”

“And Sunday is for nursing hangovers and cleaning up?”

“This isn’t a party, Sheriff. It’s an educational event, and a chance to remember.”

“Sorry. Whenever I think about men, campfires, and tents, I form assumptions based on my personal experience.”

“I hope your drinking didn’t include firearms.”

“Right. I assume you guys are firing blanks, right?” Even though the guns were mostly replicas, they functioned and their powder charges simulated the noise of actual battle. State law and courtesy required advance notification, both to head off E-911 calls and make sure the horseless cowboys weren’t too reckless.

“Safety is our most important concern, and we’re fully insured. Every participant has a permit to carry, even though technically it’s not required if the weapons aren’t concealed.”

Littlefield had no doubt Jeff Davis knew the gun laws better than Littlefield himself did, and he wasn’t particularly concerned about the fine print. “You heard about the shooting Sunday?”

“Yeah. That’s a shame. Carter was a real decent guy. We were hoping to enlist him.”

“Well, don’t you think it might seem a little inconsiderate to hold a bang-up battle near the site of his accidental death?”

Jeff’s eyebrows lifted at the word “accidental,” and Littlefield wondered what sorts of rumors were circulating despite Cindy’s snow job. “The Civil War is still the bloodiest conflict in American history,” Jeff said, and Littlefield braced for the inner professor to emerge. “Hardly a square mile of territory was untouched by blood, misery, and sorrow, whether on the battlefield or the home front. When Stoneman and Kirk swept through here, there were plenty of atrocities that never made it into the books. Theft, looting, foolery with the women. Kirk had a stockade at Aldridge, and plenty of Confederate prisoners died there, whether from dysentery or the pistol of that crazy Union colonel.”

“I heard a few escaped, with the help of some guards who deserted and fled with them.”

Jeff smoothed his moustache. “The Jangling Hole, Sheriff. Quit pussyfooting.”

“Yeah. The Hole.”

“I focus on ‘living history,’ not the other kind.”

“Well, you got to admit, we’re all living history one way or another. Even if we make it up as we go along, it’s still getting made.”

“Legends get made, too. But I’ve never found any records to verify the legend. The Union Army kept diligent records most of the time, but the North Carolina mountains were largely rough frontier, and the Union soldiers were mostly bushwhackers and goons who were locally recruited. Kirk was a rogue from the Tennessee line who was only too happy to rile up his neighbors. Making him a colonel was like giving him a license to kill.”

Littlefield wondered how the colonel would view his license if he were dead and beyond punishment. “Well, my job is to keep the county safe and uphold the laws,” he said.

“We’re not breaking any laws. We’ve been doing this every year for a decade.”

“Yeah, but people are a little fidgety right now. A lot of peculiar things are going on.”

“We have a permit to assemble and we’ve got a standing agreement to hire off-duty deputies as security. We pride ourselves on running a family event.”

Littlefield glanced at the paperwork on his desk. “Real guns with fake ammo. Plenty of folks have been killed by guns they didn’t think were loaded’”

“I’ll tell you what, Sheriff. Why don’t you come on out for the bivouac and take a look around for yourself? I’ll be out there tomorrow with a few of the boys getting the grounds ready.”

Littlefield nodded. He would likely find something wrong that would give him authority to shut down the event in the interest of public safety. The re-enactors would piss and moan, the local business owners would bang their empty tin cups, and somebody would write cranky letter to the editor, but the action would buy him enough time to figure out what was going on at the Hole. And, whether the fake soldiers ever knew it or not, Littlefield might just be protecting them from an accident or two.

“Okay, then, come out tomorrow.” Jeff Davis stood, shoulders erect, chin tilted up. “The permit?”

The sheriff scrawled his signature and slid the paper to Davis, who carried it out the door. His hearty “So long, Honey” to Sherry was the last sound besides the slamming of the front door.

He reread Cindy’s article. He was three paragraphs into it when the phone rang. Expecting Perry Hoyle’s report, Littlefield snatched up the phone.

“Sheriff, it’s Barclay.”

Chairman of the county commission, a property lawyer with a hand in practically every square inch of disturbed dirt in Pickett County, and boyhood best buddy of Bill Willard. Just what Littlefield needed. “What can I do for you?”

“I heard from the Chamber of Commerce that you’re trying to shut down the Living History event.”

“That’s a slight exaggeration.”

“Do you know how many hundreds of people the re-enactment brings to town, and how many thousands of dollars they spend? They fill up the hotels, eat in the restaurants, and buy souvenirs in the shops. Some of them even look around, like the look and feel of the place, and decide to buy a mountain getaway, and that helps the local economy all the way down the line.”

All the way into your pocket. “I can’t worry about profit margin. I’ve sworn to protect the public.”

“Don’t forget you hold elected office. The same people who put you in can take you back out.”

The next election was over a year away, and voters could drop old grudges and form new ones by then. “I like to think people put their trust in me because I always did what was best for the county,” Littlefield said.

“You don’t hear the talk,” Barclay said, his silver-tongued delivery as persuasive on the phone as in the courtroom. “Ever since what happened at the church in Whispering Pines, you’ve been damaged goods. I’ve been working behind the scenes to prop you up because I know you’re a good man. But don’t push your luck.”

First Willard and now Barclay. He resented being viewed as a puppet for Pickett County’s rich and powerful. “I only push when I get pushed,” he said.

In the ensuing silence, the scanner crackled and Littlefield missed the first few words. He moved the phone from his ear so he could hear Sherry speaking into the dispatch mike.

“10-32 at McAllister’s Bowling Alley,” Sherry said. “Suspicious person.”

“Got to go,” Littlefield said into the phone. “There’s a voter in trouble.”

“The chamber carries a lot of clout—”

Littlefield clicked Barclay cold and jogged through Sherry’s office, wincing as his knees creaked. “What’s the deal?” he said, not slowing.

“Some weird guy in rags, carrying a gun.”

Littlefield stopped at the door. “Weird guy?”

“That’s what Mac said, but you know how Mac is. He gets a little paranoid.”

As Littlefield headed for his cruiser, he hoped the weird guy didn’t arouse Mac’s suspicious streak. For one thing, Mac had a licensed handgun on the premises and had used it two years ago to ward off a robber. For another, Mac might actually put a hole in the guy, and then the whole town would be left to figure out why the victim not only walked away without a scratch, but left no blood on the floor.

He kicked on the strobe and siren, getting across Titusville in four minutes by ignoring red lights and forcing traffic to the shoulder. By the time he’d reached the bowling alley, Morton was already on the scene and rubberneckers were lined up outside, peering through the front doors.

Old Loretta Mains wobbled out of the neighboring drug store, pecking along the sidewalk with her cane, but when she saw the gathering and Littlefield’s cruiser, she straightened the hunch out of her spine and hustled to the action. A young man in a leather jacket obstructed Littlefield’s entry, noisily berating someone through a cell phone. Littlefield nudged past but the guy swung his elbow without looking.

“Hey, watch what you’re—” The guy’s mouth froze open when he saw he’d just committed what might pass for assault on an officer, and Littlefield counted three gold fillings in his molars.

“Step aside,” the sheriff said, and the guy rubbed a hand over his moussed hair and made room. Littlefield entered the alley, the smell of lacquer, hot dog chili, beer, and floor wax combining into a heady mix punctuated by the sweat of the working class.

Littlefield was not much of a bowler, though he’d taken a few of his less-sophisticated dates to the lanes and spent one desultory season on “The Tin Stars,” the departmental team. However, he’d responded to more than one fracas at Mac’s, and it was a popular spot for drug activity, despite Mac’s cheery marketing of the sport as “Fun for the entire family.”

Three years ago, a Mexican had been knifed and seriously injured behind the alley. Fortunately, the man was a migrant worker with a temporary green card for the Christmas tree harvesting season, or Titusville would have embraced the attack as a sign of the Apocalypse.

About half the lanes were in use, so any disturbance had since settled. The sound system was playing “Flirting With Disaster” by Molly Hatchet, the Southern rock pounding the walls. Morton was interviewing Mac, but most of the bowlers found their half-empty pitchers of beer more compelling than police paperwork.

“He had a pistol,” Mac was telling Morton when Littlefield approached. Mac was waving his pointy finger around to punctuate the description. Mac’s son Dex slouched behind the counter, wearing a sullen smirk.

Morton shot Littlefield a glance before returning to his clipboard. “So you’ve never seen this fellow before?”

“No, I would have remembered him, because he stood out in a crowd. Skinny guy, scruffy sideburns and mustache, eyes black as coal.”

“And a gun?” Morton said.

“Sure,” Mac said, shifting his gaze between Morton and Littlefield. “Hey, you guys think I’m making this up?”

“Nobody’s saying that,” Littlefield said. “Given the situation with your son, though, it seems mighty coincidental.”

Dex took a swig of his Dr. Pepper and broadcast a liquid belch. “Give me a break, Johnny Law. What’s the matter, too busy trying to pin charges on kids to go solve a real crime?”

Littlefield fought the urge to reach over the counter and slap the soft drink out of the brat’s hand. He let his face go soft and blank. “Did you happen to witness the incident?” he said to Dex.

“Yeah, I seen him. Just like Dad said. Rough goon, looked like he wandered out of a Dumpster somewhere.”

“Okay. Morton, finish up the report and I’ll go have a look out back.”

“Watch out for the other one,” Dex said.

“Other one?”

“Guy dressed sort of like him. Same kind of raggedy-assed clothes. Except this one didn’t have no gun.”

“He was here, too?”

Dex waved his drink and grinned. “Nah, saw him the other night on the railroad tracks.”

“What time of night?”

“Can’t say, or you might try to nail me for a probation violation.”

Mac smiled, showing polished teeth. “That a boy. All that lawyer talk is finally getting through that thick skull of yours.”

Littlefield directed Morton to interview some of the bowlers, and then focused his gaze on Mac. The studied blankness fell away and was replaced by eyes that flinted sparks.

“Listen, Mr. McAllister. You can talk turkey baloney all day, and your son can sit here and learn to gobble. But I have the authority to shut down this place in the interest of public safety. Sure, you can hit the speed dial and get your attorney in under a minute, but by the time your challenge made it to a hearing, you’d be out a few weeks of income. Maybe even months, if I can sweet talk the D.A. better than your suit can.”

Mac’s upper lip curled. “I’m the victim here.”

“Without a crime, there’s no victim.” Littlefield didn’t exactly believe that, especially given all the innocent people who’d died on his watch. But he was talking property crime, not crimes against nature. And Pickett County seemed to be coughing up enough supernatural trespassers to keep the jail full until Rapture, if Littlefield ever found a way to bring them to justice.

Dex dropped his Dr. Pepper and the brown can rolled across the counter, spilling foam. The boy was staring at the far end of the alley, and Littlefield turned in the same direction.

“There he is,” Mac shouted.

Dex ducked behind the counter. Littlefield braced himself against the expected vision of the haggard man in gray. He saw nothing but the oversize business logo on the wall.

Then an explosion slapped against his right ear, followed by the tang of gunpowder and the shrieks and shouts of bowlers, who scattered like pins in a dead-on strike. Littlefield clapped a hand over his ear before the next shot rang out, then whirled and chopped Mac’s wrist against the counter, causing the revolver to clatter to the floor.

“Damn it, Mac,” Littlefield said. “Have you gone nuts?”

Mac’s face was purple with surprise and rage. “He was aiming right at me!”

“I didn’t see a gun,” Littlefield said. “And I didn’t see the suspect, either.”

Dex’s head poked over the counter, just enough for him to glance around. “Yo, man, are you blind?”

Morton tried to calm what little crowd was left, though most of the bowlers had already fled through the front exit. “Shots fired,” Morton shouted into his handheld radio. “Request backup.”

“You see the suspect?” Littlefield asked Morton.

Morton shook his head. “Lucky nobody got hit.”

“Guess we’ll be shutting you down for a while after all,” Littlefield said to Mac, who rubbed his swollen hand.

“Yeah, but the personal injury lawsuit will make back my money and then some.”

Dex grinned, and Littlefield wanted to shove a fist down the kid’s throat in hopes of teaching him some respect before he grew up into a big-league criminal.

He couldn’t risk losing his temper. If Littlefield was suspended, Pickett County would be short one more officer, and there were already too many leaks in the dike and not enough fingers. Just when he thought the situation couldn’t get any worse, Cindy Baumhower walked through the door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“The old man’s been hitting the sauce pretty hard lately,” Bobby said.

“Hey, at least he’s not hitting you,” Vernon Ray replied.

“Not much, anyways.”

They were in the woods on the hill above the trailer park, in a falling-down garden shed that had once been part of the Eggers farm. Virginia creeper and honeysuckle vines snaked though the gaps in the chestnut planks, and the rusted tin roofing was pocked with enough holes to let the evening sunlight waft through the dusty confines. Muddy spats of dirt dauber nests clung to the rafters and cobwebs sagged under their own tired weight.

The shed had become an occasional hangout when both boys wanted to dodge their parents. Sometimes Dex joined them, cracking jokes about Bobby and Vernon Ray “playing house.” They kept stacks of comic books and magazines on the shelf where a bunch of glass jars stood in rows, their lids tight with grime and puffing from the pressure of their contaminated contents.

Vernon Ray sat on a wooden crate, flipping through a Wolverine comic. Bobby had started with Green Lantern, but he wasn’t really in the mood for superhero fare. He tossed the book back on the shelf and thumbed through the stack of glossy magazines he’d filched from his dad’s secret collection.

Bobby opened a Penthouse and turned to the centerfold. Photos of naked women made his heart beat faster, and he’d often played with himself while looking at what Jerrell called “stroke books.” But these women scared him—they were painfully inflated, their breasts looked like they could explode any moment, and their faces were vacant and bored.

He often wondered if the naughtiness of the voyeurism turned him on more than the women did, with their unblemished skin and their finely trimmed patches of pubic hair. He’d glimpsed Karen’s panties once as her skirt had lifted in a sudden autumn wind, and when his self-inflicted passion was peaking, he often closed his eyes to the magazine and let the image of her pink lace come to mind.

Once he’d whispered her name as he’d ejaculated, and it made him feel embarrassed and sick, as if he’d taken something from her without her permission.

“Hey, check this out,” Bobby said, showing Vernon Ray the blond with the oversize rack. “Those nipples are as big as silver dollars.”

Vernon Ray glanced up from his comic and grunted. “You seen one, you seen them all.”

“No, V-Ray, these are like the Taj Mahal of titties.”

“Whatever.” Vernon Ray slapped at a fly.

“I’ll bet she could make you howl at the moon and quack backwards like a headless duck,” Bobby said.

Vernon Ray stood and slapped his comic to the ground. Bobby stood frozen, stunned by the sacrilege. Both boys were serious collectors who kept their books in mint condition, not just because of future appreciation in value but out of respect for the creators, the stories, the art, and the colorful magic of the medium.

“Why are you pulling that crap?” Vernon Ray said. “It’s not like Dex is around for you to impress.”

The magazine felt as heavy as soggy newsprint in Bobby’s hand. “It’s just a titty rag.”

“What’s next? Tell me not to get my panties in a twist?”

“V-Ray, I—”

Before Bobby could utter some lame comeback, tears welled in Vernon Ray’s eyes and a sob broke from somewhere within his rib cage. All Bobby could do was look at the Wolverine on the packed dirt floor, one corner of its cover crinkled. Since it was a relatively recent issue, a damaged copy was worthless. He’d have to dig through the back issues at Planet Zero to buy a replacement and keep intact his sequential run, which dated to the year he was born.

He was grasping for something, anything, to avoid noticing that his best friend was crying. Guys had a rule: you could squeeze off a drop or two once in a while, if something really bad happened, like your dog got run over or your grandma died.

But you would wipe it away fast and everyone would pretend it never happened. The problem here was that Vernon Ray had launched into waterworks for no good reason.

If Vernon Ray couldn’t clean it up on his own, Bobby had an obligation under the Unwritten Guy Code to change the subject. “Look, I know this Jangling Hole business has got us all a little shook up.”

Vernon Ray moved his hands from his face, and to make matters worse, he looked directly at Bobby with dewy, bloodshot Bambi eyes. “The dead are the lucky ones,” he said, sniffing.

Bobby let the magazine fall closed, though the flap of the centerfold still dangled, Miss September’s bare legs framed against crushed black velvet. He didn’t know what to do with his hands.

The air in the shed had grown thicker, as if the ancient chicken manure and sawdust had coalesced into composted spirits and risen from the floor to haunt his lungs. Vernon Ray’s eyes were gray, the color of a warship on a roiling sea.

Funny, you know a guy for years and can’t remember the color of his eyes. But damned if they ain’t a lot like mine.

“Why do you shove that crap in my face?” Vernon Ray said. Bobby was relieved to note the sobs had subsided enough for his friend to complete a sentence.

“What crap?”

“Titties. Naked women. Macho crap.”

“That’s just what guys do. I mean, art is art and meat is meat, right?”

“I thought you’d be different, Bobby. I know you’re different. Dex, he’s a gorilla in training, he’ll be getting girls pregnant in a couple of years and laughing while he drives them to the abortion clinic. Dorkus Dan and your football buddies, they have to put on a show. You know, the warrior thing. But you have feelings. That’s why you stick by me when everybody else is snickering and lisping behind my back.”

“Dude, you’re my pal, and pals stick—”

“Drop the Owen Wilson stoner clown act. You know what I mean.”

Bobby turned and set the magazine on the stack, taking more care than usual, pushing the pile around until all the corners were aligned. Little black dots of mouse turds covered the shelf and he wondered if rodents would chew Miss September’s golden flesh to line their nests.

“I know your dad is a little distant,” Bobby said to the wall. “We’re alike that way. We don’t know what real affection is, and it’s kind of scary to think about. Me, at least I’ve got a brother, even if he’s a lot older.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

Whatever Vernon Ray was talking about, Bobby didn’t want to know. He’d rather hum some Coldplay or gossip about quarterback Eli Manning’s hot new girlfriend. Hell, he’d rather talk about the war on terror, which was so removed from his daily life that it might as well be taking place in the Andromeda Galaxy with the Silver Surfer kicking suicide-bomber ass.

“I better be getting home,” Bobby said, still afraid to turn and meet those red-rimmed, doe-like eyes with their thick curling lashes.

“Yeah, wouldn’t want you to miss out on all the joyful warmth and love of the Eldreth home,” Vernon Ray said with a sneer in his voice.

Bobby started for the rotted, gaping door, but his friend moved faster and blocked his way. They were several feet apart, and Vernon Ray’s breath rushed in and out, the liquidity gone. Bobby looked at him.

Mistake.

Vernon Ray’s head tilted forward, eyes flaring, eyebrows lifting, as if he were staring deep inside Bobby to a place hidden from everyone, a hollow cave Bobby had glimpsed in the mirror once in a while but so fleetingly that he could shrug it off as an illusion.

“V-Ray, this is weird.”

“It’s been weird for me since we were 10.”

“I mean, weird like weird, you know?” Those gray irises were smoldering with mad yellow flecks, the red veins streaking against the white like lightning made of fire.

Vernon Ray stepped forward and grabbed Bobby’s shoulders, pulling him forward with a strength that his scrawny 85 pounds shouldn’t possess. Vernon Ray’s head tilted up and his breath was hot against Bobby’s lips and—

Holy crap, he’s trying to KISS me.

Bobby shoved hard, his forearms up and elbows back like he was assaulting the tackling dummy in football practice. Vernon Ray flew backwards against the wall, shaking the shed with the impact, and a dried-out husk of harness fell from its nail and rolled across the dirt. The tin roofing squeaked in protest then settled. In the silence, Bobby’s breath came fast and frantic and he waited for V-Ray’s whimper.

Instead, his best friend looked at him from his crumpled collapse, a thin line of blood leaking from his nose. The corner of his mouth lifted. He was smiling.

“I’ve known it ever since we were down by the creek catching crawdads that day,” Vernon Ray said. “You were on that big flat rock, your shirt off, glowing in the sun, your face so alive and happy.”

Bobby had no idea which day Vernon Ray was talking about. They’d hunted crawdads many times, and goofing off at the creek was way better than hanging around inside the hot trailer, especially if Mom was around bitching for him to clean up the bedroom. “I don’t remember—”

“July 7, three years ago.”

“You’re freaking me out, Vee.”

Vernon Ray straightened himself until he was on his knees and bent before Bobby like a penitent before a stone idol. A shaft of sunlight angled so that it suffused his face. His eyes were shining again, but not with tears. “I love you, Bobby.”

Bobby backed up a step. The path to the door was clear now, but he didn’t trust his knees. Bobbing and weaving toward the end zone between 160-pound linebackers was no problem, but those five yards to freedom now seemed a hundred miles of toxic swamp. He cleared his throat but it felt like a corncob was rammed in his windpipe, dry and abrasive.

“I know you feel something, too,” Vernon Ray said. “I’ve seen it in your eyes.”

Anger cleared his air passage. “You ain’t seen shit. You know how hard it is when everybody thinks you’re a faggot? I hear the whispers, too. Hell, they drag me into it half the time, call me your ‘Little butt buddy’ and ‘Tinkerbell.’”

Vernon Ray’s eyes shut briefly, those long lashes curling up in delicate swoops. Closed, his eyes looked a lot like Karen’s, and his mouth did, too, at least his full lower lip. Bobby’s stomach fluttered as if a pack of moths had been let loose. This was getting confusing.

“I know, and you still stick by me,” Vernon Ray said. “That says a lot.”

“That don’t say nothing. You’re my pal. Read comic books, shoplift once in a while, sneak the old man’s beer, cheat on school tests together. Guy stuff.”

“You’re afraid, and I don’t blame you. I’ve been afraid ever since I knew I was different.”

“That’s the trouble, Davis. You’re a different kind of different.” He hoped using Vernon Ray’s last name would move things back to solid ground, a normal footing that would allow them both to walk away and pretend this had never happened.

Vernon Ray put his palms on the ground and leaned toward Bobby, then slid his knees forward, jeans rasping in the dirt. He was crawling like an animal, and his eyes radiated a strange gleam that was nothing like Bobby had ever seen in Karen’s.

“Stay away, V-Ray,” Bobby said. “Don’t make me have to punch you.”

Vernon Ray moved forward, rasp rasp rasp, breathing evenly, while Bobby’s heart knocked against his ribs like a broken crankshaft in a tractor.

“Don’t deny it,” Vernon Ray said. “It’s just you and me and God. Dex isn’t around to catch you and God doesn’t care.”

Bobby backed up another two steps, glancing toward the door, almost afraid to let his eyes leave Vernon Ray. A shadow fell across the opening, and Bobby just knew it was Dex.

Great, he’ll tell everybody he caught me with my “boyfriend” on his knees. I’m frigging doomed.

But at least Dex would kill the scene, disturb the private moment that was making Bobby nauseated, lightheaded, and off kilter. Ghosts were one thing, he’d come to accept them because he trusted his own eyes, and in a strange sort of way, they made sense. You died and you didn’t want to leave, so you hung around a while and checked things out, maybe engaged in a little vandalism for entertainment. No biggie.

But this—

As the shadow grew, moving closer to the shed, Bobby wondered if his reaction would be the same if it were Karen at his feet, getting ready to worship him in whatever sublime fashion his mind and body could concoct.

Would he be sick and nervous, or would he be the cool jock stud he’d imagined?

And, worse, was there really any difference, when you got down to it?

The shadow crept, swelling larger, too tall to be Dex. Jeff Davis? One of the Eggerses? Or, Christ, his drunken dad?

In the hush punctuated only by Vernon Ray’s rasping jeans, Bobby should have heard footsteps. Instead, all he heard was the roar of blood in his ears.

“I told you I love Karen,” he said, extra loud, so whomever was approaching could hear. “I’ve been nailing it all semester.”

He would have been thrilled to hear Jerrell, Dex, or anyone come back with, “The only thing you’ve been nailing is your own five fingers.” But there was only the silent, encroaching shadow.

“We both know the truth,” Vernon Ray whispered. “You and I are the same.”

“No, we’re not the same. I like looking at titties and some sweet pink. I don’t love guys. And I don’t love you.”

Bobby didn’t realize he’d been shouting, nearly screaming, until his mouth fell shut and the echo died away among the tin and timbers. The doorway was filled now and he looked away from his kneeling friend, who was now scarcely three feet away, his head uncomfortably close to Bobby’s crotch and the electric warmth that had collected there.

The heat turned to needles of ice.

Col. Creep stood in the doorway.

He looked more solid than he had two days ago, when he’d issued the silent command that led to the bulldozer guy’s death. As if racking up a body count did wonders for the spirit.

He’s real again, and I’ll have to run right through him to get out the door.

Bobby shivered at the thought of penetrating that cold ethereal flesh.

The dead officer’s eyes glared out from beneath the brim of his slouch hat, glinting as if backlit by the hearths of hell. The hairs of the bushy beard seemed to writhe and twist like thin serpents. The man’s pale skin was stretched tight around the bones of his face, and his lips pursed as if he were amused at the tableau before him.

Then again, when you were released from the bottomless pit of the grave, maybe the living were nothing but entertainment.

“Vuh—vuh—,” Bobby stuttered. “V-Ray?”

The officer rubbed his beard with his left hand while his right stole to his scabbard and fondled the hilt of his sword.

Vernon Ray looked up at Bobby, palms pressed flat on the ground. His eyes were glazed and faraway, his mouth open and the tip of his tongue poking through. His friend was under some kind of weird spell, and Bobby wondered if a ghost who could order dead soldiers to shoot invisible rifles using real bullets had the power to make somebody do things they didn’t want to do.

Because Bobby didn’t want to stand there a second longer, but his legs wouldn’t work, the wiring between his muscles and brain short-circuiting.

Col. Creep drew his sword with a metallic snick, the first sound he’d made.

Vernon Ray turned at the sound and almost nodded, as if he’d expected company. An audience for his coming-out party.

The officer stepped into the shed and pointed his sword at Bobby’s chest. Bobby swallowed and it felt like chunks of brick and broken glass worked their way down his gullet and into his gut.

The sword didn’t look invisible at all, and the polished metal caught the sunlight.

Bobby wondered how it would go down with his friends. Would he get a funeral and everything? Would he be the first of his class to die in a freak accident? How would the sheriff and the newspaper write this one up?

Even more importantly, where would he end up? Trapped in a casket for eternity, or was his hasty and enforced acceptance of Jesus in Barkersville Baptist enough to get him a ticket on the Big Elevator?

Or maybe he’d wind up in the Hole, the newest member of a troop destined to haunt the chilly hollows of Mulatto Mountain until the end of time.

The officer flexed his wrist and made three waves of the sword.

Motioning me to the door?

Vernon Ray nodded up at Bobby, telling him it was okay, that at least one of them would live. And Bobby’s cheeks were hot and wet, and he realized it was his turn to cry, and he wondered if V-Ray was right. He didn’t love the guy, not in that way, but maybe Bobby was different, too.

As he stumbled near-blind to daylight and freedom, Vernon Ray called out. “I’ll be okay, Bobby. Don’t worry.”

Bobby paused at the door. Vernon Ray was now standing near Col. Creep, whose sword was lowered. The ghost looked almost paternal, not at all like the mean freaky phantom that would have sliced off his head moments before.

Bobby turned his face to the golden sunshine, the blurred forest, and an escape whose only price was the betrayal of his best friend. As he ran, his feet hardly touched the ground.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The saber hovered in the air, licked with the flames of dying sunlight.

Vernon Ray stared at it, transfixed by the dance. It lifted, came closer, swayed, grew larger in his vision until it filled the shed. It was real, he knew, as solid as anything this world had ever hugged to its gravity. And it could cleave him, lop off his head, remove his heart.

Yet he couldn’t move.

The saber came closer, the shadows somehow growing deeper in the skewed corners of the lean-to. Vernon Ray settled on his folded legs, knees chafed from the crumbling dirt. His pulse rattled out a syncopated reveille, one that screamed “Retreat!” But his muscles were jelly clinging to icy bones.

The sharp steel hung motionless for a long moment. Branches brushed against the tin eaves and the old planks creaked against the Halloween breeze. Vernon Ray forced his gaze away from the killing blade and along the arm that wielded it, up the crinkled cloth of the sleeve to the terrible face.

Kirk’s skin rippled like linen on a line, shades of light and dark interweaving and stitching gossamer flesh. Dark beard and eyes swam in the shifting shadows, and Vernon Ray felt the temperature in the room drop. Goose bumps rose on his neck and arms.

He’s sucking me. Taking my heat.

The colonel tilted his head back, mouth open as if exhaling a long sigh of the grave. Amid the stained enamel of teeth, things squirmed and writhed. Vernon Ray expected something to spill from that mouth, moans or marching orders, but if anything came, it was lost in the wind that stole between cracks.

The saber lifted, higher and closer, pointed toward heaven as if gathering its strength from some distant and magical source. But Vernon Ray knew any power the colonel had was power that Vernon Ray offered. Willingly or not.

“Go ahead and kill me, so it will be over,” Vernon Ray whispered through parched lips.

At least Bobby would escape, and probably cry at his funeral, and his dad would stand there in his formal best, Mom dabbing her damp mascara with a cotton hanky, all the kids from school squirming in pews, the First Baptist Choir singing “Amazing Grace” and Preacher Staymore dishing up a eulogy that sought more to save any heathens in attendance than to celebrate Vernon Ray’s deliverance.

And as the casket was lowered into the cold red ground and the mourners filed away, Dad might linger a moment as the diggers sat on their tractors at the edge of the burial lawn like vultures. And Dad might frown at his lost little soldier, maybe secretly toss a valued relic the way others laid flowers. Perhaps a canteen, a cap, a dull brass medal, a mini ball, something to seal a connection that had never been forged on the Earth. A piece of history to carry on the endless journey, a history from some other time and not the recent one they had barely shared.

It didn’t matter if the hole were jangling or whether it was six feet deep and trimmed to rectangular precision. When you went in, it was forever.

Col. Kirk held the saber aloft as if celebrating its profane menace.

And Vernon Ray waited for it to fall.

Close your eyes. You don’t want to watch your own head bouncing in the dirt.

But he couldn’t look away from that face and those eyes that were long, black roads of misery and sin. Kirk was said to have been a cold-blooded murderer, a horse thief, a rapist who would burn churches and piss out the embers. But those eyes held none of that rage, only a vast emptiness, the ethereal flesh around them swirling like star mist into unquenchable black holes.

Then the eyes glimmered, bits of hellfire or stray sundown.

In the stillness of the shed, at that moment of surrender, Vernon Ray felt a peace descend and settle on him, wrapping him in a protective warmth that would repel any blade or bullet or hateful words. His heartbeat, which had jumped to jackrabbit speed when he’d professed his love for Bobby and then kicked a gear higher when the colonel had appeared, slowed to a steady thud and he was aware of his blood flowing through his body, the pulse pushing life to his limbs. For the first time in thirteen years, he felt alive, and he laughed aloud at the irony that only impending death could have triggered the feeling.

I surrender, but you take no prisoners.

The saber poised.

And then lowered.

Slowly.

Down, down, arcing into its scabbed sheath.

It slid home with a war-weary whisper.

Vernon Ray waited, not sure if the man would speak—could speak—and the silence stretched like a glistening spider web. He wondered if Bobby would tell anybody, then decided the colonel’s glowering eyes had contained enough threat to keep Bobby shivering under his blankets for a month. Vernon Ray finally looked up and the colonel reached into a bulging pocket of his tunic. He came away with a wad of gray fabric and thrust it toward Vernon Ray.

The boy studied those Jangling-Hole eyes for any sign of sleeping humanity. Only the long promise of night resided there. But the man nodded, in much the same way he’d motioned Bobby toward a hasty retreat, with a fluidity that was more liquid than muscle.

Vernon Ray reached for the fabric, his fingers brushing the icy ethereal mist of the officer’s hand. It was a kepi, topped with frayed wool and banded with brown leather, the canvas bill creased and stained. The colonel’s coal-black eyes narrowed, somehow no longer menacing, but strange and chilling all the same.

The eyes were almost kind. Almost fatherly.

But Vernon Ray shook that illusion away–this man had killed, captured, and maimed, he’d carved a red swath through these mountains, and the old settling families still used “Kirked” as a verb for wrongdoing. Sin could burn and embers cool to ash, and the dead could be forgiven but never forgotten.

Vernon Ray swallowed corncob dust and, with a trembling hand, placed the kepi on his head. It had been made for a boy and fit perfectly.

The colonel floated forward, looming over Vernon Ray, whose head tilted down to stare at dusty, stained boots. Then the cold fingers were on his chin, lifting his face, and Vernon Ray wondered wildly if the colonel wanted what Bobby hadn’t, if the cold company of the Jangling Hole had left Kirk as lost and alone on the other side as Vernon Ray was on the side of the living.

But the bearded mouth and wedge of cheeks and forehead visible beneath the broad hat’s brim showed no hunger or passion. The fingers, as soft and cool as salamanders in a muddy spring, slid along the curve of Vernon Ray’s jaw and stroked his hair. Then the hand gripped his shoulder with a strength that could have crushed granite and clawed its way out of any cave-in.

Words wended through the air, or maybe it was only the creak of rafters, or language leaking into him from the medium of necromantic connection:

We don’t belong together.

The words made no sense, but Vernon Ray wasn’t sure if they’d fallen properly in the carousel of his thoughts.

The hand lifted Vernon Ray, peculiar electricity shooting through the boy’s chest, and he thought again of battery charges and energy transformation. Vernon Ray now stood chest-high to the dead man, legs weak and quavering

He’s draining my juice, just like the reporter said . . . .

It was almost like an obscene dance of dust and air, Vernon Ray’s partner literally light on his feet, swaying to an invisible music.

Then Vernon Ray heard it: the distant cadence of the snare drum, rolling over the ghost hills, insinuating itself in the currents of shiftless air, riding the dying autumn sky as if marching an exhausted battalion home.

The colonel’s head lifted. heeding a call to arms, then his frigid fingers fell from Vernon Ray’s body, going to mist, and the juice flowed backwards, the connection severed. Strength and vitality surged through Vernon Ray’s limbs in a rush of warm blood.

Then the colonel paled, giving up the ghost yet again, the threads of his illusive form fading. The officer’s saber, sheath, and uniform with its dull brass insignia disappeared along with him, but the kepi remained, solid as the shed walls.

Vernon Ray reached up and adjusted the cap until the brim was perched over his forehead, shading his eyes against the death of day. The snare’s soft rattle fell away to silence, and only the wind remained, pushing October on past so winter could bare its icy teeth and feed.

When twilight came, Vernon Ray left the shed, picking through trees, careful not to snag the kepi on any low-hanging branches.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The uneasiness crept in like a rooster on crippled drumsticks.

Hardy stirred in bed under the heavy quilts. Pearl’s snores were like the bleating of a lamb. She’d popped one of those blue pills Doc Sanderson had prescribed for her nerves, and those usually knocked her out pretty good.

The onions she’d cooked with the fried potatoes had tainted the room with oily air, but Hardy was nearly used to it by now. He couldn’t blame the odor for his restlessness. After all, his old flannel longhandles were nearly stiff enough to stand in his boots and walk to the door by themselves.

The wind was flapping under the eaves, rattling the wooden shutters and causing the old farmhouse to shift and creak. The moon was up, its sick light sliding between the curtains and painting a green rectangle on the floorboards. Hardy strained his ears against the groaning of wood, listening for sounds from Donnie’s room. As he rolled over, a quill poked through his feather pillow and stuck his cheek.

The thin hands of the dial clock on the night stand were pushing past twelve and beginning their slow drop into the wee hours. Hardy sat up with a creak of bedsprings. He could almost feel the sloping weight of Mulatto Mountain, its ancient swell of rock and soil crawling into the valley.

The mountain and its damnable inhabitants could fall into the sea, for all Hardy cared. Even without the ghosts, the mountain would soon be wrecked by security lights, vacation homes for rich folks, and paved highways winding across its face.

Just like when the Yankee raiders rolled through in 1864, the invasion was inevitable, and guns would do little to change the outcome. When the Yanks had done their dirty business and moved on, their lawyers sailed in on the wake and got themselves elected to local office, then proceeded to develop land-use ordinances that favored them and their friends.

The Eggers family had been lucky because their property was so steep and hard to farm that its value on the deed books was low. But the new breed of Yankee invaders put a premium on mountain views, so the steepest terrain had become the most expensive. Never mind that the wind hammered at those high houses and the well drillers had to go a quarter-mile deep in some places; the rich idiots were only there for a few weeks in the summer anyway.

Hardy moved to the window, his joints burning with arthritis. Since the incident in the barn, he’d kept to the house, and he wondered how long it would be before the whole mess blew over.

In his youth, back when Mulatto Mountain was in the hands of the Eggers family, the ghosts had been spotted here and there on occasion. Hardy had even glimpsed them a few times himself, faint wisps of mist cavorting through the trees. But he’d never seen them so up-close-and-personal—and as real—as he’d seen them when Earley had danced to the music of the colonel’s sword.

As he peeked through the curtains, Pearl’s snoring stopped. He half expected to see campfires on the mountain, as if the dead had decided to bivouac in the woods instead of the eternal dampness of the Hole. But the woods were dark and still, even near the turnaround where Budget Bill’s bulldozers and trucks were parked. The air carried a cold weight, as if the killing frost was ready to descend from the North.

“You see anything strange?” Pearl said, her voice creaky with sleep.

He’d not told her about the incident in the barn. Lately, he’d kept a lot of things to himself, and he wondered if that was how marriages faded away until they went bust. “Nah,” he said. “Just a mountain.”

She got out of bed and Hardy heard the soft rustle of her slippers. “I’ll go check on Donnie.”

“He’s all right,” Hardy said without turning.

The shuffle of footsteps stopped. “You just keep watch and let me take care of my son.”

Hardy nodded in the dark until the door closed. He switched on the bedside lamp and got his black-powder musket out of the closet. He’d seen an old episode of “The Twilight Zone” where a priest had killed a vampire by putting a silver cross on his bullets and shooting the creature through the heart.

Hardy didn’t hold with the existence of vampires, but he figured if he was going to put his faith anywhere, it would be the Lord. That evening, he’d crept to the basement and melted down Pearl’s silver chain and cross and fashioned the metal into three balls of shot. Three wouldn’t be near enough, even if the silver had any effect on the dead, but their weight gave him comfort.

He opened the Eggers family bible, which had been passed down through four generations. Preachers had talked of the Holy Ghost, and Hardy wasn’t sure how he’d feel about Jesus Christ’s spirit drifting through the wall at any moment. But if the Good Book acknowledged the existence of ghosts, and resurrection was one of the juiciest parts of the entire tale, then maybe its pages packed a little bit of magical punch.

Hardy tilted his powder horn to sift some of the explosive substance into the barrel, then rolled in one of the silver balls. He ripped out a page from the Book of Acts and used his brass rod to pack it down for wadding to hold the shot in place.

“God, make me an instrument of your peace,” he said.

The door squeaked open and Pearl padded into the room. “Is that thing loaded?”

“Just getting ready for trespassers.”

“You ought not keep loaded guns where Donnie might get at them.”

“Our son died ten years ago. He ain’t nothing now but your 195-pound baby doll.”

“Talk like that and you’ll be sleeping in the wood shed.”

“Fine way to talk to the man who put this roof over your head.”

Pearl moved behind him, her reflection distorted in the glass. Her face was aged and sad, the lines deepened by the late hour and too-little sleep. He tried hard to see his young bride in those bloodshot blue eyes, but only pain looked back at him.

“What’s happened to us?” she whispered.

Hardy laid the musket over his lap and waved toward the mountain. “The Jangling Hole happened.”

She put her trembling hands on his shoulders. “Hardy, our problem is in here, not out there. Our house has become a worse hell than anything a legend could stir up.”

“I seen them. And look what they done to Donnie.”

“Whatever it was Sunday—if there was anything—Donnie didn’t get hurt.”

“They didn’t need to hurt him. They already took everything that mattered when they got ahold of him last time. They took his soul.”

“And you call yourself a Christian. Donnie’s soul was bound for heaven since he got saved and baptized. Ever since he was 6, his soul was set.”

“Even if he don’t know no better? At that age, you don’t know what death’s like. All you’re doing is mocking back the words somebody put in your ear.”

“Saved is saved. The Good Lord wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“I took many a comfort from the Bible,” Hardy said, tapping the book. “But now I got to go with what I see with my own eyes and feel in my gut.”

“Don’t go turning your—”

Ratta tatta tat.

They stared at each other.

“Possum must have got in the attic,” Pearl said, her hushed words barely audible even in the sudden silence.

Tatta tatta.

“Yep,” Hardy said. “And it learned to carry a beat. Reckon we ought to catch it and put it in a circus.”

“They’re coming for him, aren’t they?” Pearl pulled her bed robe tighter over her chest and held it with one trembling hand, as if somehow that would ward off invading spirits.

“They’ll come sooner or later. But this time they ain’t getting him without a fight.”

The drumming rose from across the pasture, its origin difficult to pinpoint. Hardy peered out the window, expecting to see flickering campfires or a line of marching white wisps. Instead there was only darkness and the distant trees fighting off the autumn wind.

“How can you fight them, Hardy? You already turned your back on the one power in all the world that might beat them.”

“There’s two ways to look at it. Either the Lord has a reason for them to be here, meaning it’s some kind of test, or the Lord has no power over them and we got to draw on what we can muster. Jesus is sitting on the sidelines for this one.”

“It don’t hurt none to pray.”

Ratta tatta tat.

The drumming was closer now, between the house and the barn, and its percussion trailed off in an eerie reverberation. It was joined by another pounding, a deeper, hollow, less-rhythmic pulse. Coming from across the hall.

Pearl moved first but Hardy, his arthritis screaming like salty lime in an open sore, reached the door before she did. As he stepped in the hall, the room to Donnie’s door shook in its frame.

“Donnie!” Hardy yelled, leaning the musket against the wall. His son threw himself against the door again, the wood around the hinges splintering with the force of the blow. Another meaty thud sounded as the snare drumming grew louder.

They’re on the porch.

“Open the door before he hurts himself,” Pearl yelled.

Hardy touched the sliding bolt that would allow the door to swing open. He hesitated just long enough for Pearl to push past him. She reached for the hardware and froze.

RATTA TATTA TATTA TATTA.

The drumming was beneath them now, coming from the kitchen, headed for the stairs. Donnie had stopped throwing himself against the door and now answered the snare drum with his own cadence, hammering the wood with what sounded like the balls of his fists.

The percussion rose up the stairwell, accompanied by the footfalls of boots. Hardy wondered why floaty things made of air and nightmares would need to march, but figured dead folks had no reason to follow sensible rules. When the dead got on a mission, they would hoof it through hell and back if that’s what the job required. That was as true of Kirk’s lost raiders as it was with Jesus of Nazareth.

When the time came for action, you dragged your ass off the cross and did your duty.

“They’re coming, whatever they are,” Pearl said, pressed against the door as if motherly love alone could turn back the tide. Donnie kept on with his rhythmic pounding, and the wind had risen so that the house creaked and shook on its stacked-stone foundation.

Hardy swayed on aching, bowed legs, flush with the fever of fear, his heart threatening to gallop off into a painful stretch run toward the finish line.

But he was still a man, despite his 63 hard years and his bad eyes, and he was the last line of defense between his son and the things that wanted a new recruit.

No, they didn’t want tired, used-up old men—or else the colonel would have taken him the other day at the fence line or out in the barn—but Hardy had no doubt that some fresh meat would soothe them on their long vigil of darkness, make that crack in the mountain known as the Jangling Hole a little less lonesome for a while.

They’d take the rest of his son. And Hardy would live out his days at the foot of the mountain, feeling the weight of helplessness and the guilt of failure pressing on him until it finally collapsed his chest.

No. Last time they took him without a fight. But I ain’t down for the count yet, and this battle’s just starting.

Without taking his eyes from the stairs, where the phantom platoon continued its climb, he reached behind him for the musket leaning against the wall.

His fingers came away empty.

“Hardy, look!” Pearl shouted.

The musket hovered in midair at the other end of the hall, moving away from them.

Hardy suspected that particular maneuver had never been taught on the grounds of West Point, where the great military minds sat down at their charts and maps and moved paper around as if those shifting lines didn’t cost the blood of thousands.

If you want to beat the enemy, just take the weapon out of his hands.

The musket floated a few more feet, as if it were made of dust instead of wood and steel. Then the motes around it swirled and thickened, collecting into a cottony shape.

It was the soldier from the barn, the mutineer who had been treated to the bayonet and sword at the hands of his brothers in arms. The man who had died again at the command and behest of his former leader, the dishonorable Col. Kirk.

Corporal Earley Eggers materialized, moving away from Hardy, the saber wound visible in his back. He carried the musket before him as if pushing unseen cobwebs out of the way. Maybe he was pushing through obstacles in his world, wading through something on the other side that Hardy couldn’t see. It was a land that prayers never touched and that God had seen fit to leave alone, and though Hardy felt the comfort of faith give way to the deep chill of utter solitude, he also steeled himself because he had nothing left but his own spare strength and will.

“Soldier,” he yelled, loudly enough to drown out the thrumming boots on the stairs. His commanding tone probably wasn’t as forceful as the orders the young recruit had heard at Bull Run or Chancellorsville, but the dead man hesitated all the same.

“You deserted once and you see where it got you,” Hardy said, knowing he was riding the greased rails of madness but finding no turnabout or detour. “It got you dead.”

Pearl touched Hardy’s shoulder but he gently shrugged her off. “Get in there with Donnie. I’ll take care of this.”

He was glad she didn’t question him, because he would have had no answer for her this time. The deadbolt slid from its sheath and the door creaked open, Donnie’s hammering interrupted. Earley Eggers waited, frozen in place, that gash in his old gray tunic oozing starstuff and darkness. Hardy waited for the door to close, ignoring the rattling snare drum that echoed toward the top of the stairs.

“When you going to stand and fight?” Hardy shouted at his ancestor’s back, and he could as easily have directed the words at himself. He’d always known the Hole was there and had sensed its potential to spew out plenty of damage and disaster. And yet he’d sat back and ignored it while it gobbled his son’s soul and took others along the way.

“You can’t fight what you can’t see,” he said. “But you can’t see the inside of your own heart, either.”

The drummer was on the second floor now and Hardy could sense the massed platoon coming up behind him, but he kept his gaze on Earley.

The corporal turned, those forlorn, weary eyes pouring out darkness with all their lifeless might. They were Eggers eyes, dark and flecked with gold, but the glint was more of hellfire than the spark of animation. His bony fingers clutched the musket, face set in grim determination. Earley raised the gun and pointed the barrel at Hardy, who could do nothing but stare back down the sight at the man who was readying to kill his own kin.

The barrel shifted to the right and the musket roared, the percussion hammering between the wooden walls of the narrow hallway, sulfur-rich blue smoke boiling from the end of the gun.

A cry erupted behind Hardy, the snare drum fell silent, and finally his limbs broke from their rigor and he fell with his back against the wall, sliding until he was half sitting.

At the end of the hallway stood a boy of about 12, a small kepi perched on his head in imitation of the rag-tag bunch of soldiers who gathered on the stairs behind him. A strap descended the boy’s shoulders, a snare drum against his hip. The drummer boy looked down at his chest, where a small hole appeared in the cloth just below the top brass button.

Hardy knew the boy was dead—Christ, PLEASE let him be already dead—but his flesh looked so solid that Hardy expected blood to bloom from the wound. Surprise and confusion battled on the kid’s smooth face, as if the thought of death had never crossed his mind, though surely he’d witnessed all manner of death and mayhem on those long-ago battlefields.

“What’s going on?” Pearl screeched from behind Donnie’s door, but Hardy wouldn’t have been able to describe it even if he could make his lips and windpipe work.

The boy looked first at Earley, then at Hardy, as if acknowledging the family resemblance, and toppled forward, his kepi rolling off the side of his tousled blond head.

Now Hardy recognized him.

It was one of the boys who’d been messing around the Jangling Hole the other day—only he’d been alive and well at the time.

A soldier standing behind the drummer boy opened his mouth, and though no sound came out, the name “Earley” bounced around the inside of Hardy’s concussed head. Hardy recognized his haggard face and possum-colored beard from the barn and Col. Kirk’s execution squad.

The soldier dropped his weapon and reached with one arm to catch the boy. But when flesh met flesh, there was no resistance, and the boy continued falling until his rusted snare drum banged on the floor of the hall.

Other soldiers crowded the stairwell, silent and grim, leveling their rifles down the hallway, and at such close range, none of the bullets would miss. They wouldn’t care whether the bullets ripped the flesh of the dead or the living.

Hardy wasn’t sure he cared, either. As long as Donnie was safe behind that thick wooden door, Hardy could go in peace, knowing he’d fought to the end. But spirits didn’t obey the rules of doors and deadbolts, and Pearl would be left alone in Donnie’s defense.

Since she had nothing but prayers as a weapon, Hardy didn’t hold out much hope. He glanced at his musket, knowing Earley wouldn’t have time to reload before the platoon’s fusillade sent him to the grave for the third time.

“Cease fire,” came a deep command from below, and in the sudden silence Hardy heard his own throat working as he fought to expel the thick, acrid gun-smoke from his lungs.

The soldiers stood poised in firing position, teeth gritted and hollow eyes cold, as boots strode across the kitchen floor and climbed the stairs.

Hardy couldn’t help hearing the boots as a drumbeat—tatta tatta.

The soldiers parted, allowing the colonel to squeeze through. The man gave one slow tug of his beard as he gazed down at the latest casualty in a war that never ended.

Then Kirk stooped and rolled the limp boy into his arms, standing with a creak of wood and hugging the boy to his chest.

“Retreat,” he whispered, or maybe the wind hit the tin eaves, or maybe the word was only a hallucination that flitted across Hardy’s ringing eardrums.

The soldiers followed their leader, but not before the possum-bearded soldier gave Earley a look that promised revenge.

After the soft parade back across the kitchen was over, Hardy dropped to his knees and sought out the corporal.

Earley Eggers was gone, the musket lying on the floor.

Pearl called out, but Hardy ignored her. He crawled to the musket and checked the magazine. The powder charge was intact. The gun had not been fired.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Goddamned mosquitoes. Can’t wait until the frost wipes your pointy asses out.

Elmer swatted at one of the bloodsuckers, but he missed, and a moment later it was whining against his ear again.

“Atten-chun,” Jeff Davis barked.

Yassuh, Cap’n, suh.

Elmer would have said it aloud in search of a laugh, but his fellow soldiers standing erect on both sides had let their faces go to granite. They swallowed up this make-believe shit, and Elmer played along. Truth was, he’d just as soon stand around sweating yesterday’s beer as crawl around laying pipe on the Collins job. The wool get-up was scratchy and trapped the morning heat against his skin, but all in all it wasn’t a bad way to spend a Thursday.

If only he didn’t have to lick his neighbor’s boots to earn his day off.

Wally Hampton, to Elmer’s left, didn’t seem to mind being a buck private, especially since he’d poured a little Jack Daniels in his thermos to spice up his coffee. Hampton, a carpenter who was riding a disability claim for all it was worth, was used to idle weekdays. Flanking Elmer’s other side was Darren Anderson, a teenager who had joined the Living History Society because he was dating a college girl and was trying to impress her with the uniform.

The trouble a guy went to for pussy. Well, it won’t be long until he’s hanging out with guys to get away from pussy, because all you got to do is marry it to turn it into a cunt.

The park was quiet in the morning, a few grosbeaks and cardinals working the branches of the big hardwoods. A Confederate battle flag dangled from a skinned locust post, as limp as a used handkerchief. The mountains sloped up from the creek that bordered the park, Mulatto the steepest and tallest, its autumn trees a little deeper in color than the rest. Pick-up trucks in the gravel lot were still packed with equipment, though Jeff and a couple of others had been up before dawn, erecting their tents and setting the stage for the re-enactment.

Jeff strutted like a peacock in front of the line of soldiers, his uniform so clean and starched that it looked like steel wool. He’d brought out his insignia for the occasion, pinned enough brass to his chest to stop a cannonball. Jeff was so spit-and-polish that he’d even held a mock enlistment, checking the recruits’ teeth to see if they had enough enamel to bite the paper off a powder charge. Elmer had nipped the officer’s finger.

Elmer grinned at the dregs of the memory, causing Jeff to stop his inspection and get in Elmer’s face.

“And what’s so funny, soldier?” Jeff said.

“Nothing,” Elmer answered.

“Nothing what?”

“Huh?”

“You’re speaking to a superior officer.”

Elmer wanted to grin bigger and slap Darren on the shoulder, let him in on the big joke, but Darren gulped and stood a little straighter. Wally Hampton also stood erect, though he swayed slightly from the booze.

Damn, these boys are taking it serious. And Jefferson Davis certainly got the role down pat, sausage breath and all.

It was too early to get into character. A few civilians were gathered in the gravel parking lot on the edge of the park, and the woman from the newspaper was there with her camera, getting ready to make a big fuss. A couple of the wives, wearing their bonnets and hoop skirts, were setting up iron kettles, spinning wheels, and other homestead displays.

But the unwritten rule of re-enactments, at least during Elmer’s service, was you goofed off during the warm-ups and didn’t get serious until the first fake shot was fired. But Jeff seemed to have a bug up his ass this year, as if he had something to prove and Pickett County’s future hinged on the outcome of a make-believe battle.

“Nothing what?” Jeff repeated.

“Nothing, sir,” Elmer said.

“Good,” Jeff said, slapping his pair of riding gloves against his sleeve as if to shake off the dust of a long furlough. “When Kirk and his bunch of blue-bellied demons ride through, you better not be doing much laughing, or else you’ll be picking grapeshot from between your teeth. If you’re head’s still attached, that is.”

“Sir?” Darren said, looking straight ahead.

Jeff stepped away from Elmer and stopped in front of Darren, adjusting the teenager’s kepi so that it tilted down over his forehead. “Yes, Private?”

“I thought it was General Stoneman that would be riding through here. Like in the history books.”

“Stoneman was the man in charge, but it was Kirk who did the hard riding and the hard killing. But I admire your research. Adds to the appreciation of the event.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Jeff stepped away so that he could face the entire troop, or at least those who’d been able to skip work. A bead of sweat ran down Elmer’s forehead, riding the slope between his eyes until a drop dangled at the end of his nose, tickling him. He didn’t dare reach up to wipe it away, though, because Jeff’s eyes had gone as hard and gray as a saber’s steel.

“Gentlemen, history is about to come alive, but it’s not just the past we’re about to honor,” Jeff said, his voice somehow becoming half an octave deeper. “It’s also the future. Because the Civil War truly pitted neighbor against neighbor, and the battle never ended in these parts.”

What the hell is he droning on about? Elmer figured Jeff had been reading some of the newer, revisionist books on the war, which skewed toward bizarre social and psychological theory because the nuts-and-bolts history had been examined from every possible angle. Because there were plenty of collectors like Jeff who’d snatch up anything even remotely linked to the war, writers had plenty of incentive to slap books together and roll them out in expensive leather-bound editions, even if the grammar was so crappy that Elmer, a D student in English, found mistakes. At least on those occasions when he was able to get past the third page.

“Tonight you’ll be defending your homes, your families, and your country,” Jeff said, delivering the lines with a flourish as if he were channeling Honest Abe Lincoln minus the stovepipe hat and goofy sideburns. “I can’t rightly declare that God is on our side, because it’s God’s duty to be on all sides at the same time. But it’s our duty to fight for the blessings He’s bestowed upon us, lest we bring dishonor on ourselves and our forefathers.”

Elmer heard a snuffle and a choked intake of breath. He shifted his eyes to the right. It looked for all the world like Wally was weeping.

The woman from the newspaper, who had a badge that read “Press” over her left tit as if nobody could tell by her foot-long camera lens and pocket notepad, was zeroing in on Jeff, who sensed his moment in the spotlight and let his chest swell even bigger.

The drop of sweat danced on the end of Elmer’s nose, taunting him, trying to get him to sneeze and break ranks.

Not on your fucking life. This is honor we’re talking about here, not a turn on “American Idol.”

“Some of us will not make it through the campaign,” Jeff said. “As your officer, I would not ask you to take on any risk that I wouldn’t face myself. I’ve got a family—”

As Jeff paused, Elmer wondered if his own boys would make it out to the bivouac tonight. Jerrell would probably be out boning one of his blondes in the back seat of his Mustang, but Bobby had been hanging around his bedroom since last night, barely even coming out long enough to take a piss. The boy was probably rubbing himself raw the way any normal 13-year-old boy would. And, praise the Sweet Lord in Heaven Above, Bobby had turned out normal, unlike Jeff’s little offspring.

“I’ve got a family and I’m willing to make sacrifices for it,” Jeff continued. “And they have to make sacrifices as well.”

Jeff nodded toward the civilian camp, where a fire was now jumping and water boiling. His wife Martha, a scrawny woman whose complexion and thin-necked, top-heavy head gave her the appearance of a buzzard, stirred the water in the kettle as if preparing to wash laundry or make a stew. Jeff probably wouldn’t be dipping the old noodle in that tonight, considering they’d be bedded in a tent where every little sigh and moan would be heard by the whole camp. Jeff probably wasn’t doing much dipping of any kind lately.

Not since he’d planted a little blond seed inside Vernell.

Maybe Martha had wondered the same thing Elmer had: Bobby looked a hell of a lot more like Jeff than he did anything from the Eldreth gene pool. And considering the one reproductive bullet Jeff had fired between her thighs had turned out a dud, she’d probably put the little muff pie off limits for good.

No big surprise that Vernon Ray was nowhere to be seen. The little sweetboy was a constant reminder of the sissy-girl hiding inside Jeff, the one he covered with macho commando horseshit and a pussy-tickling mustache.

Family sacrifices, my ass.

The drop of sweat swelled a little bigger on the end of Elmer’s nose and he crossed his eyes trying to look at it, as if concentration would make it evaporate.

“Sacrifices,” Jeff said, pacing up and down in front of the assembled soldiers. He was putting on a show for the photographer, who knelt in the grass and took one of those upward-angle shots intended to make the subject look 10 feet tall and full of vinegar.

Wally belched, and another acid-tinged fog of coffee and whiskey seeped across Elmer’s face. The sound stood out in the hushed morning, and the golden-topped poplars and red maples quit their flapping, as if Jeff’s message was meant for the whole world.

“The definition of sacrifice is making an offering to something bigger than yourself, whether it’s your God, your tribe, your comrades, your flag,” Jeff said, pausing long enough so the photographer could frame Capt. Davis, with the line of troops in the background, against the colorful trees and the Stars and Bars.

The worm wants to be the star of his own history book.

“We’re a living history society,” the captain continued, the photographer clicking away. “But history is about dying. What we commemorate—what we celebrate—in these next few days is the very real blood that spilled on this mountain soil. That’s our heritage, gentlemen. That’s the debt we have to repay.”

Elmer wondered how much of the goosed-up coffee remained in Wally’s thermos. The drop of sweat seemed to have swelled even bigger, defying gravity and clinging to Elmer’s snot-leaker like a frog to a wet log. He wiggled his head, trying to shake it free before he sneezed.

Jeff noted the movement and took three powerful strides forward, until Elmer could smell cheese grits on the captain’s breath to accompany the sausage. Jeff moved his hand to the brass hilt of his saber, fondling the tassel.

“You’re at attention, soldier,” Jeff said.

“Damn it, Jeff, crank it down a notch,” Elmer said, letting his shoulders slump as he reached to wipe away the sweat. “The crowd’s not even here yet.”

So smoothly that Elmer was sure the little worm had practiced it over and over in the privacy of his double-wide, Jeff snicked the saber from its scabbard and arced it, bringing the rounded tip forward until it pressed against Elmer’s breastbone.

“The Confederate States of America can brook no insubordination in the ranks,” the captain said, and his eyes were a color that Elmer had never seen, a smoky gray rimmed with red that looked for all the world like the haze over a wasted battlefield.

The tip of the saber pressed harder, and Elmer was relieved it was a cavalier’s sword, made for slashing instead of skewering, or the steel would have worked through the fabric to his skin.

Elmer flicked his eyes to the photographer, hoping she’d get a shot in case Elmer decided to press charges. The dyke’s hands were on her hips, and she glared as if she were disappointed by a coward’s betrayal. The women of the civilian attachment had paused in their chores, awaiting the disciplinary action to come. The other soldiers continued to stare straight ahead, and a glance at Wally’s ruddy face told Elmer that the walrus-assed drunk was glad that it was Elmer instead of him getting the verbal corn-holing.

Despite the increased pressure of the saber, Elmer was mulling whether to call Jeff’s bluff and tell him at least his kid wasn’t a little Swisher Sweet in a pink velvet wrapper. Then he saw the actors coming through the woods, heading for the creek from the direction of Mulatto Mountain.

It must have been the boys from the Eighth Tennessee Regiment, because they were decked out in gear that looked so authentic that it might have been dragged through Manassas and back. But the uniforms were filthy and not all of it standard, which added to the realism but didn’t really fit the spirit of modern re-enactors, who were prodded by men like Jeff until they spent all their money on approved replicas. Plus, these uniforms were a mix of Union blue and Homeland gray.

“What do you have to say for yourself, Private?” Jeff said, chicory now joining the odors that rode his words.

Elmer decided to let Jeff play his little game, but that didn’t mean the whole world would play along. He nodded toward the camp’s perimeter. “Looks like we got company.”

Without lowering the saber, Jeff craned his neck around, almost sniffing the air like a groundhog testing for danger. “Company?”

“The guys from Bristol,” Elmer said, and then he remembered the Tennessee History Brigade wasn’t due to arrive until tomorrow. They must have camped before dawn, maybe parking on the logging roads that wound around Mulatto, getting dressed and planning a surprise attack.

Not a bad strategy, except for the fact that the audience hadn’t arrived, the battle was supposed to be scripted, and these guys looked like they’d been shitting in the woods for a decade instead of fresh off a sit-down breakfast at Denny’s.

“Don’t count on reinforcements in this battle,” Jeff said. Smoke roiled in his eyes, and the narrow shape of them resembled the way Bobby’s got when he was pissed off or paranoid. “Out here, we’re on our own, the only thing standing between the devil and the folks back home.”

“Okay, Jeff, I get it,” Elmer said, quiet enough that even Wally and Darren would have had to strain to hear. “You got a hard-on for brass tacks, maybe you had a hard-on for Vernell, and you got a hard-on for this little make-believe world because your real life is crap. And I couldn’t give two hairy rats fucking in a sock. Play your little game, but leave me out of it.”

Elmer was reaching for the blade of the saber, telling himself it was only a toy, kept dull so that no one got hurt in the heat of pretend war. The Tennessee regiment was still advancing, but they were fading to smoke themselves, blending with the morning haze that hung over the creek.

Elmer thought his eyes were going, fuzzing out from a stroke.

He reached out as if to wipe away the gauze that hovered before him. His hand wrapped around the cold steel of the sword, grateful for its solidity, his heart ticking like a sick clock.

“No insubordination,” Jeff said, stepping back and flicking his wrist, withdrawing the blade so that Elmer’s hand became a sheath. The fleshy pads around Elmer’s palm grew wet, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the stacks of gray mist marching through the trees, and as the soldiers’ bodies melted into the air, those haunted, weary faces hung around a little bit longer, floating like echoes of lost screams.

“The Tennessee boys,” Elmer said, lifting his throbbing hand to point.

Red rain leaked from his palm, spattering on the dead leaves and dying grass. The shapes had dissolved, and now the sounds of the forest were back, mockingbirds warbling in the high branches, the creek tinkling like the tools of a thousand mess kits, the sugar-weighted maples flapping a gentle goodbye as they slid toward winter’s sleep.

Pain flared up Elmer’s arm, electric fire shrieking for attention, consuming all thoughts of invisible soldiers and his insane neighbor and the buddies beside him who must have chugged from the same coo-coo juice as Jeff. He looked at his wound, where yellow wells of fat protruded from the surgical splits in his skin.

Say what you want about Jeff, but the crazy fucker knows how to handle a whetstone.

“Nothing there, soldier,” Jeff said.

The newspaper photographer put the camera to her eye, balancing the long lens and scanning the forest. Elmer pitched forward, falling to his knees. None of his comrades moved a muscle.

“Company!” Jeff bellowed, and the soldiers tensed and straightened. “Dismissed.”

The soldiers relaxed and scattered, breaking into conversation. Wally slapped Elmer on the back. “Hey, this is going to be a hoot, ain’t it?”

Elmer gripped his wound, trying to stanch the flow of blood. “Yeah, a real wing ding. Say, did you see those soldiers in the woods?”

Wally blinked his bloodshot eyes, his replica musket leaning at parade rest. “The soldiers won’t get here till tomorrow.”

“That’s what I figured,” Elmer said, standing on wobbly legs.

“You’re looking a mite pale,” Wally said. “Heat getting to you? These wool clothes are a bitch.”

“Yeah,” Elmer said. “How about a cup of coffee?”

“Sure, come on over to the truck.”

“Got any of that Jack left? I could use a little lift.”

“Yeah. What happened to your hand?”

“It’s nothing. Just an old war wound.”

“Hilarious,” Wally said, belching the word. “Come on, before Jeff makes us set up camp.”

They passed Jeff, Wally snapping off an open-handed Confederate salute. Elmer imitated it, making sure Jeff saw the blood. Jeff didn’t smile or smirk, merely returned the salute as if they were miles from the front lines and settling into the routine of a weekend bivouac. Elmer heard the distant rattling of a snare drum from the forest, but figured it was another trick of his imagination, so he tucked the bill of his kepi over his eyes and followed Wally to the canteen.

He didn’t look back at the shadows beneath the freckled October canopy, nor the shapes that might have moved amid the low-lying gloom.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The morning sun poured its voyeuristic light through the trailer window.

Vernon Ray fingering the ragged opening in the wool just above the kepi’s bill. The hole was ringed by a rust-colored stain and it could only have been made by a musket ball. The original wearer of the kepi had undoubtedly died from the wound. Surgery of any kind during the Civil War almost invariably ended in gangrene or staph infection, if typhus didn’t get you first.

Vernon Ray tried on the cap for the tenth time. He’d slept with it under his pillow, afraid his dad would see it. Dad’s memorabilia and replicas were carefully catalogued, so Vernon Ray couldn’t be accused of stealing the kepi from The Room, but he didn’t know how to explain where he’d gotten it.

But he shouldn’t have worried; Capt. Davis was far too busy dressing for Stoneman’s Raid to notice that his son had been late for dinner and sick enough to miss school.

Vernon Ray stood before his dresser mirror, tilting the bill forward so he had to peer out from under the oiled canvas.

Soldier material. Battle fit and ready for action.

His reflection snapped off an open-palmed Rebel salute and he marched four brisk steps until he reached his bed then spun on one heel and marched smartly back to the dresser. He let his feet hammer the vinyl flooring, making as much noise as he wanted. Dad was already at Aldridge Park for the re-enactment and Mom had tagged along as part of the civilian attachment, probably brewing up some gritty coffee and trying to keep the hem of her hoop skirt out of the fire.

Vernon Ray should have been in school, but he’d pretended to be sick. Good old belly ache, his folks were used to it, his dad saying he was born with a “weak stomach, probably got it from Martha Faye’s side of the family.”

The emptiness of the house gave him a tingle inside, so in a way, the reported ache wasn’t a lie. He’d not been nauseated, just aching for something he couldn’t name.

He thought about breaking into The Room to try on some gear, but Dad had added an extra lock after last week’s little adventure and Vernon Ray couldn’t gain access without damaging the wood. Besides, he had his own uniform now, or at least a piece of it.

“Private Davis reporting for duty, sir,” he said to the mirror, half expecting the colonel’s face to appear in the silvered glass and give him his marching orders. He’d dreamed of the colonel, though the events had been diffuse and broken up in bits of restless sleep. All he remembered was darkness, a cold campfire, and the whispers of voices from hidden quarters.

He cocked the cap to one side in a jaunty pose, goofing off around camp to entertain the soldiers. They deserved a little break from the grim duty of legalized murder. He reached up to adjust it back—

Tak tak tak.

Someone was tapping on the window.

Vernon Ray flung the kepi under his bed and thought about jumping onto the covers. He was pale and shaky enough to fake a fever. But only one person ever knocked on his window. Vernon Ray went to it, and there was Bobby’s gorgeous, worried face. Vernon Ray cranked the window open.

“Jeez, I thought you were a goner,” Bobby said.

“Nah, I’m okay. Just got a belly ache.”

“Sorry I ran out on you. I was—”

“Forget it.”

“It was black hat, total bad guy.”

“It was the only thing you could do. And I told you to, remember?”

“Still . . . .”

“Forget it,” Vernon Ray said, his gaze crawling back to the space under the bed where the kepi lay in shadows.

“What happened?”

“Why aren’t you in school?”

“I skipped after first period. It’s just gym.”

“You like gym.”

“I thought he was going to slice you like liver mush, Vee.”

Vernon Ray released the tabs on the window screen and pushed it out, where Bobby caught it and set it against the trailer’s aluminum skirt. Bobby launched himself up and inside the room. Vernon Ray sat on the bed while Bobby slouched at the computer desk and stared at a chess board where Vernon Ray was in the middle of a solo game.

“He just disappeared after you left,” Vernon Ray said. “You know how those theories of transubstantiation go. It probably took all his energy to materialize enough to scare you away.”

“Yeah, I felt all tingly and weird, like static electricity was crackling on the tips of my hair.”

“Drawing juice from us, like a car draining a battery.”

“So he didn’t do anything?”

“Nah,” Vernon Ray said, wondering if Bobby would mention their near kiss. He doubted it, since the bedroom would be about the most uncomfortable place to bring it up.

“What are we going to do about the ghosts?”

“Why do you think we have to do anything? They’re not good or evil, they’re just there.”

“Except for what happened to Carter, you mean? And I got a feeling I’m on their hit list and I’m not even a Yankee.”

“Kirk’s Raiders were rejects from both sides,” Vernon Ray said. “They were equal-opportunity haters. If you believe the history books, but I’m not so sure of the truth anymore.”

“I don’t get it. They let you go twice now. They could have got you when we were spying on them from the Hole. Now Col. Creep has you cornered and just disappears?”

“Maybe I was born lucky. But he let you go, too.”

“They must want something,” Bobby said.

“Certainly not prisoners.”

“Maybe just casualties.” Bobby reached across the desk and moved one of the chess pieces. “Check.”

Vernon Ray crossed the room to the chess board. “You’re making two dangerous assumptions, Bobby. You assume we can actually have an effect on the ghosts and you assume whatever we do will be in their best interests.”

“Sure, ‘Go toward the light’ and all that crap. They probably have another level of heaven to move on to, or whatever.”

Vernon Ray moved a knight, his favorite piece due to its deceptive nature, blocking Bobby’s threat to the king. “What if that’s the worst possible thing for them? What if you’re sending them to heaven instead of the hell where they belong?”

Let’s not belong together. Maybe Kirk knows something we don’t.

“That’s not the point. They don’t belong here. When it’s over, it’s over, and you just bury the past and move on.”

“And who made Bobby Eldreth lord and master of the universe?”

“Hey, at least I’m trying to do something.” Bobby slid a pawn forward.

“Maybe we should just leave them alone.”

“And hope they go away?”

“And hope they do whatever they’re meant to do.” Vernon Ray angled his bishop forward. “Checkmate.”

Bobby leaned over the board and flicked his king with one finger so that it fell and rolled across the board, scattering other pieces. “I’m going to the battlefield. You can sit around and wait for them to take over the town if you want.”

“What in the world would they want with the town?”

“That one ghost soldier, the one we saw on the railroad tracks? Earley Eggers? He’s like an outcast, a deserter or something. They were shooting at him when they killed Carter. You heard the reporter. Earley Eggers lived in Titusville, and maybe he’s bound for home and the others don’t like it.”

“Like that guy in Cold Mountain,” Vernon Ray said. His dad not only possessed an autographed copy of the Charles Frazier novel, he’d made the family watch the Nicole Kidman movie every night during its entire two-week run at the Regal Cineplex.

“Maybe they’re hunting him.”

“But that doesn’t make sense, because if they can get out of the Hole, they can escape, too.”

“Maybe Deserter Boy has found another way to transubstantiate. A portable power source. Or maybe he finally heeded the call of hearth of home.”

“V-Ray, if we could prove all this, we’d be rich and famous, like what’s-his-name on that paranormal show.”

“We couldn’t even snag a decent picture of a ghost. What, you expect to get one in the guest chair on ‘Oprah’?”

“Well, let’s go check out the war. Maybe Kirk will come down to scout out the enemy. If nothing else, we’ll get to see our dads make fools of themselves.”

“Sounds like an adventure. Beats the hell out of algebra.”

They stood at the same time, bringing them closer together than they’d been since Bobby had climbed in the window. Vernon Ray realized they’d deliberately put distance between themselves the entire time and now they shared a collective breath.

“Uh, about that thing in the shed,” Bobby said.

“I told you, he disappeared right after you left.”

“No, the other thing.”

“Nothing happened, remember?”

“Yeah. I just want you to know it’s okay. I mean, if I liked guys—you know, in that way . . . .”

Vernon Ray lowered his eyes, bit his lip to rein in a pout, and nodded, willing himself not to cry. Christ, first I try to kiss him and now I’m about to open the floodgates like a goddamned little girl.

He shifted his gaze to the bed and the kepi, whose brim was just visible at the dusty edge of darkness. He recalled the comfort and security the hat gave him, the sense of belonging, as if he’d finally discovered himself and that he was okay.

It didn’t matter what Bobby or anyone else—any living person—thought of him, because the colonel found him worthy.

“It was nothing,” Vernon Ray said.

Bobby blurted his words in a rush, as if letting them linger might leave him vulnerable and exposed in the bits of silence between. “You’re my best friend and I love you like a brother, and whatever you do is fine with me, but I love Karen Greene and not guys and I don’t think you’re sick or anything—”

“Don’t.” Vernon Ray raised his hand, gaining self-confidence through the memory of the colonel’s understanding-but-hollow gaze. “Don’t try too hard. That’s worse than not trying at all.”

Bobby moved to the window and poised like a superhero about to fly to somebody’s rescue. “I’m cool with whatever.”

Then Bobby was gone, slipping out with an athletic grace that caused a mild flutter in Vernon Ray’s stomach.

The colonel’s phantom words echoed again: We don’t belong together.

He grabbed his backpack, retrieved the kepi, brushed it over his head just long enough to savor its comfort, and then squirreled it away. Tossing the backpack over his shoulder, he followed his best friend through the window and into a world where being queer was weirder than being supernatural.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Sheriff Frank Littlefield wove his cruiser between the horse trailers that were lined up along the edge of the parking lot. The Living History Society had set up a fledgling camp, and a few of the soldiers were sitting on logs and eating from tin plates. Women in bonnets and dresses bustled around tending fires and carrying water from the creek.

A couple of kids in wool britches and loose cotton shirts were playing army, using tree branches as make-believe rifles. As the sheriff got out of the car, he heard one yell, “Bang! You’re dead.”

The intended target, a red-headed boy whose floppy hat nearly covered his eyes, said, “Am not!”

Which Littlefield believed could just about sum up the situation for a lot of folks in Titusville lately.

The clouds were high and fine, promising a cool, dry October day. Mist wreathed the faces of the mountains, the vapor rising from dewy valleys to burn away under the sun. Laughter and birdsong filled Aldridge Park, and the sheriff relaxed a little.

Just a normal day in the war.

Cindy Baumhower was interviewing one of the uniformed men, camera slung over one shoulder. The incident at the bowling alley would be the headline, but a feature story on the local tourist event would get some good play to stroke the business community. Littlefield had cited Mac McAllister with discharging a firearm in a public building and disturbing the peace, but the bowling mogul had made bail before the ink had dried on the processing papers.

If Littlefield didn’t somehow plug the Hole and find a way to exterminate this little supernatural infestation, then Pickett County might become the Disneyland of the Dead, with ghosts pouring in from every crack in the Appalachian Mountains. And that would draw national media attention, which in turn would bring investigative reporters who would want to know more about The Red Church, Littlefield’s dead chief deputy, and the whereabouts of Rev. Archer McFall.

The past should stay in the past and the dead should stay dead, and the living deserved to rest in peace far more than did those who had gone before.

Littlefield walked to the camp as a couple of dress-up soldiers mounted horses at the end of the field. The air was ripe with the odors of creek mud, horse manure, and wood smoke. A dozen or so locals had stopped by during their coffee breaks to get an early glimpse of the coming battle, and a handful were gathered around Cindy as if watching the media coverage of the event was more exciting than the event itself.

A line of locust fencing marked one end of the park and a dense row of hardwoods bordered the other two sides. The shaded woods seemed a little menacing in their closeness, especially since they were part of the same living-and-breathing ecosystem that covered Mulatto Mountain.

Christ, now you’re even giving trees the power of the paranormal. What next, Casper the Friendly Ghost in tap-dancing shoes?

Jeff Davis was drinking coffee under a raised tent flap that was held up with skinned birch branches. A wooden table had his papers spread across it, and Littlefield assumed they contained maps and details of the re-enactment.

As the sheriff passed through the camp, he felt a strange kinship with the uniformed men, even though he’d arrested a couple of them. Elmer, who had once gone down for a drunk and disorderly during an explosive Fourth of July, waved at him with a bandaged hand and drank from a canvas-covered canteen.

“How’s it going, Jeff?” Littlefield said when he reached the tent.

“It’s ‘Captain’ out here,” Jeff said. His hat was off and his dark hair was slicked back with some sort of gel.

Or maybe possum fat, if he’s gone Southern for the duration.

“I just dropped by to check on things,” Littlefield said, wondering whether Jeff now considered himself of higher rank than sheriff. “People are a mite antsy after the McAllister incident.”

“Mac’s no longer in the regiment,” Jeff said.

“No, but he was shooting at invisible people, and there’s a little too much of that going around lately. Not to mention the real people who are getting shot.”

“War is hell,” Jeff said, his eyes cold and strange. He seemed a different man than the one who’d been sitting in Littlefield’s office the day before, somber and weighted with duty. “Whether it’s real or not.”

“The permit allows me the right to inspect any firearms on the premises,” Littlefield said.

Jeff smiled and fished the revolver from his holster. He set the pistol on the table as if daring the sheriff to spin it for a game of Russian roulette. “Go ahead. Colt revolver, a period piece. Only 4,000 issued.”

Littlefield, who appreciated firearms but was no historian, picked it up and opened the chamber. He shucked out one of the bullets and looked at it. The jacket was packed with tissue paper. Blanks had been known to kill people, most notably the actor Brandon Lee, who was shot by a prop pistol on set. A permit had not done a bit of good in stopping the concussion from propelling a lodged slug into Lee’s abdomen.

“What about your soldiers?” Littlefield asked, replacing the bullet and clicking the chamber closed.

“They’re a little rough around the edges but we’ll be ready when Stoneman and his boys roll through,” Jeff said. “Not much on spit and polish, but plenty of grit and backbone.”

Littlefield gave a smile, his first in days. “I meant their safety habits, not their fighting spirit.”

Jeff’s eyes remained distant. “They know how to handle their weapons. We’ve been training all year for this battle.”

“I’m sure the Confederacy will sleep better tonight, knowing you’re standing sentry.” Littlefield handed the revolver back to Jeff, butt first. The two mounted cavalry units thundered across the field, sod flying from the horses’ hooves.

“It’s not just about defending the home front,” Jeff said. “It’s a matter of principle.”

Littlefield flinched in anticipation of a lecture in which state’s rights and not slavery was to blame for the Civil War. It had been boring in the seventh grade and had not grown a bit more compelling in the years since. Instead, the erstwhile captain rolled the right tip of his moustache between his fingers and stared off toward Mulatto Mountain and slipped into a monotone, as if not aware of his words.

“The real enemy’s waiting up there. The ones who won’t do the honorable thing and give their lives for their beliefs. No, they make a mockery of all that is noble and sacred, all that’s worth fighting for.”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

“Howdy, Sheriff,” a woman’s voice called, and Littlefield welcomed the distraction, though Cindy’s greetings were usually followed by criticism, questions, or plain old pestering.

“Hi, Cindy, you getting some good copy?”

“Maybe,” she said, giving her journalism-school smile. “The way trouble follows you around, I’m sure the best is yet to come.”

“You got it backwards. Trouble doesn’t follow me, I follow it. That’s my job.”

“I guess that explains all those ghosts rattling chains in your attic.”

“She gets it, even if you don’t,” Jeff said.

KER-chewwww.

The gunshot rolled across the valley. One of the horses whinnied and reared and its rider slumped against the horse’s neck, trying to hold on.

The sheriff glanced around, seeing if any of the soldiers were testing their weapons or holding mock drills.

Jeff rose from his chair, slipping on his hat and giving the crown a tap to paste it against his greasy hair. He glanced at a pocket watch that hung from a silver chain and gave a little nod. “A bit early, but then, who ever expected Kirk’s Raiders to fight fair?”

The captain tugged down his tunic and shrugged his shoulders, squaring his epaulets as his passed between Cindy and Littlefield.

“That’s a man on a mission,” Cindy said after he was gone.

“More like a man jerking off to his own private wet dream,” Littlefield said.

“Is that off the record?”

“It’s just plain off.”

Another shot rang out with its percussive echo. Jeff Davis broke into a jog, headed for the camp and the seated men. The rider clinging to the restless horse pitched forward and fell to the ground, where he lay without moving.

“Man, that looked like it hurt,” Cindy said. “Good acting.”

“That’s nothing. We played dead all the time when I was a kid. Me and my brother—”

Cindy’s eyes flicked to his face so rapidly that her penetrating gaze stopped him before regret had a chance. “What?”

“Nothing,” Littlefield said, brushing past her. “I’m going to see if that guy’s okay.”

The second rider was wheeling his horse around, scouting the woods beyond the creek. Jeff yelled at the men, making dramatic motions with his arms. They were gathering their weapons and adjusting their gear when another shot rang out.

KER-cheww. ZeeeeEEEEEP.

Littlefield heard something whistling past his head. It had accelerated far too fast for an insect and carried a peculiar, violent quality, as if ripping the sky in half.

The rider slapped his horse on the flank and galloped toward camp. Half a dozen horses, tethered under a tall maple, whinnied and tugged against their leather restraints. Jeff reached the tents and stirred the men, rousing them into formation.

“He takes his make-believe seriously,” Cindy said, following Littlefield across the pasture.

The sheriff didn’t answer. He was watching the rider who had fallen to the grass. The man lay as limp as a bag of wet cotton.

Another shot rang out, and one of the women gave a high-pitched yelp.

“Now he’s got everybody following the script,” Cindy said.

A woman in a green dress and white bonnet held her arm, moaning in pain. Blood poured down to her elbow, staining the cloth.

“Somebody’s shooting!” Littlefield shouted. “Stay low.”

He ducked, fishing his Glock from its holster as he ran toward the prone rider. He reached the man and crouched, glancing around at the edge of the woods. Seeing no one, he checked the man’s pulse. Nothing.

He rolled the body over. A blossom of rich blood oozed from the man’s chest, an apparent shot to the heart. There had been no wound in the back, meaning the bullet must have lodged in the flesh and was likely of a low caliber.

Figures that this event would attract some lunatic sniper who never met a war he didn’t like, even a fake one.

He mentally flicked through the roster of potential nutcases in the county–Weejun Li, the Korean peacenik; Laney Curtis, the income-tax protestor and resident rabid libertarian; and Sam Wakeman, the alcoholic Vietnam veteran who had suffered a breakdown in the Walmart one Christmas and slugged the hell out of Santa Claus.

But none of them seemed to possess the type of hair trigger that would kill a man. Besides, Wakeman was in the camp, one hand tugging up his too-large trousers as he scrambled for his equipment.

The camp was in chaos now, despite Jeff’s bellowing attempts to restore order. “In line, soldiers!” he screamed, his face as purple as a plum.

The soldiers, some of them with their gray tunics undone or missing their hats, wrestled with their replica weapons, confused by the commotion. Elmer Eldreth had the butt of his rifle against his shoulder, peering down the barrel as if sighting an unseen enemy. Cindy, who had been startled at the sheriff’s revelation of live fire, was now in full swing, pressing the button on her digital camera as fast as the machinery could process the information.

Two shots sounded almost simultaneously, then a third, and Littlefield realized this attack wasn’t the work of a lone nut job. The shots appeared to be coming from the woods near the creek, though he still saw no movement or smoke in that direction.

“Here we go, boys,” Jeff yelled, yanking out his saber and waving it in the air. “Time to give those heathen devils a taste of Confederate steel. Charge!”

The squadron of soldiers—maybe 10 in all—stood in loose formation and moved ahead in unison at Jeff’s command. The civilian attachment hovered around the wounded woman in the camp. Martha Davis had ripped a strip of ruffled cloth from the hem of her dress and was winding it around the wound in a makeshift bandage. If not for the cooling corpse that lay beside him, Littlefield would have thought it was just a well-acted scene, carefully rehearsed and delivered for maximum dramatic effect.

“Sheriff,” Cindy called, waving to get his attention. She pointed toward the creek.

Littlefield blinked, blinked again.

Shapes moved against the trees, flimsy as late fog.

Like the man in the lumber yard . . . .

He didn’t know which was more surreal: the wafting, sinuous shapes or the flesh-and-blood men in replica military uniforms who approached in battle formation, muskets lowered and bayonets fixed.

He had no idea if real bullets would have any affect on ghost soldiers, but there was no doubt supernatural bullets could cut through human meat. The proof was cooling at his feet.

“Keep low,” he yelled at Cindy, knowing she would ignore him and do her best to document the bizarre encounter. He duck-walked after Jeff Davis and his squad, keeping his head down, thighs aching from the unnatural movement.

A shout came from the woods, the voice hollow as if emanating from deep within the Earth. “Commence fire!”

A volley exploded from the forest, slugs zipping through the air. One of Jeff’s men groaned and fell to his knees, and he perched there with his head bowed forward like a penitent in prayer. Littlefield doubted there was any god around to hear the begging, because if God existed, then the dead and living would stay on their respective sides. The line of soldiers pressed on in the face of the unholy fusillade, and Jeff waved his sword and urged the men toward their barely visible enemy.

The ghost soldiers solidified a little more, as if interacting with the material world had given them sustenance and form. They were little more than the suggestion of shapes, but Littlefield pieced together glimpses of Kirk’s Raiders. They were a ragtag bunch, their frayed uniforms a mix of gray and blue, stained cotton showing in the rips.

Littlefield guessed there were a dozen of them, but it was difficult to determine numbers because of their constant shifting. The gun smoke that issued from their rifle barrels was whisked away on the breeze, the muffled sound of their powder charges rumbling under the autumn canopy. Littlefield felt foolish holding his Glock, but it gave him a dose of courage and kept him from turning and running for the safety of his cruiser.

Except why would the cruiser be any safer in a world that allows its dead to rise up and kill?

Jeff ordered his men to fire, and the soldiers put their weapons to their shoulders. They’d be firing blanks, loose paper wadding and a few grains of black powder. Jeff Davis was sending his men into the lion’s den without so much as a thimble of catnip.

The Home Guard fired in a staccato rhythm, the shot peppering the trees.

Real bullets. Damned if Jeff didn’t defy the terms of the permit after all. Maybe he knew something I didn’t . . . not that I’d have believed him if he told me the war was about to pick up where it had left off a century-and-a-half ago.

One of the otherworldly warriors eased from the cover of a thick maple and took three wobbling steps toward the creek, clutching his neck. Littlefield instinctively lifted his Glock, though the target was at least 50 yards away and beyond range. The ghost soldier dropped his rifle, then pitched forward and began crawling for the water.

Christ, now I’m part of the horror show, he thought, lowering his weapon. Behind him, Cindy was twisting the focus on her camera lens, standing up, legs parted to steady her visual aim. Littlefield continued his stooped, awkward jog until he caught up with Jeff.

A projectile whined past his head as he grabbed Jeff’s arm. “Don’t you know the word ‘retreat,’ you hard-headed son of a bitch?”

Jeff gave him that vacant gaze with eyes as dead as the amorphous men in the forest. “There’s glory waiting,” he said. “And revenge.”

“Revenge for what?”

“This time, we get to win.”

Littlefield fought the urge to punch the man in his weak chin and smear blood all over the carefully trimmed mustache. The erstwhile captain was clearly caught up in whatever mass hysteria had taken over Pickett County. Littlefield wished he had a rational explanation, such as contaminated food, a terrorist drugging of the water supply, an Army laboratory leak, or even an old-fashioned alien infection.

He’d prefer any of those over the possibility that his home county and his constituency were beyond the laws of physics and religion. At the moment, he’d even welcome back Rev. Archer McFall and his demented cult of flesh eaters.

Better the devil you know . . . .

The Home Guard was now 30 yards from the edge of the forest, and several of Jeff’s men were reloading their muskets, skinnying long metal poles down the barrels to pack in more shot. Littlefield saw they were cramming hunks of dull gray metal among the paper wadding. Elmer Eldreth had a red ragged tear in his shoulder, but he ignored the wound as he lifted his rifle and squinted into the trees for dead prey.

“You were ready for this,” Littlefield shouted at Jeff, but the captain was intent on waving his men forward.

“A soldier is ready for anything,” Jeff said, breaking into a run and sending a Rebel yell into the sky that turned Littlefield’s blood to ice water.

He realized he wouldn’t be able to dissuade Jeff or rescue the soldiers who were determined to follow their crazed commander to the grave and possibly beyond, so he decided to turn his attention to the women and children who had taken cover in the parking lot, hiding among the trucks and horse trailers. They appeared unaffected by whatever insanity afflicted the menfolk, though they likely didn’t know the “enemy” in the woods had risen from the grave.

Cindy was helping the wounded man up from his knees and Littlefield ran to them, bracing against the murderous projectiles whizzing across the field.

“You should have plugged the Hole while you had a chance,” Cindy said to him when he arrived.

“Like my crystal ball showed a pack of ghosts waiting to come out and play ‘Peek-a-boo’?”

“You knew something was up and you just pretended it would go away,” she said. “Just like the red church.”

The wounded man—Littlefield now recognized him as Chalky Watkins, a member of the Titusville Volunteer Fire Department—moaned and Littlefield checked him for damage. Chalky had taken a shot to the hip, a crease wound from the looks of it.

“Just like them Yanks to pull a sneak attack,” Chalky said, as if he’d have been invincible if the ghosts had only stood eye-to-eye and fought fair.

“You’re going to be okay,” the sheriff said, his words nearly drowned by the reverberation of charged powder. He slid his Glock into its holster so he could drag the man to safety.

“Patch me up and get me back out there,” Chalky said. “Looks like the boys are going to need me.”

Chalky had a point; at least three other men had fallen and the Home Guard’s ranks were visibly thinner. Jeff had moved well ahead of his unit and Littlefield wondered if his frantic recklessness made him a difficult target. Jeff seemed to be almost daring the ghosts to kill him, as if he’d been denied his chance to die in battle and now was making the most of opportunity.

“When they said the South would rise again, I don’t think this is what they had in mind,” the sheriff said.

“It’s not just the South,” Cindy said. “That’s Kirk’s Raiders, men from both sides, which you’d have known if you’d taken your job seriously.”

“Spare me the lecture,” he said, propping Chalky against his hip and dragging him toward the parking lot.

“Looks like you’ve got the situation under control,” she said, relinquishing her share of Chalky’s weight to punctuate her sarcasm. The sheriff nearly lost his balance, but braced himself and continued his mission. Cindy was right. He couldn’t stop this supernatural battle, so he focused on one small act that he could claim was “good.”

And conveniently get myself out of the firing line at the same time . . . .

Yeah, just like old times.

“Sorry, Chalky, you’re just going to have to grin and bear it,” he said, letting the middle-aged man slide to the ground. Chalky grunted and called Littlefield something that sounded like “yellow-bellied traitorous scuppernong,” but the sheriff was already racing after Cindy, the bullets still whizzing overhead but their frequency diminished.

Jeff’s troops had reached the edge of the woods, and the enemy must have broken ranks and retreated under the suicide charge.

That’s when a man stepped from the woods and stared down the assault, holding his own saber to match Jeff’s. He was bearded, wearing a cavalry hat, and his breast was decorated with medals. “Fall back,” he shouted, his voice echoing out as if from a cold, rocky cave.

Except Littlefield couldn’t have sworn in a court of law that the words had been shouted; they may have merely fallen from the sky or crawled up through the ground from his feet to his skull.

The man looked so solid that Littlefield wondered if he were one of the re-enactors, but then he noticed the man’s dusty boots were several inches off the ground. Littlefield realized the bearded man was the officer of the dead, the Big Cheese of the buried brigade, Kirk himself. Littlefield drew his Glock, thinking that if he somehow killed the leader, the others would dissolve and drift back to whatever netherland they had escaped from.

The Hole…back to the Hole…

He steadied himself, leveled his arm, and fired.

The bullet whizzed through the empty space where the colonel had been standing moments before, not even a thread of mist to mark his passing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

They were on the railroad tracks when the first shot sounded, and Bobby figured somebody down at the camp was popping one off early, probably showing off a new gun. It’s not like the fake soldiers needed target practice, since they were shooting blanks.

When the next few shots up echoed from Aldridge Park, Vernon Ray said, “They weren’t supposed to start until tomorrow.”

“Maybe the other side isn’t playing by the rules,” Bobby said.

“Lame,” Vernon Ray said. “If you’re going to employ gallows humor, at least try to be funny.”

“Should we go down and check it out?”

“Think the reporter’s there?”

“Well, she could either cover the re-enactment or sit around the office waiting for two dorks to walk in with another bizarre tale of occult encounters.”

“I’m not a dork. You’re the dork.”

“Nah, I’m more like a geek,” Vernon Ray said.

Bobby wasn’t sure homosexuals could be geeks. Neither of them had pimples yet, and Vernon Ray was skinny and Bobby was a jock, but they both read comic books.

Maybe the only difference was Vernon Ray hated Star Wars and Bobby had seen all the movies at least twice and owned a busty action figure of Princess Leia.

Except Vernon Ray would rather kiss Han Solo . . . .

They increased their pace, juiced by the adrenaline of the unknown. The staccato volley of shots was louder now, and Bobby guessed there were dozens of guns going off. “Sounds like a war.”

“If Dad has anything to do with it, the sooner, the better.”

“He’s getting his jollies, then.”

“I don’t want to think about Dad’s jollies.”

Bobby was about to blurt out a comeback, but figured it might hit too close to home. Half of all eighth-grade jokes centered on guys giving blowjobs. Bobby wondered if he’d ever be able to tell a “queer joke” again. Even before he’d begun wondering about Vernon Ray, he’d never found them all that funny, but in the locker room, you had to laugh at them just the same.

Something crackled overhead, making a sudden beeline through the treetops. A yellow leaf fluttered down against the dizzying sunshine. Bobby recognized the sound from the incident with the bulldozer man.

“Crap, that was a real bullet,” Bobby said, instinctively hunching.

“Think somebody’s hunting this close to town?”

“No, I think your buddies from the Hole—”

Bobby swallowed the rest of his sentence. On the tracks ahead of them, three soldiers materialized, running at full speed.

Except their boots aren’t touching the ground.

“It’s them,” Vernon Ray said, his voice flat.

They were 50 yards away. Vernon Ray had told Bobby about the inaccuracy of Civil War-era weaponry. Still, the image of the bulldozer man’s shattering skull was vivid, and Bobby wasn’t willing to bet his life that these dudes’ rifles followed rules of any sort.

“Come on,” Bobby said, grabbing Vernon Ray and jerking him toward the woods.

One of the soldiers shouted—except Bobby couldn’t be sure if the noise was audible or just in his head—and the nearest soldier was slowing enough to raise his rifle butt to his shoulder.

And though Bobby stood near Vernon Ray, it was clear the soldier was targeting Bobby alone.

He either thinks I’m the “leader,” or—

The pock of the powder charge echoed up the forested alley of the tracks. The shot nicked off the gravel in front of Bobby, kicking up a rock and skittering it against his shoe. If not for the canvas Nikes he wore, the stone would have cut into his flesh.

“Move it, or your disco days are done,” Vernon Ray said, pushing Bobby toward cover. Bobby reached the edge of the gravel railroad bed and slipped on the loose stone, flopping onto his butt and sliding into the brown bristle of briars and locust. A second shot zipped overhead, and Bobby rolled to his hands and feet, crawling deeper into the scrub brush. Damp leaves soaked his pants and thorns bit into his palms, but he scurried forward toward the gurgling creek, wrestling doghobble and honeysuckle vines.

The tracks were now out of sight, along with Vernon Ray. Bobby was afraid to call out lest he attract unwanted attention, but if he reached the creek he’d be exposed.

Great, I’ve thrown my best friend to the wolves again.

Except that didn’t quite jibe, either. Vernon Ray had not only survived his encounter with Col. Creep, he’d come out of it with his chin up and a little strut. And the troops on the tracks had not aimed at Vernon Ray at all. Maybe they’d picked Bobby because he was a moving target and the most likely to escape, but if the dead really were at war with the living, then any victim should have done the job.

Before Bobby could dwell on the puzzle, other shouts erupted from the woods. He recognized his dad’s voice among them: “They’re on the tracks!”

Bobby wanted to warn them that their quarry wasn’t real, but he didn’t know how many ghosts were around. About a dozen had surrounded him on the mountain just before killing the bulldozer guy, and who knew whether the dead could summon reinforcements? For all he knew, they could have dug up a Confederate graveyard somewhere and raised an entire army.

He held his breath, but his heartbeat pounded in his ears, muffling the creek that splashed between cold stones. The sulfur smell of ghost gunpowder hung in the air. Branches snapped as men plowed through the woods.

Ghosts shouldn’t make noise, right? But they can shoot real bullets. Why can’t these bastards play fair?

Vernon Ray’s dad yelled something Bobby couldn’t make out. No shots had been fired in the last minute or so, but Bobby’s heart had probably drummed a thousand beats in that time. The Living History soldiers were moving up the tracks, which meant the ghost soldiers must have moseyed the hell back up the mountain.

But where was Vernon Ray?

Bobby crawled out of concealment, accompanied by the pungent tang of broken milkweed. Briars tugged at his clothes but he fought through, afraid he’d be left behind.

As he crawled out of the woods, several of the re-enactors ran along the tracks. He recognized Stony Hampton and Whizzer Buchanan, two well-diggers who sometimes worked with his dad. They were out of breath, legs pumping, gravel flying from beneath their boots. Whizzer’s dented tin canteen bounced against his bony ass, making a pinging sound.

Ahead on the tracks, Vernon Ray’s dad was leading the way, his revolver pointed at the sky. The ghost soldiers had either vanished or had kicked into some sort of supernatural gear and choo-chooed away.

And Vernon Ray had vanished with them.

“What the hell you doing here?”

Bobby turned to see his dad limping up the track, a bloody handkerchief wrapped around his bowling hand, a red wound blooming in his shoulder. “Me and Vernon Ray—”

“I told you not to hang around with that little faggot.”

“The ghosts took him.”

“The enemy, you mean.”

“Dad?” Bobby sniffed the air, wondering if his old man was drunk. A hint of bourbon, nothing more, and Dad could always hold his booze. His eyes were not bloodshot, but they were glazed, the pupils engorged.

“Your dad’s up yonder,” Dad said, nodding up the tracks.

“Huh?”

Dad’s face scrunched into a sneer. “Captain Jeffie Davis. The man who planted your seed.”

Dad brushed past him, tottering up the tracks. The rest of the Home Guard had rounded the curve and were lost among the trees. Bobby took two steps after them then realized he was heading toward the mountain and the ghost soldiers instead of away, to the sane safety of town.

“Are you okay, Dad?” Bobby was almost afraid to ask, because it was the sort of question that answered itself.

“Gone around the bend,” Dad said, gripping his musket so tightly his knuckles were white. A thick drop of blood welled at the end of his ragged bandage and his other wound looked like raw hamburger.

Dad took off, heading toward the shouts of his fellow soldiers. A shot fired somewhere on the slope above, then came an answering report from behind. Bobby debated crawling back into the obscurity of the weeds, pondering sitting out the war. But Vernon Ray was his best friend.

Who cares if he has Bambi eyelashes and a little extra wiggle in his walk? He’s the closest thing to normal I’ve known in this life.

And Dad had suggested an even tighter kinship between Vernon Ray and Bobby, but Bobby didn’t have time to figure that one out at the moment. His forehead hurt as if a wire were stretched around his skull. Dad was nearly to the curve in the tracks. In a moment, Bobby would be alone.

He glanced around for some kind of weapon, but the nearby branches were flimsy. He stuffed some rocks in his pocket, the way he did when they passed the mean dogs at the Stillwell house. Rocks didn’t intimidate the dogs one little bit, and Bobby didn’t expect they’d scare the ghosts, either, but the gesture made him feel better.

Th’ow it, doof.

If he’d stayed away from the Hole in the first place, all this never would have happened. But maybe the Hole was bigger than all of them, the inside-out darkness that was barely hidden by the thin painted illusion of life that lay over it.

He dashed after Dad, expecting to round the bend and find the entire Home Guard gone, Dad included, and the rest of the world giving way to a blank netherworld, the tracks dangling into the vast white void of space like a comic book page that had been partially erased.

Instead, he saw the battle lines drawn as if the stakes were not merely life and death, but past and future as well.

The ghost patrol stood in a loose formation behind Col. Creep, their weapons glinting dully as if they’d been salvaged from an underground cache. One of the men had a slanted face, his left eye frozen open, a jagged scar over one eyebrow. The colonel stood with his shoulders square, eyes blazing from beneath the brim of his cavalier’s hat. Kirk’s gloved hands were folded across his chest as if he’d been laid to rest that way, but Bobby didn’t think the colonel had gotten much sleep in the 150 years he’d been dead.

Behind the colonel was Vernon Ray, standing among the ghost soldiers as if he’d been recruited into their ranks. He was a little pale but appeared unhurt. A ragged, stained kepi was tucked down on his head.

Cindy’s words came back to Bobby: Or they’ll take a replacement . . . .

Jeff Davis and his men stood spread across the tracks, weapons at ready. The rounded tip of Jeff’s saber was pointed at the heavens, the polished edge gilded by the sun. Stony and Whizzer knelt in the gravel, muskets leveled. Five Home Guard troops stood behind them, Dad among them.

Dad aimed his gun and his cheek was pressed against the butt of his rifle as if he were sighting down the barrel. The battle cries had died away, along with the gun smoke, and leaves flapped in the hushed wind. The air carried the funereal taste of October, clouds brushing their slow shadows across the mountainsides and tinting the trees gray.

The two sides faced off, awaiting orders from above or below. Bobby couldn’t be sure because of the woolly beard, but Kirk appeared to be smiling, though the eyes were as black as rotted sin.

They’re making their stand. Which doesn’t make a bit of sense, because even a dummy like me knows they’d be better off defending higher ground.

But maybe they already occupy the high ground, because I sure can’t tell good from evil anymore.

“Looks like you’re done running, Kirk,” Capt. Davis said, as calm as if he were playing a video game. “I’d give you a chance to surrender, but I don’t think we make garrisons that can hold such as you.”

Bobby crouched behind Whizzer and Dad, peering through the gap in the firing line. The copper stink of Dad’s wound blended with the mustiness of the old uniforms and the acrid tang of gunpowder

Capt. Davis raised his saber toward the sky and leveled his pistol. “Ready!” he shouted.

The boys of the Home Guard tensed, though across the way their undead adversaries were blank faced and as stoic as Spartans.

“Aim . . . .”

“Damn, Jeff, your boy’s in there,” Stony Hampton said. “He might get hit.”

“There’s no such thing as innocent blood,” the captain said.

Col. Creep stepped protectively–floated, Bobby thought, still not used to the unnatural, liquid motion–in front of Vernon Ray, as if his amorphous flesh could shield the boy from real bullets. Bobby’s and Vernon Ray’s eyes met and Vernon Ray gave a small nod and silently moved his lips.

Bobby couldn’t be sure, because he’d rarely seen the words formed, but he thought they might have shaped “I love you.”

“Fire!” the crazed captain bellowed, and all hell broke loose in a cannonade of thunder, smoke, and screams.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Littlefield arrived on the scene just as the smoke cleared.

Jeff Davis was poking around on the gravel bed with his saber, chinking up rocks and tapping as if checking for escape hatches. The Home Guard looked as if the soldiers were fighting off a long hangover instead of a renegade pack of ghosts. Where Littlefield had expected carnage, bloodshed, and the moans of the dying, he found only the weekend warriors collapsed about the railroad tracks, wiping sweaty hair with their caps and rising unsteadily to their feet.

“What happened?” Cindy asked Whizzer Buchanan, who in civilian life had been busted for selling weed the year before. Littlefield wished this was a hallucination from the bottom of a bong instead of the reality of a world turned upside down.

“Dunno,” Whizzer said. “We was on a maneuver and that’s about all I remember.”

“How’d we get up here, anyway?” said Elmer Eldreth, and Littlefield saw that though his hand was still bandaged, the wound on his shoulder was closed and the flesh undamaged, though his uniform had a small hole in it.

“Great,” Cindy said. “The story of the century and my eyewitnesses are blind.”

“Just be glad nobody else was killed,” Littlefield said. “As far as I can tell.”

A boy approached from the edge of the woods. He wore neither a uniform nor a period outfit of the civilian attachment. His gray eyes were wide, cheeks pale, hands shaking.

Looks like he’s still got his wits about him. At least he has enough sense to be scared.

“Hey, Bobby,” Cindy said, and the sheriff saw a glance of recognition and secret agreement pass between them. “You okay?”

Before Bobby could answer, Littlefield asked, “Did you see what happened?”

The boy shook his head. “Nothing but smoke.”

“They overloaded their battery,” Cindy said. “Went ‘poof’ like a magician’s sleight of hand.”

“Vernon Ray’s gone,” Bobby said.

“Gone?” Littlefield said.

“They took him.”

Littlefield was about to ask who had done the taking, but then realized there was only one “they.” Kirk’s Raiders might have beaten a retreat from the battlefield, but the war was far from over.

“Where did they go?” Cindy asked, but Littlefield already knew the answer. He’d known it all along, just as Cindy had accused, but he’d avoided the truth because it was troublesome and painful.

It always goes back to the Hole and the darkness under the world.

If ignoring it didn’t make it go away, maybe he could solve the problem the old-fashioned way: kill it quick and bury it clean. He’d had a bead on the colonel back at the park, had aimed true at an imaginary bull’s-eye on the tunic-covered chest, but his mistake had been shooting the dead man in the heart.

Because it turned out the colonel didn’t have one.

Capt. Davis hustled up, his saber pointed toward the ground. “The Tennessee boys didn’t follow the script,” he said.

“They ain’t supposed to be in until tomorrow,” Stony Hampton said, swatting at a sweat bee that hovered in the fading gun smoke.

“That’s what I mean,” Davis said.

“Let me check that pistol again,” Littlefield said to him.

The captain frowned and gazed down the tracks as if a steam locomotive had hauled off half his brains. He passed the gun to Littlefield, who checked the chamber and saw that all the cartridges were intact.

“He fired it,” Cindy said. “And I doubt he had time to reload.”

“Invisible bullets,” Bobby said. “Everybody’s shooting blanks.”

“At blank targets,” the sheriff said.

Littlefield passed the gun back to Davis, who holstered it and began rallying the troops for the march back to camp. They grumbled a little, as if content in their drowsiness, but they gathered their gear. Elmer Eldreth collected his hat and musket, tipping his canteen and taking a generous gulp.

Capt. Davis led the desultory soldiers down the track. Bobby ran after his dad, said something to him, and received a lazy nod in response. Bobby jogged back to where the sheriff and Cindy stood on the tracks, reconnoitering the woods.

“Like nothing ever happened,” Cindy said.

Littlefield couldn’t resist. “There goes your Pulitzer and your book deal.”

“I’ve still got my camera.”

“If there’s anything on it. I have a feeling when they get back to the park, they’ll find Chalky Watkins strutting around fresh as a rooster, wondering where the hell everybody went. And that woman in the civilian camp will be flexing mugs of fresh coffee like some backwoods Martha Stewart.”

“That horseman got killed, remember?”

“Sure, but I’ll bet there’s not a scratch on him now, and Perry Hoyle will write it down as a heart attack or stroke. It’s almost like nothing’s changed, a return to balance.”

“Except Vernon Ray’s gone,” Bobby said, and he turned to Cindy. “Your ‘replacement’ theory. To balance things out.”

“That means one got away,” Cindy said.

“What are you two talking about?” Littlefield said. Capt. Davis and his Home Guard had gone around the curve and were no longer visible, though Davis’s tired commands were audible as he herded the troops back to Aldridge Park.

“It ain’t over,” Bobby said. “That was the calm before the storm.”

“The anticlimax,” Cindy said. “To trick these macho clowns into letting loose with a bunch of testosterone and rage so Kirk’s Raiders could sponge up the energy. Like a haunted battlefield where the ghosts linger long after the screams have died away and the blood has soaked deep in the dirt, feeding on the long memory of pain.”

“We’ve covered all this before,” Littlefield said. “So does this mean they got what they wanted?”

“Only if you’re willing to give them the boy,” Cindy said.

Littlefield gazed through the trees that were rooted and fed by the black skin of the mountain, the shadows under the kaleidoscopic canopy seeming to eddy and swirl like obscene molasses. He thought of his dead deputy, Sheila Story, and his little brother, other sacrificial lambs thrown on the altar of his ego and failure.

You feed the monsters and they go away and leave you alone.

Even if the outcome carries a little collateral damage.

At least you walk away.

You walk away.

“I guess there’s nothing else for it,” Littlefield said, then asked Bobby. “How do we get to the Hole from here?”

Bobby pointed to a slight part in the scrub, where jackvine and poison oak strangled a stand of leafless saplings. The path was barely wide enough to allow passage to a rabbit or raccoon, much less a grown man. But the gate was strait and the way was narrow. Or so said a book Littlefield had burned six years ago along with a certain contaminated church over in Whispering Pines.

“I don’t suppose I could talk you into staying out of it?” Littlefield asked Cindy.

“No,” she said, adjusting the camera on her shoulder as if preparing for a hike. “But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll keep it off the record.”

“You could never translate all this into English.”

“Enough talking,” Bobby said, heading for the animal path. “My best friend’s up there in the Jangling Hole with a bunch of dead guys.”

He slipped into the tangled brush and was swallowed by the woods of Mulatto Mountain.

Littlefield stared at Cindy as if fully seeing her for the first time, as a colleague, a partner in crime, and a woman, and he wondered if he’d always looked at people in his life as ghosts just waiting to happen. Her eyes were as blue as the sky, flecked with gold that might have been borrowed from the autumn poplar or the sun. She blinked first.

“History is written by the winners,” she said, sneakers crunching the gravel as she hurried after Bobby.

“Or the survivors,” Littlefield said, but he was the only one around to hear it.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Pearl had took sick since the shenanigans of the night before, and Hardy figured a day in bed would do her good, not to mention get her out of harm’s way in case Kirk’s bunch paid a return visit.

He’d forgotten he’d set the tea kettle on the stove to make her a cup of that fancy Darjeeling hippie-sounding stuff. When it broke steam and erupted in a whistle, he about jumped out of his skin, thinking it was the shriek of one of those contrary creatures from the Hole. He’d scalded his thumb while pouring the hot water, and now balanced the cup and saucer as he made his precarious way up the stairs.

He skipped the thirteenth step, where the drummer boy had been shot the night before. There was no blood, no bullet holes in the wall, nothing to mark the confrontation between Earley and Kirk’s Raiders. If not for the musket that had wound up at the far end of the hall, Hardy would have written off the incident as a dream, though that damnable rattling of the snare drum still echoed in the stairwells of his memory. At least Pearl and Donnie had been protected from the sight of the ghosts, though his wife’s imagination had done worse things to her than her eyes ever could.

And Donnie had no imagination worth worrying about.

Donnie’s room was quiet, which meant his son was either coloring again or else he was sleeping, or maybe just sitting cross-legged in the corner and rocking back and forth as he sometimes did. Hardy was almost past the room when he saw the opened door and the black wedge that filled the space leading behind it.

The door had been locked from the outside when Hardy had gone down to the kitchen. He’d checked it twice to make sure. Pearl might have taken Donnie into the bedroom to comfort him the way she had when he was six and the nightmares came. Except she’d been snoring loud enough to wake the dead, compliments of the blue pills the doctors had prescribed her in February, when the latest round of tests had resulted in the suggestion of a state hospital stay for Donnie.

Hardy swallowed hard and kicked the door wide with the toe of his boot. It squeaked open and Hardy slopped some of the tea on his overalls. The room held nothing but the little table with its scattered crayons and papers, the rumpled cot in the corner, and a plastic water tumbler. Hardy set the saucer on the table and picked up the lone drawing on it. He angled it so it caught the light leaking from the hall.

Stick figures. A man and a boy.

Marching toward the Hole, which held smears of red and yellow in its dark squiggles as if the devil was serving up hot peppers for dinner.

He hurried down the hall to his bedroom and checked on Pearl. The hand-stitched quilt rose and fell with her breathing. Maybe merciful God would let her sleep through it all. Hardy took the musket from the closet, knowing it was as impotent as the slack, wrinkled meat between his legs, but like that part of him that had sired Donnie, its presence gave him comfort nonetheless. The Bible offered a little less, but he tucked it in his overall pocket anyway, just to feel the weight of the words.

As he made his way back through the hall, he was troubled by two things. Something had unlocked Donnie’s door and then led Donnie down the creaky stairs and past Hardy in the kitchen without being seen. Well, there was a third thing, too. The Hole had come unplugged and hell had let slip a few of its occupants.

From the porch, he surveyed the pasture and the twin ruts that led to the far gate. The dew had long since dried and the cows were grazing with their heads toward the west, working the last of the season’s grass as if storing the sweetness against the dead taste of winter hay. A lone buzzard circled high beneath the clouds, lazy and patient.

The rumble of heavy equipment oozed down from Mulatto Mountain as if the ancient stacked granite was being shaken to its foundation. He thought he heard a snare cadence in the diesel-fueled throbbing, but it might have been his own erratic pulse fluttering against his eardrums.

The musket had grown heavy by the time he reached the woods, and he considered tossing the Bible to ease his load. He thought about that little inspirational picture he’d seen in the doctor’s office, where there were footprints on the beach and the bit about where there was only one set of footprints and it turned out Jesus had carried a man across the sand for a while.

There was no mention of where they both were headed or why Jesus wouldn’t allow the fellow to rest for a minute, but that was the way of things. You just kept walking, no matter the burden.

Entering the high church of trees, he shivered. The temperature had dropped about 20 degrees and the advance scouts of December had grown a little bolder, baring their teeth in the shadows. This was a time of year for digging potatoes and setting aside cabbages, hauling in the feed corn and piling it up in the barn crib. Autumn was a season of dying, and the weak wouldn’t see it through.

Budget Bill Willard’s machinery was rumbling away, carving up the mountain and changing it forever. In a few years, there would be no Mulatto Mountain. Only Elkridge, with a fancy embossed sign down by the highway, and a stone entryway with a steel gate that could be lifted by punching in a code. Hardy wondered if the Hole would still be there, Kirk’s Raiders sleeping under the million-dollar houses that dotted the slopes.

Time passes and human greed outlasts even the eternal.

But when it came to sins, Hardy carried enough of his own. Pride went before a fall, the Good Book said, and he’d never figured out whether that meant pride led to trouble or whether you better throw over your pride before it got the best of you. Maybe pride was just another form of greed, but one thing Hardy knew, the Hole wasn’t taking his boy without a fight, even if Hardy had to march right down in there and wrestle bare-handed with Kirk and his entire troop.

He could have avoided the construction area, but that would have meant cutting below the ridge and climbing a steep, rocky incline on the north slope, where the laurel grew tangled and tough. He didn’t want to waste either the time or the energy, and he didn’t intend to let anything stand in his way, even a bulldozer. He emerged from the logging trail onto the turnaround, where Budget Bill Willard had planned to place the clubhouse for the resort. A dump truck was parked on the gravel, idling as it awaited a small steam shovel whose jaws plucked at gray boulders.

The Caterpillar bulldozer was higher on the slope, digging its thick, rusty blade into the dirt, turning up stumps and stones. It hadn’t taken long for Budget Bill to replace Carter Harrison, and the raw road was much closer to the ridge than it had been during Hardy’s last visit. Bill’s crew was making good time.

Hardy followed the fresh cut of the road, ignoring the clanky steam shovel. Budget Bill’s pick-up was off to the side in some weeds. The cab was empty, and Hardy hoped the sawed-off developer was away checking out property lines or maybe taking some of those photographs of the mountaintops he was able to parlay into calendars and postcards. Hardy followed the loose soil until he was near the bulldozer, and then realized the new road was barely a hundred feet from the Hole.

The air was charged with the static of a coming storm, though only a few clouds dotted the horizon. The ground throbbed under Hardy’s feet as he ascended the road bed, and the roar of the big diesel engine shouted down the forest noises. Ahead was a gap in the laurels where he could duck into the woods and reach the cave. Hardy thought he would make it without being seen when one of the Caterpillar’s treads locked and the machine swung around sideways.

Budget Bill was in the cab, working the dozer’s levers, his hands encased in White Mule work gloves. He eased down the throttle and a tuft of black smoke spilled from the smokestack. As their eyes met, understanding and horror dawned on the developer’s face.

He thinks I’ve gone squirrel-shit nutty and that I killed Carter, trying to stop the development. And he reckons he’s next.

Hardy nodded at Budget Bill and patted the musket barrel, letting him think the worst. He let a grin creep up one side of his face, enjoying the developer’s torment. He considered the steep hike remaining to reach the Hole. Even if he made it without his heart exploding, he wouldn’t have much wind left to take on a haunted platoon before Kirk and the mountain took whatever little bit was left of his son’s mind and soul.

He pointed the musket toward Budget Bill, not bothering to aim. Budget Bill eased back on the levers and raised his hands like a prisoner in a war movie. Hardy eased the barrel of the musket back and forth, motioning for Bill to dismount. Bill reached for the ignition but Hardy shook his head. Bill climbed down, eyes flicking back and forth as if considering escape.

Hardy met him when he reached the ground and yelled over the rumble of the diesel engine. “How do you run this contraption?”

Bill, perhaps sensing if he let Hardy take the bulldozer he could escape with his life, made a pulling motion. “Left bar forward, right for back, brake in the middle.”

“Like an old Massey Ferguson tractor,” Hardy said.

Bill nodded, though Hardy suspected the developer didn’t know the first thing about Massey Fergusons. Bill would have probably agreed that the sun rose in the south and the Tooth Fairy was real if it would keep Hardy’s finger away from the trigger.

Hardy settled in the cab seat, laid his gun across his lap, and pulled back on the throttle. He yanked the lever–Budget Bill, who was skidding down the muddy road as fast as his stunted legs could carry him, hadn’t lied to him–and the dozer lurched into the saplings and strewn granite stones, grinding toward the Hole.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The Jangling Hole was cool, the air fetid. Vernon Ray was just past the reach of daylight, beyond the spot where the rubble had settled during the long-ago cave-in. The throat of the underworld was now open, the slumbering lungs taking a deep breath of the outside universe as if starved for light and life.

The dead soldiers were resting around an unseen campfire. They no longer appeared solid, except for Kirk, who crouched near the cave’s mouth and surveyed the edge of the woods. Another soldier, whose cheek bore a deep scar, stood just beyond the opening, his musket at the ready. Vernon Ray adjusted his kepi and blinked into the darkness, expecting the icy pierce of a bayonet or the muffled detonation of a deadly powder charge.

The ground trembled with the drone of heavy equipment, and a rock kicked loose from the cave ceiling and bounced near Vernon Ray’s feet. A shower of moist dirt sprinkled on his shoulder.

“You warm enough?” one of the men said, and the words echoed a couple of times before dying in the rumble of heavy equipment.

“You can talk,” Vernon Ray said, and laughter erupted around the circle, mimicking the low rumble of machinery.

“Yeah, but you can’t rightly hear,” said another soldier. His kepi was pulled low over his forehead, but white bone glinted dully where his chin should have been.

“Leave the boy alone,” Kirk ordered, before turning his gaze back to the forest outside the cave. His voice was the same as the one Vernon Ray had heard in his head during the rain-shed encounter.

Those words rose from the depths of his memory like a drowned corpse bobbing up from a watery grave: We don’t belong together.

The soldier to the left of Vernon Ray was scraping his spoon against a tin plate, dredging up air and scooping it toward his moss-covered face. The moss parted, revealing a black maw, and the spoon entered. After a brief slurping, the spoon pulled free, dribbling bits of gooey mud. The spoon hit the plate again, combining with the rattle of hardware and the cleaning of muskets in a jangle of activity that had given the Hole its name.

There were three soldiers between Vernon Ray and the opening. Kirk was one, the sentry the second, and the last lay sprawled behind Vernon Ray, propped up on the stump of an arm. Shattered bone emerged from a ragged sleeve packed with rancid, discolored meat. The stench of corruption mingled with the mildew and mud and the acrid smoke that arose from somewhere below.

Vernon Ray thought of running for daylight, leaping the soldier behind him and plowing past Kirk. But he wasn’t sure his legs would work anymore. The Raiders had marched him up the mountain under the cover of gun-smoke, somehow diverting the attention of his dad’s Living History group.

The bullets had whizzed past, manifesting into solid things, the battle made real for a short stretch of the morning. The ghost soldiers could have killed him, or let him get shot by friendly fire, but instead they had taken him prisoner.

So they wanted him alive for a reason.

“Here come Eggers,” the sentry shouted.

Several of the soldiers reached for their muskets and Kirk rose to his feet and moved to the edge of sunlight. Vernon Ray shifted away from the dark depths of the tunnel that promised its own special brand of gravity, one that would suck and tug until all light was defeated. He knew better than to trust his depth perception in the Hole, and the grinding of the bulldozer’s steel against ancient granite added to his disorientation.

From his vantage point, he could see Donnie Eggers approaching the Hole, grinning like a rabid possum and tapping two sticks against his thighs as he juddered up the slope. Branches slapped at his face but he seemed oblivious to the welts raised in his flesh. His cotton shirt was torn, naked toes covered in mud, his hair greasy with sweat. Donnie’s wild eyes were fixed on the cave as if the darkness inside it held vast pleasures and joys.

“Go back,” Vernon Ray whispered.

“Ain’t no going back,” Kirk said, though Vernon Ray’s words had barely been audible.

That’s when the corporal came out of the trees, floating over ferns and galax and jackvine. It was the man from the railroad tracks, the one with the CSA canteen. Earley Eggers. Decades dead and as hellacious and rebellious as ever.

“All right, boys, we got one more battle,” Kirk said, and though the command was issued loudly enough to carry over the bulldozer that was crashing through the trees on the back side of the ridge, the soldiers rose with a languid reluctance. The man with the stump lifted himself by his wounded limb, gangrenous flesh dropping from the effort.

Boneface with the kepi was grinning, but Vernon Ray couldn’t tell whether it was due to nervousness or the fact that his lips had long since melted away to dust. The soldier with the red kerchief and crusty blue tunic drifted toward the mouth of the cave, moving his legs as if his spirit still harbored memory of needing them. The preternatural platoon was mustering around their leader, taking a stand, black eyes flinting tiny sparks of hellfire. They were misfits, losers, a band of outcasts that the world had no room for, a coalition of the damned whose camaraderie had survived the grave.

We don’t belong together.

And one of them had broken ranks. The deserter, Eggers.

No wonder they were riled.

But that didn’t mean the innocent should suffer. Every war had its collateral damage, every conflict its unintended targets. If Cindy Baumhower’s law of balance was correct, then Earley’s return should end the war, at least for this go-round.

But Donnie might reach the Hole first, and Kirk might decide a living Eggers was better than a dead Eggers, and fresh blood might be welcome.

Donnie was close enough that Vernon Ray could see a strand of clear drool dangling from one corner of his idiot grin. Donnie’s head bobbed as his wrists flexed in a fluid grace that defied the spastic jerking of his legs and shoulders. He was stamping out the vintages of his mental isolation, marching to the beat of an indifferent drummer.

Earley was mostly solid, though ripples of light played in his limbs as he staggered toward the Hole. His face was like dishwater, sloshing around the soulless eyes.

Kirk rubbed his beard, standing with broad shoulders squared and one hand on the hilt of his saber, his silhouette dark against the spilled shaft of sunlight. Muskets rattled as the Raiders tamped sulfur and brimstone into their barrels.

“Want them dead or alive?” Boneface asked Kirk.

“Let him go,” Vernon Ray said. “He never belonged here.”

Kirk angled his head around, then around, until he was facing Vernon Ray, though his boots and medals were still pointed toward the forest. Kirk’s words were nearly lost in the roar of the diesel engine and the cracking of tree limbs, but Vernon Ray wasn’t sure whether they were spoken or were voiced by the dank wind oozing up from the depths of the cave.

“Nobody belongs nowhere,” the voice said, reverberating in Vernon Ray’s head as if his skull were a granite sheath.

Donnie was less than 30 feet from the cave now, eyes bright with fevered hope. He would reach the Hole before Earley. And the oddest part was that Donnie, who was alive, appeared to fade and become less substantial the nearer he got, while Earley grew more solid and heavy, his scuffed boots now flopping over the ground.

The grinding, splintery thunder of the bulldozer swelled louder as the earth machine ascended the ridge.

“Vernon Ray?” came a shout from the edge of the forest.

Bobby . . . .

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Bobby had raced ahead of Cindy and the sheriff, anxious to find Vernon Ray before Kirk and the goon squad siphoned him so deep into the Hole he would never return.

At least not in any recognizable, useful, human way. Donnie Eggers had been only half gone, according to the rumors, and an intangible half of him was trapped lurking somewhere in those black depths. Vernon Ray’s fate might be far worse.

Bobby wasn’t sure what he would do when he got to the Hole, but he slowed enough to scoop up a fist-sized stone from among the fallen leaves. Th’ow it, doof, Dex repeated in his head.

And if what Dad said were true, Vernon Ray was more than his best friend, more than the guy who tried to kiss him, more than a fellow survivor of the Dysfunctional Family Circus. Vernon Ray was his brother by blood. That carried extra obligation, and Bobby was willing to risk death, or whatever passed for death in the depths of the Hole, to rescue V-Ray.

When he entered the clearing in front of the Hole and beheld that terrible orifice of rock, dirt, and darkness, the sun ducked behind a clump of clouds and stretched a shadow over Mulatto Mountain. Earley Eggers staggered toward the Hole like a wayward son returning to the family doorstep.

The cave was still and empty, at least from the few feet Bobby could see of its interior. The entrance seemed like a solid wall of black glass, and he imagined that if he made it close enough to hurl his stone, the wall would shatter like a midnight mirror into a thousand sharp pieces.

And what would be behind it?

Donnie didn’t slow down. The man-child took staggering steps toward the Hole as if navigating a sheet of ice with cinder blocks on his bare feet, but he moved forward with determination and strength. Earley’s movements were almost in perfect rhythm with Donnie’s, as if the two had undergone the same parade drills and now were locked in a unison of muscle memory.

The bulldozer chuffed and trembled in the woods, tearing up trees as it made its inexorable assault on the ridge. Donnie was almost to the entrance now, Earley about 20 feet behind him. Donnie had dissolved and faded so that Bobby was able to see gray slabs of mossy granite through his body. Donnie was ten feet from the Hole when a command issued forth from the cave: “Halt!”

Bobby didn’t recognize the deep and chilling voice, but he would have bet his entire run of Silver Surfer comics that it belonged to Col. Creep. Donnie and Earley both stopped, though Donnie continued to tap out his quiet cadence, his head bobbing up and down.

“Vernon Ray?” Bobby shouted again, and he heard the reporter and the sheriff hollering after both of them, then the bulldozer burst through the line of laurels and clanked into the clearing, a wild-eyed Hardy Eggers at the controls.

The sheriff stood near the stump where the boys had been smoking cigarettes a week ago. He held his pistol in his hand as if he were the star gunslinger in a shoot-em-up western. Bobby looked down at the rock in his hand, then at Hardy’s musket.

Crapola. Am I the only one who isn’t packing heat?

Just when Bobby thought the situation couldn’t get any weirder, Capt. Jefferson Davis jumped out from behind a boulder near the cave, his saber flashing in the filtered sun. He grabbed Earley and yanked the dead, ragged scarecrow of a soldier close, pressing the saber to Earley’s neck. The captain’s Rebel yell temporarily drowned out the rumbling bulldozer.

Hardy stood in the cab of the idling bulldozer and his musket swiveled from the cave to Earley, then to Jeff Davis. The sheriff’s pistol did likewise. Cindy Baumhower had appeared at the sheriff’s side, and her camera lens also tracked between the various targets.

The commanding voice boomed from the cave again: “Looks like we have us a standoff.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

There was motion at the mouth of the cave, and a hunk of shadow broke itself free and stepped forward.

It was the man in the cavalier’s hat, the ratty ostrich plume flailing in the October breeze. Littlefield aimed his Glock at the man, and then remembered they’d already played out that scenario and all Littlefield had to show for it was an empty shell casing. Except the man–Col. George Kirk, if he believed Cindy–appeared more substantial than he had down at the park, as if submersing in the Hole had revitalized him in the same way that heated natural springs restored spa visitors.

The dead colonel seemed calmest of all, as if defeat or victory led to the same fate. The veins in Jeff Davis’s temple were turgid and purple, his teeth bared in a rictus of madness. Littlefield didn’t know what would happen if Davis drew his saber across Earley’s throat, but he had a feeling that Kirk wouldn’t like it. And though Kirk held only a saber himself, he had a group of soldiers backing him up who had already proven they would follow him to hell and back.

A click beside Littlefield startled him, then he heard the whir of machinery and realized Cindy was focusing her camera. “Quit it,” he said.

“You do your job and I’ll do mine,” she said.

Sounds simple, except I’m not sure what my job is at the moment. I can’t tell whether this situation calls for an undertaker, a psychiatrist, or an exorcist in a Sherman tank.

Treetops shook as the bulldozer plowed toward the clearing, and the growling of the big Cat engine added extra tension to the scene, setting Littlefield’s teeth on edge.

“Give me my soldier,” Jeff shouted at the colonel.

The colonel merely stood with one hand on his saber, studying the assembly as if he were defending a fort surrounded on all sides. Jeff’s hostage, who Littlefield now recognized as the man he’d seen vanish in the lumberyard, appeared slack and resigned, like a scarecrow dangling on a cold and lonely winter pole.

The hostage looked as solid and healthy as the colonel, except for his eyes, which had no whites. Littlefield wasn’t sure what would happen if Jeff drew the saber across the dead soldier’s throat, but he imagined a Pandora’s box of horrors spilling out from the wound, nasty stinging creatures and fanged bats and tiny, scaly dragons.

Bobby, who had stopped when the colonel emerged from the Hole, edged toward the opening and paused again near Donnie. “Vernon Ray! Are you in there?”

Metal clanked against stone, and the bulldozer’s treads rattled and squeaked as they fought for traction. Donnie’s hands moved up and down as if drumming in accompaniment, then the autistic man took a stiff stride toward the colonel. Bobby grabbed him and tried to tug him backward, but the man was too strong. Donnie shook free, knocking Bobby to his knees, and lumbered toward the colonel.

“Donnie,” the sheriff shouted, taking a step forward bit unsure where his loyalties lay. “Get back here.”

“You’re only getting one, but not mine,” Jeff said to the colonel. “Which one is it going to be?”

Col. Kirk folded his arms across his chest as if he had all the time in the world, which Littlefield supposed he had. Then the colonel lifted his head and gazed at the sky as if remembering what it was like to breathe autumn mountain air. Aside from the cantankerous bulldozer, the moment was almost peaceful.

Bobby scrambled to his feet and cupped his hands against his mouth. “Vernon Ray?”

The colonel ignored him. Instead, his head swiveled toward Earley. “Desertion is a hanging offense, Corporal.”

“Take him and hang him, then,” Jeff said, pressing the saber deeper into the solidified ether of Earley’s neck. Littlefield saw a black sliver open in the supernatural skin and wondered if Jeff Davis was committing a crime.

Assault with intent to kill? Hard to make that one stand up in court when the victim was already dead.

Folklore said if you wanted to kill a snake, you had to chop off its head and wait for sundown. He was considering giving Col. Kirk one more opportunity to take a bullet and die like a man, but before he could force himself to pull the trigger, the bulldozer burst forward, roots and branches dangling from its raised blade. Dirt and wet leaves sprinkled from its treads as it plowed ahead.

Hardy Eggers tilted the throttle full ahead in a burst of black smoke. Littlefield started toward the bulldozer and showed his palm, even though he didn’t expect the crazy-eyed old man to obey his command to stop. From the way Hardy wrestled with the levers, Littlefield wasn’t sure the man could have put on the brakes if he wanted to. And Littlefield wasn’t about to climb over those churning treads to reach the cab.

Hardy was pale and sweating, one white eyebrow twitching in anxiety. He eased one of the levers forward and the bulldozer slowed as he motioned Bobby away from the Hole. “I told you damned kids to stay away.”

“My friend’s in there,”‘ Bobby said.

“I can’t worry about your friend,” Hardy said, tugging up one of his overall straps and pointing his musket into the Hole. “I got to save my boy. What’s left of him, anyways.”

“They want Earley,” Bobby said. Littlefield took advantage of Hardy’s distraction to close in, and Cindy stuck to him like an unwanted shadow.

“They done tried to take him but Earley ain’t going back. He’s done his duty.”

“But somebody’s got to pay,” Bobby said.

“Kirk needs a replacement,” Cindy said. “The law of mass and energy.”

“I follow a different law,” Hardy shouted. “The Bible says an eye for an eye, blood for blood, a burning for a burning.”

“There won’t be any more blood spilled here,” Littlefield said, though he doubted if the black stuff oozing from Earley’s neck counted as “blood.” “Not while I have anything to say about it.”

“Why do you think you’d have any say?” Kirk thundered.

“Give me back my boy,” Hardy yelled.

“Give me back my boy,” Jeff yelled.

Kirk’s head swiveled back and forth between Earley and Donnie as if making a decision, though his skull appeared too lolling and loose, as if his spine had shattered during the cave-in and the long decades hadn’t knitted the bones back together.

Just before the beetle-black eyes could settle on a new recruit, Vernon Ray stepped from the shadows of the cave, though it looked to Littlefield as if some of the shadows still clung to him like old rotted rags. A snare drum bounced against his hip as he walked to the colonel’s side and stood at attention as if awaiting orders.

His left hand held two drumsticks and his right palm was facing out as he saluted.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“Run, Vee,” Bobby yelled, not understanding how his friend–brother–could stand there with the Hole at his back like a giant mouth. Vernon Ray acted as if he hadn’t heard, as though the people gathered around him were toy soldiers on a make-believe map. Bobby expected gunfire to erupt at any moment, and since the boys in the Hole seemed to have hoarded enough munitions to last several centuries, Bobby would bet on Kirk’s Raiders to carry the day.

“Come here, son,” Jeff shouted, momentarily relaxing his grip on Earley and letting his saber tilt down.

Donnie spazz-marched in place, apparently excited by the presence of the snare drum, but Bobby held him by the waist. Hardy, perched in the bulldozer seat, put his musket to his shoulder and stared down the barrel at Kirk.

Knowing the legendary inaccuracy of Civil War-era weaponry, Bobby figured V-Ray was as likely to take the bullet as Kirk was. Kirk had already spent his share of time on the mortal plane, and Vernon Ray might get cheated of his own go-round.

“We’ll let them choose,” Kirk said, his lips scarcely moving but his voice making a duet with the bulldozer engine. He put a pale hand on Vernon Ray’s shoulder. Bobby imagined the colonel’s flesh was as cool and cloying as the dirt in the cave.

“Don’t go AWOL, soldier,” Jeff shouted.

Vernon Ray snapped off a mocking salute in his dad’s direction. “Reporting for duty, suh!”

Donnie took another trembling step toward the Hole, and Hardy’s musket exploded in a flash of smoke. The musket ball must have been aimed at Donnie’s twitching legs because it kicked up a spray of mud several feet in front of them.

Hardy’s shot triggered a chain reaction, and Bobby froze. Littlefield fired his pistol and Col. Kirk’s tunic erupted in a blossom of murky oil. The colonel looked down with no expression, eyes as dead and cool as the Jangling Hole that had infected them with its unwholesome lack of light.

Earley Eggers escaped from Jeff Davis’s grip, going to smoke, leaving Jeff–Daddy?–to clutch at the evaporating fibers of his spectral hostage.

Bobby sprang toward Vernon Ray, who stared out at the woods like a lone sentry of the soul, watching and waiting for an end to the forever war.

Kirk clutched the wound in his chest, taking his hand away and staring at the sludge that dripped from his fingers as if finally realizing that he had been dead a long, long time. The colonel staggered backward toward the welcoming darkness of the Hole.

“Get over here, you goddamned little homo,” Jeff screamed, expecting his orders to be obeyed without question. Vernon Ray tilted the snare drum against his waist and rolled his sticks into playing position.

“Guh-ruk,” Donnie barked, wobbling uphill toward Kirk.

Bobby glanced back, tightening his grip on Donnie’s waist, wondering if Hardy Eggers or the sheriff were about to fire again, but the sheriff and the reporter were running toward the Hole and Hardy had tossed his rifle aside, gunning the bulldozer engine and lurching forward in a titanic creak of steel, rust, and rage.

Bobby was juiced by adrenaline instead of diesel, but he let out his own blast of internal combustion, shrieking in a mimic of Jeff Davis’s Rebel yell. Bobby pushed past Donnie, giving him a shove as if he were a linebacker interfering with a touchdown run, and launched himself toward Vernon Ray, who didn’t seem to recognize him.

Dang, they’ve already got him . . . .

Kirk fell to his knees just beyond the mouth of the cave, and a skeletal arm reached out as if to drag him to safety. Bobby hoped the sheriff wouldn’t shoot again, because he and Vernon Ray were exposed targets. And the monumental jangle of steel inside the mountain suggested that an army was massing to defend its borders.

Vernon Ray struck the drum head a solid blow, and then delivered a left-handed roll that seemed to fill the sky like midnight thunder. Bobby was closer now, ducking low in case bullets flew, planning to drag Vernon Ray away from the mountain that wanted to swallow V-Ray and Donnie and Bobby and maybe the whole living, breathing, hateful world into the cold, endless sameness of its belly.

“Come on, Vee,” Bobby said, reaching for his friend.

He clutched a sleeve, but Vernon Ray shook free and continued drumming.

Vernon Ray stared ahead, unblinking, not seeing the guy who was there for his first Incredible Hulk plastic model, his journey reading “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, his first chipped tooth from a skateboard accident. Bobby’s best friend had forged a new bond, an unspoken alliance with something no comic-book writer could ever dream up. The snare cadence rumbled through the forest and across the hills, calling all creatures to muster.

But the cadence was drowned by a different rolling storm, that of the bulldozer growling its own battle cry.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The sticks were light and strong in Vernon Ray’s hands, the kepi tucked tight and proud. Vernon Ray straightened his spine as much as he could, facing the full-frontal assault as bravely as he could.

Dad was running toward him, waving his saber and calling him an idiot faggot, face so twisted in rage and fear that he looked like an escapee from the criminal psycho ward. Dad’s uniform was torn and filthy, and Vernon Ray would be blamed for it. Dad would dress him down, commandeer the kepi Col. Kirk had given him, and take away the beautiful and resonant snare drum that was as comforting as a mother’s heartbeat in the womb.

He was out. Dad would call him “homo” and “faggot” until the end of time, or at least until Vernon Ray ran away or took up cutting himself until he got the nerve to check out for good, maybe with razor blades in the bathtub or by making one final trip to The Room, loading one of Dad’s collector Smith & Wessons, and painting the history books, maps, and artifacts with a red-and-gray shower of blood and brains.

Bobby touched him—

“Get away,” Vernon Ray said, retreating two steps but keeping the drumroll strong and steady. His colonel was wounded and the boys were helping, and maybe Vernon Ray could buy some time for them. Dad and the sheriff were closing in, but it was the bulldozer that worried him most–the enemy had brought out the heavy artillery for this one.

“You’re spaced out, dude,” Bobby said, reaching again.

Vernon Ray backed up another step, and then the colonel was beside him, swaying back and forth, pressing his hand against his wound to stem the flow of ichor.

The lost leader’s face squirmed, as if the space between skin and skull was occupied by worms instead of meat. But his right hand held his saber, raised in defiance of those who sought to destroy what they couldn’t understand.

Tears welled in Vernon Ray’s eyes.

At last he understood the colonel’s recruiting pitch, and he repeated it now to Bobby.

“We don’t belong together,” Vernon Ray said, only it had a different meaning out here under the blue sky and golden treetops and the all-seeing but dispassionate eye of heaven.

“Sorry about this,” Bobby yelled, and Dad was screaming, the bulldozer was chuffing and choking, the sheriff was barking unheeded orders, the reporter was taking pictures of it all, and Earley Eggers had returned to smoke, finally released from service to return home. The Raiders jangled their weaponry in the Hole, packing sulfur and brimstone for a final siege.

Bobby looked down at his hand, and Vernon Ray saw the rock. His best friend raised his arm, winging his elbow in the motion that had struck out Vernon Ray thirty-six times in a row on the baseball diamond. But Vernon Ray didn’t miss a beat. Or, rather, the sticks didn’t miss a beat, because now they seemed to be driving his hands, lifting them, rolling his wrists.

He was no longer playing the snare drum. It was playing him.

The colonel stepped in front of him just as Bobby flung the chunk of granite. It struck the colonel’s forehead with a sickening crunch of bone, knocking the cavalier’s hat from his head. By emerging from the Hole, Kirk had made himself vulnerable.

Sacrifice.

Giving your life for a belief.

Surrendering to a cause greater than yourself.

Vernon Ray finally understood, and he changed the cadence to sound the retreat. Glory and honor were found as much in defeat as in victory. Maybe more so, when the war was senseless and never-ending.

We don’t belong together.

We’re not of this world, we don’t belong, so we might as well do it together.

Not so lonely that way.

Vernon Ray stepped back, tears leaking from his eyes, blurring the sad, frightened face of Bobby Eldreth. The colonel was dead, at least for now, though his uniform was turning to dust and his flesh was evaporating into the milk of mystery and yesteryear.

“Queer,” Dad yelled, slashing his saber at the air as if he could cut a path between their great gulf.

“Don’t go in there, son,” the sheriff yelled.

Hardy Eggers, high in the bulldozer’s cab, squinted at the Hole as if it were an old enemy, pushing the machine to its limit, black smoke boiling from its pipe. Donnie Eggers–another who didn’t belong–knelt in the mud, head bobbing as if he could still hear the snare over the rumbling diesel motor.

Vernon Ray imagined Donnie would continue to hear the muster call long after the battle was over, and would wake in the night and seek its direction in the wind.

Then the cool, comforting embrace of the shadows took him, and he marched backward into the Jangling Hole, home at last, free to be, belonging.

Drumming his heart out, the sticks dancing in his hands like old friends and lovers, the troops rallying around him.

Dad was mouthing insults that were drowned by the bulldozer. His last glimpse of daylight was the sheriff yanking Bobby away, and Vernon Ray wished he could say good-bye and tell him of a love lost, or maybe a love never known, but in the end Bobby belonged to that other world.

The last thing he saw was Bobby struggling against the sheriff’s grip, reaching toward Vernon Ray and the Hole.

Then the bulldozer blade smashed into the granite boulders framing the cave, a cruel cannonade into the gates of Kirk’s stronghold. Stones loosened, soil spilled down, the phantom soldiers let loose a desperate moan as they prepared to die all over again.

As the earth showered down around him, Vernon Ray played on.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Halloween had passed, but its shadow clung to the mountain where two boys walked the ridge.

Dex kicked in the dirt, looking for souvenirs. Dex would love to have a bone, a junky piece of rusted metal, maybe even Vernon Ray’s little Rebel cap, anything to prove he’d trespassed and defied yellow tape that blared “Police Line–Do Not Cross.”

Bobby wished Dex would find something, because they all wanted proof that the Battle of Mulatto Mountain had actually happened.

Well, not everybody. The sheriff seemed perfectly happy to make it all disappear, but the reporter made sure it didn’t get buried along with Vernon Ray. Her digital photographs had all been blurred and smoky, and Hardy Eggers, after making bail on a vandalism charge, had invoked his right to remain silent and was likely to keep it for the rest of his life.

Jeff Davis was the picture of the bereaved parent, so shaken that he’d cancelled the Stoneman’s Raid re-enactment, though he’d been spending most of his time locked away in the room that housed his Civil War memorabilia.

Bobby had gone over to the Davis trailer once, when his mom had sent him with a bean casserole, that staple of southern comfort in a time of sorrow. Bobby heard Jeff talking to himself behind the door but hustled out before things could get weird. Dad was acting like Dad again, so Bobby saw no need to go questioning lineage and patriarchy. He had enough on his mind.

Like the pile of rubble around them and whatever path Earley Eggers had walked as he made his way home.

“So what really happened, man?” Dex said.

“I done told you,” Bobby said. Dex was getting on his nerves. Life without a best friend was hard on a guy. Dex just didn’t understand the real stuff, and talking to him about emotions was like talking to a chicken about the price of eggs.

“Yeah, sure, a bunch of baloney about ghosts,” Dex said. “I know you’re just making it up to get in Karen Greene’s panties.”

In truth, he couldn’t meet Karen’s eyes in the hall between classes. Whenever he did, he thought of Vernon Ray trying to kiss him.

“I’d rather have V-Ray back,” he said, studying the mounds of heaped dirt, stumps, and rocks. The heavy equipment brought in to search for Vernon Ray–or his body–was still parked around the clearing, though it had been three weeks since the runaway bulldozer had closed the Jangling Hole for good.

“I got to admit, it’s kind of creepy that they didn’t find him,” Dex said. “I mean, you saw the Hole. It couldn’t have been more than 10 feet deep. Where could he have gone?”

Bobby had wondered the same thing, but he didn’t know how to explain that maybe some people just weren’t made for this world. They came into it fresh and whole and good, but the world wasn’t ready for them.

Or maybe Vernon Ray was right: if you were different, you didn’t belong.

Bobby gazed across the ridges that stretched in the distance like brown waves of a dirty sea. Autumn was giving way to winter, and soon even the brown would be a memory as all turned to gray.

“I guess he went everywhere,” Bobby said. And I hope you fit in there.

He picked up a rock and tossed it toward the closest gash in the soil. It bounced off an upturned tree root and settled on the black skin of Mulatto Mountain.

“You read too many comic books, dude.” Dex dug in his jacket pocket and pulled out a cigarette pack. “Want a smoke?”

Bobby shook his head.

Dex lit his cigarette and looked at the sky, where a dark swell of clouds were bloodied by the sundown. “Thunder?”

Bobby nodded again, a stone in his throat. He knew the suffocated rattle of a snare drum when he heard it

The beat goes on . . . .

“We better get out of here before it rains,” Dex said.

“Yeah.” Bobby turned away from the disturbed rubble of the Hole and headed down the mountain.

Rain would be okay. It would come in silver with a liquid tatta tatta tat, beating its ancient pulse across the skin of the Earth. It would pound like a million drummer boys, so that Vernon Ray’s lonely rhythm could be lost among them. It would bathe the uncertain grave of the Jangling Hole. Rain would smooth the heaps of loose dirt, rain would sweep away the scent of decay, rain would wash the world clean.

Most of all, rain would veil his welling tears.

THE END

Table of Contents

###

Roby Snow has a mission, and he won’t rest until Jacob Ridgehorn is resting in peace.

BURIAL TO FOLLOW

By Scott Nicholson

Copyright ©2008 Scott Nicholson

ISBN 978-1-907-19095-7

Table of Contents

I.

The Ridgehorn kitchen was a mouth-watering shrine.

The island counter, made of polished oak and topped with 1950’s Formica, the kind you couldn’t chip with a hatchet, was piled high with the fruits of condolence: a sweet potato pie, with pecan halves floating face-down in its burnt-orange sea; glazed ham, ringed with pineapple slices and brown sugar; green bean casserole, though beans were out of season so they must have come from some basement-stashed Mason jar; gallons of sweetened tea and diet Coke and banana pudding and gravy.

Roby Snow looked around and made sure no one was watching. Not that anyone would care. At all the death sittings and watch-overs and grievings and gatherings he’d ever attended, food was usually the last thing on the minds of the bereaved but the first act of sympathy by acquaintances. He dipped a pinkie in the gravy, brought it to his mouth, licked the turkey drippings from his lips, and smiled.

The marshmallows that dotted the sweet potato pie caught his fancy, and he plucked two, popped them in his mouth, then rearranged the remaining four so that no one would notice the gap in the pattern. The ham was growing cold, and gray-white grease congealed in the bottom of its tin foil container. Roby crossed the room to the cabinets, opened them.

Crystal. Nice stuff, the kind that would hum if you put water in the glasses and rubbed your fingers around the rim. He’d seen a man on TV once who’d played a whole row of them at the same time, the glasses filled to varying depths, the performer wetting and wiping his fingers, raising a series of full notes that hung in the air like the blowing of lost whales. Crystal symphony, the man had called it.

“Mr. Snow?”

Roby looked away from the crystal. Anna Beth had entered the kitchen. She was the youngest of the Ridgehorn clan, and the prettiest. Years had a way of stealing beauty. Of stealing everything.

Auburn hair. Her nose was all Ridgehorn, humped in the middle but not yet jagged, as it would be in a decade. She had her mother’s bone structure and, lucky for her, not her father’s eyes.

Because her father’s eyes were glued shut in the back room of Clawson’s Funeral Home.

“Hey, Anna Beth,” he answered, turning his attention again to the cabinet shelves, the chinaware, the tea set, the chipped bowls in the back, the plastic fast food cups that the family probably used at the dinner table on weeknights.

“Can I help you find something?”

“I was looking for the Saran Wrap.” He nodded toward the counter. “Flies are about to carry off the ham.”

“Next cabinet over.”

“Much obliged.” He nodded, moved over, and rummaged through the shelves, behind the gelatin molds and paper grocery bags and cereal boxes. He found the wrap and brought it out. Anna Beth stared at him.

“Sorry about your dad,” he said. The wrap felt as if it weighed twenty pounds.

“Well, we was kind of expecting it,” she said.

You never expect it, Roby Snow thought. We all know we’re bound for it, but none of us believe, deep down in our hearts, that it will ever happen to us. Or to the ones we love.

Anna Beth’s eyes grew moist. They were as bright as the deviled eggs on the silver-plated tray. She was in her Saturday night dress, dark blue with white ruffles. Sunday best would be saved for the funeral. That was only proper. But this dress was plenty good enough for receiving callers.

“It’s okay,” Roby said. “You can cry if you want. Wouldn’t blame you a bit.”

She shrugged. “I’m about cried dry.”

“Reckon so. You folks have the sorrow round-the-clock. The rest of us get to come and go. And after it’s done, when your daddy, God bless him, is tucked in the ground, you all have to come back here and go at it some more. Grieving don’t let up its grip so easy when it comes to blood kin.”

From the living room, the widow Ridgehorn let out another long wail, this one a little tired and drawn out, as if her heart wasn’t really in it.

“Poor Momma,” Anna Beth said.

Roby put the wrap on the counter, rolled out a couple of feet. When he yanked the clear film across the serrated blade, he caught his thumb on the sharp edges. The blade bit the thick meat above his nail.

He put the thumb in his mouth. The blood tasted of gravy.

“You okay?” Anna Beth asked.

“I’ll live,” he said.

Someone had been thoughtful enough to bring paper napkins, which lay in a sterile pile near the desserts. He pulled one free and wrapped his thumb. The bleeding stopped. He ripped the piece of wrap, fluffed it in the air so the corners wouldn’t stick, then draped the clear film over the ham.

“Can’t have all this going to waste,” he said. “I know you don’t feel much up to it now, but comes a time when hunger helps feed the grief.”

“Yeah. It’s been a long time since Aunt Iva Dean passed. That was the last one in the immediate family.”

“You were seven then. I remember, because you were in the second grade, and some boy had kicked you in the shin and you had a big bruise.”

Anna Beth’s face grew thoughtful and far away, the sadness momentarily gone. “Yeah. Funny how things like that come back. I’d forgotten all about it.”

“It’s the smell,” Roby said.

“Huh?”

“Smell. See this sweet potato pie? That’s Beverly Parsons’s favorite recipe. But she changes ingredients a little for a bereavement. Uses molasses instead of brown sugar. So the smell of molasses is a little sad to me.”

“I never noticed. I probably ate dozens of her pies, her being a neighbor and all, and she makes one for every homecoming at the church.”

“It’s not how many you eat, it’s when you eat them.”

The talk in the next room had heated up, and Anna Beth’s second cousin on her mother’s side was asking when the burial would be. The cousin was Cindy Parsons, Beverly’s daughter, maybe a future in-law since she was sweet on Alfred, the sole surviving son.

Roby shook his head, weary. What had happened to manners? You didn’t come right out and ask the burial time, especially of the immediate family. You looked in the local newspaper and read the obituary like everybody else, or, in a pinch, you called the attending funeral home and asked. Unless you were a professional, you never spoke of the burial when you were calling on the home of the deceased. It was practically like spitting on the grave. Or spitting in the face of the survivors.

“Anna Beth,” someone called from the sitting room. Sounded like the oldest sister, Marlene. The one who liked chocolate. Roby shot a glance at the bundt cake, saw the swirl of yellow that was exposed inside the crumbling brown wedge. Marlene was clumsy with a knife.

“I’d best go,” Anna Beth said to Roby. “That’s real nice of you to take care of things out here. Most men consider that sort of thing to be women’s work.”

“I ain’t most men,” he said. “And it’s the least I can do.”

“Well, you got that stubborn Ridgehorn blood in you. Just like me. I guess I’m more like Daddy than I ever like to let on.”

She waved a small good-bye and left the kitchen.

Roby looked at the sweet potato pie. If only someone had the nerve to mention to Beverly Parsons about the molasses. Maybe it was some old Appalachian tradition. He’d never heard of it, and he was big on tradition himself. He made sure the lid was secure on the bowl of Cole slaw and slipped it into the refrigerator before the mayonnaise turned.

That Anna Beth was a silly girl for being in her late teens. She wasn’t like her daddy at all. She was still breathing, for one thing. And she and Roby didn’t have anything in common except this house and this wake and this monumental tribute of food. They certainly didn’t share any Ridgehorn blood.

Roby took a knife from his pocket, eased out a sliver of Beverly Parsons’s pie, and slid it into his mouth. As good as her other death pies, molasses and all.

He swallowed, wiped his hands, put away the Saran Wrap, and went into the sitting room to hear tales of the late Jacob Davis Ridgehorn’s honorable and God-fearing life. Every sinner got to be a saint, at least for the three days between departure and burial. Yet every saint rotted just the same.

From the inside out.

From the heart first.

Roby would offer what comfort he could. He knew there were worse things than losing a loved one, and there were worse things than dying. His knowledge of those things made him swallow again. The bite of pie went down like a stone.

II.

Widow Ridgehorn sat stiff and unyielding by the television. It was a big boxy RCA, a relic from the era of vacuum tubes. A fine layer of dust lay on it like loose skin. The decedent’s photograph leaned backward on the top of the television, framed by a corroded gilt rectangle. Jacob’s celluloid eyes were hard and dull, the face severe, like a mortician’s handiwork done twenty years too early.

Roby sat across the room on the sofa, where Alfred had eased over. Alfred’s polite gesture not only gave Roby room, but it also moved Alfred closer to Cindy, daughter of the famed pie-maker. Alfred’s eyes were suitably haunted, edged with dark lavender, but something about the lines on his forehead gave the impression that he was unsure of his emotions.

The widow wiped at her nose with a tattered handkerchief. “Shame about the timing of it, but I reckon there’s no good time to meet the Maker,” she said. “When the Lord calls, and all.”

“Late harvest was coming up,” Alfred said. “Corn first. Daddy always looked at home up there in the seat of the Massey Ferguson, his hat pressed down to his ears.”

“What about the tractor?” Marlene said. She had taken the chore of sorting things out, scheduling arrangements, seeing to the practical matters. “You going to sell it, Momma?”

The widow looked at the photograph on the television as if seeking advice. “Don’t hardly know yet.”

Sarah, the middle sister, stood with a rustle of her patterned dress, a sleeveless rayon thing from off the rack at Rose’s Discount. It was a spring dress, really, not fit for early September, all light blue and yellow and pink. Roby felt sorrow for the family. In these parts, people couldn’t afford to go out and invest in an entire wardrobe of black just for a short period of use. They mourned in their best. How come their best was never good enough?

He supposed that maybe all that really mattered was how you felt inside your heart.

“Let’s not worry about that kind of thing,” Sarah said. “It’s like grave-robbing, to start splitting up the goods before Daddy’s even in the ground.”

Buck, her husband, nodded in agreement. Buck had twenty acres on the back side of Elk Knob, four of it cleared for crops. He could use a tractor. He’d been making do with a walk-behind tiller, the kind that fought you when the tines hit a rock.

Buck had asked Roby about the procedure for getting a tobacco allotment. All Roby knew about it was that the government was involved, told you how much to grow and how much not to grow, and the allotment could be passed on down as an inheritance. It was the same government that had sued the cigarette companies for millions. Damned if Roby wanted any piece of such nonsense, and had shared that opinion with Buck.

“Reckon the will spells all that out,” Alfred said. “Who gets what, and all.”

“If you don’t mind a lawyer getting a big fat chunk of it,” Marlene said.

The air in the room was heavy with perspiration and cheap perfume. Marlene’s blonde hair clung to her neck in damp strings. She was a natural blonde, all over, Roby had been told. She didn’t meet his eyes, as if she were somehow aware of his secret knowledge.

“Well, there’s the whole funeral thing to pay for,” the widow said, wringing her leathery hands.

“Bet that thing there cost a hundred bucks to rent.” Alfred pointed at the maple lectern at the room’s entrance. It had a brass-plated lamp and on its slanted surface was a notebook filled with thick, creamy paper. The guests had signed their names, a keepsake book. As if this were a time to be remembered, picked over at some future date to share laughs and what-could-have-beens.

Roby had signed it himself, in his looping, swirling death hand, the florid signature reserved for these special times. He had almost written “good pie” after his name, but he didn’t know the widow well enough. He thought of all the lonely nights waiting ahead, an empty space beside her in the bed where Jacob Davis Ridgehorn’s shape had pressed a hollow over the years.

He knew all about lonely. In life, you had to give your heart to somebody. When you died, all you left behind was the love you thought you had given. And when you died, that was all you got back.

Roby had nobody, no family. Except, for the next few days, these Ridgehorns. And he wanted them to appreciate what they had lost, and what they were gaining. “Now, your pa deserves nothing but the best, so don’t skimp on the arrangements.”

“They ain’t much money,” Sarah said. “Daddy worked for himself all his life, pretty much hand to mouth.”

“We’ll work it out.” He nodded to the widow. “I’ll help you straighten out the papers, ma’am. And I know old Barnaby real well. I’ll make sure he does you right.”

Barnaby Clawson had been the county’s sole undertaker for forty years until a corporate chain had set up shop five years back. But Clawson still got the local trade based on brand loyalty. In the tradition of morticians everywhere, he’d found a woman who could put up with hands that caressed the dead. He had two sons by her before she decided she could no longer bear the smell of formaldehyde. She up and moved to California, some said with a Bible salesman, others said with nothing but a suitcase and a scalpel.

Roby had felt neither sorrow nor joy for the undertaker’s luck. Barnaby was under the impression that Roby had a solid streak of Clawson in him, maybe a cousin twice removed, and had even offered Roby a job. But Roby didn’t enjoy that end of the aftercare process, the closed-door operations, the mutilation, the obvious deception. He didn’t have the heart for such casual treatment of the departed. Besides, he was spoken for.

“Barnaby called this afternoon, wanted to bring the rest of the flowers over,” Anna Beth said.

“Probably just wanted to eat again,” Alfred said. Roby could tell the boy was trying to act like the man of the house to make his mother feel more secure. Or maybe Alfred was ashamed of having wept when he heard the news and now was making sure everyone knew he was tough and suspicious.

“I don’t think you ought to sell the tractor right off,” Buck said. “You ought to think it over some.”

“We might keep it,” Alfred said. “Somebody’s got to get the crops in, and there’s always next year. ‘Course, if old Barnaby Boneyard takes us for every penny, we might be selling the farm, too.”

A warmth rushed through Roby, not anger exactly, but a tiny trill of nerves. “I said I’d talk to him. He’s a fine Christian gentleman. You ought to be grateful somebody knows how to tend to all the little details. What would you have done without him?”

Alfred sat forward, a hand on Cindy Parsons’s knee. She looked at his hand as if it were a spider crawling up her skirt.

“Daddy always said, ‘Just toss me in the pond and let the sunfish nibble on me,’” Alfred said. “If he was done and buried, he’d be rolling over in his grave at all the waste of it. How much was that coffin? Two thousand? Two-and-a-half?”

Widow Ridgehorn’s face collapsed, shriveled. The first sob came like a giggle, dry and nasal.

Go to her, Roby silently commanded. For the Good Lord’s sake, comfort the poor woman.

He would have done it himself, but some things were best left to family. Even though they thought he was part Ridgehorn, it wasn’t his place. Marlene was the one for the job. Not only was she the oldest, she was female, and Alfred had shown he wasn’t going to suffer any more uncontrolled outbursts of sensitivity. Anna Beth sat with her mouth hanging open, and Sarah was busy picking stray threads from the hem of her dress.

“When did you say the burial was?” Cindy Parsons said.

“Day after tomorrow,” Alfred said.

Roby searched inside himself, found room to forgive Cindy. She’d not had many funerals herself. The Parsons clan was long-lived and didn’t breed much, so the losses were few and far between. Maybe after the sitting was over, he’d take her aside and advise her to listen to the daily obituaries on the local A.M. station.

The widow coughed a few times, swallowed her sobs, and wiped her eyes again. “Flowers need watering,” she said.

White chrysanthemums. They were one of Barnaby’s specialties. He ran a floral arrangement on the side. One of his boys had turned out gay, but that was just the run of statistics and had nothing to do with growing up in the aftercare industry. The other boy was the one who ran the floral shop. Weddings, anniversaries, births, deaths, Barnaby took a cut from just about every memorable occasion, sad or joyful. He even had his ordaining papers and could perform a marriage if necessary.

“I’ll get the pitcher,” Anna Beth said, trying to be useful.

“Here,” the widow said. She picked up a glass and held it out.

Everybody froze. It was Jacob’s denture glass. When he drank beer at night, too worn to chew tobacco, he’d take his teeth out of his mouth and plop them in the jar, plant the heels of his dirty socks on the hearth and gaze into the fire.

The glass was as holy a relic as Jacob’s fishing pole and pocketknife. Far holier than a tractor. You don’t just go and insult a dead man by abusing his intimate worldly possessions. Roby chalked that one up to the widow’s distraught nature.

“I’ll get some fresh from the kitchen,” Anna Beth said, taking the glass from her mother’s shaking hand.

“I’ll help you,” Roby said, and followed her out of the room. Behind him, Buck was asking Alfred about the condition of the Massey Ferguson’s tires.

The congealed salad had a ghostlike tint, the peaches floating among the red Jello and whipped cream. Red was the proper choice of gelatin for a death. Someone knew the rules. Roby would have to check the formal book on the lectern to see who was responsible for that particular tribute. Such small tokens paved the way to healing far better than any minister’s words.

Anna Beth put the denture glass on top of the refrigerator. A film of paste and flecks of white settled to the bottom of the glass. Barnaby had taken the dentures with the corpse. The false teeth would be fitted into Jacob’s mouth so that he wouldn’t be slack-jawed at the viewing. If Barnaby attended to the details with the usual care, then Jacob would be haler and heartier than he’d looked in decades.

But the viewing wasn’t until tomorrow. There was still the sitting to get through.

Anna Beth was at the sink, rinsing out a chipped coffee mug, when the tears came. The first sign was the tremble of her shoulders, then her head dipped, and Roby saw her reflection in the window behind the sink. Her hair hung over her face, tangled strands on either side of the faucet. Roby went to her, patted her on the back just below the neck, rubbed softly.

“Here, let me,” he said, taking the cup.

“I shouldn’t be carrying on so.”

“Hey, now.” He squirted some Joy into the cup, let a trickle of water run into its bottom, then ran his forefinger around the ring of stain in the bottom. “You only get one daddy, and he only gets to die once. So you go ahead and do whatever you need to do.”

She wiped her eyes, then wiped her hands on a dish towel hanging from a cabinet knob. “I think I need to eat something.”

“Try the pie,” he said. “Beverly Parsons made it.”

“Maybe so. You know what’s funny?”

“What?”

“I can’t taste nothing. Ever since . . . “

“Ain’t unusual.” He rinsed the cup and filled it with water. Spring water, come from a fresh rocky crevice in the hills. Roby had found it with a dowsing rod, not that you needed a dowser to find water in these parts. But Roby had the gift with water witching, could make that forked stick dip down for water or precious metal or even lost bones.

He handed a knife to Anna Beth, handle first, so she could take it without cutting herself. She snicked off a sliver of sweet potato pie and used the blade to push it into her mouth. She stretched the plastic wrap back over the pie. Roby frowned. The wrap was wrinkled.

“Take this to your ma,” he said.

She licked the knife clean and set it on the counter, then took the cup with both hands. “Good pie.”

A good-bye pie, Roby almost said aloud.

She left the room, and Roby was once again alone with the heaps of food. Deviled eggs, left out for at least two hours. The paprika had dissolved into a rusty blur among the yellows. That was a sign. The eggs had turned. Only four of the dozen had been eaten.

Roby poked a finger into the mushy yellow of one of the remaining eggs. He sniffed his finger. Definitely turned. But maybe he could get Buck to eat a few, if only to shut him up about the tractor. If Buck churned his guts up later, that was okay.

The pie called to Roby again, almost with a whisper of human voice. He picked up the knife, wiped it on the leg of his jeans, and looked at his reflection in the blade. The fluorescent light made him look green and sickly, as if he himself were two days dead instead of Jacob. But Barnaby would take care of the skin. Barnaby was as reliable as the sun.

He reached the blade to the pie and was about to cut a thick wedge when Marlene entered the room.

“Momma wanted some of that,” she said.

“I thought she wasn’t hungry.”

“You know how it goes when you got sorrow. Half the time you can’t stand a bite and the other half you want to stuff yourself blue.”

“I’ll cut her a piece, then. Mind handing me a plate?”

“Momma’s all the time going on about Beverly Parsons’s pies. Daddy raved about them, you know. Ever time we come home from a church social, he’d lay on the couch and put his hands over his tummy and said if he’d married Beverly instead of our ma, he’d weigh four hundred pounds. And Momma would throw a pin cushion at him, sometimes not even taking the pins out first.”

“Well, they’re good pies.”

“And Daddy stayed skinny as a rail, even though Momma ain’t so bad a cook herself.”

“No offense, Marlene, but your momma is best with casseroles, when she has some garden harvest to work with. Beverly’s good for all seasons.”

Marlene almost smiled. “Hush up, now. She might hear you.”

Roby eased the slice of pie onto the plate. The crust collapsed and lay on the plate among some brown crumbs. He hoped the widow would eat that part. Every crumb added to Jacob’s burden, and if the dead man couldn’t even count on his own wife to help him make the passage, then he was in deep trouble.

Roby had handled visitations and sittings where the widow was practically sending out feelers for a new husband, right there during the mourning period. Some, you’d think they helped their poor old menfolk into the grave, they were so cold. Such things had been done before. A farmer’s wife had a dozen dirty ways to get rid of a man. Most of them had bad arteries from eating too much fat, because no part of an animal was wasted.

For evidence, all you had to do was look at the sausage patties from the Clemens place.

Peggy Clemens had already put the headstone to two husbands, and was known to boil down the entire pig’s head, brains and all, then debone it and run it through the grinder. Roby took no sides in the moral issue of whether brains were proper eating or not, but you had to admit that a Clemens patty had enough grease in it to shine a barn door.

“You gonna help your momma keep up the place?” Roby said.

“I don’t know. I got my place in town and you know things with me and Harold Pennefield are getting sort of serious.”

“So I heard. You could do way worse than marrying a mechanic. As least you’ll always have something to drive.”

“Yeah. I hate he smells like gasoline and always has those black curves under his fingernails. But he’s regular in church of a Sunday and lets me pick out which movie to see. He took me up to that fancy inn over in Glendale Springs, you know the one.”

“The Inn at Glendale Springs, they call it. A rich couple from Florida bought the place and fixed it up. Reckon they couldn’t come up with a good name.”

“That meal was over thirty bucks, but Harold didn’t bat an eye. He even ordered me seconds on wine that was four dollars a glass. I didn’t tell him the wine tasted like brake fluid.”

“You better learn to cook so he doesn’t have to spend so much money on you.”

Marlene cocked her hip a little, not flirting, exactly, but just letting Roby know she could if she wanted. “He says I’m worth spoiling.”

Roby nodded at the pie. “Well, you best get that in there before it spoils.”

“Give me another minute. Sarah’s going on about what to do with Daddy’s war medals. Daddy couldn’t give them away while he was alive, and all of a sudden they’re something to fight over. Like Buck and that damned tractor. I say sell everything and split the money all around. With Momma getting the biggest chunk, of course.”

A fly landed on the pie. Marlene didn’t notice.

Flies were the worst thing that God had ever put on this earth. They laid eggs in your food and, if you didn’t die where somebody could find you easy, they laid eggs in your nose and eyes and mouth.

Roby waved the fly away, then watched as it cut a lazy arc in the air before settling on a whole hog hunk of Clemens sausage.

“You don’t mean to sell the land?” he asked.

“No, nothing like that. Momma needs a place and she’s liable to live for another ten years at this rate. Anna Beth is set on staying here, too, and ain’t any men lining up to woo her away from the nest. Sarah’s got her own problems, but at least she has Buck to take care of her.”

Roby didn’t see the attraction that Buck had for Sarah. She was a little bookish for these parts, not much good with her hands. She could play a banjo, but that was about it for useful skills. She had fancy ideas and talked about going to a big-city college, but she was three years gone from high school and the longer you put off things like that, the harder it was to make happen, especially if you were married. Still, no kids yet, so you could never say never.

Roby himself had once thought about joining the Air Force, even though his eyes weren’t great so he’d never make jet pilot. But maybe he could have worked on an aircraft carrier or something, seen the world beyond Barkersville. Maybe he would have found somebody, got married.

And if he’d gotten away from these parts, he wouldn’t have driven out in that backroads part of Pickett County under the dead moon, drunk as the devil, his foot heavy on the pedal. That night had touched him and shaped him and tied him to these mountains like a Billy goat on a chain.

“Reckon your momma will ever marry again?” he asked.

Marlene smiled this time, though the grief cut shadows beneath her eyes. “No, she was a one-woman man. Some are like that. I can see things with Harold maybe giving out one day, especially if he never opens his own garage. Me, I might get impressed with a traveling salesman or a long-haul truck driver or something. My generation ain’t as stable and reliable as Momma’s.”

Roby nodded. He was between those generations, and he was only half-stable. He was reliable on the job, though. He had to be. There was job and there was duty, and he put his heart into it. On the night that changed his life forever, he hadn’t asked the consequences of failure. He took the job. It was the lesser of three evils, or so it had seemed at the time.

“Think she’ll want some coffee with that?”

“All we got is Maxwell House instant. It’s rough enough stuff in the morning. This late, you’re better off with tea.”

“Well, I guess she’s sleeping restless as it is. Maybe a glass of milk.”

“Lordy, as long as you don’t use the denture glass. I don’t know what she was thinking.”

“The grief-struck mind takes an odd turn once in a while. You ever heard of ‘gallows humor’?”

“No, but I’m sure going to hang Buck if he don’t shut up about that tractor. He could at least wait until the other vultures got their fill.”

“It’s a damned good tractor.”

“A real man deserves that tractor, not somebody like Buck. I want to see a real man on that thing.”

“I got to wrap up this sausage. The flies are going to carry it off.”

“Are you a real man, Roby?” She moved closer, lowering her voice.

Roby looked at the Frigidaire. On it was a Polaroid of Jacob and the girls, taken maybe a decade before. A young Marlene was barefoot, in a calico dress, with pig tails and uneven teeth. Jacob was smiling like somebody had a pitchfork in his back.

“Marlene, your momma’s probably starving by now.”

She cocked her hip again. “It’s some damned good pie.”

“You had some?”

She grinned, her teeth still uneven, and leaned back her head. She looked at him through half-lidded eyes. “Harold says it’s the best in town.”

Roby felt his throat tighten. Here was Jacob barely cold, and his daughter was acting like a floozy on his grave. Harold was going to have his hands full with this one, but probably only for a few years. She had the itch. He could see Marlene talking her momma into selling the place off, then jumping a bus for Raleigh or Wilmington or even Pigeon Forge. She looked like the Pigeon Forge type, with her styled hair and shirts that were always a little too tight.

“Ought to get that pie to her,” he said, working to keep his voice level. “I’ll fetch along the milk.”

Marlene pouted a little, as if she’d used her best bait and hadn’t got so much as a nibble. She gave a little extra shake of her rear as she left, but Roby forced himself not to watch. It wasn’t his place. She had given her heart to Harold, at least for the time being.

Biscuits. A time like this, a good scratch biscuit eased the troubled soul.

He took one out of the Tupperware container and ate it dry, without the butter that sat on a porcelain dish, its yellow edges soft in the heat of the kitchen.

III.

By the time Roby entered the sitting room, the widow had eaten half the piece of pie. She chewed with a crooked yank of her jaws, as if she had an aching tooth on one side. Her gaze was fixed across the room where Alfred and Buck were studying over one of Jacob’s rifles. It was a war relic, brought home from Japan by Jacob’s father.

“What caliber is it?” Buck asked.

“Japs don’t use calibers. Why do you think they lost? Besides being yellow Commie slants and all that.”

“Well, it had to have had a bullet.”

“Daddy showed me one, once. Long as your little finger.”

“I remember that,” Sarah said. “Maybe the bullet’s in that old cigar box with his medals.”

The widow cleared her throat. A tarry crumb stuck to her lower lip. “He threw that stuff out. Figured they’d be grandkids running around here before long.”

She shot a stare at Buck, as if his worthless seed had refused to take root in Ridgehorn soil, as if he were personally responsible for Jacob’s dying without ever meeting a third-generation descendant.

Alfred lifted the barrel of the gun, pressed the thick wooden stock to his shoulder, and sighted to a spot somewhere near the setting sun outside the window. “Man, bet you could really knock down a deer with this thing.”

“Or a buck,” Marlene said.

“Ain’t you funny?” Buck said. To the widow, he said, “Reckon this will go up on the block, too. No grandkids, you might as well sell it off.”

“We don’t have enough money to buy it and the tractor, too,” Sarah said.

“Don’t be dumb,” Buck said. “You don’t buy it, you inherit it. I say if we get the tractor, then Alfred here deserves the Jap rifle. Marlene can have—well, what would you rather have, Marlene, the Dodge pickup or Old Laddie?”

Old Laddie was Jacob’s horse, high-spirited in his day, before they gelded him and turned him out to pasture. He was experienced with plow-and-harness, but when you had a tractor you didn’t need to mess with draft animals. Now Laddie mostly spent the day in the shade of the willows by the creek, his dark tail sweeping flies, his nose wet with age.

“Jacob said one time he wouldn’t mind being buried with Old Laddie,” the widow said. “Wasn’t there a Civil War general who done that? Buried himself right on top of his horse?”

“Probably a Yankee,” Buck said. “Who else would be that damned stupid?”

Alfred lowered the rifle. “If we’d have had ordnance like this, then the stars and bars would be flying over Washington, D.C., right this very minute.”

“Don’t make fun of Momma, Buck,” Marlene said.

“They was one,” the widow said.

“I think it was Jeb Stuart,” Roby said. He actually didn’t know, but figured if it had really happened, it was either Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, or Robert E. Lee, and he didn’t think it was Lee, because Lee had lived many years after the war and his horse Traveler probably died long before Lee.

And Stonewall Jackson’s arm was shot off, maybe that was what the widow meant. Maybe they buried Jackson’s arm with the rest of his body. Stuart was a cavalry hero, at that. To bury a man on a horse, you’d need a mighty deep hole. Or maybe they were just planted side by side. Roby wondered who’d baked Stuart’s death pie.

“I want to be buried on top of Harold,” Marlene said, and her eyes were looking right into Roby’s. Nobody else seemed to notice that she was talking dirty.

“You got to marry him first,” Anna Beth said. “Nobody gets in the Ridgehorn cemetery unless they’re family. Right, Momma?”

The widow nodded, setting her pie plate on the scarred, handmade coffee table that would have been an antique hunter’s dream except that one of the cherry legs had splintered off and been replaced by a square hunk of locust.

There were at least two forkfuls worth of the pie left on the widow’s plate. Roby wanted to say something, like maybe Cindy Parsons would go home and tell her mom that the widow let some of the pie go to waste. But it wasn’t his place. A grieving widow had a right to her own appetite.

“The cemetery will be a problem if you ever need to sell out,” Sarah said. “I done some studying on it. Once you make a graveyard, it puts an easement on it so you can’t never do nothing else with the land.”

“Goddamned government,” Buck said. “Next thing you know, they’ll be telling you what color to paint your barn.”

“How big is the graveyard?”

“The fenced-in part is half an acre,” Alfred said. “You got grandpaw and grandma up there, his parents, the two oldest, plus that one baby that died. With the hole for Daddy, there’s still probably about two generations’ worth of dying room left.”

Roby clenched his fists, then stuck his hands behind his back so no one could see his anger. This was a family affair, after all. It wasn’t his duty to make sure the survivors behaved like they had a lick of human decency. He had other worries.

“Turk’s cap lily,” the widow said. “I want to plant Turk’s cap on his grave. He always liked those.”

Turk’s cap was a drooping yellow-orange mountain flower that bloomed in early summer, its petals curling up so that it looked like one of those fancy, old-fashioned caps. Roby figured a dead man’s wishes were to be respected, even if it involved a horse and a deep hole, keeping a farm together, or passing a tractor down to an in-law.

“So, Momma, when do we get to read the will?” Anna Beth asked.

“When the time comes,” Alfred said, not easing his grip on the Japanese rifle. “Best get him buried first. That’s only proper.”

“Well, you know they ain’t no savings,” the widow said. “And the government trimmed the tobacco allotment again. Down to four acres next year. Why can’t they treat us like they do soybean farmers and pay us not to grow it?”

“They sued the ass off the cigarette companies, that’s why,” Buck said. “It won’t look good for them to turn around and say, ‘This is good for farmers but bad for everybody else.’ Hell, I almost want to take up smoking just for spite.”

“Snuff has sure gone up,” the widow said. “Eight dollars a jar now, and the jars ain’t even fit for putting jelly in no more. Used to be pretty glass things, little diamond patterns on the outside. Now they’re plastic.”

“You need to quit that, anyway,” Marlene said. “Stuff will rot your mouth.”

“I only do it of an evening,” she said. “After dinner. When me and your daddy—”

She looked down at her hands. Her voice grew quiet, and even Alfred stopped his fidgeting.

“We’d sit out on the porch this time of year, rock and snap beans, Jacob with his chew and me with my dip. Never felt like no sin to me. Nowhere in the Bible does it say tobacco’s wrong.”

Cindy Parsons stood up, went to Alfred, held the hand that wasn’t gripping the rifle. “You don’t need that gun.”

“Don’t tell me what I need or don’t need.”

“Honey—”

“We got the land,” Marlene said. “Forty acres split four ways, we’ll all do okay.”

“Except you’d sell your share off in a heartbeat, and before you know it, we’ll have a row of condos popping up on the ridge,” Alfred said. “You’d open it up to the same rich Yankee trash that caused the rest of Barkersville to go to hell.”

“You’re forgetting about Momma,” Sarah said. “Forty acres split five ways.”

“Won’t be no splitting ‘til after I’m dead,” the widow said.

“What about we sell it all in one chunk and just divide the money?” Anna Beth said to her. “You can move into the Westfield Estates. It’s real nice in there, air conditioned, satellite TV, an indoor pool, a cafeteria right there on the spot.”

The widow worked her lips as if she were holding back too much snuff juice. “It’s an old folks’ home, no matter what fancy name you give it.”

“But, Momma, you are old.”

The silence fell again, as thick as the ash dust in the back of the hearth.

“Dishes,” Roby said. “There’s a whole sink full in the kitchen.”

He moved across the room, every eye on him. He took the widow’s plate, almost asked her if she were going to finish that last bit of pie, then took her glass. A ring of milk had hardened halfway up the glass.

“Mind giving me a hand, Sarah?” he asked. Buck gave Roby a suspicious look, then turned his face out the window, toward the barn where the Massey Ferguson sat in the shadows.

Sarah got up. Marlene crossed her legs and folded her arms. Cindy moved closer to Alfred, who planted the stock of the rifle on the floor as if he were a soldier at parade rest. Anna Beth watched the black screen of the TV.

The fork fell off the widow’s plate as Roby lifted it. Crumbs flipped onto the gray rug. The fork bounced across hardwood. Roby counted the crumbs. Three big enough to see, maybe six more too small for a mouse.

Sarah stooped and gathered the fork and Roby followed her into the kitchen.

#

IV.

Lemon-fresh Joy. Roby not only enjoyed its smell, but the lather was richer than that of Ivory or Dove. The dishes were stacked to the left of the sink. Sarah had scraped them clean and was busy putting away the morning’s plates from the drying rack.

“That’s one thing people don’t consider,” she said. “They bring over food, but nobody remembers to bring paper plates.”

“It would be even worse if you had to cook, too,” Roby said. “Greasy frying pans, tomato sauce clinging to the bowls, egg yellows that set up and get stubborn on a plate.”

“I’m sorry about what happened in there.” She wiped her hands on a dish towel.

Roby lowered the first stack of dishes into the soapy water. He wiped the scrub pad over the surface of the top plate, flipped it over, wiped a circle in the back, and placed it in the adjacent sink.

“It’s not your fault. And people got to find their own way to get over a death.”

“But picking and fighting isn’t the way. Daddy would bust a gut if he was here.”

“Maybe that’s the way of it,” Roby said. “Everybody lost the one person they would look to when something like this happens. When was the last death? Didn’t you lose your aunt a few summers back?”

“Yeah. Iva Dean on my Momma’s side. Had a stroke in her sleep, the doctor said. Was gone before she knew what hit her.”

Roby kept working the dishes, getting his momentum, wiping, flipping, stacking. “I remember now. That was some spread.”

“What was a spread?”

“The kitchen. Had the sitting over at your cousin Vicky’s house. That was Iva Dean’s only daughter, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Iva Dean’s husband died back in the Reagan years.”

“Tuna salad. One of you girls brought tuna salad, didn’t you?”

Sarah turned the cold water tap and rinsed the stack of cleaned dishes. “That was Anna Beth. She made it herself, back before she learned how to cook.”

“Sweet pickles and mayonnaise and mustard. No onions.”

“How do you remember all that?”

Roby looked at the food on the counter, the heaps of it, a feast fit for a king. Probably the most food that had ever graced Jacob Ridgehorn’s kitchen. The refrigerator had enough pork and beans, melons, and corn on the cob to feed a small army.

“Food and death go together,” he said. “Because food is life.”

“I reckon. I heard that Vicky hid food up in the attic so the preacher wouldn’t eat it all. Somebody said she done it so that those who dropped in to pay their respects would see no food on the table and would run out and bring some more.”

“Vicky did hide food in the attic. Some of it spoiled.” Roby shook away the memory of Iva Dean’s lean spirit, forlorn among the molded cakes and collapsed soufflés. A Beverly Parsons pie was among the food that had gone to waste. How do you apologize to somebody when their death pies don’t get eaten?

The plates were done and he was working on the flatware. The finger he’d cut earlier began to throb, the nerves activated by the warm water. “I didn’t want to say this in front of the others, but I think you got the most sense of any of them. You’re married and more or less settled, Buck’s got his own land and a steady job. So you don’t need to worry about who gets what and how much land ought to be sold off.”

She stared into the rinse water. “Daddy liked Buck. You should have seen them at the wedding. We had a string band, I got to pick some banjo, and Buck and Daddy were square-dancing together, laughing like crazy. And Buck was only half drunk at the time, Daddy maybe three-quarters.”

“I wished I could have made that one.” Roby had been away, tending to a death sitting on the other side of the county. Serving.

“At least Daddy got to see one of us settled down. Though I expect Cindy got her claws deep enough into Alfred that he won’t get away.”

“Cindy might be good for him. Some men lose their dangerous edge when they get married.”

“What about the others?”

Roby got busy with the dirty glasses. He’d been to several sittings where the husband was in prison without bail, the wife dead long before her time. Sometimes with kids running around underfoot who were too young to know that their momma wouldn’t be coming back. All they knew was that there sure was some good pie in the kitchen.

“What I’m trying to say is that it’s up to you to keep the farm together,” Roby said. “I know it ain’t none of my business, I ain’t close kin, but I know your Daddy would want it that way. No telling how much of his blood spilled out there on that dirt, how many splinters drove under his fingernails, how much dust he swallowed in the barn. This place is all about him. And soon he’s going to be buried here, gone back to the soil that he loved so much.”

“I don’t know. It might be easier on everybody to just sell it. I mean, Anna Beth will soon be wanting to get out on her own, see the world a little, and where will that leave Momma? She can’t keep this place up by herself.”

Roby’s nose itched. Probably from the smell of the spoiled eggs. “But you got roots here. Memories. Don’t that mean anything?”

“I’m growing new roots. Me and Buck will probably be having kids in a few years. That’s why he needs the tractor. We probably can’t afford one after that.”

“You take that tractor off this ground and it’s the same as if you walked across your Daddy’s grave backwards.”

Sarah turned away and carried an armload of dry plates to the cabinet. “Maybe it’s none of your business. I mean, here we are, close family trying to work out our differences, and you come in and start bossing the kitchen and bringing in your big ideas of what the Ridgehorns ought to do and not do.”

She paused in her stacking. “Come to think of it, you did that at the Jones house, too. When Granny Aiken died. She was Momma’s great aunt, so that makes you what? Second cousin? Third? Yet you went right ahead and meddled when Momma went after the doll collection.”

“Them dolls should have rightly stayed with Granny Aiken’s grandkids, somebody who’d appreciate them. What good would it do to sell them off so they’d get stuck on a shelf somewhere?”

Roby looked at his smeared reflection among the spiderweb cracks of the plate he was rinsing. When had his eyes gotten so old? While he wasn’t looking, that’s when. That’s the way it worked.

“Well, that money would have come in handy when Gertie needed a heart bypass. The hospital in Asheville said they couldn’t turn anybody away, but you can bet your boots they didn’t go the works for a dirt-poor country patient. And when she died on the operating table, why, it’s just one of them things, ain’t it? Happens from time to time, the doctors said. Every surgery a risk. Except you can bet if it was one of theirs on the cutting table, the odds would have been a lot better.”

Poor Gertie, God rest her soul. Dead at forty. Beverly Parsons had made a pumpkin pie for that one, sweet as snuff and thick as tar.

“And what good would the money have done her dead?” Roby asked. “At least the kids can look at the dolls and have memories. Money don’t make memories.”

“Yeah, but if Buck got the tractor and we got our share when the land sold, we could afford to build a house and move out of that trailer. You can hear the rats at night. They eat right through them aluminum walls.”

Roby pulled the stopper and watched the gray water swirl down the drain. “What would your Daddy say?”

“Nothing, because the dead don’t talk.”

Roby said nothing. He couldn’t explain, and she wouldn’t believe him if he tried. “There’s still half a pie left. Why don’t you have some?”

“I ain’t hungry. You got me mad.”
“It’s not my decision. It’s you-alls.”

“Well, just shut up about it, then.”

Roby looked out the window. The sun had hit the lip of the far mountains, splashing the ridge lines with molten gold. The shadows around the barn had grown long, the woods dark by the fence. In the quiet, he could hear crickets through the screen door, and a couple of frogs had taken up conversation down by the watering pond.

“Buck’s getting that tractor, no matter what Marlene says,” Sarah said.

“Not while I’m breathing,” said Alfred from the kitchen entrance. Roby wondered how long he’d been standing just outside the room, listening. Then Roby figured it didn’t matter. This family didn’t have many secrets. At least the living members of the family.

“You don’t give a bucket of horse hockey for this place, Alfred,” she said. “You can have everything else you want. Daddy’s got a bunch of hand tools, the hay baler, the old junk Ford Falcon—”

“Hey, that’s a collector’s item. Worth some money. Maybe more than the tractor.”

Roby thought of Granny Aiken’s collection, how the dolls had stared down from the shelves with dark glass eyes while her family scratched and hissed over her worldly goods. What did those dolls think about that? Probably wished they’d get sold and not have to witness any more such foolishness.

“Eat some pie, Alfred,” he said.

“You and your damned pie.”

“Where’s Cindy?” Sarah said. “I didn’t think she let you out of her sight these days.”

“She’s comforting Momma, since you girls are doing such a bang-up job of it.”

“She’s sucking up, more like it.”

“Look, I don’t know what you and Marlene are scheming behind my back, but I’m man of this house now, whether you like it or not. Daddy wanted it that way.”

“How do you know what Daddy wanted?” Roby said. “You were hardly ever in the same room with him since the day you turned fifteen.”

Alfred’s cheeks burned red, his eyes narrowed to quick, cruel slits. He glanced at his sister, then back to Roby. “Don’t you dare say another word,” he said in a half-choked whisper.

“You carry your sins inside you, whether they’re spoken of or not,” Roby said. “In your heart.”

“Shut up in front of her,” Alfred said.

Roby looked at the half-empty jar of apple butter on top of the refrigerator. Made from Macintosh apples in the orchard that covered the slope above the meadow. Cooked down over a kettle in October, an all-day event, with taters wrapped in tin foil and tossed into the embers, pan-fried cornbread, fresh-squeezed cider.

“Don’t trouble yourself none,” Roby said. “Your daddy told me all about it.”

“What’s he talking about, Alfred?” Sarah said.

Alfred looked around like a mountain lion caught in a cage. He lunged forward, grabbed a ceramic urn, and flung it across the room. It bounced off the Frigidaire and fell to the floor, unbroken. A spatter of cream blurred and ran in tiny white rivulets down the refrigerator door. The murmur of conversation in the living room eased off.

“You all okay?” the widow said in her loudest voice.

“We’re fine, Momma,” Sarah said. “I just dropped a cake plate, is all.”

“Cake wasn’t on it, I hope.”

“No. Nothing broke.”

Alfred stared at the cream as it dripped to the floor.

“Get a mop,” Roby said to him.

Cindy Parsons came into the kitchen and hurried to Alfred. “What’s wrong, honey? You took ill?”

“I’m all right,” he said. He looked at Roby as if daring him to speak, as if the secret of Alfred’s fifteenth birthday was something he’d never shared with his lady friend. With anybody, for that matter.

Roby crossed the room, scooped up the urn, and examined it under the kitchen fluorescents. “Lucky bounce.”

Sarah brought a wet dish rag and wiped down the front of the Frigidaire. Then she got on her hands and knees and began soaking up the pool of cream. Roby put the urn back on the crowded counter, then pushed the sweet potato pie toward Alfred.

“Here,” Roby said. “Have a piece. Take your mind off your anger.”

Alfred looked into the surface of the pie, more than half of it gone, the dull aluminum pan grease-smeared beneath the part that had been eaten.

“Go on, honey,” Cindy said. “Momma made it special for the Ridgehorns. Spent half the day on it.”

“I don’t want no damned pie.”

“Eat it,” Roby said. “You don’t want to disappoint your ma. No more than you already have, I mean.”

Alfred scrambled around the counter, sweeping a bowl of green beans with bacon to the floor. He grabbed for the glazed ham, its hunk of exposed bone slick among the red meat. He raised the ham and charged Roby, wielding the weapon like the Bible’s Sampson flailing around the jawbone of an ass. Roby ducked the two blows, hearing the shallow breath squeezing from Alfred’s lungs. Roby spun, grappled at the counter, and came away with Beverly Parsons’s death pie. He shoved it into Alfred’s face.

Alfred froze, more stunned than hurt. The ham slipped from his fingers and hit the floor. Cindy squealed in panic. Sarah stood at the far end of the counter, the wet rag limp in her hand.

Alfred took two steps back, then began wiping the sweet orange goo from his eyes.

“Sorry about that,” Roby said, his voice barely audible.

By now, the rest of the family had clustered in the kitchen, the widow hunched and squinting, trying to make sense of the scene. Buck fought through the group of his in-laws to Sarah’s side. Marlene let out a laugh that sounded like a pig’s last call at a slaughterhouse. Anna Beth was saying three or four things at once, none of them complete sentences and only a few of the words recognizable as English.

They all watched Alfred, waiting for his reaction. He peered through the mess that clung to his face and looked at the pie filling and ruptured crust on his hands.

“Sorry,” Roby whispered.

In the silence, the sounds of the mountain dusk leaked through the windows and screen door. The cows had come down from the high pasture and bumped against the warped locust gate that led to the barn. A hound dog bayed on a distant ridge, the tolling of a death bell for a treed raccoon. The crickets had risen up in armies now, emboldened by the cool darkness. A lost gray moth battered against the wire screen in the kitchen window.

Alfred held his hands out, palms up, as if he were experiencing stigmata and wanted the others to witness the miracle.

The silence grew deeper until the room was swollen with it.

“You’re right, Roby,” he finally said. “That’s one hell of a pie.”

Marlene laughed for real. The widow eased forward on legs that were worn by age, each step a creaking curse on gravity. Roby felt his muscles relax and he rose out of the fighting crouch that had knotted his gut. Alfred’s tongue flicked out and licked at the pie that surrounded his lips. Then he lapped the thick substance from his palms.

The tension that had filled the house all day fell away like mist burned under a strong dawn. Everyone began talking at once, Sarah gave Alfred the towel so he could clean himself, Roby picked the pie pan and ham off the floor, collecting the larger clumps of pie. Buck took a clean plate from the cabinet and heaped it full of mashed potatoes, then broke the skin that covered the cold gravy. He dolloped some gravy on the white mound, then ladled some sliced carrots on his plate.

Cindy helped Alfred wipe himself, kissing him on the mouth before all the pie was gone, so that her lips were stained and smeared as well.

“Hope your momma teaches you how to cook that good,” Alfred said to her.

Sarah got out plates for everybody. The widow was in the mood for casserole. Roby washed the ham off in the sink and put it back in its foil platter. Anna Beth carved a slice and stuck the meat between the split halves of a scratch biscuit. Marlene had a fat, out-of-round piece of Clemens sausage. Roby started a pot of tea and everybody worked on the pile of food, all standing gathered around the kitchen counter except the widow. She sat on an uneven stool, head bent forward like a minister leading a flock in some joyous ritual.

They were still eating and chattering when the car headlights first appeared as specks on the dim end of the dirt drive, bouncing like twin fireflies.

#

V.

The knock was unnecessary, but Roby knew the action was meant as a sign of respect. Alfred, clean now except for a few stains on his shirt, swung open the screen door and held it as Barnaby entered. The undertaker wore his midnight blue suit, the one he wore when dropping in on a sitting. His black suit, the serious hand-tailored one, was saved for the actual viewing and interment.

Roby nodded at Barnaby. Barnaby smiled in greeting while somehow keeping the undercurrent of sorrow fixed on his face. Roby marveled at the man’s professional talent. Or perhaps it wasn’t a talent. Maybe his face had grown that way, etched by a thousand funerals, the solemn features worn and eroded like a tombstone that had weathered too many storms.

“Hello, Mrs. Ridgehorn,” he said. The widow had risen to her feet and let Barnaby take her hand. “Hope this isn’t an inconvenient time to discuss the final arrangements.”

“Needs to be done,” the widow said. “No use pretending he ain’t dead.”

“I’m handling it for Momma,” Marlene said. “I’ll do all the signing.”

Barnaby, with his hunched back, long neck, and sharp face, had the aspect of a vulture. He hunched even lower in a bow of resigned agreement.

“We don’t want nothing fancy,” Alfred said. “A regular Baptist funeral, the preacher does his sermon, the choir sings ‘When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder,’ then a straight drive from the chapel to the family cemetery.”

“And no more wreaths,” Marlene said. “Or memory books. No limousine, just the hearse.”

Barnaby looked to the widow for approval. She pursed her mouth. The casserole had given her lips a slick sheen. “I reckon Jacob would have wanted the bare bones,” she said.

“As you wish,” the undertaker said.

Roby caught a faint whiff of formaldehyde over the aroma of the food.

Death seeped into a man when he was around it long enough. His breath became the gas of rot and his skin became dust. His eyes became dying lights, dry and gray and empty. He returned to the dirt more slowly than his customers, but the process was just as one-way, with the same end.

“You want some food?” Anna Beth asked him.

“No, thank you. I’ve already eaten.” Barnaby made his way around the counter and shook Alfred’s hand. The veins in the undertaker’s neck throbbed visibly under his thin skin. “Alfred. Sorry about your loss.”

“Our loss is your gain.”

Roby stiffened, but the undertaker’s colorless smile took the edge off the remark. “When you stick out your chin that way, you look just like your father,” Barnaby said.

Alfred didn’t know whether to take that as praise or an insult. “Want some cake? The pie’s all gone but we got devil’s food and bundt. Pick your poison.”

“Thank you, really, but I just stopped by to take care of the details.”

“Come on, Barnaby,” Roby said. “Make yourself at home.”

Their eyes met.

“Any pie left?” Barnaby asked.

“All gone,” Roby said.

“Must have been good.”

“It was. Beverly Parsons made it.”

Sarah got out a plate and set it before Barnaby. He rubbed his hands together and said, “Well, since you’re being so hospitable.”

Anna Beth nicked off some of the bundt cake. Barnaby was asking for seconds before Roby could make the offer. Roby wondered how the man stayed so thin, as many sittings as he’d attended over the years. After he’d finished off the second piece, he wiped the crumbs from his chin with a handkerchief he’d pulled from a hidden suit pocket.

“I have the flowers out in the car,” Barnaby said. “The usual way is for the flowers to stay at the house until the viewing.”

“No more wreaths,” Marlene reminded him.

“Oh, of course there will be no charge. These are gift flowers, sent in loving memory. Jacob was well-respected by the community.”

The widow choked back a sob and rubbed a hand across her eyes. “Thank you, Mr. Clawson, for your consideration in these trying times.”

“Ma’am, I talked to Jacob a few times in the past year. Even though the Lord took him before any of us expected, he was already laying plans. He didn’t want you to worry over the details.”

“He was a good man.”

“I think relieving a loved one of the burden of afterlife care is the best thing a person can do in this life,” Barnaby said.

Roby wished the man wouldn’t lay it on so thick. It’s not like he needed a sales pitch. He had the product that sold itself.

“Where are the flowers?” Alfred said.

“Out in my car,” the undertaker said. “In the trunk.”

“Let me get them,” Roby said.

Barnaby fished in his pants pocket and came out with the keys. “You know the right key.”

Roby nodded.

“Get the porch light,” the widow said to Anna Beth. “It got dark while we wasn’t looking.”

Anna Beth followed Roby outside. He felt, more than saw, the dark hulk of the barn off the road to the left of the yard. The early stars were like cold holes in the night sky. The autumn breeze played along the tops of the trees, rattling leaves that had gone to red and brown. The stretch of Jacob’s farm was a distant, forgotten corner of a deep and heartless universe.

“You wait here,” Roby said to Anna Beth.

“You might need some help.”

“I done this plenty. Don’t want you falling in the dark and getting your dress dirty.”

That was something she couldn’t argue with. She needed something for the viewing, and had to save her best for the funeral itself. That meant she’d be wearing tonight’s dress tomorrow. “Be careful.”

Barnaby Clawson’s car was parked twenty yards from the house. He could have driven closer to the door, but distance meant respect. And distance meant safety from prying eyes.

Except from those eyes that could see in the dark, could see through skin, could see right into the heart of things.

Roby inserted the key, popped the trunk, and looked back toward the house. Through the windows, the kitchen was like a lighted stage. Barnaby looked to be helping himself to a third piece of bundt cake. The widow held a mug of warm tea, Alfred and Cindy had an arm around each other’s waist, Sarah was at the sink washing the latest round of dirty dishes, and Buck was talking to Marlene, no doubt about tractors.

He ducked under the trunk lid and rummaged under the bouquets of flowers. The smell of crushed petals was heady and sickening. He hurried in his task, eager to breathe the night air again. The suitcase was over the wheel well. His fingers found its familiar frayed piping, the ragged leather raised from its surface like warts on flesh.

“I’ll be just a second,” he said to Anna Beth, who stood under a swirl of moths that had collected around the porch light. “Got to get something from my car.”

His palm was sweaty around the handle of the suitcase, his breath shallow, his lungs burning though the air had a September chill. His arm ached, as if the contents were a hundred pounds instead of a few. He reached his truck, opened the door, and slung the suitcase into the passenger’s seat. Roby glanced up to the barn, its black mouth open to the world.

Roby didn’t like that part of the job, the one that was far removed from bright kitchens, clean plates, solemn families, sweet pies.

He hurried back to Barnaby’s trunk, stacked some bundles of flowers in his arms, closed the trunk, and headed for the safety of the front door. Anna Beth held the door open and he went in, peering through the stems, stalks, and leaves.

“Lordy mercy, Roby, you look like you took ill,” the widow said.

“Where do you want these?” he managed to say, hoping his voice fooled them. All except Barnaby. The undertaker frowned around a forkful of cake.

“In the living room,” Marlene said. “On the hearth by the chrysanthemums.”

“You sure you’re okay?” the widow asked.

“Just a little heartburn,” he said. “It’ll pass.”

“Hope it wasn’t them deviled eggs,” Sarah said. “I knew we should have put them in the refrigerator.”

“Probably ate too much of that goddamned Parsons pie,” Alfred said.

Sarah turned from the sink. “No, if it was the pie, we’d all be sick. We all had some.”

“Not me,” Marlene said. “I’m on a diet.”

Roby nearly dropped the flowers on his way out of the room.

He’d forgotten Marlene.

VI.

Barnaby left first, followed by Cindy. Alfred had to drive her home because she didn’t have a car. The widow had turned in early, and Anna Beth went upstairs to read to her, to help take the edge off the loneliness. Buck, Sarah and Marlene sat on the couch, Roby on a worn vinyl footrest. Jacob’s rocker sat empty beside the coffee table, and the four of them were turned as if Jacob still sat in it.

“I still say we sell it all,” Buck said. “Except the tractor.”

“When did you become part of ‘we’?” Marlene said.

“He’s my husband,” Sarah said. “We share and share alike.”

“He wouldn’t be saying that if Alfred was here.”

“Don’t worry about Alfred,” Roby said. He was trying to figure out a way to get Marlene out into the kitchen. He’d have to scrounge through the trash can and find some of the pie that he’d swept up. Then trick her into eating it somehow.

“Well, I don’t want to stay in these mountains forever. You ever been to that mall in Raleigh? They got a fountain right there in the middle of it, under a glass roof, and a hundred stores, half of them selling nothing but clothes. Name stuff, fancy, not those off-the-rack seconds we get in Barkersville.”

“Marlene, why don’t you think about somebody besides yourself for a change?” Sarah said.

“Just ‘cause you’re stuck here don’t mean I have to be.”

“We’re all stuck here. You’re part of this place, no matter how far you run.”

“Now,” Roby said. “You girls just lost your daddy. Don’t be at each other’s throats.”

“Since when did it get to be any of your business?” Buck said.

“I’m almost as much family as you are.”

“Why don’t you take your ass to the kitchen and let us work this out? Better yet, why don’t you just get on home? You’re way past polite, to be staying this late.”

Roby knew it. There were unwritten laws to sittings, the food, the settling of affairs, the burial arrangements. He was a creature of habit, steeped in tradition, and had been to more sittings than he could count. He’d eaten dozens of death pies, he’d served up thousands of plates to grieving relatives. And easy rested those who’d trusted their hearts and souls to Roby.

Except for Jacob Davis Ridgehorn.

Roby stood. “Maybe you’re right, Buck. Forgive me, ladies.” He bent low. “I reckon I’ll see you at the viewing tomorrow.”

“Wait a second,” Marlene said. “You going to help clean up the kitchen?”

“It’s the least I could do,” Roby said.

VII.

He’d washed the last round of dishes, including another go at Jacob’s denture glass, before he tried anything on Marlene. He knew he didn’t have Harold’s good looks or charm or pure heart. All Roby had was a stubborn streak. And a crumpled piece of pie.

“Want to go for a walk?” he asked, careful to keep his voice even.

“I don’t know. I’m awful tuckered.”

“Just to get some fresh air. I’ll have you in bed before you know it.” He realized what he’d just said, how she might take it. “I mean—”

She grinned and shook her head. “Roby Snow. I thought you didn’t have a single bad thought in your head.”

“I don’t—I mean, well, it’s a pretty night, and I could use some fresh air. This kitchen has got me feeling cramped.” He thought of Jacob, who’d soon be confined in a casket.

Marlene looked toward the kitchen entrance, considering. “Well, okay. Just don’t try nothing. I’m not in the mood.”

“I’m not, either.”

She gave him that patented Marlene pout and put away the last of the food. The Frigidaire was jam packed, the freezer so full that bags of raspberries fell out when the door opened. The top of the refrigerator was covered with the remnants of cakes and homemade loaves of bread.

They went outside into the cool darkness. The dew had settled early, fat and slick on the blades of grass. Alfred had put the cows in the barn on his way out, and now the pastures were empty under the weak gleam of moon. Black trees stood like long, scrawny scarecrows along the fence line.

Marlene walked a few steps ahead, following the worn path that bordered the garden and led to the creek. The water was silver in the night, gurgling and licking at the smooth stones. The aroma of cow manure and cut hay filled the sky. The tobacco had been harvested and speared on stakes to dry, and the silent rows seemed alive with small moving shadows.

“How could you ever leave this place?” Roby asked.

“Easy. If you lived here, you’d want to be gone, too.”

“No. I’ve been out there, to other places. The big city. I’ve been places where you wouldn’t believe, even if I told you.”

Marlene stopped along a broken wooden fence and leaned against a post. Her face was turned to the moon, its light soft on her cheeks. Roby realized she was probably beautiful. Maybe this is what Harold saw in her, what all those other men had seen in her. A glow that came from inside.

Maybe that’s why people gave their hearts to each other.

No. That was foolishness. Roby had a job to do. Something more important than the things between a man and woman, the twin beating of hearts. His business was between life and death.

“Can I ask you something?” Roby asked.

“You just did.”

“Something scary.”

She looked at him, then back to the house with its distant squares of light. “Roby, I do believe you’re trying to get fresh.”

“Hey, I’m serious.”

“Yeah. Just like every other man.”

“It’s about your daddy.”

The crickets chirped louder. Something moved in the shrubs along the creek.

“I don’t want to talk about him,” she said, so low that Roby could barely hear her.

“This is important.”

“I don’t care. He’s dead.”

“I know. But he talked to me, told me what you folks ought to do.”

“Well, he told Momma, too. And Barnaby Clawson. And just about every damned body except us. The ones who have to decide.”

“He told me last night.”

Marlene had no answer for that. Her breath came fast and shallow, her eyes wide and wet with moonlight. “Don’t talk like that.”

“He come to me, Marlene. While I was asleep.” A little lie, but he’d told worse. In truth, he hadn’t been asleep at all.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those crazy people who dream about dead folks? I liked you better when you was just another guy trying to work his way inside my dress.”

“This ain’t about liking or not liking. It’s about doing what’s right.” Roby eased forward, his boots hushed in the grass.

“Marlene turned, tried to run, but was cornered by the fence and the underbrush. “Get back, or I swear I’ll scream.”

He stopped a few feet from her. She could scream, but Buck and Sarah wouldn’t find them for at least two minutes. Plenty of time. “I ain’t going to hurt you. I just want you to do one thing.”

“Sure you do. And I was ready to do it. Only now I don’t want to.”

Roby reached into his pocket and brought out the mashed and balled wad of sweet potato pie. He held out his fist, hoping his hand wasn’t shaking. “Here.”

She was suspicious. “What’s that?”

“For you.”

She looked at his hand as if he held a snake. “What is it?”

“Eat this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Eat it. It’s what your daddy wanted.” He used the past tense, to make it easier for her.

It’s what your daddy wants. Because he loved you, and you have to love him in return.

“I ain’t eating that. Whatever it is.”

“Pie. It’s good.”

She looked up the path, at the house that now probably seemed a hundred miles away. “I’m sure it’s good. Because Beverly Parsons made it, right?”

Roby smiled, but the expression felt wrong on his face. He pressed his lips together. “She made it special for you folks. Wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings, now. That wouldn’t be neighborly.”

“What about my feelings, Roby? You got no right to scare me out of my wits. You’re a real creep, you know that?”

“Eat up. It’s good for you.”

“No.” She eased deeper into the shadows, edging for an escape up the path.

“Your daddy wants it this way.”

“Leave me alone.”

“You won’t scream. You won’t, because then I’ll have to tell.”

“Tell what?”

“About Alfred’s fifteenth birthday present. Behind the barn.”

She said nothing. There was nothing she could say.

Roby held out the clod of pie.

“Nobody . . .” Her voice was like a wind over ice, brittle. “Nobody saw.”

“Family secrets. We keep it in the family.”

“Nobody saw.”

“Somebody did. How do you think I found out?”

“Nobody saw.”

“Your daddy did. And he told me all about it. Last night.”

Her words were like notes played on the wet rim of a crystal glass, uneven and piercing. “My daddy was dead last night.”

“I know.”

“My daddy was dead and nobody saw and you’re crazy and you and your pie can go to hell.” She sprang forward and slapped at his hand.

The pie flew from Roby’s open palm, parted some leaves in the underbrush, and landed in the creek with a liquid thunk. Marlene clawed her way past him, screeching. He looked at his empty palm under the moonlight, then watched her grow smaller and darker until she was nothing but a moving shadow. Then her figure was outlined in the light of the screen door. She went inside and the door to the kitchen slammed closed.

After a minute of listening to the creek, Roby walked to his truck, started it, and headed for Clawson’s Funeral Home.

VIII.

The back room of Clawson’s was dim and still and clammy as a cellar. The room smelled like Barnaby, or maybe that was the other way around. Roby knew that death could get in you, worm its way through your pores, crawl down your throat and into your lungs, sneak into your eyes and inside your brain. Death could surround you and suffocate you. Death could stiffen you up. Death could swell you and then shrink you. Death could do it all, change your face, give you a tight grin, take you places, open doors.

But first, you had to shake its hand.

Jacob Ridgehorn looked good. One of Barnaby’s finest displays of talent. The cheeks were smooth and pink, the eyes closed peacefully, the lips full. Under the shop lights, his forehead shone with the faintest luster of wax. The sparse hair was combed into place, more neat than it had ever been in life.

Roby looked at the clock above the workbench, carefully ignoring the sharp tools, surgical saws, thread and glue and buttons and rubber bladders. Five-gallon plastic containers of chemicals lined the floor beneath the bench. A long stainless steel table stood in the middle of the room.

It was nearly midnight.

Roby listened to the rodents in the storage room and waited.

Jacob’s body spasmed when the clock’s thin hands both reached straight toward heaven.

“I tried,” Roby said.

Jacob’s mouth had parted as the skin tightened in death. Barnaby hadn’t gotten around to running a stitch through the inside of the corpse’s mouth yet. Roby was relieved that the dentures were in place. It made Jacob seem less dead somehow.

The thing that bothered him was he could never be sure if the dead person was really dead. Or if it was a ghost.

He’d have to ask Barnaby about that one day. Or the old man at the broken-down garage at the end of the world.

As if the old man would tell him anything.

But maybe Jacob would, the way he had the night before.

“I fed them the pie,” Roby said. “You never tasted such a heavenly thing.”

Jacob twitched, maybe one corner of his mouth lifted in appreciation.

“It was good.”

No answer except the soft settling of cloth.

“You should have seen Alfred. He was a tricky one, all right. Had to get a little feisty with him.”

Jacob said something about how Alfred always was a bit stubborn, maybe he was too much like his Daddy that way. Or maybe what Roby heard was just the whisper of a car passing on the distant street outside.

“And Sarah. Fine girl, that one. She and Buck will give you some great grandkids once they get around to it. I know, I know, a little too late, but at least you can be content that your blood line will be carried on.”

Jacob said he figured there were plenty of Ridgehorns in the world already.

“Anna Beth is my favorite. No, don’t get mad, I don’t mean that way, I just think she’s got spunk and will do all right for herself.”

Jacob said that a father wasn’t supposed to say such things, but now that it didn’t matter what opinions he held, he could admit that Anna Beth had been his favorite, too.

“Marlene,” Roby said. “Now, Marlene is a horse of a different color.”

Jacob waited silently, hands folded across his waist, as patient as a saint.

“But she . . . she didn’t have none of the pie.”

Another thirty seconds of silence passed, the tick of the clock filling the gap of missing heartbeats. Jacob looked sad, even with eyes glued shut.

“I’m sorry. But I ain’t give up yet. I just have to talk to Johnny, is all. And Barnaby. We’ll sort it all out.”

And this after I told you all the family secrets, Jacob said.

“I know, I know. Don’t make me feel worse than I already do. And it ain’t just because I let you down. It’s because I’m—”

Roby looked at the clock on the wall, mad at himself for expecting sympathy from a corpse. The deceased deserved all the sympathy. That’s what this was about. Honoring the dear departed.

Jacob said it was hard to feel honored when a man’s own flesh and blood turned against him.

“I don’t think she did it out of spite,” Roby said. “And maybe it ain’t my place to say, but your family got the worst grieving manners I ever did see.”

Jacob said that every family was different, that you couldn’t understand unless you were on the inside. Roby didn’t know whether he meant the inside of the family or the inside of the coffin.

The family, Jacob said. Though laying stiff in a coffin was no way to spend an eternity, either. That was for them who were too unlucky or too despised to get their pies eaten. Nothing sadder than to cross over with a sack of soured deviled eggs and moldy cake and a whole pie. That was no way to meet Judgment.

“You don’t have to paint me a picture,” Roby said.

You’ll have to go see him for yourself, Jacob said.

Roby pressed his tongue against his teeth. He didn’t want to go out there, not tonight. He wasn’t sure he could find the place again. Or maybe he was scared that he would.

Because he’d found it every time he looked. Or else it had found him.

And every time, whether it was midnight or sunrise, the old man was sitting there, waiting, as if the last Greyhound had rolled through forty years ago but he was still determined to catch the next.

Except Johnny Divine’s type of waiting had no end.

I know you’re scared, Jacob said, but I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat. Ha ha, that’s supposed to be funny.

Roby nodded.

See you at the viewing, Jacob said.

Roby nodded.

And bring the family, Jacob added.

“I won’t let you down,” Roby said.

No, Jacob said. That’s what old Barnaby’s for.

Roby said nothing, looked at the clock and its slow countdown toward tomorrow.

A joke, Jacob said. He’s the undertaker, get it?

Roby’s sense of humor was not in the best of shape. “Sleep tight.”

Jacob said he’d try his best.

Roby headed for the door, feet as heavy as gravestones.

And, Roby . . .

Roby turned, looked at the sallow corpse, the rigid mouth, the sunken cheeks.

Don’t forget to lock up behind you, Jacob said. Wouldn’t want nothing getting stolen.

IX.

It had been dark the first time, three in the morning maybe, the hour when even the night creatures were bone lazy and dawn seemed like it was as far away as forever. Roby had taken a wrong turn down the back country, through the little community known as Mule Camp that had once been a whistle stop on the old Virginia Creeper railway. The town had died with the passing of the locomotive era, but a few people still kept up shops in the area. Roby hadn’t been through those parts in years, not since he gave up bow hunting for deer, but that night he’d been drinking and hell bent on speed.

He passed an old gas station he never remembered seeing before. Something about it, the suddenness of it, made him fumble for the brakes, the way it gleamed skull-white in the moonlight, its windows nothing but blank holes and the cinder block walls weeping rust and cracks. He lost control and skidded off the road, smacked a tree and bumped his head. It was a miracle he wasn’t killed outright.

He got out of the truck and that’s when he first saw the old man sitting in shadows.

That was the night his life changed.

Tonight, as he pulled beside the gas pump that was so old it had a hand-operated suction pump, the same figure sat in its usual place in a warped rocking chair. Roby had the feeling that, if he dropped by during the daytime, unexpectedly, the side of the road would be barren, or he’d find only a stand of stunted jack pines. He had an equal belief that the garage could be found in other places, on other dark stretches of roads that led to nowhere. The same garage, the same old man.

“Been expecting you,” Johnny Divine said. His eyes shone, the only features visible amid the dark face.

“I got what you wanted,” Roby said. He pulled the suitcase off the passenger seat, slid out of the truck, and walked across the crumbling old concrete tarmac.

“It’s not what I want, Mr. Snow,” the old man said. “It’s what you need.”

“I don’t need this. I never asked for this.”

Johnny Divine’s laughter crept from the shadows, around the chipped corners of the low structure, down from the moon and up from the cold ground. “You most certainly did, sir. The first night we met. Said you’d do anything.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

The scratchy voice was almost sad. “They never do. I guess they never really do, when you get right down to it.”

Roby held out the suitcase. “Here.”

Johnny Divine didn’t take it. After a moment, Roby set the suitcase down near Johnny’s moccasined feet and moved a couple of steps backward. He heard a tapping sound, then saw the head of Johnny’s cane poking at the suitcase.

“Are you sure that’s the right one?” Johnny asked.

“Barnaby sent it special,” Roby said. “Fresh.”

“Unh-huh.” Johnny leaned forward and Roby got a brief glimpse of his face, the blank eyes, the dark caverns of cheeks and eye sockets. A face that looked to have drawn its substance from the surrounding blackness, cobbled and knitted itself from the dirt, shaped itself in the cold forge of the night.

Johnny pulled the suitcase into the shadows and flipped the brass latches. Roby didn’t want to see what was inside.

On that first night, Johnny had sent him to Clawson’s Funeral Home with the empty suitcase. Barnaby hadn’t said a word, just looked him over as if they shared an unspoken secret, then took the suitcase. Roby had waited while Barnaby attended to some work in the back room. Barnaby then gave the suitcase back to Roby, several pounds heavier. And Roby had driven back out to Mule Camp and made the delivery to Johnny Divine.

Then Johnny had instructed Roby to go to the home of the deceased’s family and help ease the grief.

Roby hadn’t understood then, but now he knew plenty enough.

Enough to hold out his hand when Johnny Divine passed him the wrinkled sheet of paper.

“Would you please, sir?” Johnny Divine said. “My eyes aren’t so good anymore.”

Roby read the name that ran across the top of the document. Glenn Claude Isenhour.

Roby didn’t know Isenhour, but he had a feeling he would soon be his second cousin. A member of the grieving family.

“You wouldn’t mind reading it aloud, would you?” Johnny said.

Roby cleared his throat and held the paper higher so that it caught more of the moonlight. He tried for a mixture of solemnity and energy with his voice, as if he were a news anchor.

“Glenn Claude Isenhour, age 72 of 1235 Pleasant Valley Road, Barkersville, died Thursday morning, September 18, at Pickett County Hospital following a long illness.

“Mister Glenn Claude Isenhour was born on December 27, 1930, to the late Otis Cornell Isenhour and the late Beulah Florence Cook Isenhour. Mister Isenhour was a veteran of the Korean War.

“Mister Isenhour was preceded in death by his wife, Sally Ruth Ridgehorn Isenhour. He is survived by a daughter, Mary Ruth Eggers, and a son, Glenn Claude Isenhour, Jr.; two grandchildren, Glenn Claude “Trey” Isenhour, III, and Emily Faye Isenhour; and a number of nieces and nephews.

“Funeral services for Mister Glenn Claude Isenhour will be conducted Saturday afternoon at 2 o’clock at the Clawson’s Funeral Home Chapel, officiated by the Reverend Barnaby Clawson. Burial to follow in the Shady Valley Baptist Church cemetery.”

Roby paused, aware of his voice being the world’s only sound, as if the walls of the old garage, the surrounding forest, and the soft dark hills were all listening.

“Go on,” Johnny Divine said. “You’re getting to the good part.”

“The family will receive friends at the viewing Friday night before the service from 7 until 8 p.m. At other times, the family will be sitting at the home of Mary Ruth Eggers, 4752 Old Cove Road. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to V.F.W. Post 1393, Barkersville. Clawson’s Funeral Home is in charge of the arrangements.”

Johnny sat back in his rocker as if he had just finished a heavy meal. “Mister Glenn Claude Isenhour.”

“Do you know him?” Roby asked.

“I’ve made his acquaintance recently.”

Roby looked longingly back at his truck.

“Don’t be in such a hurry,” Johnny said.

How did he know? He couldn’t see.

But there were other kinds of sight. Some that saw through to the bone even in pitch-blackness. Some that looked right into your heart.

“I have a problem,” Roby said.

“So I heard. Jacob told me all about it.”

“What should I do?”

“Well, you wouldn’t want Jacob to show up for Judgment with only four-fifths of his soul. So you’d best find a way for that last family member to get a piece of the pie.”

“What if I can’t?”

The cane tapped at the ground, steadily, four beats, five beats, then stopped. “You’ll find a way. Or you might just end up on the wrong side of this suitcase yourself.”

“I’ve got the Ridgehorn viewing, then I’ll have to run over to the Isenhour sitting. I reckon the pie will be ready by tomorrow.”

“Oh, sure. Beverly Parsons knows better than to let us down. Her daughter’s leukemia didn’t go into remission of its own accord. Unless you happen to believe in miracles.”

Roby was sick of miracles. He’d seen too many, the bad kind, nothing holy or inspiring about them. He looked around at the trees, at the kudzu that draped them and smothered them. He wondered if anything could be worse than this endless cycle of sittings, his constant posing as a relative of the deceased, his strange and endless mission. He’d been privy to too many family secrets for families that weren’t his.

Roby peered into Johnny Divine’s pale, sightless eyes. “How many more, Johnny? How many times before I’ve paid what I owe?”

“I didn’t set up this game of living and dying. I got caught in the middle myself. You think I like sitting out here by this spooky damned garage in the dead of night, miles from nowhere?”

Roby had never considered the strange man’s motives. Barnaby Clawson made an earthly profit, Roby and Beverly Parsons benefited in their own selfish ways. The dead counted on these strange transactions to aid their journey to a mysterious Judgment in a plane beyond this one. But Johnny Divine seemed tied to both worlds, the one of battered suitcases and broken-down garages as well as the one of shadows and spirits.

Though Roby had been raised a Baptist, he’d learned new rules of the road since meeting Johnny Divine. God and the devil had no place here. Unless Johnny Divine was one or the other. Or both.

In a moment of angry bravery, Roby stepped forward until he was a few feet from the old man. “Tell me, Johnny. When you died, who ate your pie?”

The old man’s breath came like the stale stench of a grease pit. “Who says I’m dead?”

Roby could only nod. He looked down at the suitcase. He could have looked inside it any time over the past few hours. He could have looked inside the suitcase during any of his dozens of other courier runs. If he wanted answers, he could have found them. Not all, but some.

Even one answer would be too many.

“I’ll give Jacob your regards,” Roby said.

“Tell him to come on out and see me sometime,” Johnny said.

Roby headed for the truck. He believed that, if he turned, he would find that Johnny Divine had drifted off with the night mist. The garage would be gone. The suitcase and its contents would have never existed.

He started the truck and pulled onto the dirt road. He didn’t glance even once into the rear view mirror.

XI.

Jacob Davis Ridgehorn may have been a simple man, a farmer and construction worker, but you would never have guessed it from the attendance at the viewing.

The chapel at Clawson’s Funeral Home was crowded and smelled of cologne, flowers, and Baptists. A line was out the door as neighbors, distant relatives, and local public figures took their turns viewing Jacob in the casket. As they filed past, each person would mutter a few words, say a prayer, or give a somber bow. Then the line led to the members of the immediate family, who shook hands or hugged those who came to pay their last respects.

Or next-to-last, in the case of those who would be attending the funeral itself.

Roby stood with the widow, offering support, keeping her supplied with tissues. Normally the oldest son or daughter ought to handle the chore, but Roby had eased his way into the family cluster and by the widow’s side. Buck and Alfred wore their suits as if they were strait jackets, looking stiff, the flesh of their necks straining over their white shirt collars.

The widow was in a dark blue dress. It was bad luck to wear new clothes to a funeral, and she didn’t own anything in black. Marlene was in a skirt and a blouse that was unbuttoned too far down for such an occasion. She’d been avoiding Roby, staying quieter than usual, keeping to herself. Sarah wore the same print dress as she’d worn for the sitting. Anna Beth wore a yellow sweater and a brown, knee-length dress and shoes that had thick, sloping heels.

They all looked out of place, uncomfortable. But the guest of honor, Jacob, looked as if he had been born for this very moment. His lips and eyes were relaxed, his forehead unwrinkled. Every strand of his gray, thinning hair was in place, curving gently over the peachy sheen of his skull. Barnaby had even plucked the little hairs from his ears. Jacob was radiant under the soft, recessed lights, his casket polished, his body at rest amid the plush interior. He could have been dreaming of a gentle walk toward a distant and brightly-lit gate.

“He looks like he’s sleeping,” said a stooped old woman whose blue-rinsed hair was topped with a small black net.

“He’s mighty handsome,” said the widow.

“They did a fine job on him, all right.”

Roby wanted to step on the old woman’s toes. You’d think she would have learned some manners. After all, she’d probably been to many viewings in her day.

“I only touched him once,” the widow said. “Set me off to bawling. His skin was so cold.”

“I remember I found my Henry that way, hunched over on the toilet. I thought he was straining away, because he was mighty bound up with constipation there his last few years. But I laid a hand on him, and he was plumb cold. Fell over on the floor and laid there while I screamed.”

“Ma’am,” Roby said. “Sorry to interrupt, but the line’s long and we don’t want to keep the family out too late.”

The old woman bobbed her head in agreement. “I know what you mean. They probably ain’t sleeping much.”

She juddered a few steps away and hugged Marlene, then the other girls. “Say, do you know what time the burial is?”

Barnaby Clawson stood near the chapel doors, hands folded and clasped together over the lowest button of his suit jacket. “Ma’am, the information is posted on the sign outside.”

The old woman went to him, touched him on the forearm. “You did a fine job on him.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Roby waited until the old woman had exited, made sure the widow was occupied by some concerned neighbors, then went over to Barnaby.

“Marlene didn’t eat none of the pie,” Roby said.

“I know,” Barnaby said, his practiced expression of sorrow never slipping.

“What am I going to do?”

“Did you ask you-know-who?”

“How come you’re afraid to say his name?”

“Look, a man sees too much in my line of work. Some of it stays behind closed doors. To these folks—” Barnaby gave a small nod to indicate the line of those paying final respects “—the show is everything. We’re all in on the great big lie. Jacob’s gone on but we pay tribute to his flesh in all these little rituals that are supposed to make us feel better.”

“Well, you’d be out of a job if it wasn’t for the rituals.”

“No. I’m as deep in it as you and Bev Parsons and the old man. We’re maggots eating off the same corpse, when you get right down to it.”

“You shoulda known better. You had your face pushed into it all your life.”

“My boy,” Barnaby said. “He had AIDS. I know he turned out funny, was punished by God and deserved it, but a man will do most anything for his sons, even when they despise him.”

“And he’s better now, no sign of it, huh?”

“I don’t ask questions, I just open the suitcase and do what Johnny’s note tells me to do.”

“At least you did it out of love. From the goodness of your heart. I reckon that will count for something when you get to Judgment.”

“I don’t know,” the undertaker said, sounding weary. “I guess we all got our own sins to answer for.”

A distant cousin came by, recognizable by the distinct Ridgehorn chin that resembled a burl on an apple tree. He was middle-aged, smelled of bottom-shelf whiskey, and his eyes were watery. “You sure done proud, Mr. Clawson. Jacob looks fresh as a daisy.”

Barnaby smiled a little without any of his wrinkles moving. “Thank you, sir. I hate to see him go, but I’m glad I can do my part to help ease his passing.”

The man sniffled and moved on, wobbling slightly.

Barnaby dropped his voice again. “We’re all maggots. We all eat the sorrow and then go home, glad that it’s him and not us that had to give up the ghost.”

“What if you don’t give it up?” Roby asked, thinking of Johnny Divine’s stubborn belief that he was still alive.

“I’d take the heat of hell over the cold indifference of the dirt. You and me, we know that souls go on, and we believe it more firmly than any church-goer you ever met. We’ve seen it with our own eyes, and that sets us apart.”

“I guess it’s kind of a like a holy duty, when you look at it that way.” He looked at Marlene, at the exposed fringe of her bra, the soft white curving flesh above it. Harold had arrived and was greeting the widow, taking her frail hands in his large ones. Black grease filled the creases of his fingers and his hair was slicked back with what looked like thirty-weight.

Barnaby put a hand on Roby’s shoulder. “It’s the least you could do for poor old Jacob.”

Roby nodded. “Yeah, I reckon.” Then, after a pause, he said, “Has Glenn Isenhour come by?”

“They wheeled him in this morning. Don’t worry. He’ll get his turn. He don’t deserve no less.”

“And the suitcase?”

“You don’t need to know too much about my part. And I don’t want to know about yours.”

Roby felt Barnaby press something into his palm. He took it, glanced down, then slipped it in his pocket.

“A little extra,” Barnaby said. “I always save some for emergencies.”

Beverly Parsons made her way through the line, hugged the widow and the girls. She gave Alfred an extra special squeeze, and Roby would have sworn she had real tears on her cheeks. Leaving Cindy to comfort Alfred, Beverly went over to Roby and Barnaby.

“Got that Isenhour pie in the oven?” Roby asked her.

She looked at the undertaker, then back at Roby. “Things like that aren’t to be spoken of.”

“Jacob’s pie was about the best I’ve had in a while. You really outdid yourself.”

“I do what I do and you mind your own business.”

“Cindy’s looking mighty healthy. Gained her weight back.”

Barnaby excused himself, said that he had some matters to discuss with the widow.

“I don’t want to talk no more,” Beverly Parsons said.

“I was just curious about something. If Cindy walked out of the funeral parlor and stepped out in the road and got smacked down by a dump truck, would you still be beholding to Johnny Divine? Or would it be even Steven?”

“Quit that kind of talk. Somebody might hear you.”

“Oh, you mean Johnny? He already knows, ma’am. He sure enough knows.”

“Hush up.” She clamped her hands over her ears. “Hear no evil, hear no evil, hear no evil.”

Roby leaned over her, put his mouth near her ear. “If Cindy died, would you have to bake her pie?”

She ducked away from him and rejoined the Ridgehorn family. Roby, smiling, followed her.

“Much obliged for the pie,” Anna Beth said to Beverly. “Everybody’s been so nice to us. Daddy would be happy to know how much you all pitched in.”

“He was a good man,” the pie-maker answered.

“Real good,” Roby said. “Delicious.”

Anna Beth gave him a confused look. Marlene, who’d been letting Harold show his admiration for how good she looked all dressed up, moved away from the rest of the family. Harold stuck close to her, like a dog following a bucket of chicken guts.

“Are you okay, Roby?” Sarah asked. “You’re looking a little sickly.”

“Yeah.” The sweat on his forehead was thick enough to collect in rivulets. “I reckon I better get some fresh air.”

“Want me to come with you?” Alfred asked.

“No, I’ll be fine. Funerals just get to me, is all.”

“I know what you mean,” Anna Beth said. “I liked to never got to sleep last night. Kept thinking I heard Daddy out in the barn. You know, Alfred, how he used to hum that little tune while he was milking the cows?”

Alfred’s eyes flicked toward Marlene, so fast that nobody noticed but Roby. “Yeah. I guess memories come in different size boxes. Because I woke up in the middle of the night and thought I heard the tractor out in the cornfield.”

Buck turned from his conservation with Sarah at the mention of the word “tractor.” “Didn’t nobody steal it, did they?”

Sarah grabbed Buck by the arm and pulled him toward the widow. “Don’t even get started.”

Roby was hit by a wave of dizziness, as if the chapel had suddenly broken loose from the world and drifted into the clouds. The thick sweetness of the flowers made his stomach flutter. Roby grabbed Alfred to keep from falling.

“Here,” Alfred said. “I’ll help you outside.”

Alfred hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even snickered, as he helped Roby take a seat on the concrete steps leading into the funeral home. The evening was autumn cool, and as Roby leaned against the wrought-iron railing, his sweat dried, leaving him clammy. Two men he didn’t recognize were smoking cigarettes in the parking lot, the orange glows of their cigarette tips growing fat with each draw. Clawson’s Funeral Home sat on a small hill, and downtown Barkersville huddled below it in a tangle of utility lines, a wash of street lamps, and a stack of worn bricks.

“You got no right to nose into family business,” Alfred said.

“I promised,” Roby said, wiping his eyes.

“How did you find out?”

“Your daddy told me.”

“Bullshit. Wasn’t nobody else there. Just me and Marlene and—”

“You didn’t hear him coming, did you? I reckon not. You were probably breathing too hard. Or maybe whispering little words in her ear. Tell me, what did you call her? Did you say, ‘Oh, Marlene,’ or did she make you say ‘sister’?”

“You bastard,” Alfred said.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell nobody.”

“It didn’t happen. And don’t go messing with Marlene. You leave her alone.”

“I said I wouldn’t tell anybody. Wouldn’t want Cindy Parsons to know, would we?”

“Daddy’s dead. He can’t tell nobody. And who would believe you, anyway? Everybody pretty much thinks you’re touched in the head.”

“I guess we both got our secrets, don’t we?”

Alfred kept quiet while an elderly couple doddered down the steps and into their Ford. The two men had finished their cigarettes and exhaled the last of the gray smoke, buttoned their jackets, and went back inside. One of them said, “Sorry about your loss, Alfred.”

“Thank you, Mr. Adams.”

When the funeral parlor door had closed once again, Roby said, “There’s one way you can shut me up for good.”

“Hell, yeah. I can put a Jap bullet in your brain and bury you out by a back road.”

Roby almost told him to go ahead, to see how that worked out, to see whether secrets took to the grave actually stayed there. Instead, he fumbled in his pocket, touched something dry and ragged.

No. Wrong pocket.

He went inside his jacket and came out with the thing Barnaby had given him. “Here. This is for Marlene.”

Alfred held the object up to the light that leaked through the parlor’s windows. “What the hell’s this?”

“Forgiveness.”

“You’re as crazy as everybody says.”

“I swear on God’s Holy Bible, you get her to take that, and I’ll never whisper a word to nobody.”

“Take it?”

“Eat it. All of it.”

Alfred held the object close to his face, then sniffed it. “Shoo, smells like dried dog shit.”

“It’s pie.”

“Pie?”

“A special recipe. Been in the family for generations.”

“You’re crazy, Roby Snow. Crazy as a frog-fucked hoot owl.” After a long minute, Alfred said, “You promise, as God is your witness?”

Roby smiled. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Alfred went inside, into the room where the others were paying tribute to the flesh that once housed Jacob Ridgehorn’s soul.

XI.

The burial was almost an anticlimax.

By Saturday, the entire Ridgehorn family was worn down by grief, missed sleep, and the burden of hosting all of those who paid their last respects over and over. Some of them Roby had seen at the sittings, dropping by to deliver a roast or casserole, then coming over a few hours later to help eat it. A few had joined the family after the viewing for a late meal.

Roby had skipped that one, as much as he had looked forward to spending time with his temporary relatives. After all, he had the Isenhours to prepare for.

Now, with the sun nearly straight up like God’s golden eye, the clan had gathered around the family cemetery. Only the immediate family had been invited to the graveside services. The rest of the mourners had been shucked back at the official chapel service in Barkersville. Barnaby Clawson was offering a few words of comfort, a garbled mix of Bible verse scraps and personal anecdotes.

“Jacob Davis was not just a loving husband and father,” Barnaby said. “He was also a friend, somebody you could count on in hard times. He held to his faith in everything he did, whether he was sitting in the third row of Barkersville Baptist or standing out in the cornfield killing crows.”

Alfred cleared his throat. The widow looked misty-eyed, but the shakes that had plagued her the last couple of days had gone. Her chin was tilted up, as if she were gazing into that better land she would someday share with the love of her life. Sarah and Buck sat on the far end of the row of metal chairs. Buck kept stealing jealous glances toward the backhoe that stood under the apple tree, its metal jaw ready to scoop soil over the coffin as soon as the formalities were done. The backhoe operator, dressed in a pair of blue coveralls, smoked and stared off over the meadows.

An Astroturf rug had been placed over the dirt so everybody’s fine shoes would remain spotless. Roby looked across the brown field at the barn. He caught Marlene looking in the same direction. Their eyes met. Neither of them had any tears.

“Jacob was a man of the earth,” Barnaby continued. “But he was also a man of heaven. As we give him back to the dust from which he was formed, we also deliver him back to God. As we mourn his passing, we also rejoice in his new eternal life. Let us pray.”

Roby’s attention wandered as Barnaby reeled out one of his stock send-offs. The high hills were a splendor of red and yellow, and in the distance the wall of mountains rose like gray skyscrapers. The clouds were thin and far apart. The air smelled of harvest and earthworms. Jacob’s horse, Old Laddie, had come up from the cool banks of the creek and now stood at the fence, watching the proceedings with curiosity.

Alfred and Cindy sat together, holding hands. Harold was at the far end, away from Marlene, his hands clean today. Anna Beth stood near the head of the closed casket, wiping her nose with a shredded wad of tissue. The casket gleamed in the sunshine, suspended by canvas straps over the deep rectangular hole in the ground, a pile of flowers perched on the casket’s slick belly.

Roby read the names on the other tombstones that dotted the stretch of grass. Diane Kelly Ridgehorn, Julia Anne Ridgehorn, Thomas Ridgehorn, Wilbur Derek Ridgehorn, Maude Davis Ridgehorn, others with letters too worn to make out. A dozen dead folks, at least three generations.

Roby wondered who’d baked their pies.

He had no doubt that Johnny Divine had been around for all of them, and that the garage at the end of the world worked just as well by being a train station or a stagecoach stop or a ferry pier. Crossing places, that’s what they were. The mode of transportation didn’t matter, only the route.

And what about the conductors who guided the dead along the way? The people like Roby and Beverly Parsons and Barnaby Clawson? What happened to them? Did they get to take that same road to Judgment that they’d help others find?

Or did they walk a different path?

Roby shook the dread from his thoughts and focused on Barnaby’s prayer. Barnaby had said “Amen,” and the family echoed the hollow word, each in a different rhythm and tone.

“Amen,” Roby said.

“Bye, Jacob,” the widow said. She tensed, and for a moment Roby thought she was going to throw herself onto the casket, the way they did in movies. Then she smiled, rubbed her lips, and turned away. The hearse, oversize and out of place with its polished chrome and tinted windows, blocked her way to the other vehicles. She stumbled over a stone and nearly fell.

Alfred moved over to the widow and put his arm around her, leading her to Marlene’s sedan. Marlene got behind the wheel, and Sarah and Cindy Parsons got in the back seat. Buck and Harold climbed into Buck’s pick-up. Alfred walked back to the grave site as the two vehicles drove off. Barnaby had loaded the flowers into the hearse and was shutting the rear door.

“I’ll put the flowers back when the dirt’s smoothed and the headstone’s placed,” Barnaby told Alfred.

“Funny, ain’t it? Daddy always said he’d rather die than plant flowers where vegetables ought to grow.”

“Your daddy had a way with words.”

“Yeah,” Roby said. “Like those words he said in the barn on your birthday.”

Alfred’s fists clenched. “You promised.”

“What about you? Did you keep your end of the promise?”

“Excuse me, gents, I got to get back to the home,” Barnaby said.

“Hey, why don’t you come on back to the house for a bite first?” Roby said. “There’s plenty enough for everybody.”

Barnaby waved to the backhoe operator, then got in the hearse without a word. He drove away, the vehicle bouncing over the rutted dirt road that led away from the cemetery. The backhoe’s engine roared to life with a giant cough of black smoke and the long metal arm grabbed at the air.

Roby raised his voice over the noise. “Did she eat it?”

Alfred looked down into the hole that would soon be swallowing his daddy. “Yeah.”

“Did you have to trick her?”

“No, I just told her straight up. About you keeping your mouth shut if she did what you wanted.”

“Tell me, and this is important . . . she didn’t get sick or throw up or anything, did she?”

“No. Said it tasted like stale boot leather, though.”

Roby nodded, and they both moved away from the grave as the backhoe approached.

“Come on,” Roby said. “You don’t want to watch.”

“No, I reckon not. Damn, I sure could use a drink.”

“Got a bottle under the truck seat. Keep it on hand for emergencies. Want a ride back to the house?”

Alfred glanced at the casket, then at the distant barn, then in the direction of the Ridgehorn house. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

As they climbed into Roby’s Ford, Alfred said, “So, are you going to tell me what it was I made Marlene eat?”

Roby shifted the Ford into first. “Can’t. It’s a family secret.”

XII.

The kitchen was cleaner now than it had been during the sitting. The counter was almost bare, except for a few slices of store-bought bread in a plastic bag and some shriveled apples piled in glass bowl. The only thing in the sink was Jacob’s denture glass.

“So, are you going to sell the place?” Roby asked the widow.

She had tucked a pinch of cinnamon-brown snuff behind her lower lip and worked it into place before answering. “I reckon not. When you stick your loved ones in the ground, you owe them. We talked it over. The kids will probably sell it off after I’m gone, but that’s their worry. Me, I’m going to leave this world and join Jacob with a peaceful heart.”

“Amen to that,” Roby said.

Marlene came into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She stooped from the waist, rummaging on the bottom rack. Roby glanced at the curves of her rear. A door to sin, that’s what it was.

She closed the refrigerator and turned, holding a jar of bread-and-butter pickles. “Say, you know what would go good with this?”

“What?” Roby asked.

“Some of that meat you brought over the other night.”

The widow squinted at him. “What meat? We done took that ham down to the bone.”

“Oh, Roby knows what I’m talking about.”

“You carry your bones with you,” Roby said. “When you cross over. You carry your soured eggs and stale bread crumbs and molded cheese.”

The widow took a step back, her eyes widening. “What in the world’s wrong with you?”

“Peggy Clemens knows. Whole hog. Waste no part of the animal.”

“Alfred!” the widow yelled, her voice brittle off the kitchen enamel.

“And Beverly Parsons. She’s in on it. Barnaby, too.”

Marlene held out the pickle jar as if it were a charm to ward off evil spirits. “You done gone crazy.”

Alfred ran into the kitchen, with Buck and Harold right behind him.

Roby felt the sweat oozing out of the pores of his face like maggots from the holes of an electrified corpse. “Who’s going to make your pies?” he said. “When you die, who’s going to eat you?”

“Lord have mercy, better call the sheriff,” Harold said. Alfred and Buck closed in on Roby from opposite sides of the counter.

This happened every single time. Roby was wracked by a wave of nausea and nearly collapsed. He grabbed for the edge of the counter and held himself up with effort. The room spun in the corners of his vision, the edges of the world dissolving like sugar in warm water. He felt hands gripping his arms, and he thought of Johnny Divine and the suitcase. Who would carry the suitcase after Roby was gone?

If Roby ever got to go, that was.

He pushed the hands away and straightened, trembling. “Sorry, folks. I just got a little carried away, is all. Been a mighty stressful time for all of us.”

The widow studied him as if he were a bug on glass. “Anna Beth?”

The youngest daughter was standing behind her. “Yeah, Momma? Still want Sarah to call the law?”

The widow peered at Roby. “You been drinking?”

Roby fought off the small lightning bolts that streaked across the gray inside his skull. “Yeah. I apologize. First Jacob died, and then Glenn Isenhour. You know him, don’t you?”

“Distant cousin,” the widow said.

“Well, he was my second cousin. All this dying going on at the same time, I guess I just let it get to me. But I’m fine now.”

“You sure?” Buck said. “You look like you swallowed a live lizard.”

“Yeah. I’ll just get a drink of water and I’ll be good as new.”

He forced himself not to tremble as he walked to the sink. He filled the denture glass from the tap and took four big gulps.

“You better go lay down for a while,” the widow said. “You’re a bit green around the edges.”

“I can make it home,” he said.

“Let me drive you,” Alfred said.

“No. I done put you folks to enough trouble already.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I feel a lot better now. Just needed to get something on my stomach.”

“Well, you be careful driving home,” the widow said. “That’s all we need, is to have to bury another one.”

“I will. And I’m sorry for your loss.”

“I guess we all lost something,” Marlene said. “It’s like all this food everybody brought over. You eat and eat and eat, and you’re still empty inside.”

Roby nodded, not sure what to say. He went outside and sat behind the wheel of his truck for several minutes before driving home.

XIII.

The back room of Clawson’s Funeral Home was as airless as a tomb. Roby didn’t turn on the lights. He knew his way well enough.

Glenn Claude Isenhour’s earthly remains were stretched out on a gurney, his belly as pale as a fish. A long, wet scar ran between his ribs. Barnaby had been at work. He had filled the suitcase. And, tonight, Roby would carry the suitcase to Johnny Divine, who would deliver it to Beverly Parsons.

Roby went outside to wait, leaning against the garage bay where Barnaby kept the hearse parked. He looked at the distant stars, the uncaring and dead moon that hung above him. At least Jacob was up there, rid of his burden, his worries over, his heart at peace. Thanks in part to Roby.

His hand went to his pocket, fidgeted for a moment, then brought out the tough and ragged hunk of meat. He put it in his mouth and chewed, swallowed without gagging, though the taste was bitter.

He was still hungry.

Same as always.

That long-ago night, when he’d made his deal with Johnny Divine, he never realized how empty a person could be.

Oh, he would do it all over again if he had the chance. He didn’t have any regrets. Because when his truck had run off the road, hit a tree and thrown him through the windshield, and he’d lain bleeding to death on the side of the road, Johnny Divine had stepped out of the black nowhere and made the offer.

If Roby had loved anybody besides himself, he might have gone ahead and died and taken his chances. But he’d been scared.

It was a fair deal, all the way around. He helped lost souls find their way to Judgment, and that was something to be proud of. Yet he was always so hollow inside.

Because he’d given Johnny Divine his heart in exchange for his life.

Roby had no relatives to eat his pie. Nobody could help him pass over, nobody could send him down the road to Judgment. Nobody had ever loved him. And he’d never loved anyone else.

All he could do was keep eating his heart himself, and hope someday that he would be full enough, or empty enough, or whatever was required.

But, as always, the leathery thing he’d eaten only left him starved for something deeper, a craving that reached beyond flesh.

He thought of Glen Claude Isenhour lying cold and lost inside the building. Shame burned Roby like an inner fire, and he put away his selfish wishes. The Isenhour family needed him. Maybe in service to others, he’d find what was lacking inside himself. Roby walked under a midnight sky that had never seemed so large, and he straightened his back against the weight of sacrifice, determined to be strong. His own judgment could wait.

Right now, he had a pie to serve and a burial to follow.

THE END

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A man channels his dead wife during a paranormal conference, disturbing demons at a haunted hotel where even angels can’t be trusted.

SPEED DATING WITH THE DEAD

By Scott Nicholson

Copyright ©2010 Scott Nicholson

Scott’s Amazon Author Central page

Table of Contents

For my #1 fan and #1 stalker…you know who you are.

Chapter 1

“And here’s our most haunted room, Mr. Wilson.”

The brass name plate over the hostess’s breast read “Violet,” an old-fashioned name that didn’t match her JC Penney pants suit. Early twenties and attractive, the make-up failed to hide the hard years around her eyes. But Wayne Wilson had logged his own hard years, and he hid them in the coffin of his heart.

“Call me ‘Digger,’” he said.

“‘Digger’?” Violet said.

“I have this little undertaker thing going on,” he admitted, feeling a bit sheepish under her blue-eyed stare. “The top hat and Victorian coattails. Part of the gig.”

Wow. Beth, if you really are here, you’ll see what a cartoon I’ve become.

But the dead stayed dead, and the best thing about them was they weren’t in a position to second guess. But the worst thing about them was they weren’t around when you needed them.

“So, have you ever had any experiences here?” Wayne asked, eyeing the décor and fighting the rush of memories.

“I’ve never had a honeymoon, and I would choose somewhere a little more exotic than the North Carolina mountains. Like maybe Dollywood or Paris.”

“I meant ‘supernatural experiences.’”

“Just those brain-dead zombies who hit on me at the bar.”

Wayne was only half listening. The master bedroom of Room 318 had changed little since his stay 17 years earlier. The roses on the wallpaper had yellowed, and each wall held an autumnal mountain landscape. Imitation Queen Anne furniture, chipped and scarred by cigarette burns, a plush purple carpet in which rodents could reproduce, and the king-size, four-poster bed were the same as his honeymoon night.

Even the throw pillows appeared unchanged, skinned in greasy satin and leaning against the headboard the same way his and Beth’s heads had leaned on a cold autumn night. Before they opened the door.

“The manager’s pleased you chose the White Horse for your conference,” Violet said.

I didn’t choose. I was chosen.

“You have quite a reputation,” Wayne said. “Nobody keeps their ghosts secret for long.”

“Ghosts are good for business. Especially in the off-season.”

“It should be good for both of us.”

“We booked about 50 for the weekend.”

“Too bad you can’t charge your invisible guests. You’ve got at least three here in 318.”

“Ah, you’ve been browsing the Ghost Register,” she said, referring to the journal at the front desk where guests and staff had faithfully recorded their encounters.

One of the victims had been a stock broker who had suffered a heart attack during his honeymoon, and though the urban legend maintained he’d died on top of his new wife, the Rescue Squad report said he’d been discovered on the floor with half a corn dog in his mouth and an empty bottle of champagne sitting in a tin bucket of water.

The second was a jumper, a documented death in which a distraught tool fabricator had launched into a frothing rant about a two-timing, backstabbing bitch before launching himself off the balcony in a fall that would likely have resulted in nothing more than a few fractures if he’d have missed the lamp post. You could call it coincidence, you could call it bad luck, but it made for a better campfire tale if you called it “the Wicked Hand of Evil.”

The third victim was the most interesting to Wayne, because it didn’t have the glib familiarity of the other deaths, which were not much different than those suffered at any of America’s century-old hotels. As the manager, a powder-dry walking mummy named Janey Mays, had put it, any building with a few generations behind it would end up with a slate of strange happenings.

Janey hadn’t recognized him from his long-ago visit. But why should she? He was young and happy then, a clean-shaven newlywed and 100-percent demon free.

“What do you know about Margaret Percival?” Wayne asked Violet.

“Just the stuff in the register.” Violet opened the television cabinet as if to make sure the maids hadn’t stolen the TV.

“West Virginia woman, checked into this room in February, 1948.”

“I don’t think the color scheme has changed since then.” She whacked the dark floral pattern on the velour curtain, and a lazy haze of dust spun in the sunlit window.

Margaret was a war widow, in town for a reunion of the Camp Creek Sisterhood, a collective of well-to-do white teenagers who spent the summers of the Great Depression in their one-piece, baggy swimsuits, canoeing, singing “Tomorrow” around the fire, and talking about boys, when they weren’t sneaking off in the dead of night to meet them at movie theaters and fumble in the dark.

Perhaps the reunion was an opportunity to recapture the lost innocence of youth, or perhaps Margaret was seeking a veneer of respectability after a notorious past. But she never made it to the reunion luncheon, because between the hours of 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. early one Sunday, she vanished from the face of the Earth. Police reports hinted that she might have been in the “family way,” and a single mother and alleged prostitute might sneak across the border to get rid of the problem.

Hotel management built their businesses on reputation, and mysterious disappearances were the kind of publicity they wanted to avoid. It was a measure of how far the White Horse Inn had fallen that it was now cashing in on its seedier, supernatural side.

Just like me. We’ve both been ridden hard since our paths last crossed.

And there was a fourth case study, totally off the record, one that Wayne carried in his guts like a latex glove full of broken, bloody glass. He’d delayed his return as long as he could, but Beth might not wait forever.

Violet moved over to the bedside dresser, where the alarm clock was blinking. “Old wiring,” she said. “The radio cuts on by itself, too.”

“Let me guess. I’ll be awoken at three every morning by the theme song from ‘The Exorcist.’”

The room’s angles, like those of the rest of the inn, were off by two or three degrees in every joint. Sagging floors and ceiling joists, warped window casings, and uneven spaces between cracks in the crown molding projected a sense of decay and despair.

The unease came from an expectation of order, and the skewed geometry made a distinct impact on the brain. It added a pressure that caused skin to tingle and lungs to stutter, all tricks the mind played on the body. Combined with the out-of-whack wiring that scrambled the electrical signals of the brain, the structure made a wonderful laboratory for the living.

And a fun playground for the dead.

Violet reset the clock while Wayne examined the size of the room, calculating how many hunters the place would hold. He could have booked the room in private, set up some gear, and conducted his own private little tea party, but hosting a paranormal conference gave the necromancy the sheen of respectability. Plus it offered the fringe benefit of not facing his demons alone.

But he should have left her out of it.

He peeked through the curtains. Below, Kendra was perched on a concrete bench, pencil flying, lost in her own little fantasy world. She was portable and self-sufficient, and Wayne not only encouraged those attributes, he took full advantage of them.

“You don’t believe in ghosts?” Wayne asked.

“Do you?”

“Depends.”

“Talk to the maids. They know it all.”

“The honeymoon sheets keep no secrets, they say.”

“Depends on the secrets,” she said, opening the closet door.

There’s more to you than meets the eye. Too bad. This could have been fun.

He followed her, trying to detect her natural scent beneath the various aerosols the housekeepers had used to refresh the room. He kept a prudent distance, though the closet opening was tiny, and the best he got was a whiff of something that smelled like it had a celebrity’s name on the bottle. He had no intention of being one of those aforementioned losers, but he wanted to stay in practice in case he ever felt romantic again. Since Beth, the means and motive had rarely coincided.

Violet pointed to the closet ceiling, where an access panel was cut into the gypsum board. “You get to the attic here,” she said. “Miss Mays said you had all access for the weekend.”

Wayne passed up the chance for a lame double entendre, and he couldn’t recall the access from his previous visit. But they’d spent more time in the bed than in the closet. “Was this access in existence back in 1948?”

“You’re thinking Margaret Percival slipped though here, found another way outside, bypassed the front desk and her security deposit, left her Packard in the parking lot, and hitchhiked away to start a new life?”

“It’s one theory.” Wayne noticed black streaks on the wall, probably made by the shoes of people who had scrambled upward in search of the missing woman’s spirit. Margaret was an Internet urban legend, and Wayne had researched more than a few sketchy photos on various paranormal sites.

“The service stairs run along the back, to the kitchen and laundry rooms. Margaret could have used the side doors, except those were kept locked because the manager didn’t want the hired help to sneak out, either. This was back before excessive fire and safety regulations.”

“I noticed the sprinkler system was an add-on,” Wayne said, indicating the sprinkler system that hung suspended six inches below the ceiling. “These pipes don’t do a whole lot to promote elegance.”

“The White Horse gave up on elegance in the 1960s,” Violet said. “Since then, we’ve been selling ‘quaint.’”

“With appropriate rate increases along the way.”

“A hotel is like a woman, Digger.” Violet made a sudden turn and her face was eight inches from his, but for only a moment, and then she flitted back to the dresser, where the alarm clock was blinking again. “She not only gets better with age, she makes it an asset.”

“But her wiring gets a little more temperamental,” Wayne said. Blinking lights and power surges gave a thrill to those who accepted them as proof of visitation. If they needed so little to believe, then who was Wayne to question their faith? It was no different than seeing the Virgin Mary in buttered toast or the devil’s face in the smoke of a terrorist attack.

Or believing in the face that stared back from the mirror. Where was the proof in that?

“We undergo our annual inspections, and our hotel is up to code,” Violet said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have guests waiting.”

Wayne stepped into the bathroom, where a cast-iron, claw-foot tub sat off the floor. He and Beth had played there, soap bubbles, laughter, candles, and champagne. The dripping faucet, inaudible in the bedroom, echoed with a stony resonance. The bad lighting and the rippled, frosted mirror over the vanity would give suggestible people plenty of shivers.

“This will do,” Wayne called. “But I’ll need a cot brought in for my daughter. And some paranormal activity for my customers.”

“Sorry, we don’t have any Indian graveyards,” Violet said. “No axe murders, no hung preachers, no hillbilly vampires.”

Thunder rolled down the hall, accompanied by giggles of mirth. Wayne frowned. The hardcore purists didn’t like busy, noisy traffic that contaminated their evidence, and children were the worst. He didn’t recall anyone registering children for the conference, and while he didn’t forbid it, the ghost-hunting crowd generally followed an adults-only rule. After all, they tended to miss bedtime.

“I thought the hotel was blocked off for the conference,” Wayne said, tightening the faucet handle to no avail. “I didn’t know there would be small children here this weekend.”

“The children are always here,” Violet said, and by the time Wayne entered the bedroom, she was gone, out the door with not even a whisper of its closing.

Nice exit line.

Children underfoot or not, Wayne had picked the perfect place to stage his traveling freak show. But he’d already known that, because of the promise he’d made 17 years ago. Much had changed since then, including his view of promises.

He went downstairs to retrieve his gear and his daughter, dreading the weight of both.

Chapter 2

Maybe ghosts are like clouds on a windy day. The ether merges in tapestry—then is torn away, and all you were is never again. A memoir writ in invisible ink.

But that was the sky and dreams and imagination, Emily Dickinson crap, and this was the real world. Real, real, real, no matter how deep inside your head you hid or what games you played.

Kendra Wilson ran her pencil lead across her sketch pad, threading spidery gray lines over the paper. She roughed out the hotel’s main entrance, a set of double doors featuring large oval windows. The glass was beveled and tinted, so she drew them as if they were dewy eyes, complete with pupils. It was the kind of doorway that looked right back at you, just what you’d expect from the most haunted hotel in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Kendra wasn’t sure what was spookier: the idea that dead people might still be checked into the hotel’s many rooms, or that the structure itself might have taken a life of its own, sucking in the dust and detritus of the years and imitating the breath of those who had passed through its halls.

Dad would laugh at either notion. Then again, Wayne “Digger” Wilson had built a cottage industry on such lame curiosity, and he had a lot of money riding on the White Horse Inn’s reputation, whether it was “the most haunted” or merely grim and gray and in serious need of a makeover. But Dad was busy scoping out the cold spots, or else the blonde bimbo who headed up hospitality, so Kendra couldn’t get his opinion on the matter.

Which left her by herself, alone with the creatures she set down on paper and the games inside her head.

And they wonder why I don’t play well with others. At least the ones I can’t erase.

Kendra let the pencil tip float over the page, eyes almost closed. She’d read in one of Dad’s books about automatic writing, or “ghostwriting” as some called it, where psychics supposedly tuned into voices from the other side. They’d drift into a trance and scrawl out messages from beyond, whispering exactly the types of sweet nothings the living wanted to hear.

I’m fine over here on the Other Side. It never rains, the flowers are always in bloom, and even the old folks are good-looking. It’s sort of like Southern California without the smog and plastic surgery. Come on over when you get a chance, but don’t forget the cheese dip.

Her art induced an equivalent trance, but despite being dragged along to a dozen of North Carolina’s darkest destinations, she’d yet to witness so much as a stray bit of cigarette smoke. So she wished herself into dreams and nightmares, summoning up specters that delighted her fellow sophomores and horrified Bradshaw, the guidance counselor.

Yet even with her obvious talent, she was going nowhere. Her high school art teachers summed up her ouvre as “comic-book doodling,” and even though coffee-shop geeks and Hollywood producers read nothing but books that were mostly pictures, if you wanted to be serious, you had to render nudes and faded roses and geometrically precise duplications of European townscapes. Or close your eyes and pee on the canvas a la Pollock.

Even her pencil was ludicrous, the Big Fattie, the kind favored by kindergarteners with stubby fingers. Never mind that her mother had given her a box of them before leaving her with the Digger and six billion other people who would never understand.

Thanks, Mom. Preesh that whole abandonment thing.

So forget fitting in the real world. Instead, she was developing an imaginary milieu for Emily Dee, her time-traveling Victorian heroine who was half steampunk, half literary hero. The trouble was that a fictional character based on Emily Dickinson didn’t get into a whole lot of graphic action, unless Kendra copped out and threw in a vampire and let the eternal maiden have some sexual intercourse. And all she knew about either of those subjects was the stories she’d read in books.

“Whatcha drawing?”

She almost snapped her pencil lead because the voice was unexpectedly close to her ear.

Whoa. Survival mechanisms failing. Must reboot.

Kendra looked up from her sketch pad into the round, freckled face of a boy maybe 11, with plum-colored eyes sunk in the dough of his skin. His red mop of hair seemed too big for his skull. A vague fishy odor permeated the air around him, though his breath smelled of licorice.

“Just some stuff,” she said, not interested in twerp pesterage at the moment.

The boy peered over her shoulder, and his hoarhound-flavored panting nearly curdled the yogurt in her stomach.

“That looks like the door,” he said.

“Bingo, Biscuit Head,” she said.

“Except it looks creepy. Like it’s going to eat you.”

“It is going to eat you,” she said in her most matter-of-fact voice.

The doors parted, glass rippling with the reflection of clouds and blue sky, and a pudgy, middle-aged man stepped out of the darkened lobby. He was dressed like a Salvation Army bell-ringer, in a uniform that would have looked official if not for the threadbare elbows and the creases in the bill of the service cap. The ruddy cheeks suggested either a fondness for the bottle or a Northern European bloodline. “Bruce,” he shouted, just another cranky parent.

“Gotta go,” the boy whispered.

Kendra nodded, not wanting to give the twerp actual acknowledgment by speaking. She concentrated on her drawing, visualizing the bellhop as a shimmery Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

“How many times do I got to tell you not to bother the guests?” said the Marshmallow Man, and Kendra imagined his voice echoing inside a wavy dialogue balloon.

“Sorry,” Bruce said.

“I’ll make you sorry.”

“I was just–”

“Just nothing. Get in here.”

Welcome to reality, Bruce. You got a sucky name and a dorky dad and you’re about to get reminded that children should be seen and not heard.

She just had time to sketch the Marshmallow Man’s outline before he stepped back into the shadows, letting the doors swing closed in a flash of silver and azure.

“It already did,” Bruce whispered, as if he were still at her ear. She glanced up from the page, expecting the boy to swing the doors open again, but he was already inside.

The twerp moves fast to be such a chunky monkey. Already did what?

She shrugged down into her coat so that the fleece liner covered her neck. Despite the brightness of the day, the November wind carried the promise of winter and the air was a good 15 degrees colder than in Raleigh. According to Dad, the White Horse had been the summer retreat of governors and industrialists at the turn of the previous century, when the state ran on tobacco and denim instead of education and research. Apparently the wealthy elite had enough money and sense to climb back off the mountain when the leaves fell. Now the trees were knobby old crones and the slopes were nothing but brown and gray, the colors of dookie and death.

Only Dad would pick such a dumb season to host a conference, but he said the rates were cheaper and fewer Normies would be around to spoil the fun and mess up the readings.

Kendra parked her pencil between her teeth and rubbed her hands together, trying to flush some feeling into her fingers. The wrought-iron bench was cold and hard, corroded with age and centered on a little flagstone semicircle away from the main walk. It was surrounded by the bones of rose briars and stunted boxwood, and across the lawn a few skinny ornamentals leaned like sickly witches. A mottled concrete statue of a generic angel knelt in the grass, the Matron Saint of Lost Causes praying for a Clorox makeover.

The hotel itself was three stories of skewed architecture, peeling paint, and sagging green shutters. A veranda ran the length of the bottom floor, and the entrance featured a stack of gabled arches that peaked fifty feet up with a small cupola that resembled a bell tower. The roof line was uneven, the forest-green shingles cracked and buckled. The whitewashed siding was faded and scabbed with flakes.

An extension had been tacked on to the eastern wing, with little attempt made at matching the materials and style. A wooden fence surrounded the pool, but the gaps in the boards were wide enough to allow passage to any small children willing to drown, though she guessed the pool was either emptied for the season or frozen over.

A narrow strip of crumbling blacktop led through the woods from the main highway, and the dense, tangled hardwoods hid the nearby town of Black Rock. Isolated by the surrounding forest and perched on the edge of the ridge, the hotel seemed forgotten by the world. The place probably made a lovely postcard in the summer, but right now the White Horse looked ready to gallop off to that Great Glue Factory in the Sky.

Which made it perfect for Dad’s little enterprise.

Speaking of the Digger, it’s about time for him to pretend he cares whether I’ve been abducted for sex slavery yet.

Kendra blew into the cup of her drawing hand and continued the sketch. Usually she created a creep factor by warping the angles just a little in her architecture, aiming for a Gothic flavor, but in this case the reality was almost weirder than her fantasized depiction.

All she needed was a shadowy figure to appear in one of the second-floor windows.

The late-afternoon sun glinted off the glass as she surveyed the hotel’s one hundred eyes. A curtain billowed inside one of the rooms. She fleshed it out as a spirit in her workbook, knowing she could fine-tune it later, move in with erasers before applying the ink and making the ghost permanent.

She glanced up again and saw someone standing beside the curtain. She nodded and smiled. The figure stepped back into the darkness of the room. She silently counted over three windows from the middle balcony, planning to verify the room number later and deduce the identity of the occupant. Probably one of them was trying to spook her. Dad’s events brought out the crazies, those who believed in things they couldn’t see.

But maybe she was just as unhinged, believing in things that didn’t exist until she put them on paper. Dreams, lies, memories, games. All the same. Ether.

A memoir writ in invisible ink.

“Hey, Buttercup.”

He was somewhere up there. She peered into the shadows of the upper balcony. He wore the darkness like his out-of-fashion tailcoat, a stage prop that was as hokey as his act.

Kendra bent to her sketch pad again.

Children should be seen and not heard, but grownups should be seen and heard only when it’s time to dole out some allowance.

She had no problem drawing him as a ghost. He’d been dead to her for years, deader even than Mom, who was really dead.

“Up here, Buttercup.”

A pet nickname, copped from William Goldman’s “The Princess Bride.” She sighed and let Big Fattie fall from her fingers. It rolled across the pad and fell to the ground, bouncing off a flagstone.

“They say one of the guests jumped from this balcony,” Dad called, with a pleasure in his voice that approached glee. “Got skewered on that lamppost.”

His arm came out of the shadow and pointed to one of the tall metal spires that girded each side of the walk. Kendra pictured a shish kebab of writhing arms and legs, red sauce spurting out like a busted ketchup pack at a greasy roadside diner. The image would have been gross if it weren’t so comical. Compared to the modern teenybopper slasher movies, Dad’s attempts at shock were like Casper the Friendly Ghost on a sugar high.

But he’d been polite on the drive up the mountain, even letting her pick the music, and she’d been working him for a new graphics program, so she could spare a little feigned affection.

“Nothing like a suicide chump to get the Groovy Ghoulies riled up,” she called to him.

“That’s my girl,” he said, stepping back inside the inn.

If Digger Wilson actually believed in evil spirits, he had no problem leaving her to deal with them on her own. Then again, she’d learned at an early age that everyone had to face their demons alone.

Whether the demons are real or just drawn that way.

Kendra continued her work superimposing a set of human features over the entryway, not realizing until she was nearly done that the eyes she’d drawn in the glass were her mother’s.

She got busy with the eraser.

Chapter 3

J.C. hated the goddamned basement.

The rusted cast-iron pipes that hung suspended from the floor joists dribbled black goo, and old fiberglass insulation hung down like rotted cobwebs. The dirt floor was cluttered with broken chunks of concrete, dusty bottles, short lengths of pipe and copper wire, and a clutch of three-legged chairs. A brass bed was set up along one cinder-block wall, no doubt erected as some sort of joke, because the mattress was fuzzy with mildew. A plastic red rose lay where the pillow would have been, the kind of punch line his dick-headed supervisor Wally Reams would think was hilarious.

The breaker box for the hot water heaters had been on the blink, and Reams had filled out a work order and put J.C.’s name on it. J.C. always got the crap jobs, but since the White Horse maintenance staff consisted of three other guys, one with a V.A.-approved wooden leg compliments of Saddam’s little poke in George Bush’s eye, then the odds were against J.C. anyway. Besides, every fix-it call was a crap job in a place as ancient as this.

The place smelled of rotted newspapers and mouse turds, and the dirt floor was packed to mud. The coal-burning boilers that had once heated the inn were now corroded shut, miles of pipes carrying their filthy air.

J.C pulled a flashlight from a loop on his overalls and flicked it on. The breaker box was on the far side of the room, and screw-in glass fuses were scattered across the dirt, glinting in the flashlight’s beam. He could be across, check the fuses, and be done in less than a minute. If the problem lay with the main circuits, then Reams would have to call in a real electrician. J.C. was a licensed plumber but he could barely twist a bread tie, much less mess with 220 volts of juice.

It was probably the goddamned Mexicans’ fault. They’d punch the buttons on every washer and dryer at the same time, speeding things up with nary a thought to the power drain. Most people, all they wanted was to flip a switch and have the light come on. Not many cared about the complex science of electrons. J.C. didn’t blame them. All he wanted was a fast paycheck, so maybe he wasn’t that different from the Mexicans after all.

But the job wasn’t as simple as the work order made it sound. For one thing, the breaker box was in the darkest part of the basement, behind a row of support beams and a couple hundred feet from the rickety wooden stairs. For another, the basement always gave him the willies.

He’d heard the stories, and once in a while a shadow shifted out of the corner of his eye, but nobody in his right mind paid attention to the corners of his eyes. Pegleg had sworn to an encounter with The Jilted Bride, a woman supposedly abandoned at the altar a hundred years back and killing herself as a result. Of course, in Pegleg’s version, he’d done her seven ways to Sunday on the rotted mattress, adding a few more stains to the canvas and leaving her with a smile on her face as she vanished. The vision of Pegleg in the buff, flashing all his nubs, was more frightening than any ghost. But alone in the basement, with the pipes groaning, the wood creaking, and the raw sewage plop plop plopping, the blood ran a little faster and the short hairs tingled a little.

He flipped the switch to trigger the set of bare bulbs that dangled from the floor joists. Dead.

Shit fire, Miss Mays. Somebody better call maintenance.

He tried to laugh but the dusty air clogged his throat.

Despite the flashlight, he was reluctant to leave the foot of the stairs, where light leaked from the doorway above. The darkness had a border, and stepping over it would mean hostile territory. The laws over there were unknown, and you could break them without even knowing you had trespassed. But the laws on this side, with that bitch Janey Mays holding the purse strings and his parole officer marking time, were just as cruel.

Life was full of choices. Walk through shit and black hell and check the goddamned breaker box or stand in the unemployment line with the rest of the garbage Janey had tossed over the past year.

He put one toe to the edge of the darkness. He could have sworn the line of blackness oozed forward a couple of inches, and his leg shivered as if a frosty mouth had exhaled over his Wolverine work boot. The basement was always 10 degrees colder than the building’s interior, but the place was so drafty the temperature fluctuated anyway, no matter the season. That’s why guests were always bitching about the ventilation, which caused Janey Mays to chew J.C. a new asshole, and he’d run around with duct tape, weather stripping, and nails, but all the patchwork did was send the drafts to new locations and start the merry-go-round all over again.

The air in the basement, though, was still and dead. J.C. had failed science in the seventh grade, but he remembered the teacher droning on about the moon and how you couldn’t breathe there, and in the pictures of astronauts they all had on those bozo helmets with the black masks and lots of tubes running into different parts of the white suit. J.C. had never wondered about their breathing. He’d been more curious about where all the piss and shit went, and the teacher said they ran their piss through a filter and drank it again. And people called them “heroes.” J.C. called them “dumbasses.”

“A small step for man and a big step for mankind,” he whispered, mangling the astronautic catchphrase.

He thrust the flashlight in front of him and entered the darkness. The dirt floor was as slick as a plastic sheet covered with Crisco, but he didn’t look down at it. His focus was on the breaker box, which seemed to have moved farther away from him. Something rustled to his left, and he flicked the light over to the boiler.

The damned thing grinned at him with those rusty metal teeth, the old valves glittering like eyes that had been snapped open from a long sleep. The blacker darkness inside it quivered, a tongue of coal ash and cinders. Decades ago, men like J.C. stood down here half-naked, shoveling coal into that beast’s belly as it spit glowing embers onto their sweaty flesh. Compared to that kind of work, J.C.’s little mission was a tiptoe through the tulips.

And if he didn’t get the hot water going soon, Janey Mays would blow her smoke in his face and flash that wrinkled, mummified grin.

As he crossed the room, stubbing his boot on a busted cinder block, he fished in his tool belt for a screwdriver. He would need it for the breaker box, he told himself, though he held it like a weapon and the job would more likely require pliers than a sharp blade.

Flup flup flup.

The sound came from the boiler, which was now 20 feet behind him. J.C. had been called on to exterminate bats before, but they hung out in the attic and were easy to catch in the daytime. The White Horse had enough mice, rats, and possums living within its walls to pick up the place and carry it away, but those rodents made sharper, scurrying sounds. Flup meant wings.

J.C. moved faster, and he was almost to the breaker box when the boiler clanged. To hear Pegleg tell it, the thing hadn’t been fired since 1962, but Pegleg had only worked the White Horse for two years and he could create facts on the spot, anything to keep his jowls flapping and his hands idle. Of course, Pegleg’s war wound made a trip down the stairs too risky, and his arthritis hated the damp, and his eyesight was gone to hell since Saddam’s boys had let loose all them chemicals, but at least the important equipment still worked and you could just ask the Jilted Bride, because he’d done her seven ways to Sunday and–

The bed creaked.

J.C. knew that sound as well as any man, because he’d gone through two wives and had screwed his way down a whole trailer-park row during his teenage years, and a fuck squeak was a fuck squeak.

Most likely it was a couple of them ghost hunters. They were a weird enough crowd, probably liked to bang in graveyards and haunted houses and coffins. He cleared his throat, but they didn’t stop like normal folks would. Maybe they wanted an audience.

A couple of the check-ins had been hotties, and he wouldn’t mind getting a late-night plumbing repair call from them, because he’d sure fix their leak.

But no way was he going to swivel the light over to the bed. He might see the Jilted Bride laying there getting drilled by something black and oily and monstrous, maybe something with giant, raggedy wings that went flup flup flup as its hips rose and fell.

The creaking fell into a rhythm, along with the flupping, but J.C. zeroed in on the breaker box and he could see the problem–somebody had unscrewed the fuses and left the holes empty.

One of the ghost hunters might have snuck down here and tried to kill the lights. Maybe even the people on the soggy mattress. Just the kind of thing to add a little shock to the system. But not knowing how the place was wired, or that the main breaker box had been moved to the ground floor during the last overhaul, the dumb shits had just gone for the only fuses they could find. Except a couple of the fuses were still intact, buttoned up across the top row.

Creak flup creak flup creak flup.

If it was fucking–and J.C. would bet a case of Busch Lite on that–then the ride was going slow and steady, the kind women always said they liked until you actually did it and then they got all impatient.

He didn’t want to play the light on the ground and look for fuses because he was afraid of what he might see. He fumbled in his belt pouch for new ones, but when he started screwing the first one in, the one above it gave a half turn counterclockwise.

All by itself.

Creak flup creak flup creak flup.

J.C. gulped and twisted the fuse home, then plugged the five other holes. Lastly, he secured the top one again, screwing a lot more frantically than the things–people, it’s people–on the bed.

Finished, he back-pedaled, the rectangular light from the basement door spilling down like the stairway to heaven. Not so far, not so dark, though the basement air smelled like sulfur and smoke, as if the boiler was fired up and gasping. And the air that had been cool was now stifling and thick, the darkness like a cloud of ash.

All he had to do was breathe and walk, though, and he’d have a story that would top anything Pegleg had to offer. All he had to do was put one Wolverine in front of the other, eyes straight ahead, and–

CREAKFLUP CREAKFLUP CREAKFLUP.

The bed rattled with urgency, and the creatures–ghost hunters, it’s just freaky ghost hunters–appeared to be speeding up for liftoff.

Despite himself, J.C. turned toward the noise, though he kept the flashlight beam ahead of him. The sounds had been joined by wet sloshing, like somebody had dropped six bags of pea soup on the party. Porn flicks were ten bucks a pop down in Fantasy Land Books, a corrugated, windowless warehouse on the backside of Black Rock that had no books but plenty of magazines, plus some video booths in the back corner that J.C. wouldn’t have entered on a dare. But J.C. wasn’t much of a peeper, and his last three-way had ended in a divorce and a confrontation with a .38 revolver, so the group scene wasn’t his thing, either.

But he was feeling braver now that he was closer to the stairs and could chalk it all up to his imagination. Here was a chance to make the story even better. A ringside seat at a ghosthunter orgy. Pegleg could gnaw his fucking shin to splinters in jealousy

The boiler clanged again, and J.C. shifted the light toward the bed, getting a glimpse of something slick and red tangled in a foggy spiderweb.

Creakflupcreakflupcreakflupcreakflup

The red thing was pulsing like a raw heart, and J.C. squinted, backing toward the stairs, wondering if a pack of possums had given birth all at the same time, or if–

His flashlight blinked dead.

He banged it once against his hip, but it was still dead, and the creak flup creak flup grew louder like–

The BED is walking.

He flung the flashlight toward the noise and fled for the stairs, boots slipping in the mud as he threw himself on its rough wooden planks, dust flying in his face. His knees throbbed where they’d banged and one fingernail had been ripped to the quick, but that was okay, the light was waiting above, and the ground floor, and cool air and sunshine and ghosthunters in clothes and the three cans of lukewarm Busch Lite in the maintenance shed.

He wriggled halfway up, his hips rising and falling like he was creakflupping the steps, unable to get traction. He could taste the sweet hotel air with its rug cleaner and cigarette smoke and—

creakflupcreakflupcreakflup.

The basement door slammed shut and darkness draped him like a thunderstorm.

Pegleg playing a gag, pulling my leg, that’s all...I’ll yank HIS fucking leg off and beat him over the head with it.

A molten band of iron girded his ankle, yanking him back down into the basement.

The creakflup had given way to raspy boiler breath, the hungry panting of a pulsing red thing.

Chapter 4

Kendra wouldn’t look there.

No, not a glance, he doesn’t exist, he’s Ghost Boy to me.

He’d jumped out of the van with its stylized “SSI” logo on the panels and cut across the lawn, grinning above that Brad Pitt soul patch that hadn’t quite filled out. The Future of Horror had his own Web site, Internet radio show, and fan club, and it didn’t hurt that he looked drop-dead hot in his black jump suit. At 17, he was in the range as a lust object without it being sicko, though Dad had already given her the lecture about “boys like Cody McKenzie.”

He was headed for the door and the adulation of the ghost hunters, who were all certain he’d have his own television show in a season or two. Kendra would ignore him. That was the best strategy, and if nothing else, she’d sleep better tonight. Fewer bits of Cody roiling in her fevered brain.

But he wasn’t headed for the door.

Kendra glanced into Cody McKenzie’s eyes. Mistake.

They were the green of oceans and Lime Jell-O and other things that could drown you, salty or sweet.

She kept her sketch pad by her side, not hiding it exactly, but not shoving it in his face, either. She was simply offering him the opportunity to express curiosity if he wished. She didn’t have much in the boob department, not yet, but her art was weird enough to be awesome.

“How ya doing, K-Babe?” he said. “I haven’t seen you since the Carolina Inn.”

“The inn was lame,” she said. “That was urban-legend crap. The armchair ghost of an eccentric professor who smoked a pipe and occasionally ruffled the pages of the New York Times. Hardly what you’d call ‘bone-chilling terror.’”

Cody grinned, like she knew he would, like she was afraid he would. Those big, brilliant Chiclet teeth were the stuff of Hollywood. He probably had groupies all over the country mailing their panties for autographs. Even the boys.

But she could out-cool him any day. She just needed to keep her head, which was hard to do when he leaned close and his breath moved across her cheek like a warm sea breeze. When–

Enough. Emily Dee died a virgin.

“Yeah, it’s a high-priced gig, all right,” Cody said. “What was your dad charging for that one, $400 for an overnight?”

“Basic package. And an extra hundred to go in with the team and hold an EMF meter.”

“My thermograph got nothing,” he said. “I think that place is deader than Bob Dole’s dick.”

Kendra teenybop-giggled despite herself. “You’re the only person alive who thinks a place is dead if there are no dead people banging around.”

“Besides your dad.”

Kendra rolled her eyes and immediately regretted it. That’s sooo Hannah Montana. I need to bring my Megan Fox moves or he’ll ignore me.

“Maybe this place will be luckier,” she said.

Cody looked away from her for the first time and took in the ramshackle, sprawling structure. “It’s got game, for sure.”

The rear door to the van opened and a rotund man in a black jumpsuit like Cody’s–but not nearly as attractively packed–shouted at him. “Come on, Cody, this stuff don’t unload itself.”

“Better go be part of the team,” Cody said in a conspiratorial whisper she found dead sexy. He swiveled and gave a mock salute to Jonathan Holmes, the overweight, bearded man with a dramatic bald dome and a Fu Manchu mustache. “SSI or die,” he shouted.

“Get over here, Future,” Jonathan grumbled. “I better get some work out of you before the cameras show up.”

“Catch you later,” Cody hollered to Kendra, and she imagined his tone meant “Let’s hook up” instead of “Down the road, kid.”

She tried one bit of spunk. “So, how’s that ‘Future of Horror’ thing working out?”

It got him to turn and flash another smile.

Worth it, worth it, worth it.

“The future’s dead ahead,” he said.

“You can do better than that. How about ‘The future’s so dark, I gotta wear night vision’?”

“Sweet. Can I use it for my Web site?”

“Sure. But you’ll owe me a cut of the T-shirt sales.”

“You’re just like your dad. Got that entrepreneurial spirit.”

“Cody!” Jonathan called again, wrestling a metal strongbox from the van.

“Hey, Holmes, that’s my MAC Attack. You break that and I snap your cinnamon twists.” Cody launched into a run, and Kendra couldn’t help ogling those muscular buns in action.

Two middle-aged women came up the walk, flanked by brittle shrubbery that was more twig than foliage. They looked like school teachers who’d taken their Thanksgiving break early.

Séance junkies or psychokinetic spoon-benders? Plain old ghost-chasers? Or maybe they’re in that special class of versatile wingnuts who embrace the alphabet soup of the unknown, from the Abominable Snowman to X-ray vision.

Whatever their specialty, they fell into that category Dad liked to call “paying customers.” Kendra shot one more wistful glance in Cody’s direction as he loaded his MAC Attack on a dolly, then she headed inside to the registration desk.

Time to pass out tickets to the freak show.

Chapter 5

“How bad do you need the money?”

Janey Mays leaned back in her cracked leather chair, a cigarette dangling from her lips. The office was hazy with smoke, and the hotel’s owners had been pushing for a tobacco-free policy, but they’d only bought the overgrown outhouse six months before. Since they lived in Florida and Janey had worked her way up over forty years from laundry maid to manager, she felt more attuned to the hotel’s needs and more qualified to set the ground rules.

“I’m in for a couple of grand,” Violet said, fidgeting on the edge of the metal folding chair.

Janey made sure the employees were uncomfortable in the office. It wasn’t difficult, since the philodendron had long since choked to death and the potted fern was curled and brown. The office was ensconced behind the front desk like a secret catacomb, with no windows and a bare bulb for light. Two rusted filing cabinets were packed with moldering guest registers, and a pile of outdated menus threatened to topple from above them. Janey’s desk bore a computer that barely had enough memory to type a letter, but it cast a sickly green glow on her wrinkled skin, so it was worth keeping around for visual effect.

“A couple of grand,” Janey said. “Barely a felony.”

“Please,” Violet said.

Violet Felkerson was one of the pretty ones. Hospitality hostesses fared better when they were pretty; the guests were more forgiving of cold water, dirty sheets, and overpriced room service when the apologies came from pert, smiling, submissive lips. And Janey enjoyed this part of the job more when they were attractive. They deserved to meet the ugly inside.

“Normally, one strike and you’re out,” Janey said. “This hotel was built on tradition and dedication and honesty, and anybody who doesn’t buy into that has no place at the White Horse.”

Violet’s thick eyelashes descended and fluttered. She was about to cry. Janey had chosen well, because this only worked on those who couldn’t afford to walk away.

“I’ve got a reputation to uphold,” Janey said. “They don’t call me ‘Battle Ax’ for nothing.”

Actually, “Battle Ax” was only one of her nicknames. She’d overheard “Horse’s Ass,” “The Mayflower Madame,” and “The Warden” as well, and no doubt plenty of other, cruder ones had made the rounds over the years.

She drew in smoke and let it tumble out of her mouth and across Violet’s blinking face. “Tell you what. I think we can cover that, move around some money from the maintenance budget. An unexpected leak in the boiler system, maybe. Chad and Stevie will fall for that.”

Violet angled forward even more, hands clasped as if Janey were the ghost of Mother Teresa. Janey jammed her cigarette into her mouth to stifle a chuckle.

“Thank you,” Violet said. “I can replace it in six weeks.”

“You won’t tell anyone?”

Said the spider to the fly.

Violet almost stuttered. “Will you?”

Janey stubbed out her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray, one of the lipstick-stained butts rolling free and bouncing to the floor. “I think we can work something out.”

A few thousand, Violet had said. According to Janey’s reckoning, the actual amount of the embezzlement had been somewhere around four thousand dollars, give or take a few hundred. Janey had noticed because she was constantly calculating how much she could steal for herself. After all, a woman had to rely on her own devices. When looks faded, all you had left was cunning. It was a lesson Violet was still at least two decades away from learning.

Chad and Stevie would never notice the parched till. They’d bought the hotel as an “investment” that was actually a tax loss to offset the millions they were making in Palm Beach condominiums. The one time the couple had actually visited the property, they’d decided to book a room at the Courtyard by Marriott in neighboring Boone rather than sleep under their own leaky roof. So Janey’s accounting was a like a whore’s career in a seaport—tight going in and loose going out.

Violet looked so exuberant that Janey wished she’d played a little longer. But Janey tended to burn them out too fast, and with the hotel’s new billing as “the Blue Ridge Mountain’s most haunted hotel,” the job had been getting harder to fill, despite the recession and the fringe benefit of occasional free drinks at the bar.

“We can stick some extra charges on Wayne Wilson’s bill.” Janey stood, the chair creaking with a metallic brittleness that befit the hotel’s reputation. “A set-up fee here, a maintenance surcharge there. We’re giving him the hotel for the weekend, so he shouldn’t be surprised by a few surprises.”

Janey made a slow, stately trek across the floor, which was difficult because of the travel magazines, electric heater, broken lamp, and mop bucket that created an obstacle course on the floor. She made a ceremony of opening the door, which gave a gratuitous creak. She’d instructed maintenance to quit oiling door hinges. She also added extra mirrors in the hall and reduced the wattage of the light bulbs. All to create atmosphere.

Stroke of genius, marketing the hotel as a ghost hunter’s getaway. Hype your cobwebs. It’s easier than dusting.

“Make sure Mr. Wilson gets what he needs,” Janey said. “He’s talking about making this an annual event.”

“He’s kind of creepy,” Violet said.

“Play along. Act scared. Let him believe what he wants to believe.”

“He asked me if I’d ever had any ‘experiences’ here.”

“A little white lie never hurt anybody,” Janey said, appreciating the irony. She’d busted Violet for embezzling, but here she was promoting dishonesty as simply good business.

As Violet exited in a waft of lavender and apples, Janey smiled, the parchment of her cheeks crinkling. The pleasure was still spreading across her face when the phone rang. Cell phones rarely worked here on the carapace of the Eastern Continental Divide, another advantage to the new marketing angle. The jangling phones and crackling lines added to the mystique.

“Janey, it’s Stevie.”

“Hey, good news. We booked it full for the conference.”

“Good,” Stevie said, though his tone was ambivalent.

“Something wrong?”

“This isn’t easy for me. You know how I much I love the place.”

Janey didn’t fall for it. Instead, her gut tensed in paranoia. “Yes.”

“Chad and I had an offer.”

“An offer? I didn’t even know you were selling—”

“Two mil an acre. Condo project. They’ll knock off a little for the demolition costs, but they want it fast to catch the good interest rates. We couldn’t pass it up, not the way the hotel has been bleeding red ink.”

“How soon?” Janey said, skin tingling, hoping she’d have a good half a year or so to rob the till. Early retirement wasn’t so bad.

“Sunday.”

Sunday? Two days from now.

“I don’t—”

“We’ll be down next week to deal with it. Don’t worry, Janey, you’ll get a nice severance package. Chad and I aren’t monsters.”

“What about the staff?” Janey said, not that she cared. She was buying time to give her racing mind a chance to settle down.

“Don’t say anything so they don’t walk out. Give the ghost hunters their money’s worth. One last hurrah for the old White Horse, eh?”

You can bet your sweet little tush on that one, Stevie.

“Farewell, love.” Stevie hung up.

The hotel was her life, her identity, her playground. She’d imagined keeping her room on the second floor until they wheeled her out in a zippered bag. Janey gripped the dead phone, unable to face the void that loomed in front of her.

“Two days.”

Had she said it aloud?

She had the acute feeling that someone was watching her.

Janey turned. Nothing.

Paranoia.

But that didn’t mean they weren’t watching.

She wondered if they’d overheard.

Two days.

Chapter 6

Smells like pigeon poop and mummies up here.

Wayne played his flashlight beam along the narrow strip of decking that served as a crawl space. The attic was insulated with shredded newspaper, so it was a miracle the White Horse hadn’t long since burned to the ground, especially given the shoddy state of the wiring. The rafters were crisscrossed with cables and pipes, evidence of the hotel’s attempt to change with the times. The upgrades had been haphazard, and the tangles created the suggestion that monstrous, hairy spiders would come creeping out of the shadows at any moment.

He planned to make the attic a hunt location, but he couldn’t picture running a bunch of forty-something TAPS wannabes up the ladder and through the cramped quarters. One of them might wander off the decking in the dark and plummet through the gypsum ceiling. Even though Haunted Computer Productions was a limited-liability company that owned nothing besides its namesake computer, Wayne didn’t want the hassle or legal fees involved with getting sued. Hunters were required to sign waivers, but a waiver would be nothing more than Exhibit A in a court case that could drag for years.

He backtracked to attic access, deciding to use the main one off the hall closet instead of the one in Room 318. He yelled down through the access hole to the hall. “It’s a no go up here.”

“How about a couple of IR cams?” answered Burton Hodges, the former rock ‘n’ roll roadie Wayne had recruited as SSI’s tech specialist.

Infrared cameras would allow people to watch the attic on monitors. Every waft of dust or wind-blown shadow could become proof of the afterlife. The unbelievable became more real if it was on television, and he could edit together clips to create a commemorative DVD and rake in some extra cash on the side.

The only thing better than sending customers away satisfied is sending them away broke.

“Sure, let’s rig it with audio, too.” Wayne figured the eaves had enough cracks and gaps to allow moaning breezes, and with any luck the place was infested with bats.

Wayne sent his flashlight beam bouncing deeper into the attic. Specks of dust swirled in the orange cone, creating the illusion of a thousand floating fairies. Any digital flash photographs taken up here would result in generous orb phenomena, something the armchair spiritualists accepted as paranormal activity.

Wayne had always wondered why a ghost should choose to inhabit a fuzzy white space the size and shape of a billiard ball when presumably it knew no bounds of time and space. Every professional photographer insisted orbs were the result of lens flare arising from reflections of dust or water droplets, and in the era of Photoshop programs, no digital image was trustworthy anyway.

That didn’t stop the proliferation of “authentic” photos of ghosts, and Wayne himself had included orb photos taken at the White Horse Inn with his promotional materials. He did add a disclaimer at the bottom, stating, “Orb photography is a controversial field and opinions vary on its research validity,” but it was like a beer-can label that warned alcohol could impair your motor skills. The warning itself was good publicity.

As Wayne scanned the crawl space, looking for good locations to post the cameras, the shadows shifted at the far end of the attic. A wall vent covered with wire mesh and wooden slats allowed air to circulate in the attic, and thin slices of sunlight leaked through. Passing clouds could cause a change in brightness, altering the quality of light in the entire attic.

Groovy effect, now all I need is a ragged sheet on a coat hanger...

The shadows shifted again, though the air was still.

Wayne crept forward, keeping his head low so he wouldn’t bump it on the rafters. The flashlight’s globe bobbed in front of him and the boards creaked beneath his boots. The hairs on his neck tingled–the wiring, it’s an EMF effect on my brain circuitry–and the air seemed charged with an expectant weight. A papery rustle in the walls, probably the migration of disturbed mice, sounded almost like a whisper.

Cumulatively, the various phenomena could be called an “encounter,” but Wayne knew them for what they were. Suggestion, a mild alteration in the physical environment, and cultural folklore meant that if it walked like a ghost, talked like a ghost, and shat like a ghost, it was ghost. The image of ghostly turds made him suppress a grin.

Then the shadow moved again.

Mice.

A chunk of darkness pulled itself free and moved near a crusted brick chimney. Wayne flicked his beam toward it, and the black outline grew more vivid.

It was a human form.

A brittle, high frequency pierced his ears and his teeth jolted as if he were chewing tin foil.

The whisper came again, and this time the wind was quiet and the words were clear and in a language mice never spoke outside of Saturday-morning cartoons: “You’re blinding me.”

Wayne retreated a step and his skull knocked against a support post, sending squiggly lime sparks across the backs of his eyelids. His flashlight bounced to the decking and went out. He wobbled and hugged the post for balance.

The temperature in the attic dropped 10 degrees and the electrical surge rippled from his head to his toes.

The wind, dummy, it’s November. And mice. Yeah. Mice.

He squinted into the darkness, orienting himself by the distant square light of the access door and the zebra-striped vent. The dark form now blended into the black space of the attic, and it was easy to believe he’d imagined the whole thing.

But that didn’t stop his heart from hammering like a man trapped in a coffin.

“Wayne?” Burton called.

He swallowed and his throat chafed as if the air had turned to sawdust. “I’m okay,” he croaked.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“I heard a couple of bumps.”

“I dropped my light.” Wayne reached out with the tip of his boot, probing for the flashlight, wondering what he would do if something grabbed his foot.

Burton’s head poked up through the access opening and he swept a flashlight across the attic until Wayne stood in its spotlight like a cabaret dancer on stage. He blinked into the light–You’re blinding me–and then glanced toward the chimney.

The shape was gone, just as he knew it would be.

Because it had never been there.

We made a promise, Beth, but neither of us believed it. And lying gets easier as you get older.

He stooped and gathered his flashlight from its bed of shredded paper. He tested it and found it still worked. “Okay, pass me a couple of the cameras,” Wayne said, pulse returning to normal.

He was a little embarrassed at his suggestibility. He’d never considered himself a skeptic, and he wasn’t interested in all the physiological changes that caused people to hallucinate. Ghosts were good business, from campfire storytelling to blockbuster horror movies. With thousands of people running around chasing them with fancy electronics, the poor souls were probably hiding safely under ground instead of rattling chains and slamming doors.

Burton set a plastic case on the decking and slid it toward Wayne. “Two Sony DVMs,” he said. “Hey, it’s cold up here.”

“November in the mountains,” Wayne said. “What do you expect?”

He mounted the first camera so that it would catch the main section of the attic, though one wing of the hotel would not be visible.  He aimed the second camera so it would take in the chimney. He connected the cables that Burton had snaked toward him, and then used the viewfinder to test the chimney cam. As he zoomed in, the camera’s auto focus fixed on a hand print in the chimney’s soot and grime.

Made by a worker’s glove, probably.

He zoomed out and duck-walked over to the chimney, keeping his head low. He ran his flashlight over the bricks and masonry joints. The hand print was gone.

He went back to the camera and set it to record, the satellite hard drive in the control room capable of recording an entire weekend’s worth of footage. “Come on out and play,” he called into the dead air of the attic.

“What’s that?” Burton called from below.

“Nothing,” Wayne said.

What was he expecting? Beth?

Nothing.

Just like always.

Chapter 7

Nailed him.

These New Age flakes were too busy smoking fairy dust, drinking koo-koo Kool-Aid, and gazing into crystals to peek behind the curtain.  Which gave Ann Vandooren all the power of the Wizard of Oz, and by Sunday, Digger Wilson and his band of merry pranksters would wish they’d never left Kansas, or Pluto, or wherever the hell these losers came from.

Ann had hidden a closed-circuit television camera in the corner of the attic two days earlier, renting Room 306 so she could be across the hall from the infamous Room 318. She’d drilled a hole through her closet ceiling and surreptitiously ran two cables into the attic. One cable connected to her multiplexor to store video footage on a hard drive, while the other cable allowed remote operation of a pocket-size projector. She’d borrowed the gear from the Optical Sciences department at Westridge University, where she was a tenured professor of physics.

The trick had worked better than she had imagined. With Duncan’s help, she’d collected footage of herself in a black gown and stage make-up, dancing and cavorting in front of a sheet while floor-level spotlights blazed up from below. In the editing process, she’d turned the image into a reverse negative, so that her body appeared almost translucent. She’d then dubbed the footage in slow motion, creating a rippling, almost sensuous ballet. It had taken an hour to aim the projector lens so that the image appeared to float across the attic, and the dust and sweat had been worth the result.

Ann figured Digger would squeal like a pig on a hillbilly honeymoon, run from the attic, and cry “Wolf,” giving her an opportunity to retrieve her gear and let the mystery drive SSI batty for a few days. Then, after all the conference attendees had marveled over the “evidence,” Ann would come out with her own version of the facts, backed by a video recording of the hoax.

But Digger had actually approached the image, more startled than afraid. She could almost respect him for that. After all, his sick obsession was a close cousin to her own scientific curiosity. A pity he wasted his energy and resources on bunk.

“What did you get on him?” asked Duncan Hanratty, her graduate assistant and temporary lover. He was on the bed, propped against pillows and reading the latest issue of Popular Mechanics.

“I’ll show you the clip later,” she said. “When the phonies stand up and start blathering, I’ll roll this out and dash ice water in their faces.”

“You’re sexy when you’re mean.”

“Lucky for you.” She wondered if Digger had reported the incident to his team. She might not get an opportunity to sneak back into the attic, especially if SSI got their cameras hooked up. For space cadets, they sure knew their stuff when it came to high-tech gear.

“What do you have against these guys, anyway?” Duncan said, tossing the magazine aside and rubbing his tousled hair in that sleepy, Teddy-bear manner that made him so adorable for minutes at a stretch.

“This pseudoscience gives real science a bad name,” she said. “We’re planning the first mission to Jupiter, we’ve mapped the human genetic code, and we’re making major breakthroughs in nanotechnology. But there’s no sense of wonder in it. People would rather engage in make-believe.”

“Still seems like a waste of our weekend,” Duncan said. “We could be logging some lab time.”

“You’re too young to understand.” It was her favorite taunt, though he was in his mid-twenties and only 15 years younger than she.

“I understand perfectly,” he said. “You need to know you’re right, and you need other people to know they’re wrong.”

Ann checked her laptop and made sure the other pieces of bait were ready. She’d planted a few digital recorders around the hotel, triggered by wireless remote signals. The recorders contained cryptic sound bites such as the one she’d broadcast for Digger in the attic. “You’re blinding me” was one of the most obvious, given that ghost hunters tended to work in the dark and carry flashlights.

“The trouble is they don’t know they’re wrong,” she said. “They’re trying to prove a negative.”

“Well, your scientific method is suspect, too,” Duncan said, with that infuriating smugness. Or maybe Ann was only infuriated because he had a point. “You can hardly consider your approach methodical and objective, because you hold the belief that ghosts don’t exist. Therefore, you are trying to prove a foregone conclusion rather than collect data in an impartial manner.”

“What’s your point?” It was the common response of those in a weak position. But at least she had the authority to stop sleeping with him if necessary.

“You’re in high dudgeon,” he said.

“I have no idea what ‘high dudgeon’ means.”

“Me, either, but whatever it is, you’re in it.”

Ann scrolled through some programs on the laptop. She wasn’t in the mood to argue or play, which were usually the same when it came to Duncan. She’d seduced half her male assistants, and one of her female assistants, since securing her Ph.D., and Duncan was the first she’d actually almost loved. “You know what’s ironic?”

“You as a NASCAR queen?” he said, his hand creeping toward his belt.

She was wearing blue jeans and a Dale Earnhardt sweatshirt, her hair tied back in a pony tail instead of flaring in the usual defiant and deranged curls. The biggest insult was the Carolina Panthers ball cap clamped down on her forehead. But the disguise had worked when, during her preliminary scouting expedition, she’d blundered into a cramped rear room where the hotel staff sat sullen and tobacco-soaked. She didn’t quite have the wrinkled, defeated look of the permanent underclass, but she had passed for some sort of laborer, because she’d given a conspiratorial wave that said, “This place, what can you do?” One of the maids had even directed her to the service stairs, where traffic was minimal.

“Shut up and listen for a change,” she said. “I’m trying to be objective here.”

“Shoot.”

“Assuming 50 people are here focusing their energy on ghosts, what if the combined electromagnetic force of their brain circuitry slightly altered the normal EMF state of the hotel? And subsequently that alteration led to hallucinations, feelings of disorientation, and a sense of being watched or touched?”

“You mean the power of wishful thinking?”

“Or maybe just projection or self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“That’s the whole trouble with the supernatural,” Duncan said. “It’s beyond the laws of nature and, as such, can’t be measured, quantified, or compared. It’s like arguing religion. Say a child is swept away in a flood but gets snagged on a tree branch and survives. The rescue is called miraculous proof of God’s mercy, but what about the people who drowned?”

“They come back as waterlogged ghosts?”

“Have you noticed,” he asked, “that most of our conversations are in the form of questions?”

“And this is a bad thing?”

“You love to be bad.” Duncan rolled off the bed and stood behind her. He kissed the back of her neck and then peered over her shoulder at the computer screen. “Hey, did the light level just change in the attic?”

“What if we accidentally discovered irrefutable proof of the afterlife while trying to debunk it?”

“It would be a miracle,” he said.

Ann clicked through the files on her computer. She had five more doctored videos and a folder full of superimposed still images. She’d spent one on Digger, but she could use that one again. Maybe she’d wait until several true believers were around to witness proof of the impossible.

She switched to the view from the hidden spycam in the attic. Light fluctuated and she wondered if Digger had returned for a second look, but the shadow fell still. She smiled. Such imaginative impressions would have sent the average ghost hunter into a paroxysm of bliss.

“We’ve got a few hours to kill before showtime,” she said, turning to meet his kiss.

“Want to continue this conversation in bed?”

“Will you shut up already?”

Chapter 8

People called him The Roach.

Rodney Froehmer wasn’t sure whether it was because he could fit through impossibly tight crevices or because he was likely to survive nuclear winter as the last living human in a post-apocalyptic world. Either way, he embraced the role, from the rubber gloves dangling from his belt to the mini MAG light clipped on the bill of his black baseball cap. He only had one antenna, unlike his insect namesake, and it extended from a two-way radio headset. His night-vision goggles completed the bug-eyed appearance, but at the moment, they were draped from his neck.

All of the Spirit Seekers International crew were hooked on technology, but The Roach was in his own special class of geek. His equipment dangled from loops and straps or bulged from the cargo pockets in his jumpsuit. While the SSI uniforms made all of them easily recognizable, The Roach particularly loved the attention from the paranormal community. He didn’t have Cody’s looks or the artistic flair of Digger Wilson, but he’d carved out a niche and been photographed with plenty of ghost-hunting groupies. The coup de grace was the silver crucifix that dangled down his chest.

Since Kendra was running the check-in table and the rest of the crew was setting up gear in the control room, The Roach figured he could loaf by the front desk and serve as advertising. Besides, there were forces at work that merited a little surveillance, even if those things couldn’t be seen at the moment.

A couple who appeared to be husband and wife came down the hall, the husband carrying a glass that contained either red wine or grape juice. He was balding and flushed, seeming to fade into his wife’s ample shadow. She was one of those overweight women who didn’t seem comfortable in her own skin, because she kept tugging at her lime-colored blouse and suit jacket as if somehow she could disguise the extra eighty pounds. She was formidable and brassy, her perfume running interference. She grinned at The Roach, her heels hammering as she increased her pace.

“You’re one of the ghost busters.” she practically squealed with delight.

“We don’t bust anything, ma’am.”

“You’re on the team, right?”

“Spirit Seekers International, at your service.” He touched the bill of his cap like a jet pilot about to embark on a flight. Digger had taught them the importance of showmanship.

By this time, the husband had caught up. The glass definitely contained alcohol. “Don’t you try to catch the ghosts, tell them to ‘Go toward the light’ or whatever?”

“That’s a misconception,” The Roach said, leaning forward to read the name badge on the woman’s generous breast. “We can’t vacuum them up into glass jars and release them in the woods like a raccoon trapped in a henhouse. For one thing, we have no idea where a ghost is supposed to be. For all we know, it might go toward the light and discover the light is caused by the flickering flames of hell.”

The woman, Amelia G. according to her name badge, chuckled. “Religion and the afterlife shouldn’t mix.”

“The television shows treat ghosts like they are a problem to be solved. The last thing a dead person needs is a ghost whisperer trying to psychoanalyze them.”

“Well, I’ve had some success with that,” Amelia said.

“She has an Ouija board,” said hubby, Donald G.

Kendra, who had finished registering a couple of women, said, “You shouldn’t mess with those things.”

“Young lady, I’ve been communicating with spirits since you were in diapers,” Amelia said.

“I had a friend who tried to commit suicide after a midnight séance.”

“Not everybody can handle messages from beyond.”

“It’s not the messages that are the problem. It’s the kind of people who need to hear them.”

“Come on, Kendra,” The Roach cut in. “You know the rules of the road. There is no right or wrong in this field, only theories.”

Kendra could never resist tweaking those who took the dead too seriously. A little humor was one thing, but nobody wanted to be around a sarcastic brat. The Roach didn’t like parenting Kendra, but Digger was doing a lousy job of it. And Digger didn’t realize how much danger his daughter was in.

“All I’m saying is that it’s just a piece of pasteboard with some letters on it,” Kendra said. “But you better check your spiritual condition before you play.”

Amelia sniffed. “The dead can tell who’s playing for keeps.”

“Tell them about the Commodore,” hubby said.

“That’s for the beach house,” she said. “I’m here to channel Margaret Percival.”

“Why don’t you come say hello?” Kendra said, pointing to the wall. A portrait of a woman with short, curly hair and sad eyes hung above an antique tea table.

According to hotel legend, the portrait had been found at a 1950’s flea market by a maid, and she’d sworn it bore an uncanny resemblance to the vanished Miss Percival. Taking it as a sign from God, the maid had purchased it and given it to the hotel. The Roach figured it was just another flea-market hype job, since the hair style was wrong for the era, but the hotel had gone so far as to attach a copper nameplate beneath it that read “Margaret Percival.” The nameplate appeared much newer than the ornate but chipped wooden frame.

The Roach was about to give his opinion when the portrait fell from the wall, the glass shattering.

“I caused that,” Amelia said. “With my mind.”

“I wouldn’t admit it,” Kendra said. “The hotel might stick damages on your bill.”

The Roach examined the wall where the portrait had been. A tiny hole was ringed by plaster dust. The picture hook had apparently lost its grip.

She’s got a mind like a claw hammer, then. Bet she uses the head of the hammer on hubby.

“She’s a demonologist, too,” hubby said.

The Roach shot her a glance. She was too young to know better. Anyone claiming to be a demonologist was worth avoiding. The real ones, like him, worked best in secret. It was an unfortunate calling, not a hobby.

“Among other things,” Amelia said with pride. To hubby she said, “You’d best notify the hotel staff before someone gets cut.”

“Why bother?” Kendra said. “A little blood is just what we need to get the party started.”

“Blood magick,” Amelia said to her. “Are you a virgin, dear?”

“Excuse me?”

”Are you familiar with Aleister Crowley?”

“Come on, Kendra,” The Roach said, ferrying her away. “Some more guests are checking in.”

“Cool,” Kendra snapped. “Maybe they’ll be old perverts, too.”

Amelia glowered at the teen. “I would hate to fetch a demon on you.”

“You don’t want one of her demons,” her husband said, arching his eyebrows into arrow tips. The Roach wondered how many demons he’d been subjected to during the course of the marriage. Plenty, by the looks of it.

“Why don’t you two come to the medium parlor?” The Roach said, appealing to Amelia’s ego and letting her assume her presence was awaited with all the anticipation of a visiting queen’s. “Wayne Wilson is expecting you.”

“I hope it’s in one of the haunted rooms.” Amelia G. stepped over the broken glass and followed The Roach down the hall, hubby trailing and sipping his drink.

“I believe they’re all haunted,” The Roach said.

“Got any demons here?”

“Only the ones you brought with you,” The Roach said, wishing it were true.

The hall was buckled and warped, the angles slightly skewed by decades of wooden bones shifting on concrete footing. The scarred oak floorboards creaked under their feet, and mirrors placed at strategic angles suggested subtle movement at the edges of the shadows. The Roach had been in a number of reputedly haunted structures, and most of them had age and faulty architecture in common. It was another of those contrived truisms of the field: ghosts avoided clean, well-lighted places.

They were heading up the stairs to the second floor when a brittle crash sounded on the landing above. The Roach looked back at Amelia, whose plump face bore a look of childish pleasure.

“Sometimes I don’t know my own power,” she said.

Either that, or the game has already begun.

“I’ll inform the front desk,” hubby said, as if pleased at a chance to escape, lest Amelia’s glare turn him to glass and then shards and slivers.

“Wayne’s going to love you,” The Roach said.

Amelia beamed, though The Roach was sure she’d completely misinterpreted his statement.

Too bad you’re not clairvoyant, because if you could see the future the White Horse demons have in mind, you’d be swallowing that smile.

Chapter 9

“How’s it going?” Wayne said, patting Kendra on the shoulder and looking at the check-in sheet.

“Forty-three so far,” Kendra said.

“We’ll put you through college yet.”

“Unless I run away from home and join the circus.”

“You’re already in the circus, honey.”

“Well, they’ve certainly sent in the clowns. You’ve got psychics, remote viewers, a couple of cranky quantum physicists, and a woman who claims to be the reincarnation of Madame Blavatsky.”

“As long as she didn’t pay in rubles.”

“I’ve got a feeling she’ll probably add a hillbilly to her past-life collection by the time the weekend’s over,” Kendra said, rolling her eyes to indicate the surroundings.

The hotel had given them its “history room” for registration, the walls replete with old photographs, door handles, wallpaper samples, and other relics of the building’s past. A glass case held an ancient Royal typewriter, its black ribbon cracked and curled. Beside it was a tattered copy of “The Yearling,” and a placard explaining author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had stayed at the hotel in the summer of 1936, taking breakfast in Black Rock and dinner in Boone. The glass case also held Southern Appalachian artifacts like corn-husk dolls, a dulcimer, a ceramic moonshine jug, furrier’s tools, and a hand-stitched quilt that looked as if it has been pieced together with dust. The room smelled of linseed oil and old paper.

“It’s all about presentation,” Wayne said, imparting a basic business principal disguised as a parental lecture. “Give them a little atmosphere and let their imaginations do the rest.”

Kendra rolled her eyes. “I know, I know. ‘People don’t buy products, they buy emotions.’ Jeez, Dad, why don’t you get out of the ghost game and launch a political consulting firm?”

“There’s not much imagination in that. Plus you’re on the losing team half the time.”

A tall man with a dramatic swoop of gray in his dark hair entered the room. He wore a rumpled tan blazer and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone, exposing the wiry hair on his chest. “Is this where we register?” he said, in a low, mellifluous tone.

“Step right this way,” Kendra said, motioning him to the table.

“I paid in advance,” he said. “Martin Gelbaugh.”

As Kendra checked his information and gave him his badge and packet, Wayne lifted the lid on the ancient piano in the corner. He poked the lowest C, and as the note reverberated against the room’s wooden surfaces, he tapped a note higher up the register. The two harmonics clashed, horribly out of tune even to Wayne’s untrained ear.

“The upper C is about eleven vibrations per second flat,” the man said.

Wayne looked at Gelbaugh, studying the hands that appended the badge to his suit jacket. The fingers were gaunt but graceful, like those of a musician or fine craftsman. “Perfect pitch, huh?”

“I’m not convinced that ‘perfect’ exists,” he said, smiling at Kendra. “Unless perhaps it’s the angelic demeanor of this lovely young lady.”

The gallant attempt at flattery would only enrage his daughter. She was convinced that every man over the age of 20 was a hopeless perv, and Wayne endorsed that sentiment. But she disguised her grimace so that it could be mistaken for a shy smile.

The customer is always right, even when he’s an asshole. I’ve taught her well. The Digger’s daughter.

She’s your daughter, too, Beth, but I hope your lessons have ended. Everything we knew might have been wrong.

“She could be the only angel here, Mr. Gelbaugh,” Wayne said, falling into a dinner-theater role to match that of the guest’s. “I’m Wayne Wilson, your host.”

“I’ve read a lot about you.”

“Half of it is true, but nobody knows which half, not even me,” Wayne said. Kendra shot him a look that said Don’t pile it on too thick. Or maybe Lame-o-rama. He wasn’t so good at teen translation these days.

“Is it the half that says you’re a huckster who doesn’t even believe in the afterlife and is only in it for a fast buck?”

Wayne felt his face shift into a cold mask. He studied Gelbaugh’s eyes, looking for a twinkle of mischief, but all he saw was an inquisitive challenge. The tension was heightened by Kendra’s expectation of a response. Maybe he could surprise them both.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe, or what you believe, or what anyone believes,” Wayne said. “All experience is subjective, and no one’s yet to offer irrefutable proof of life, much less the afterlife.”

Gelbaugh touched his forehead in a mock salute. “So you’ve been reading about me, too.”

“Sure. I subscribe to Fate Magazine and hit the paranormal blogs like everybody else. Unless a dozen people are out there pretending to be Martin Gelbaugh, you get around.”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t come to crash the party. I’m just an innocent bystander.”

“Nobody’s innocent,” Wayne said.

A group of four came to the table, drawing Kendra’s attention. Wayne moved closer to Gelbaugh, not sure whether he welcomed the man’s presence. Gelbaugh was a famous critic of the paranormal, but instead of debunking its science, he challenged the foundation of consciousness. The Gospel According To Gelbaugh went something like, “You can’t prove one plus one is two, because you can’t even prove what ‘one’ is. And if you show me a mathematical formula, all you are showing me is a piece of paper with strange markings on it, and I have no way of knowing not only whether the markings are actually there, but whether the piece of paper exists.”

Wayne had to admit, as radical theories went, Gelbaugh’s was pretty unassailable. The man had published a book called “God Equals Absolute Zero,” and it created a brief buzz before its convoluted logic bored even the fickle pop-psychology crowd.

Gelbaugh’s reputation had decayed from metaphysical whiz kid to cranky nay-sayer in the space of a decade. Now he was trading on the last of his reputation, hanging around the fringes, finding new purpose in the paranormal fad. And he’d paid his registration in cash, too far down the ladder to request free admission in exchange for a panel appearance.

“Come now, Mr. Wilson, if we’re going to debate guilt and innocence, you should at least join me at the hotel bar,” Gelbaugh said.

Wayne licked his lips, the bittersweet bite of whiskey aroused from its slumbering tomb in his memory. Sure, he could have one drink. Just one. This time, he could manage it.

Then, in a flash of prescience that could have convinced him of psychic ability if he were so inclined, he saw himself sitting on a bar stool, elbows riding the oak railing, head tilted into the gray fog of cigarette smoke. Glass tinkling, murmurs of conversation spiked with occasional cracked laughter, the TV set tuned to championship poker or semipro boxing, the drinks coming faster and faster until it was morning and he would awaken against the toilet,  vomit and apologies burning his throat, Kendra forced into playing the grown-up of the family once again.

You want to talk about horror...

“Maybe later,” Wayne said. “I’ve got to check on the control room and the hunt schedule.”

Gelbaugh gave a knowing nod, and Wayne wondered if his drinking habits had been part of Gelbaugh’s homework. “Sure. How about after tomorrow’s panel? ‘The Nature of Spirits.’ One could take a number of meanings from that title.”

“It’s supposed to be open-ended,” Wayne said.

“Naturally,” Gelbaugh said. “What better way to kick off a paranormal conference than to turn on the metaphorical fog machine and cloud the collective consciousness?”

“My panelists have credentials that–”

The walkie talkie on Wayne’s belt squawked, and he retrieved it, glad he didn’t have to defend the reputations of people he’d drafted because they were willing to jabber for free.

“Excuse me.” He pressed a button and said into the mouthpiece, “Wayne here.”

“We got a problem, Boss.”

Burton had a flair for understatement. His “problem” was another man’s “life-and-death crisis.” At best, he’d run into a wiring problem. At worst, the whole telecomm system had melted down.

“On my way,” he answered, brushing past Gelbaugh and heading for the stairs. “What you got?”

“In the medium room.” Burton responded. “They were playing around with automatic writing, and a woman fainted.”

“Christ,” Wayne said. His first thought was not of the woman’s well-being, but of his liability insurance. He almost wished he believed in God so he could pray the victim was diabetic or had some other chronic ailment instead of suffering emotional trauma.

All conference attendees were required to sign waiver forms acknowledging the physical and psychological risks of ghost hunting, but his attorney had said the papers were little more than good publicity. A lawsuit was a lawsuit, and in a courtroom, everybody lost but the lawyers.

There was one more possibility, one he wasn’t yet prepared to face. But she would wait for an intimate moment to make her appearance.

You and me, just like the old days. Just like we never have before.

He was leaping up the winding stairs three at a time when Kendra called after him from below. “Something wrong?”

Wayne peered over the railing. “An Elvis sighting.”

“Dad,” she groaned, but he was already thundering to Room 218 and whatever unpleasant surprise awaited.

Chapter 10

Amelia appeared to be breathing normally, but her fluttering eyes gazed past Burton’s shoulder to a point on the ceiling.

“She’s up there,” Amelia said.

Burton, checking her pulse, put his head to her chest, but her heartbeat was lost in the pillowy softness of her breasts and he wasn’t willing to burrow in for better audio. If she were having a heart attack, she was having the most blissful cardiac arrest ever recorded, because her smile stretched across her rounded face.

“Dearheart,” said the thin man Burton took to be her husband. He was excited but his voice projected no life-or-death anxiety. “Are you stepping through?”

The other three people in the room were frozen around the glass coffee table that held an Ouija board. All three wore white badges that featured their names and the cute little ghost logo Wayne used for his Haunted Computer Productions trademark. They were paying customers, which made the situation more controllable. Paranormalists were used to drama queens and catatonia, and sometimes a gathering of like-minded seekers led to a game of one-upmanship that had the clairvoyants and sensitives quivering in the throes of unseen forces. Their performances could make an orgasm-faking porn actress proud.

But Amelia had dropped like a sack of flour, with a limp-boned surrender that would have been difficult to fake. The human body had a number of involuntary defenses, including the instinct to brace for a fall. Burton, watching the session on one of the control-room monitors, had taken her flop for the real thing. Overweight people were more prone to health problems, and in stressful environments the pressure on bodily systems naturally increased.

After calling Wayne on the walkie-talkie, he’d raced to 218 and arrived less than a minute after her collapse. Amelia’s husband Donald didn’t even ask Burton to call an ambulance. Apparently he was used to her spells, or what he had called “stepping through.”

“Angel in the clouds,” Amelia said.

Burton lifted his head from her breasts and studied the swirled gypsum patterns in the ceiling. With a little imagination, or the appropriate hallucinogenic drugs favored by visionaries around the world, then the random patterns could be fitted into whatever shapes the viewer desired. Might as well be angels as anything.

“What’s her name?” Donald asked, edging closer.

Amelia lifted a trembling arm and pointed to the table. “Ask the board.”

A yellow legal pad was on the table beside the Ouija board. Now that Amelia had stabilized, Burton turned his attention to the words written there.

“Nancy. 1922. In the stone garden.”

It was like a supernatural game of “Clue,” only instead of the butler in the study with a candlestick, it was Nancy in the garden, from an era long enough ago that she was almost certainly deceased. However, Amelia hadn’t addressed the angel as “Nancy,” so her dream image must have been someone else.

“Help me lift her,” Donald said, and Burton took one shoulder and arm while Donald lifted her head. They were struggling to get her into a sitting position when Wayne came panting through the door.

“How is she?” Wayne asked.

“We had an episode,” Donald said, full of pride.

Wayne visibly relaxed. He glanced at the three guests, who kneeled around the coffee table like adolescents who’d been caught playing Spin the Bottle.

“Your medium room is above average,” Amelia said, and the bad pun broke the tension. Burton had heard it before but laughed anyway.

“The planchette,” Donald said.

Amelia reached forward, her hands still shaking, and cupped the wheeled triangular device. The three guests knelt at the coffee table, penitents before a shrine, though they must have sensed that Amelia would be flying solo on this particular ascension to the Great Beyond. Burton found himself kneeling as well, though he’d never ascribed much mystical power to a concoction of cardboard, glue, and ink manufactured by Parker Brothers.

Still, intention was a powerful thing.

Wayne approached the table, eyes shining as if infected with the contagious enthusiasm that filled the room. Burton knew Wayne also put little stock in the Ouija board, but his boss believed in giving the people what they wanted. If they paid good money to sit in a room and consult a trademarked oracle, then more power and Godspeed to them.

“Are you here, Nancy?” Amelia said.

The surrounding observers were silent as the planchette gave a squeaky roll toward the “No” corner of the board. Burton’s take on the divination tool was that the operator unconsciously manipulated the wheeled mechanism. It was difficult to tell fakery, but if you believed all of it was fake, then you didn’t have to waste time detecting sleight of hand.

“If you aren’t Nancy, then who are you?”

Burton met Wayne’s glance. No doubt Amelia had researched the hotel’s history and knew all about the legend of Margaret Percival, the suicidal Frederick Weinstein, and the honeymoon heart-attacker Erwin Henderson. Since Margaret was the most notorious of the cases, Burton expected the planchette to slide toward “M.” Donald squatted beside his wife, pen poised over the note pad to record the letters.

Amelia closed her eyes and allowed the planchette a visible tremor. Then it slid toward the “O,” hesitated a moment, and settled on the “N.” “N,” Donald called out, scribbling it down

“Nancy,” whispered one of the bystanders, a pinch-faced man with an oily strand of hair plastered across his bald spot.

The planchette rolled again, locking on the “O.”

“N-O,” Donald said. “ ‘No’ the slow way.”

“Not Nancy,” whispered Baldy.

Amelia’s face was calm but her eyelashes fluttered as she concentrated. Burton noted her breathing was deep and steady again. Whatever spell she had suffered, she appeared fine now.

The planchette eased back and settled on the “O” again. Donald called out the letter as he wrote it.

The bystanders gathered closer around the table, straining forward to see which letter the planchette would select next. The metallic tang of tension hung in the air, mixing with the air freshener that the maid had used to cover the room’s must.

The plastic squeak of the planchette was brittle in the room’s silence.

Donald announced the next stop: “N.”

Burton smiled. Amelia had read the same books he and everyone else in the field had read. She was serving up the identity of “No one.” It was the perfect riddle, used by Ulysses to trick the Cyclops in “Odysseus” and used in a variation by Captain Kirk in “Star Trek” to outsmart an evil computer. Of course, in the paranormal world, “no one” could be anyone, even the Prince of Lies himself, or Prince Albert.

“Noon?” Baldy said.

“Shh,” said a red-haired woman. “She’s not finished.”

Wayne’s expression had shifted from curious mirth to one of concern, his brow furrowed. Burton figured he was putting on a show.

Amelia pushed the planchette to the “I.”

“I,” Donald asked. “Are you sure?”

Amelia, whose eyes were closed, gave a slight nod. A pendant on her bosom caught the faint golden glow of the lamplight.

Wayne’s face was nearly white, a shade of pallor that Burton didn’t think could be faked.

The planchette moved again, skidding across the slick cardboard.

“E,” Wayne said, flatly.

As if obeying his command, the planchette rested on the letter. Amelia took her hands from the device and opened her eyes.

“Noonie?” Donald said.

“Wayne?” Burton asked. His boss looked as if he had swallowed a live snake.

“Is that all?” Baldy said. “What does ‘Noonie’ mean?”

“I don’t know.” Amelia said. “I saw an angel.”

Several of the bystanders nodded as if that was a perfectly obvious explanation.

“Let’s keep going,” Donald said. “Maybe we can flush it out. Might be a poltergeist at play.”

“You sure you want to mess with a poltergeist?” Baldy said.

“That’s why we’re here,” Burton said, checking his EMF meter. The baseline reading hadn’t changed, suggesting no spirit had visited the room and nobody’s cell phone was close to the meter.

Wayne turned away, and Burton saw his face in the mirror. Wayne was pale, as if he was going to throw up, and he staggered to the door. The group of necromancers didn’t notice, too intent on Amelia’s wielding of the planchette. Burton clicked off his EMF meter and left the room.

Wayne was slumped against the wall, eyes staring straight ahead.

“Did you feel something, Digger?” Burton asked, annoyed because his FLIR thermal imaging system might have recorded any temperature fluctuations in the room if Wayne had actually spoken while the trail was still warm. Or cold, in this case.

“Noonie,” he whispered.

“Yeah, keep them guessing, right?”

“No guess. It’s her.”

Burton tried to square the nonsense word with the known historical hauntings but came up empty. “Which ‘her’? Margaret?”

“My wife.”

Burton inhaled sharply. It always came to this. Most people became interested in the paranormal to deal with a personal loss. Maybe the Digger was human, after all.

“She’s dead, Wayne.”

“She promised.”

“I don’t—”

“She promised to meet me here.”

Chapter 11

Janey Mays walked through the kitchen, past pots and pans dangling from hooks, a wooden rack of overpriced wine, stainless-steel tables covered with cabbages and yellow squash, a cart loaded with dirty cookware, and a large sink where Irish potatoes were soaking. The music from the bar was piped into the kitchen, and at the moment a growly hard-rock tune was blaring loudly enough to shake the utensils by the grill.

One of the legends Janey had concocted was that a cook had died of a heart attack in the kitchen and, since that fateful day, cutlery rattled whenever his spirit returned. No one had ever challenged her for a name in order to check the story’s historical accuracy, but after the rumor had taken root, it spread throughout the staff. In five years, seven reports of rattling cutlery and the specter of a funny little man in a chef’s hat had been written down in the ghost register, one by Janey herself but the rest by people who were unwitting accomplices in her deception.

Now, with the place on the verge of closing, the effort seemed silly. It was already a museum despite the activity. Soon enough, it would be rubble fit only for the landfill. So much for forty years of dedication and faith.

A sullen teen, whose name she hadn’t bothered to learn, was chopping barbecue, wielding a heavy cleaver and sending bits of baked pig flesh flying in the air.

“Nice stroke,” she said, but the remark passed unnoticed.

Dinner was still two hours away, but with 50 or more people expected for the conference, the kitchen was clanging. Vincent, the head chef, worked the gas grill as if he were forging mystical swords for the Roman fire god Vulcan. Phillippe, the new guy who actually wore a silly, poofy chef’s hat and had a culinary degree, browsed the spice rack as if filling a life-saving prescription.

Janey resisted an urge to dip a spoon in a bubbling cauldron of something that looked like pumpkin stew. Much like a captain going down with the ship, she wanted her guests to enjoy their last meal. Despite her impulse to poison it.

“Smells yummy, Phillippe,” she shouted over the clangor.

“Mal appetit, mademoiselle,” he said.

“And a Chucky Cheese to you.”

She made her way to the laundry area that was appended to the back of the hotel. The narrow cinder-block alley that was so plain and familiar now took on a surreal quality, as if it were already becoming dust and air. The squeaking hum of the washing machines reverberated along the walls, growing louder as she entered the wash room.

Rosalita, whose brown, leathery face was unreadable at all times, was folding table linens. Rosalita had started working in the laundry room at the same time as Janey, but she had the disadvantage of being Hispanic in a conservative rural area. In four decades, she’d missed only three days of work, each of them to bear a child. Janey had reported her once because Rosalita was running her cloth diapers through each load of sheets, a snitch that had moved Janey another rung up the laundry-room ladder. Janey had learned early on that by ratting out the hired help to the pinch-pennies and bean-counters who kept hoteliers around the world rich, she’d soon be management material herself. The trick was not in being moral and scrupulous, it was in not getting caught.

But Rosalita had never shown any antagonism toward Janey. She’d also never shown any deference or friendliness. She might have been a carved Mayan idol for all the emotion she projected.

“Good evening, Miss Mays,” the laundress said in her mild Spanish accent, not pausing in her routine of folding. Her spidery hands creased the fabric with geometric precision as she stacked the linen in a basket. The wash room had bare, gray walls and a concrete floor, with no heat besides that generated by the machinery. Janey still carried those long, late hours in her bones.

“Are all the rooms ready?” Janey said, not bothering with a return greeting.

“Yes, and we’ll have the dining room set in an hour.”

“Have you noticed anything funny?” Janey asked.

“Funny, ma’am?”

“Unusual. You know. Have your people said anything?”

Rosalita was so wary that she even hid her wariness. “Nothing. Steady business.”

“The guests are looking for ghosts, and we wouldn’t want to disappoint them.”

“We show them ghosts?”

Janey gave a cracked laugh. “We don’t have to do any showing. Just let them see what they want to see.”

“Ah. Even if they can see through them.”

“Right. So please instruct the staff to play along. Let them share stories and the hotel history. All those deep, dark secrets you guys talk about behind my back.”

Rosalita’s stony facade didn’t yield a crack. “Yes, ma’am.”

Janey took one of the folded linens, flapped it open, and flung it over her head. She let it settle about her shoulders and feigned a ghostly moan. “Whooooo.”

She yanked the tablecloth off her head and tossed it down for Rosalita to fold again. Rosalita’s black eyes were as cold as the room.

“And make sure nobody walks off with any towels,” Janey said, heading for the cluttered service alley that led to the dining hall.

“Or diapers,” Rosalita said.

Janey turned, but the face was impassive. Janey had enjoyed the gradual oppression of Rosalita, a slow grinding under the heel that had stretched for delightful decades. Come Monday, Rosalita would be out of a job but Janey would lose much more—the joy of domination and manipulation.

“I don’t think there will be any babies at the conference,” Janey said. “I’ve seen a couple of teenagers running around, but it’s not the sort of event for child’s play.”

“Except for those dead ones that run and laugh on the second floor?”

“That’s the spirit,” Janey said with an exaggerated wink.

As she navigated the mop buckets, broken chairs, and filthy rolls of carpet in the service alley, she met one of the black-uniformed members of Digger’s crew. He was young and handsome, projecting an air of cockiness. He had some type of electronic gizmo in his hand that looked like a cross between a laser gun and a flashlight.

“Excuse me,” Janey said. “This area is off limits to the public. As you can see, it’s unsafe.”

If Chad and Stevie get sued in the final hour, that might cut into the severance package.

“Digger said we had an all-access pass,” said the young man, whose sea-green eyes twinkled as if they could get him into any door he wanted. “I’m just grabbing some baseline readings.”

He kept on with his instrument, waving it around and studying the digital information on its screen. Janey fought an urge to grab him by the ear and drag his insolent ass out of there. She looked at the name stitched above the SSI logo on the breast of his jump suit.

“Cody,” she said. “I’m sure Mr. Wilson impressed upon you the importance of following rules.”

Cody clicked off the instrument. “Ghosts don’t follow the rules, so why should I?”

Janey gave a brief, dry burst of applause, and the sound was swallowed by the confined space. “Bravo. I’m sure you’re Digger’s star pupil.”

“Look,” he said, thrusting the meter toward her. “You’ve got EMF fluctuations all along here. I’m thinking it’s the wiring behind the walls, or maybe water going through old copper pipes.”

He pressed a trigger on the meter and a row of LED lights flashed red across the screen. He waved the meter in an arc so she could see it, and the line of LED’s surged and disappeared.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“Maybe nothing,” Cody said. “Get the readings now, before all hell breaks loose. Then get readings later, and you can measure hell.”

“Ghosts come from hell?” She’d always thought of them as trapped spirits killing time, watching as she went about her business. More like deadbeat tenants than anything.

“There are different types. You have your residual haunts, sort of like a film projector stuck in a loop. Then you got your actives, what some call the ‘intelligent’ haunts because they interact with the real world. They might talk or touch you, and sometimes express confusion about why things have changed.”

“That doesn’t sound so scary,” Janey said, though she shivered at the thought of a ghost touching her. They could watch all they wanted, and whisper things, and move objects around, but they could damn well keep their hands to themselves in her hotel.

“Poltergeists tend to play little pranks, rap on the walls, and toss things around. They’re usually associated with adolescent girls getting their first period, psychokinetic powers, that kind of thing.”

“No wonder. Turning into a woman would make anybody unstable. If you had PMS, you’d throw things around, too.”

“Then you got your demons,” Cody said, with a mischievous grin.

Klonggg.

Janey jumped at the metallic, grinding noise behind her that might have been the snapping jaws of some flesh-eating spawn of Satan.

Then a buzzer sounded, and Janey realized one of the ancient, commercial-sized dryers had ended its cycle. She pictured Rosalita waiting patiently for the next load, alone with whatever spirits of cotton and dust lay gathered around her.

“Demons constitute less than 1 percent of all activity,” Cody said. “But it’s the kind of activity that can mess you up.”

“Mess you up?”

“I’ve had them throw me across the room. But the real risk is to your noggin. They can plant ideas and make you see things that aren’t exactly family-friendly viewing. And if you get possessed, well, the party really gets out of hand.”

“And you believe this stuff? What are you, some kind of Bible thumper?”

Cody moved past her to take another set of readings. “God versus the Devil would be a clean fight. But demons aren’t really interested in either. A boss is a boss, right? They tend to do their own thing.”

Janey had images of red, pointy-eared creatures fluttering around in caves of fire.

“You’re looking pretty clean so far,” he said. “We’ll do a complete sweep and get a better idea. But you can never tell what’s going to come out and play in the dead of night.”

“When things get quiet,” she said. “I wouldn’t–”

“Whoa.” The row of LED lights on the meter filled and faded in the rhythm of a slow heartbeat. “This is freaky.”

He moved the meter close to an old cherry wardrobe. The piece wasn’t classy enough to be an antique and wasn’t rustic enough to pass off as primitive handicraft. One splintered door sagged from its hinges while the other door was warped and buckled from dampness. The base of the wardrobe was nicked and scarred, and a strip of trim was missing from the crown. The LED bar continued its steady blinking.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

Cody eased the meter through the gap between the doors and Janey cringed, half expecting something to grab his wrist and drag him into the darkness.

“What’s the story on this?” he asked.

Janey couldn’t remember where the piece had come from, but she’d been walking past it for many years, cursing its obstruction of the hallway. She wasn’t even sure why she’d never had the wardrobe hauled away. Perhaps she thought it might be restored, so she could concoct a receipt for a new wardrobe, dump the furniture in one of the larger suites, and stick the cost difference in her pocket.

“Just a pile of junk,” she said.

“Here, hold this,” Cody said, thrusting the meter into her hands. She gripped it gingerly, as if it were a loaded gun. Cody parted the doors and the dim light of the service alley spilled into the interior. The wardrobe was empty.

The meter stopped pulsing and the LED’s went dead.

“It stopped,” Janey said.

“I think we’ve got us an anomaly.” Cody made notes in his pocket-sized composition book.

“Haunted furniture?”

“You need a lot more than an energy fluctuation to make that conclusion. But it’s a data point. I need to check for electrical outlets or pipes behind it.”

While Janey studied the meter’s display, Cody put his shoulder against the wardrobe and scooted it sideways. Despite her cynicism, Janey found herself craning to see the hidden section of cinder block wall. A frayed sheet of plywood was propped against the wall and cool air oozed from the dark gaps around it.

Cody plucked the plywood away, revealing a hole about the size of four cinder blocks. A rank, earthy odor oozed from the opening, and the blackness inside was almost palpable, a solid mass that threatened to spill out like stuffing from a torn sofa.

“I don’t remember that hole being there,” Janey said, relishing a last scolding of Wally Reams.

Cody squatted, fished a penlight from his pocket, and speared the thin shaft of light into the darkness. He stuck his head into the opening. “Sweet.”

“What is it?” Janey asked, shuddering at the thought of rats and other vermin having a free run to the kitchen.

“Looks like some kind of repair access. For pipes and heating ducts.”

As Janey leaned to peer over Cody’s shoulder, the EMF meter began blinking again, this time in a staccato frenzy. She almost dropped it.

“Whatever it is, it’s in here,” Cody said, taking the meter from her.

“Great. An evil spirit is just what we need.”

Cody shook his head. “I doubt we’d get that lucky. I meant that the source of the fluctuation is down there. Wires, pipes, maybe some kind of heat or water pump. The first job in this line of work is to eliminate all the possible solutions until you get to the impossible.”

He turned and looked up at her, his cheek smudged with a cobweb. “People think ghosts are everywhere, but the truth is they’re pretty damned rare. You have to cut through a lot of noise to get to the real deal.”

Janey handed Cody the meter and straightened her jacket. “Well, don’t be crawling down in there without written permission. Mr. Wilson’s contract limits the hunts to the public areas.”

Cody did the Charm School bit, dimples and all, and one eyelid fluttered in a conspiratorial wink. “I wouldn’t dream of it, ma’am.”

She didn’t know whether to spank him or kiss him, and she tightened her lips so she didn’t appear flustered. “And don’t be summoning any demons to my hotel.”

“You don’t have to summon demons. If they want to be here, they already are.”

Janey left Cody to his meter and note pad, acutely aware of the subtle noises of the hotel: air sluicing through the central ductwork, the distant creaking of the old elevator, the muted music from the kitchen, the rumbling of washers and dryers. She had a sense of the hotel as an organic, living thing, with its own circulatory system, breath, and skeleton.

And its own memories.

Its own desires.

And perhaps a will to live.

She hurried to the dining room, a chill settling on her skin. She kept her eyes dead ahead.

Chapter 12

This was exactly what he’d wanted, the main reason he’d set up the ghost hunt. He’d even prayed for it, in such awkward fashion as he could undertake that act of humility. But maybe it wasn’t so wise to ask God for things, because He might deliver them.

Wayne had brushed Burton off with a mumbled story about the Ouija session reminding him of his wife because they’d played the board game together in college. Burton hadn’t bought it completely but hadn’t pressed for more details.

We played, all right. Only it wasn’t in college.

Wayne checked the monitor system. The guests who had signed up for early hunts were already making the rounds of the most notorious rooms, led by members of the SSI team. Wayne and Burton had charted out the rotation schedule to ensure that everyone would be able to spend time in 318, 202, and 218, with the dining room optional. Little history had been gathered on the dining room, though supposedly a spirit dubbed “The Waiter” still offered service in the wee hours of night.

Wayne turned to the group of six that had assembled for the next hunt. Two were old ladies who looked wiry and clear-eyed, knotty hands clutching meters labeled “Ghost Detector.” Such devices were usually sold on the Internet by enterprising paranormal sites, run by entrepreneurs who bought basic EMF meters at wholesale and decked them out with a few stickers and a marketing image at double the cost.

A younger couple, who appeared more interested in each other than in Wayne’s explanation of the hunt logistics, carried no equipment besides digital cameras. A balding man in a plaid jacket projected an unhealthy eagerness, as if ghosts were the only entities that could endure his company for long. Martin Gelbaugh, the final member of the group, hovered around the edge like a wolf waiting to cull the weakest from the pack.

“Okay, folks, here’s the drill. We have one hour in 202. First I want to give you a little history on–”

“Excuse me,” Gelbaugh said. “Wouldn’t it be preferable to go in with a blank slate rather than a head full of suggestions?”

“Not necessarily,” Baldy said. “If you know the stories, then you know what to look for.”

“Exactly,” Gelbaugh said. “You find what you’re looking for.”

Baldy wasn’t sharp enough to pick up on the sarcasm, but one of the old ladies said, “If there’s a ghost in the room, I want to know before I step foot in there.”

Great, Wayne thought. A hunter afraid of ghosts.

“For the record, 202 features anomalies such as tobacco smoke from nowhere, an alarm clock that turns on and off by itself, and a moving cold spot,” he said. “The EMF levels are fairly stable and consistent with the room’s wiring. Multiple reports suggest an entity lingers in the room, but I won’t go into details. You can read the Ghost Register at the front desk if you want to know the rest. Now let’s head out so we can stay on schedule.”

One old woman, the one whose slumping posture made her resemble an undersize Quasimodo, said to the other, “Maybe the ghosts wait until after bedtime.”

Wayne led them down the hall, where they passed a group led by The Roach. Wayne gave a casual salute, impressed by the military precision The Roach had drilled into his charges. The small MAG lights clipped on the bill of his cap gave him credence and furthered his insectile demeanor. Wayne was glad they’d selected the black jump suits as uniforms, because they conveyed organization and competence and also a slight suggestion of danger.

Spiritual storm troopers, armed and ready.

The door to 202 was open, with wires running along the baseboard of the hall and feeding into the room. Burton had rigged surveillance cameras in each of the hunt locations, arranged to capture evidence but also help Wayne track the progress of the various groups. Any guest that wanted to drop out and conduct armchair hunting could sit in the control room and get their money’s worth, imagining shadows on the tiny monochrome screens.

Room 202 was a honeymoon suite, with a renovated kitchenette and a spacious bathroom with a sunken tub. The windows faced east, and dusk was already settling on the rippling hills in the valley below. Night came suddenly in the mountains, especially in November with the solstice approaching. Wayne had almost forgotten the magical aura of the Blue Ridge, with its gray shroud of fogs and ancient, mute granite slabs.

“Okay, folks,” Wayne said, instinctively lowering his voice as the group entered the room. Hunters whispered on a scene, and they assembled with all the reverence of devotees entering church. After all, this was a mystical act of faith and belief. They came to see the unseen and know the unknowing, and they were eager to eat the invisible wafer.

“Can we take pictures yet, Mr. Wilson?”

The woman, whose name tag read “Ann,” projected the air of a tourist. Up close, she looked a little older than her companion, Duncan, and Wayne figured her for a rich cougar who’d netted a hunk in the twilight of her hotness. Nothing was sadder than a woman fighting the losing battle with time and growing desperate and scared as her feminine vanity fought the truth.

I never got to go through that with Beth. And she was braver than I could ever be. She would have kicked Father Time’s ass if she’d had the chance to meet him.

“Take all the pictures you want,” Wayne said. “You never know which one will catch the evidence.”

“You make it sound so random,” Gelbaugh said.

Wayne ignored him and clicked on his digital voice recorder. “White Horse Inn, Room 202, November twenty-first, 6:30 p.m. Six people present. Room temperature is 72 degrees.”

Wayne put his recorder on the coffee table in the middle of the bedroom. The two elderly women settled into arm chairs, Ann and Duncan sat on the bed, and Gelbaugh took up a post by the window. Wayne turned off the lights and closed the door, then returned to the center of the room. Gelbaugh’s silhouette was clear, but the others blended into the twilight.

“Is anybody here?” he said, in a stage voice.

No answer.

“Show yourself.”

Nothing.

“We would like to meet you.”

The bed squeaked a little as someone changed position.

“Audible bed squeak,” Wayne said, wanting the comment on record to account for the stray sound.

“Did you hear that?” Gelbaugh said.

“Bed squeak,” Wayne said, annoyed that Gelbaugh seemed intent on ruining the hunt.

“Not that,” Gelbaugh said. “Something else.”

They all listened for a moment, but only their shallow breathing disturbed the silence. A flash went off near the bed, illuminating the room like a lightning strike, freezing Gelbaugh as he moved away from the window. Ann had taken a digital photo.

Wayne resumed his summons. “Can you say ‘Hello’?”

The huncher gasped.

“I heard it, too,” said the other.

Wayne hadn’t heard anything. He pressed the glow button on his wristwatch. “6:33 p.m.,” he said for the benefit of the recording. “Report of auditory anomaly.”

The notation would help him review the data later and examine the sound waves to match them with the subjective reports of the people in the room. He didn’t expect the recorder had captured much of anything. Gelbaugh was along to cajole and smirk, and the two old ladies were suggestible enough to turn a whistling wind into the keening of a rabid banshee. Ann and Duncan were the anchors of the group because of their apparent open-minded skepticism.

“Are you with us now?” Wayne said.

Nothing.

“If you’re here, can you move the recorder on the table?” Poltergeists were reputed to respond to challenges on occasion, though Wayne had never witnessed such behavior. He’d seen things fly across the room before, and books and knickknacks fall from shelves, but nothing to convince him the incidents weren’t due to telekinetic powers rather than mischievous spirits. In fact, if the recorder had actually moved, he would have attributed it to floor vibrations caused by the heating system.

The bed squeaked again.

“Audible bed squeak at 6:36,” he said.

“Something touched me,”‘ Ann said.

Wayne squinted into the darkness and made out her shape. She was sitting in a lotus position, with her legs folded under her. If the touch had startled her, it wasn’t reflected in her tone or posture.

“Can you describe it?” Wayne asked.

“I feel it, between us,” Duncan said, showing more excitement than Ann.

“Is it there now?” Wayne said, keeping his voice flat. If the two old ladies started twittering, any auditory evidence would be lost.

“It’s cold,” Ann said.

Wayne slid a digital thermometer from his pocket, but before he could move to the bed, a red dot appeared on the blanket. “Sixty-seven degrees,” Gelbaugh said.

Infrared temperature gun. To bother reading surface temperatures at a distance, Gelbaugh must have had a deeper interest in metaphysics than he’d implied. Or maybe he was trying to stay one step of Wayne, proving the superiority of reason over faith.

“Invalid,” Wayne said for the benefit of the witnesses and the recording. “You have no baseline for comparison.”

“I’ll get my baseline afterward,” Gelbaugh said.

“It’s sitting here beside me and you two are bitch-slapping?” Ann said.

“What is it?” said the hunchback. “A demon?”

“There’s a ghost here,” Baldy said. “I can sense it.”

Gelbaugh snorted in derision.

“Shh,” Wayne said. “You’re contaminating the evidence.”

“Never mind,” Ann said. “Whatever it is, it left.”

“I felt the mattress sag when it sat down,” Duncan said.

“Are you still with us?” Wayne said, hoping the rest of the hunts had a better mix of personalities. An investigation was difficult enough for a trained team of hunters to collect any useful data, but it was nearly impossible for a group of strangers.

“Yes,” Gelbaugh said. “I am.”

“What’s with you?” Baldy said in the dark.

“Nothing’s with me. In fact, I am utterly alone. Despite your collective wishful thinking.”

“Sorry, folks,” Wayne said to the others.

“Bummer,” Duncan said.

“What is it?” asked the hunchback.

“A party crasher,” Baldy said.

“They call it ‘pragmatist’ where I come from,” Gelbaugh said.

Wayne was mentally charting his course across the dark room to the light switch when a thunking sound was followed by a brittle crash.

“Who did that?” Ann said.

Gelbaugh flicked on a pen light and the small, bright beam settled on a shattered lamp that had fallen from a bedside table. “Well, I’m way over here, so it wasn’t me. Which of you is playing ‘Poltergeist’?”

Gelbaugh’s beam bounced from face to face, each of them grim, before fixing onto Wayne’s. He squinted against it, annoyed at the damage.

“I didn’t touch it,” Ann, who was the closest, said.

“Ladies and gentlemen and all you dead people,” Gelbaugh boomed. “Honesty is the best policy. If you broke this, just admit it and be forgiven. Don’t carry the sin with you.”

“Stuff it, Gelbaugh,” Wayne said, flipping the light switch and exploding the room into painful brightness. After the hushed, almost sacred atmosphere of minutes before, the space now seemed desecrated and cramped. The occupants, besides Gelbaugh, began rising and stretching, the elderly ladies confused by it all.

“Investigation ends at 6:44 due to human interference,” Wayne said into the recorder before shutting it off.

“Come on,” Gelbaugh said. “Don’t tell me you can’t stand up to someone poking a stick at your invisible friends. That’s hardly sporting.”

“We paid good money for ghosts,” Baldy said to Wayne. Ann and Duncan had already left the room.

“We’ll get you on another hunt,” Wayne said, collecting the largest shards of the lamp.

After the group exited, Baldy grumbling aloud, Wayne faced off with Gelbaugh. “You’ve made your point, now stay out of the way.”

“You should work on your technique,” Gelbaugh replied. “Take some acting lessons.”

“Some of us have to fake it, but you’re a natural-born asshole.”

Gelbaugh laughed. “Will the last one leaving please turn out the lights?”

The room went dark.

“Nice trick,” Gelbaugh said. “Too bad your audience is gone.”

Wayne, ten feet from the light switch, said nothing. He stood there with the yellow orb of light burning its blurred images behind his eyelids—along with a face, yawning black mouth and vacant eyes riding behind the glow like a red scream.

It was a face he’d kissed and loved and married once, long ago.

It wasn’t so pretty these days.

Chapter 13

The Roach was down on demons.

Raised a Catholic, he’d first sensed evil at the hands of a priest, who had touched him in ways that made him sick and tingly all at the same time. Nothing too overt, nothing that would have merited a civil suit in the “Pope Versus Lawyers” landscape of the 1990’s, but enough to instill an unsettling view of sacred rituals.

During puberty, he’d felt the shadow latch on him as he’d explored the natural wonders of masturbation. Figuring it for a textbook case of guilt, he’d offered his Hail Marys and continued indulging. But the shadow deepened, insinuating into his heart like an autumn whisper, and one night the shadow appeared at the foot of his bed and said, “We’re ready to play.”

He’d passed that night with the light on, flipping through his Bible without seeing the words, mumbling catechisms and the Lord’s Prayer. He’d tried to speak to his priest about the incident, but the modern church was more interested in pop psychology and public relations than battling ancient evil, and so little Rodney was left on his own. Fortunately, the Internet and a New Age bookstore had provided an armchair education, and soon he was secreting away holy water in preparation of the coming Armageddon, when the Fallen would have their day.

The Roach had become an informal demonologist, working outside the church, moving in a world that bordered between low-budget horror movies and La-La Land. He’d taken up ghost hunting almost as a cover, since the equipment reassured many of the clients who consulted him. The Roach never charged for his work, believing it a calling from God, and he’d joined Spirit Seekers International because the group would provide more opportunities for service.

Only problem was, these days, he wasn’t so sure which side he served.

God promised eternal peace and joy, but it was a delayed gratification. Lucifer and his gang gave you everything you wanted, and right now.

But Lucifer played a game of bait-and-switch, with the catch being you only thought you wanted something, and when you got it, you realized it wasn’t so good for you. And when you wanted another person, and consumed her against her will, then it wasn’t so good for her, either.

Eat her like a cracker. Bread of life, bread of death, it all comes down to crumbs floating in the chalice.

“You picking up anything, Roach?”

Cody gave his sparkling gaze, and The Roach was nearly disgusted by the innocence and light that swam in The Future of Horror’s eyes. Angels weren’t born, they were made, and they pissed him off royally.

There but for the grace of God go I. Maybe you’re taking my dance card on the head of a pin.

“There are five here,” The Roach said. “Two of them are the bad-ass variety. The rest are impressions that don’t even know they’re dead.”

“We’ll slap the MAC Attack on them and pin them down.” Cody was rigging motion detectors in the large dining hall to work in sync with the cameras, all linked to a couple of eight-gig hard drives that could store two days’ worth of data. Audio, thermal image, spot temperature, electromagnetic activity, all measurements were recorded and correlated with the exact time so that anomalies could be cross-referenced. Cody’s MAC Attack did everything but give the ghosts an anal probe, and The Roach was sure that feature would be added once he patented his system and marketed it to the UFO crowd.

“You were right about the crawl space,” Roach said. “That entity’s so old it doesn’t even have a name.”

“I’m just afraid of what’s going to happen once all these paranormal tourists start stirring things up.”

“Come on, Cody. You’re not afraid of anything.”

Cody flashed his smile, and heavenly light practically sparkled off his teeth. No wonder Kendra was sweet on him. If Wayne didn’t watch it, he’d be raising an extra generation, and it wouldn’t be a virgin birth, either.

“Nothing sticks to you that you don’t invite, right?” Cody said.

True dat, little friend. “But you can be tricked.”

Cody perched a tripod in the corner of the dining hall. “Other people can be tricked. Not me.”

“You just haven’t been presented with the right temptation yet,” The Roach said, thinking of Kendra.

“Oh, I’ve had a few,” the teen responded. “Jesus wandering in the desert and all that. Keep your heart pure and you’ll be okay.”

Cody reeled out some black, plastic-sheathed cables, keeping them out of the traffic areas as he set up his sophisticated data-collection system. The paranormal field had exploded with technical gear in the last decade as profit margin sparked its own brand of ingenuity. While a few technogeeks had invented tandem devices to combine various measurements, Cody had developed software that charted information from multiple sources. All the MAC Attack needed was a marketing push and Cody would be set for life.

“We’ve got a visitor,” Roach said. A shadow shimmered in the cut glass of the ornate dining-room door. The round tables were bare, covered by white linen and an air of expectation, as if invisible diners had eaten and were now waiting for dessert.

The door creaked open and in came Kendra. “You guys ever heard of a light switch?”

She flicked on the electric chandeliers, but an incipient gloom still clung to the corners like a permanent stain.

“Ghost hunters do it in the dark,” Cody said.

“Yeah, yeah, and all night long, too. I’ve heard it before. When you going to come up with some new stuff?”

Cody looked past the camera he was mounting to Roach. “I’ve got to get this lady on my payroll.”

“You don’t have any payroll,” Roach said. “Remember, you’re the ‘future of horror.’ You ain’t happened yet.”

As Kendra approached, Cody made a show of swiveling his camera toward her, as if recording her walk. She immediately broke into a stilted, filly-like strut, like a model on a runway. She was overdoing it, a little uncomfortable in her flirting.

“I’m too sexy for my shoes,” she rapped, in a send-up of the old Right Said Fred song.

“Paranormal poster child,” The Roach said. “You’ll be ready to take over for Digger any day now.”

“Cool it, Roach. I’m not legal yet. Besides, I’m going to art school.”

Cody propped a ladder against the wall. “You don’t believe in any of this stuff, do you?”

Kendra sat down on one of the tables, and it wobbled, throwing off her calm insouciance. “Nothing personal, Cody. But I’ll believe it when I see it, and you haven’t shown me anything yet.”

Whoa, she’s good. Roach ogled her as much as he could get away with, noticing how much her figure had filled out in the past year. The pesky little brat was swelling into a full-blown tart. If I were 10 years younger and had a shred less morality...

“What does Digger think about having a heathen in the family?” Cody climbed the ladder to tape a remote thermometer to the wall.

“I don’t think he’s noticed,” Kendra said. “But I talk to my mom all the time.”

“Communing with the dead?” Cody said.

“I call it praying,” Kendra said. “Your mileage may vary.”

Roach checked the electromagnetic levels in the room and marked them down. While Cody’s program would record the data automatically, Roach still found comfort in pen and paper. He’d seen computers go dead along with other equipment, especially when demons needed a handy power source while entering the physical realm.

“Better watch your aura,” Cody said. “Roach says there are some Dark Ones here.”

“I don’t get it,” Kendra said. “If God has the power to throw angels out of heaven, why would He allow them to hang around down here and tempt people with evil, possess them, or whatever?”

“God needs somebody to do His dirty work,” Roach said. “Keeps his hands clean.”

“What do the demons get out of it? I mean, Lucifer got tossed out on his buns because he wanted to be top dog, and now he’s sitting around plotting his comeback?”

“That’s what the Book of Revelation is all about,” Roach said, though that biblical text was clouded by metaphor and poetic nonsense. “The Fallen go for it, they get Earth for a thousand years, just enough for them to get a taste, and then–whammo–God yanks the bone out of their mouths.”

“Okay, so they’re waiting for their day in the sun,” Kendra said. “Then why are they messing around in the meantime? If demons walk among us, how come none of us are possessed?”

The innocence of youth. Where do you think your own sins come from, Digger Junior? And you don’t even have to rely on evil’s influence spreading from within, because sooner or later the Devil’s hammer is going to hit you from the outside.

“Demons can’t work without invitation,” Roach said. “So it’s a choice. That’s what the whole heaven-and-hell thing is all about.”

“Lighten up,” Cody said. “You’re going to give the paranormal industry a bad name. I’d rather be seen as a bunch of opportunistic flakes than Gloomy Doomies.”

“What good are numbers in matters of faith?” Kendra said. “You can pile up specs until the end of time and never come up with an answer to the big question.”

Cody grinned a little at the compliment, but uncertainty clouded his features. “What’s your point?”

“You’re trying to prove the unprovable, Dad’s trying to know the unknowable, Roach is trying to defeat the invincible. We’re all just going through the motions and it all comes out the same in the end.”

“Whoa,” Cody said. “I didn’t realize you were an existentialist.”

She slid off the table, mussing the linen, and headed for the door. “Nah, I’m just a cartoon character. Don’t mind me.”

Roach watched Cody’s eyes as they consumed every detail of the girl’s movement. Confident she was being watched, she gave a flip of her hair, blending shadow and light, and lapsed into a subtle imitation of her catwalk strut.

Yes, he’s watching, you little vixen. But he’s not the only one.

The demon in the corner, which had not yet given itself a name, nodded in agreement.

Chapter 14

“You shouldn’t have tipped the lamp so fast,” Duncan said.

Ann, aiming her digital camera into a mirror so that it caught a slanted view of the third-floor hall, said, “It wasn’t me, it was that cranky old cynic, Gelbaugh.”

“You’re the cranky old cynic. Besides, he was all the way across the room.”

The hall was buckled, the decades warping the wood beneath the frayed gray carpet. The skewed geometry no doubt contributed to paranormal delusions, and Ann figured to play it to her advantage. Using the mirror, she was able to distort the architecture even further. She clicked, and the flash illuminated the grim passageway.

“I wouldn’t put it past Digger Wilson to rig it himself,” Duncan said. “Maybe a thin fishing line tied to the lamp cord.”

Ann took another photo. “Doubtful. He would have played the crowd a little, let the drama build toward a satisfying climax. He’s a showman if nothing else.”

A small group turned the corner at the far end of the hall, led by a middle-aged man in an SSI jumpsuit. While some of the hunters were solemn and had haunted looks about their eyes, this group was boisterous and laughing.

“No respect for the dead,” Duncan said.

“Judging from the roster, most of these people are from established groups,” Ann said. “I guess they all want a paranormal show on the Sci Fi Channel.”

“Light on the ‘science,’ but heavy on the ‘fiction,’” Duncan said. “But I doubt if there’s a lot of demand for the ‘Skeptic’s Channel.’”

“Skeptic? I’m not a skeptic. Skeptics are still open to possibility.”

Ann and Duncan pressed against the wall to allow the group passage. The jump-suited group leader smiled at them and glanced at their name tags. The walkie talkie on his hip hissed and squawked, and Digger’s voice rode a wave of static: “We’ll have to regroup, folks. Please return to the control room.”

Jumpsuit groaned and banged his clipboard against his hip. “This is no way to run a railroad.”

As he herded his group toward the stairs, Ann grabbed Duncan’s sleeve and went in the opposite direction. “Come on, handsome, time for a little game.”

“We just did that. You know it takes me a couple of hours to recover.”

“Not that kind of game. This is for keeps.”

“Where we headed?”

“I saw on that guy’s clipboard that they’re headed for 302. We have time to give them a little show.”

“What about all the cameras they’ve got rolling?”

“We’ll use them.”

After the turn of the corridor, they reached a set of stairs that squeaked with every step. Ann admired the cleverness of the maintenance staff. From the mirrors on the walls to the careful disrepair, a Hollywood construction team couldn’t have concocted a better stage. The hotel even had a chilly draft snaking through the hallway.

They found 302 unlocked, as Ann knew it would be. All the hunt locations were guaranteed to be open around the clock, just in case some hardcore spirit junkies needed a late-night fix.

“So what’s the plan?” Duncan asked.

“There you go, talking in questions again.”

“I have a probing mind.”

“And probing other things. But once in while you should just shut up and follow my orders.”

“What do I get out of that deal?”

“My undying gratitude. Now go to the window and wrap yourself inside the curtain liner.”

“Nobody’s going to fall for that.”

“I’m going to flash the lights. Anyone standing outside will see your silhouette but won’t have time to observe any definite features. So you’ll become a ‘sighting,’ and everyone will want to run in here with their instruments.”

“I still don’t get it.” Even as he was expressing doubt, he headed for the window, and Ann smiled to herself. She knew how to get what she wanted, and he likely had a few good months left before she burned him out.

“If 302 becomes a hot spot, then we have time to set up stuff in the other rooms.”

“What stuff?” The woman coming out of the bathroom surprised Ann, and Duncan was already untangling himself from the curtains.

“Uh, sorry. Didn’t know anybody was in here.”

“Yeah, our group hunted here and I had to….” She rolled her eyes into the bathroom. “Darned thing didn’t flush.”

“We were just goofing off,” Ann said.

“You said something about a sighting.”

Ann had been thrown off her game with Duncan witnessing. The woman looked to be in her 30s and was attractive, but had none of the spaciness of the other hunters, that vacant-eyed desperation that made them so easy to fool. “I heard this room was haunted.”

“It is,” she said. “I’m Tonya, by the way. Tonya Townsend.”

“I’m Ann, and that’s Duncan.”

Duncan moved away from the window and pretended to investigate the closet, going so far as to flick his flashlight on and peer into the corners.

“Nothing in the closet,” Tonya said. “It’s gone. I felt it.”

“You’re a...what do they call them, a ‘sensitive’?” Ann figured the woman would be flattered.

“I’m a hairdresser,” she said. “The head is a powerful place for spiritual energy and when you’re styling someone’s hair, you’re messing with the crown chakra.”

Ann had heard of the seven-point energy system derived from a Hindu-based healing tradition, but she wasn’t sure it held any more validity than ghosts and goblins. But she nodded, more to distract Tonya from her suspicion than because of any interest in the subject. “And you know when ghosts are around?”

“Yes,” she said, eyeing Duncan, who was now peering under the bed. “I can feel them. Sort of like the static before a thunderstorm.”

Or maybe exactly like that. One of Ann’s theories was that minor electromagnetic fluctuations could lead to disorientation and hallucinations, and people who were hard-wired to be susceptible were also more likely to report paranormal experiences.

“Did you sense one here earlier?” Duncan asked. His eyes met Ann’s, and she saw a conspiratorial glimmer in them. He was changing the subject.

“Yeah. It was the suicide guy. The one who jumped from the third floor and got skewered.”

“I thought he jumped from 318,” Ann said. She was losing track of the haunted rooms.

“He wanders from room to room. No need to worry about walls, right?”

“I guess not,” Duncan said.

“He has a sad energy. I’ve encountered ghosts that had post-traumatic stress disorder, and they usually don’t know what happened. This guy acts like he knew he made a choice and now he regrets it.”

Ann bit her lip to keep from grinning. Tonya’s face was so earnest that Ann almost believed her, except the part where the guy was many years dead and she was talking about him like he’d just returned from a vacation.

“Do you think he’ll come back around?” Ann said, pulling a Flip video camera from her breast pocket. “I would love to get some footage for my YouTube site.”

Tonya narrowed her eyes. “You can’t see him. He’s an energy spirit. He doesn’t draw enough charge to become substance.”

“Sort of like a battery that’s gone weak?” Duncan asked, trying to impose a plausible science.

“You’ve heard of auras, right? The energy rings above people’s heads? It’s sort of like that.”

“Cool,” Ann said. “Can you see them?”

“I see them with both the living and the dead. That’s how I can tell their moods.”

“What color is mine?”

“Orange, the color of fire and passion.”

Ann felt a small surge of pride, despite not believing a word of it.

“What about me?” Duncan asked.

“You’re a greenie. Earthbound and bright.”

Ann couldn’t resist. “And the dead guy?”

Tonya closed her eyes. “You’re not going to believe this.”

You can say that again. Ann felt her flesh tighten as the room temperature dipped noticeably.

“He’s here,” Tonya whispered.

Duncan, who had sat on the bed, looked around the room. Ann found herself pulling out the pocket-sized video camera. “Where?”

“Right behind you.”

Ann’s heart skipped a beat despite her doubt. As she turned, she imagined a slow exhalation of breath drifting along the back of her neck. She wondered if she were beginning to suffer a peculiar version of Stockholm Syndrome, only as a willing hostage of the paranormal community. She was more than a hostage; she was a spy.

Ann saw nothing but put her hand out. The air in front of her felt cold and her fingers tingled with a faint trickle of electricity.

“His aura is gray,” Tonya whispered. “With a little bit of purple, like clouds at sundown.”

“What’s he want?”

“I can’t tell,” she responded. “I don’t think he knows.”

“Come on, Ann,” Duncan said. “This is getting a little silly.”

“Shh,” Ann said. She pressed the button on her Flip cam and held it in front of her. Perhaps Tonya’s hallucination was a bit of reflected streetlight or a prismatic effect from the bedside lamp. The cam also had an audio track so she could monitor Tonya’s remarks.

“Can I talk to it?” Ann asked Tonya.

“It’s a he,” she said. “You can try. But I don’t think he’ll stay long.”

Ann had studied investigation techniques and knew some hunters took a provocative approach, on the belief that ghosts were like caged tigers and only needed to be poked a little to growl.

“Why did you kill yourself?” she asked, the words coming out louder than she had intended.

The heating system kicked on, the hum accompanied by a mild vibration in the floor. So much for a simple answer in English.

“Maybe you should have it sing the ABC’s,” Duncan suggested.

“The aura is changing,” Tonya said. “Now it’s like a dark cloud.”

Ann waved her hand at head height before her, imagining the aura dispersing like so much mist. The air before her was now frigid, despite the ventilation system pumping warm air into the room. A pungent aroma assailed her nostrils, as if a rat had died in the air duct and reached a ripe state of corruption.

“Do you see anything?” Ann asked, intending the question for Duncan.

Tonya answered. “The aura is getting bigger.”

Ann took an involuntary step back and the pillar of cold air seemed to expand to meet her. Tonya’s steady, calm voice was somehow more chilling than if she’d gone for a dramatic stage whisper. Ann kept the Flip cam as steady as she could in her now-trembling hand. The tension in the room swelled and the overhead light dimmed.

“It’s drawing power,” Tonya said.

“Electrical surge in the wiring,” Duncan said, but Ann wasn’t so sure science was behind this little display. She knew most of her experience was subjective, and that the visual and auditory record would reveal nothing unusual, but she found herself glad for Tonya’s steady presence.

As the light grew bright again, the room warmed. Tonya exhaled as if she’d been holding her breath since exiting the bathroom.

“What was that?” Duncan asked.

“It’s gone again,” Tonya said.

“He’s gone,” Ann added, realizing that the force had projected a definite masculinity. But that was absurd. Even if the various experiences could be corroborated, physical events by their nature were indifferent and neuter. Science was marked by gender, not sex.

“Come on,” Duncan said, taking her arm and leading her to the door. “You need some rest.”

Ann was listless, as if the entity had drained power from her as well as the light bulb. As Duncan guided her from the room, he whispered, “Good show.”

He must have thought she was faking the performance, both to assuage Tonya’s suspicions and raise expectations among the hunters. But Ann wasn’t quite sure how to assess the experience. The various phenomena combined to create a cumulative effect that left her wondering what had happened.

As they reached the door, Tonya said, “Your aura.”

Ann turned, though Duncan frowned.

“The black is in yours now.”

Chapter 15

Lame-o-rama. Ain’t that right, Momma?

Kendra had lowered her expectations for her dad, but this was a little embarrassing. She would have just given the two ladies their refunds and sent them on their way, but Wayne Wilson never let a dollar slide out of his pocket without a fight. Even the little melodrama with the fainting fat lady had turned dull. This whole conference was shaping up as nothing more than another wasted weekend.

The control room was in chaos, with the hunt schedule already thrown off barely two hours in. A dozen people were complaining about their groups, and one woman said her butt had been fondled in the dark. Wayne had tried to appease her by suggesting she’d been touched by the spirit, but apparently the woman’s feminist ardor trumped her belief in the paranormal.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll get back on track in just a minute,” Wayne shouted in his best barker’s voice, momentarily quelling the rebellion. The room smelled of menthol and stale tobacco smoke, with a faint tinge of body odor. As he huddled with Burton over a clipboard, Kendra sidled through the murmuring crowd to Cody, who was rattling the keys of his laptop.

“Hey, Future,” she said. “Got any goods yet?”

Cody’s brow furrowed as he studied the computer, which was perched on a card table and wired to a bank of video monitors. “Check this out,” he said without looking up.

He tapped some keys, bringing one of the video thumbnails to full size on his screen. The video began playing, and Kendra leaned over Cody’s shoulder to look. His neck smelled clean, with an outdoorsy freshness that made her a little light-headed. She debated brushing her chest against his back, but decided he was too deeply into his work to notice, and she didn’t want to waste ammunition.

She smirked to herself. Tiny bullets.

“The attic,” Cody said, stating the obvious as he pointed to the screen. The image showed rafters, dusty boards, a crumbling brick chimney, and fluffy piles of old insulation.

“Creepy.”

“No more so than any other dark place. Now look.” Cody pressed a key and the video began streaming.

Kendra saw no movement on the screen and couldn’t tell whether the image was a still photograph until a moth finally fluttered past the camera. Her dad, like most hunters, spent more hours poring over potential evidence than they did hunting, one of the mundane and overlooked aspects of the field. Ghost-hunting shows on television didn’t show the tedious research that went into gleaning the oddities; the audience would be clicking away to reality shows and other forms of instant gratification. Cody was as impatient as any teen, so he didn’t bother building suspense.

After 20 seconds, Wayne appeared on the screen, crouching and walking awkwardly toward the chimney. He placed his hand on the bricks as if sizing something up, then he retraced his steps.

“So, it’s just Dad being dorky,” she said. “Nothing special about that.”

“Wait.”

Five seconds later, a faint image of a person appeared against the bricks. The image had no movement, but appeared to fade in and out. Just as the woman’s features became distinct, showing her flowing dress and long hair, it blinked out.

“Whoa,” Kendra said. “Did I just see that?”

Yep.” Cody let the footage continue as Wayne herded the groups together and began sending them out of the control room. Cody stopped the streaming video and backed it up, then replayed the segment. This time, he zoomed in and increased the screen resolution so that the image was revealed in large rectangular pixels.

“Here’s the weird part,” Cody said, touching the screen with his finger. “See the digital information on the regular image?”

“Yeah. It’s pixelated.”

He froze the image just as the shadowy figure appeared. “Now look how fuzzy the blocks are.”

Kendra wondered if he was testing her skepticism. She couldn’t decide whether to call his bluff or act ignorant. “Well, if it’s a ghost, isn’t it supposed to be fuzzy?”

“It’s sort of like when you keep making photocopies of a photocopy. Pretty soon the image degrades.”

“You’re saying Dad rigged a fake image?”

“No. This is my personal video. I would know if somebody hacked it. He didn’t even know I’d set this one up because I did it before the rest of the crew hit the attic.”

Burton’s group was the last to leave, and Wayne came over to the monitor desk. Kendra was about to ask if he’d seen the video when Cody shot her a “Cool it” look and minimized the screen.

“Murphy’s law,” Wayne said. “The group hunts always work on paper, but people don’t hunt on paper.”

“Got it sorted out?” Cody asked, bringing up the split-screen view that showed small versions of all the live camera images.

“Trains are back on schedule,” he said. “Kendra, can I talk to you a sec?”

She rolled her eyes just enough for Cody to notice, and his lips pursed in sympathy. “Sure.”

Wayne escorted her to the hall and faced her, lowering his voice so Cody couldn’t hear. “You know I trust you and give you lots of leeway, and maybe that comes across as being inattentive, or ‘spaced out,’ as you like to say. And I’ve never worried about bringing you along on my hunts because you’ve always been so mature.”

Because when Mom died, somebody had to be the grown-up. That was the kind of response that would require years of psychotherapy, so she merely nodded.

“But this time I want you to stick close to me,” he said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.”

“It’s just a creaky old hotel,” she said.

“Don’t be so damned hardheaded.”

“Is this about Cody?”

Wayne’s eyes narrowed and flicked back into the control room. “What about Cody?”

Dad was so shut off from his emotions that he couldn’t recognize teen lust when he saw it. Not that she was quite sure what to make of it herself, or how far she wanted to go, but if two heterosexual teens were stranded on a desert island, somewhere along the way things would get natural.

“Nothing. He’s just a tech geek.”

“Cody can take care of himself. It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Like I can’t take care of myself?”

“Look. Some stuff is happening, okay? Things I can’t explain.”

“I thought that was the point,” she said, then slipped into a mocking delivery of one of his marketing slogans. “‘All the shivers you can stand, or your money back.’”

“That was show biz, but this is real.”

“Digger Wilson calling something ‘real’?”

“Honey.” His features curdled, his pretense of patience drained dry.

“You said I was mature for my age, but I think you just forced responsibility on me so you wouldn’t have to bother with me.”

Digger slammed the bottom of his fist against the wall, the suddenness causing her to jump. “Damn it.”

“Great, a few more punches like that and this whole place is liable to collapse.”

Digger walked away just as Cody poked his head out of the control room. “Something fall?” Cody asked.

“Just my high hopes,” Kendra said. Dad had already turned the corner. Kendra was still flushed with the thrill of cheap victory. In younger days, she would cry, her tears driving him into helpless rage. She’d grown a little subtler since then, but he was just as vulnerable to his anger. The violence was a new manifestation, but nothing she couldn’t turn to her advantage.

“Thanks for keeping our little secret,” he said.

“Hmm?” She was only half listening, thinking of Dad.

“The superimposed image. I need to break it down a little to see if it’s legit.”

“And if it is?”

“Then somebody’s trying to set us up.”

“What’s the third alternative?”

“I don’t believe it’s an intelligent haunt. No interaction.”

“Well, you believe in demons, right?”

“Yeah, but–”

“Why couldn’t a demon superimpose an image, or manipulate your video data, if they’re so powerful?”

“It doesn’t work that way.” Cody looked a little less certain than he sounded.

“You have rules for everything, but not everything follows the rules.” The combative mood still lingered, and she couldn’t shake it, even though Cody had done nothing wrong. To her horror, she felt a surge of heat in her self-righteousness, and wondered if she had inherited the Digger’s anger issues.

She needed to get away before Cody wrote her off as a bitchy lunatic. A little down time with some paper and pencils was the cure for her mood.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m starting my period.”

Cody grinned, which she took as a sign of forgiveness. “My deepest sympathies.”

“Good luck with that image thing. Gotta run.”

“Later.”

Kendra headed for her room, yearning for escape into two-dimensional worlds and cartoon ghost faces, where the characters behaved the way she wanted.

Chapter 16

The Psychic’s Room was set up in 131, and Cristos Rubio was holding court in style.

When Wayne entered the room, Rubio was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, eyes closed, hands resting on his knees with his palms turned up. He wore his signature purple cloak, a silk cord holding it around his neck. His wrinkled brown face was etched with secrets, and his skin looked as if it were flaking. His eyes were small, dark, and reptilian.

A young man sat in front of Rubio, a deck of playing cards on the floor between them. The man pressed one of the cards against his chest.

“The card you’re holding is the seven of diamonds,” Rubio said in his rich Spanish accent.

The man turned the card over and flipped it to the floor, where the half-dozen onlookers gaped at it. It was the six of spades.

“Three out of eight,” the man said.

Rubio opened his eyes. The left one wandered, swiveling toward the corner of the room. In the Middle Ages, those with wandering eyes were considered seers, and the lucky ones managed to earn their bread by telling fortunes, preferably good ones. The rest were burned at the stake or exiled.

“Cut the deck,” Rubio said.

The man did, and Rubio touched the top card. The onlookers fell silent, as if they were also trying to tune into the card. Wayne admired Rubio’s sense of drama, letting the moment play out. Rubio took his fingers off the card and the man picked it up.

“It feels like the jack of hearts,” Rubio said.

The man turned the card over, revealing that Rubio had predicted it correctly. Or else examined the marks hidden in the patterns on the back of the card.

“Four of nine,” the man said, with a slight bit of awe.

“Is he cheating?” whispered a woman in the back of the room.

“Probably,” said a man in a black turtleneck. “But it’s a good act.”

“I checked the cards myself,” Wayne said. “He’s legit.”

As far as I know.

Wayne had found Cristos Rubio through an Internet search, figuring a psychic would round out the conference and give some of the low-energy types a reason to skip out on the hunts.

“One more,” Rubio said. “I should be good to pick at least 50 percent.”

The man went through the routine again and this time Rubio correctly guessed three of clubs. This elicited a few “oohs” and “aahs,” as well as a little muttering. Gelbaugh, leaning against the wall wearing his patented smirk, offered, “Hardly a controlled experiment.”

The man who was dealing the cards, whose face was pointed like a weasel’s, though he had gambler’s eyes, said, “Why don’t you try one?”

Good theater, Digger thought. I might have to make this a regular part of Haunted Computer Productions.

Gelbaugh eased his way through the crowd, strolling like a motion-picture sheriff headed for a showdown. “Let’s try my deck,” he said, fishing inside his sports jacket. “Then we’ll know it’s clean.”

Unless you two varmints is in cahoots.

Gelbaugh pulled out a deck with an elaborate, mystic design on the card backs, replete with stars, moons, comets, and other celestial bodies against a midnight-blue background. He set the deck on the coffee table, cut it, and said, “Try the top one.”

Rubio touched the deck, closed his eyes, and frowned, the deep creases of his forehead as eroded as the Andean Mountains of Peru, his country of origin. His thick, dark eyebrows worked up and down in concentration. “These are not playing cards,” he whispered after a moment.

“Sure, they are,” Gelbaugh said. “We’re playing a game, aren’t we?”

“Don’t push it,” Wayne said.

“What’s the matter?” Gelbaugh looked around at the assembled audience, several of whom appeared to be silently supporting him. “You don’t want anyone to peek behind the curtain?”

Wayne was resigning himself to another verbal shootout with Gelbaugh when Rubio cut in with renewed strength in his voice. “I see.”

Gelbaugh’s smile dropped into an O of surprise, and Wayne’s pulse leaped at the cheap victory. If Gelbaugh were left dead in the street, his trigger finger cold and limp, then the conference attendees might be able to relax and enjoy themselves.

“Okay,” Gelbaugh said. “Wing it.”

“Is Tarot,” Rubio said.

Gelbaugh’s face went impassive. “Obvious,” he said. “The design gives that one away.”

“From India.”

“Wrong. These are from Poland.”

“Designed in Poland. Printed in India.”

Gelbaugh remained inscrutable. “Much of the world’s printing is done in India.”

“It’s moving to Hong Kong and China,” said a man in a tie that featured a ghost drinking a martini and bearing the logo “Blithe spirit.” “I’m in advertising. All those crazy chemicals and no regulations, plus there’s more merchant ships.”

“Thank you for the trivia quiz,” Gelbaugh said. “But I’m sure you folks want to get back to chasing figments of your imagination, so let’s get this over with.”

“Fool,” Rubio said.

“Sticks and stones. But don’t let your name-calling break your concentration.”

“The Fool. Turn it.”

Gelbaugh gave a deft flip and the card showed a dancing jester who wore an idiot grin. “Ah, nice work. Odds are one in 70, so you should head for Vegas after the conference.”

“It is upright, meaning the beginning of a journey. Spiritual, emotional, or physical. Decisions and unexpected occurrences await.”

“As vague as any daily horoscope or fortune cookie. Does that apply to me or to you?”

“Me. You have the down side: Rash choices, impulsive actions, reckless behavior.”

Gelbaugh grinned and look around the room. “Any ladies in the house want to see how reckless my behavior can be?”

One woman blushed, but most of them scowled. The energy in the room was taking on a brittle edge, the anticipation melding into impatience. Wayne didn’t want to interfere, but he felt obliged to play the tolerant host.

“Next card,” Wayne said. “If he can get two out of 70, then Cristos–and clairvoyance–wins.”

“The senor just called me a gambler,” Gelbaugh said. “Anyone want to put $500 on the next guess?”

Rubio shook his head in dismay, but the advertising executive raised his hand as if he were a bidder at an estate auction. “I’m in, asshole.”

“You heard the man,” Gelbaugh said to the room, cutting the deck again and sliding the Fool card to the side.

Rubio reached out a hand and placed his index finger on the deck. One corner of his mouth twitched. The room was so silent that Wayne heard the distant elevator grinding toward the bottom floor.

“Pull something melodramatic like the Hanging Man,” Gelbaugh said. “Or the Devil.”

“Please no joke about these things,” Rubio muttered through tight lips. The finger on the card trembled. “Knight of Cups.”

Gelbaugh turned the card and was grinning before he laid it on the table for all to see. The ad man drew in a deep breath. “Seven of Coins. Guess that means coins for me.”

“Okay, he’s batting .500,” Wayne said with feigned joviality. “What say we cash in our chips and move on?”

“Double or nothing,” the ad man said.

“Please,” Rubio said.

“Fine, I could use a grand, considering how expensive these conferences are,” Gelbaugh said, splitting the deck once more. “Maybe I can afford an autographed publicity shot of Digger Wilson.”

Rubio, resigned and slumped, put his palm over the deck and closed his eyes. His dark complexion had gone pale and sweat beaded his forehead like jewels. The people in the room shifted uncomfortably.

“No good,” Rubio said after a strained moment.

Gelbaugh, without looking, held his hand out toward the ad man. “Sucker’s game.”

“Wait,” Rubio said. His shoulders shook, as if low-voltage electricity were flowing through him. Two women, who had been whispering to one another, leaned toward the table. The entire group had crowded together so that the air around the table had become stale and warm.

“I see a curving shape,” Rubio said. “An ‘S.’”

“Swords, coins, cups, wands, empress, priestess, sun, star, strength...have I forgotten any? Ah, yes, justice. That hardly narrows it down much.”

The man knew his Tarot, Wayne had to admit. Gelbaugh was well-read on any subject he sought to ridicule.

“No, no, this is a different card,” Rubio said.

“Something in the major arcana?”

“Are those the cards without Roman numerals?”

“Nice. Pretending ignorance.”

“I don’t know these cards well. It is not good to know the future.”

Gelbaugh winked at the ad man. “Especially if the future sucks.”

“The shape moves against a field of green.”

“Could be the sun,” one of the onlookers said.

“Shh,” said another.

“It’s not going to help,” Gelbaugh said. “Any guess has the same odds as any other.”

“Snake,” Rubio said with force.

“Ha. Your odds just went from long to zero. There’s no snake in the Tarot.”

“Snake,” Rubio insisted, his eyebrows lowering and his face setting in hard resolve.

“Final answer?”

“Snake.”

Gelbaugh turned the card, revealing an illustrated snake that curled up from a meadow and into a tree. It was done in the same art style as the other cards, though Wayne had never heard of such a card in the Tarot.

Gelbaugh’s grin had frozen on his face, as if he had tasted live worms and found them bitter. “A trick,” he said.

“No trick,” Rubio said. “Your deck, remember?”

“That card’s not part of my deck.”

Rubio turned the card over, face down. “The design matches.”

“I’ve had this deck for years. That card isn’t in it.”

Wayne wondered who would go to such lengths for a prank. Gelbaugh was genuinely angry, overlooking the fact that Rubio had made a correct guess. Or perhaps “guess” was the wrong word. The wizened Peruvian had delivered his earlier readings with a studied equanimity, but his insistence on the answer of “snake” had projected passion and pride and a little bit of fear. Now Gelbaugh owed acknowledgment but all he had was rage.

Gelbaugh drove the bottom of his fist onto the table top, shaking the remaining cards. “Someone’s been in my room,” he said. “I had the deck locked away.”

“Only the hotel staff has room keys,” Wayne said.

The ad man slapped Gelbaugh on the back and said, “Even Steven.”

“He cheated,” Gelbaugh said, furiously counting the deck. “There should only be 70 cards.”

“Maybe he changed the card with his mind,” said a woman in a rumpled silk jumper.

Wayne moved closer to examine the card as Gelbaugh picked it up. The wax had the same amount of wear as the other cards and was clearly not new. It matched the other cards in all other aspects besides its depiction. Wayne wondered what the snake would mean if it were one of the arcana. Probably would imply all the historic and psychological metaphors of serpentine behavior—temptation, poison, and cold-bloodedness, with the flip-side attribute of shedding old skin. And, of course, there was also the Freudian interpretation of male genitalia.

Cristos Rubio leaned back, weary and slumped. “Snake,” he whispered with finality.

“...thirty-seven...38...39....” Gelbaugh counted.

“He pulled it from the bottom of the deck,” someone said.

“I don’t trust either of those guys,” said another.

“Cristos helped me find my car keys,” said a woman who now stood over the self-proclaimed psychic as if she wanted to market his movie rights.

“...sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine.” Gelbaugh touched the snake card, which still rested on the table. “Seventy. Somebody swapped one out.”

“It’s your deck,” Wayne said.

Gelbaugh stood, the Tarot cards in disarray in one hand. “All of you are in on it,” he said. “You, too, Digger.”

“Hey, you didn’t even sign up for a reading,” Wayne said.

Gelbaugh pointed an indignant finger at Rubio. “If you can read minds, then you know what’s coming.”

Gelbaugh grabbed the snake card and fled the room. Rubio smiled, and Wayne noticed for the first time that the seer’s head resembled the blunt, reptilian shape of the snake.

Chapter 17

Janey despised how shabby and cramped her suite was.

Or maybe it just seemed empty and was occupied by things beyond her vision.

She’d taken 226 at the end of the second floor as a fringe benefit, telling the owners she’d keep a better eye on the place if she were on site around the clock. She told herself she wanted to save extra money for retirement, but the real truth was that she had no real place in the world outside the hotel grounds. With the curtains drawn, old photographs gathering dust on the dresser, and the drab royal purple carpet beneath her feet, she could have been in a museum. Or a tomb.

The hunting groups occasionally passed in the hall, but they were much quieter than the usual convention crowd that drank and cavorted on corporate expense accounts. Janey found little comfort in the hunters’ mouse-like passage, as if they were nocturnal creatures who wanted to go about their business undisturbed. Though Janey had sold the owners on promoting the hotel’s supernatural reputation, the shrewd calculation now seemed silly. Dozens of adults were taking it seriously.

And Janey didn’t suffer fools gladly, most of all because she now felt like one. Chad and Stevie were cashing in their chips, and she’d never know if all her hard work would have paid off. This suite that had been her home for nearly half her life would join the rest of the inn under the weight of the wrecking ball. And beyond its walls lay a world she didn’t understand.

Janey found herself glancing into the shadows that clung to the corners of her bedroom. She’d never noticed how long and angular they were, or how they seemed to shift despite the fixed location of the bedside lamp. Janey’s paperback romance, which was so ordinary she couldn’t recall the title, couldn’t dull her into sleep.

She touched the phone, considering a call to the kitchen. The boys would be cleaning up, probably smoking marijuana with rock-n-roll blasting from their CD players. She occasionally placed a special order after hours, partly to check up on the progress and partly to flaunt her power. A couple of fried eggs would be just troublesome enough for both a cook and a dishwasher, a last command from a fading queen.

She dialed the kitchen, keeping one eye on the closet, thinking of young Cody’s suggestion that demons might live in the hotel. Obviously, it was the invention of an imagination fueled by comic books and science fiction, and probably a few sniffs of rubber cement, but the notion chilled her all the same.

“Yullo,” said a male voice she didn’t recognize.

“This is Janey. Just checking to see if the kitchen is still serving.”

“We closed it down 15 minutes ago.”

“Oh.” She affected a disappointed whine. “I was really hungry.”

“We could make you something. No problem.”

She gave a breezy, cheerleader giggle. “You’d do that for me?”

“Sure. Anything for you, Miss Mays.”

“Wow. Who is this, so I can be sure to put a check mark in your personnel file.”

“It’s me, Battle Axe.”

“What’s that?”

The voice grew deeper and sounded as if it had doubled itself. “The thing under the cellar.”

Janey sat up, letting the paperback fall to the floor. “That’s not funny. I’ll have you fired–”

“Two days, Miss Mays,” the strange voice taunted. “Let them believe what they want to believe.”

She recognized the line she’d delivered to Violet earlier in the day. So the hired help was gossiping. She’d have to clean house the hard way, forcing Violet to finger this impetuous cook before Janey bounced them both out on their asses.

But how had they known the hotel was closing? She’d not told anyone.

“You’re fired,” she said into the phone, barely controlling the tremor of rage in her voice.

“Fired by the forge below, Miss Mays. The sweetboy tried to tell you, but you only believe what you want to believe, right?”

No one else had been around when Cody had mentioned demons to her. She gripped the phone and glanced into the closet. The shadows had crept closer to the bed.

No, not possible.

She was letting Cody’s imagination get to her. If she believed the shadows belonged in the corners of the room, then they had to stay there.

Paranoia. Pending change. Fear of the unknown.

It all boiled down to loss of control.

“I’m coming down,” she said. “You better be clocked out and gone or else I’ll have you arrested for trespassing. And there better not be so much as a teaspoon missing or you’ll be up for embezzlement, too.”

Embezzlement was a simple threat. She could alter the hotel inventory and hold any employee accountable: Violet for petty cash, Rosalita for sheets and towels, and this nameless crud for kitchenware. And just like an accused child molester was ruined whether the charge was bogus or not, an employee with such a black mark would never work in the area again.

“A little white lie never hurt anybody,” said the voice on the phone. Except the voice sounded like voices—a chorus talking in unison.

The shadows now covered the floor. Janey eyed the bedroom door. Even if she made it, she’d still have to cross the rest of the way to the hall. The floor no longer looked solid, the carpet roiling and undulating.

“Come on down, Miss Mays,” said the voices. “What are you waiting for?”

She let the phone drop onto the bed. The darkness on the floor was like an abyss of ink, and she expected the bed to sink into it at any moment. Instead, the ink began to rise like a tide.

Janey clicked the phone signal dead and punched the extension for maintenance. The phone rang twice, and then the line crackled.

“Maintenance.”

“J.C. Thank God.”

“Nobody’s ever said them words together before, Miss Mays.”

“There’s a leak in 226,” she said. “Hurry.”

“What kind of leak?”

Sewer? Water? A crack in hell?

“It’s staining the carpet,” she said.

“You know that boiler in the basement?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I think that’s the problem.”

“What’s that got to do with a leak on the second floor?” The leak was rising fast, at least a foot above floor level.

“It’s stored up a whole lot of dark over the years, and it finally blew a gasket.”

“When can you get here?”

“Oh, two days or so.”

”J.C.?”

“That’s one of our names.” The voices had blended together again. Janey cut the connection.

The dark, oily shadows were now a couple of feet from the bottom of the mattress. She imagined how cold the water was–no, it’s a shadow, not water–and what it would be like to wade across it to escape. Assuming the floor was still there beneath it. The shadows had also swelled out from the corners and were closer now, as if forming solid columns of darkness.

She was afraid of what the phone would do to her next, but she couldn’t release the handset. Risking her balance, she leaned over and reached into her night stand drawer. She tried to keep her eyes away from the darkness, but she couldn’t help glancing down. The shadowy sea robbed her of her focus, and she recalled that saying about staring into the abyss until it stared back. Finally she blinked and realized her hand was inside the drawer.

She felt past the paperbacks, vibrators, jewelry, and cigarette packs until she found the gun.

Its cool grip gave her comfort, and she drew the weapon into the room. It was a .38 revolver, simple to load and use, but she couldn’t remember if she’d put bullets in it. She fished several from the drawer and laid them on the night stand. One rolled free and fell into the black haze. It didn’t hit bottom.

Janey shoved a couple of bullets into their round slots inside the cylinder, and then clicked the weapon closed. She wasn’t sure what she would shoot, though. She played the gun around the room, hoping a real target would emerge. After all, what good would a bullet do against the absence of light?

The ink was now six inches from the top of the mattress. It made neither a gurgling sound nor the hiss of escaping air, and its silence was more terrifying than an odd liquid noise would have been.

Feeling a little safer with the gun in her hand, she dialed the in-house connection again. Rhonda was at the front desk, smacking and chomping her gum.

“Ya?” Rhonda said, in her usual distracted fashion.

“Janey here. Everything okay?”

Because if it is, then I’m the one who needs a little rewiring.

“One of the guests walked out of the bar and took a whiz in the potted plant, but other than that, nothing unusual for a Friday night with a special on Coronas.”

The shadow was lapping at the top of the mattress, its persistent tide working the edge of the bedspread. She smiled. This couldn’t be happening, because things like this were impossible. And in the world of Janey Mays, the impossible had no place.

And—

Drugs.

It would be just like those vengeful, snot-nosed slaves to spike her coffee with LSD or Ecstacy or whatever mindblower the kids used these days. And that would make every cracked piece of the puzzle fit. Hallucinations, disorientation, paranoia, cold sweats, heart palpitations.

“Do you know what happens in two days?” Janey asked as a test.

“Sure, I’m off, but then I’m scheduled the rest of the week until Friday.”

“Good,” Janey said.

“The only trouble is the goddamned hotel is going to be bulldozed,” Rhonda said. “What’s going to happen to me then?”

“How did you—”

“I know everything.” The voices blended into the unwholesome chorus. “Battle Axe.”

Maybe the hotel wasn’t a living thing, with its own memories and desires. Maybe those belonged to something deeper, something that dwelled in the basement.

“That’s one of our names.”

Maybe more than one thing lived in the basement.

Janey let the phone slip into her lap. She leaned forward and gazed into the abyss. Now it was staring back.

One last try, one last test, one last link to the sane, real world.

She dialed 9-1-1.

The phone made a strange noise and she looked at the digital readout on the handset. 6-6-6.

She punched the “9” and the “6” appeared.

Janey giggled, pointing the gun across the room as the shadows crept over the edge of the mattress. A little inner voice–remarkably similar to that of the demented kitchen worker–whispered “Swim for it, Janey.”

She let out a cracked laugh and rose on the bed, the bedsprings groaning beneath her. She took a long step, the cold gelid blackness oozing around one ankle, and then she launched herself, a crippled swan dive, the gun clenched in one fist.

She hit without splashing, flailing her arms for traction, but there was nothing to push against.

Nothing.

And then she was under.

Chapter 18

Dad would never find her here.

He probably wouldn’t even notice she was missing until it was Sunday afternoon and time to pack up. That took some of the steam out of her anger. No need to waste a good temper tantrum.

She wedged into the tiny break room, plopping her sketch pad on the scarred wooden desk. A glass ashtray overflowed with wrinkled, yellowed butts. A stack of magazines leaned precariously—Sports Illustrated, Motor Racing Digest, People, magazines for people who couldn’t read. An auto parts store’s calendar on the wall was three years out of date, and a shelf was piled with cleaning supplies, oily hardware, and dented cans of paint.

Mom, looks like we’ve painted ourselves into a corner.

It was an old game, one they played in those early years when “Mommy was okay, but the doctors just want to make sure.” They’d get out the color pencils, oil pastels, and watercolors, create strange houses and gardens, and then work all the way up to one corner of the page. When only a little white was left, Mom would give the trademark “Looks like we’ve painted ourselves into a corner. Two choices: stay stuck, or more paper.”

Kendra opened her pad. No choice. Only more paper.

“Hey.”

Kendra nearly knocked over the magazines. She calmed herself, because she didn’t want the little twerp to know she was startled. She remembered the name his dad yelled at him.

“Bruce, don’t you know it’s rude to sneak up on people?”

“I didn’t sneak up. I was already here.”

Now she smelled the licorice, so powerful that she didn’t know how she missed it. Probably because of the rank, tarry odor of the cigarettes. Bruce sat on a worn plaid couch, cotton oozing from its arms like clouds exiled from a summer sky. He had a black eye, and the eyeball surrounded by the puffy skin was bloodshot and dewy.

“You bump your head?” Or did your daddy bump it for you?

“Yeah. On Rochester’s fist.”

“Rochester?”

Bruce shrugged. “Ah, he’s a big bully. Never mind him.”

“This place looks like a good hideout,” she said, her annoyance subdued by sympathy.

“Well, the only folks who know about it are those who been around a while.”

“How long have you been here?”

He shrugged again. “I’m a kid. It feels like forever.”

“Does your dad work here?” She couldn’t believe she was actually tolerating the twerp, much less making conversation. But after being around grownups for so long, the change was a little refreshing. Plus he looked like he could use a friend.

“Yeah. My mom’s dead, too. How come you draw so much?”

My mom’s dead, too? “It’s what I do. Everybody’s got a gimmick, right?”

“Can I see?”

Kendra slid the pad over to the edge of the desk. “Knock yourself out.”

Bruce moved from the couch, the licorice aroma stronger now, and behind it came that rank, fishy stench. The boy could stand a bath.

“It looks like the third floor,” Bruce said. “Those kids look funny, like they’re from a cartoon.”

Kids? Kendra checked the rendering of the hallway. It was a pretty quick perspective job, the angles of the hallway receding toward the horizon to the vanishing point. No great shakes, even with the decorative table, vase, and plastic flowers on them. She’d fuzzed in some lines to capture the shadowed areas, planning to cross-hatch them with ink later and throw in some sort of spook for the fun of it, or maybe Emily Dee with a samurai sword or something for the manga crowd.

“It’s just a hallway,” she said. “I’m not finished yet.”

“Do you always put faces in your pictures?”

“Another gimmick. I want to do my own comic books when I grow up. I figure since my dad already has a name in the paranormal world, it will be easier to get a publisher. Go out as ‘The Digger’s Daughter.’”

Bruce leaned closer. Kendra usually didn’t let anyone see her work in progress, but she figured the kid would be good for some ideas. Except the fish smell was overpowering now that he was an arm’s-length away.

“So, got any ghost stories?” she said, expecting the same urban-legend crap the front desk had dished out. “Anything weird happen to you here?”

He touched the paper with his fingertip and traced out a shape. Then she saw it, the deeper shading where she had turned her pencil lead sideways and raked out a series of zig-zags. It looked like two small figures standing at the back of the hallway, waiting in the shadows.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said, with a shudder in his voice.

“Smart.”

“Will you draw a picture just for me?” One corner of his mouth lifted in a weak attempt at a smile, and his pale, injured face looked so forlorn and pitiful that Kendra felt ashamed for thinking of him as a twerp. After all, if her mother hadn’t died, she might have had a little brother and–

She looked away from the hollow eyes and the glistening, bruised flesh around his nose. “Sure thing, Bruce. You want Spiderman or Batman?”

“I don’t believe in heroes, either. Draw something scary. Like the two kids.”

Kendra flipped the sketch pad to a clean sheet and began roughing in the end of the break room. “Sure. I’ll have them sitting on that couch like they’re going to bite the legs off whoever comes in the door.”

Bruce giggled, and the sound gave a flat echo off the walls. The kid had moved a little closer, and the room was too small for such intrusion on her personal space. But probably he just wanted to see her work.

“I don’t know what they look like, so I’ll make one fat and one skinny,” she said.

“Dorrie’s the fat one,” he said. “She eats all the cupcake crumbs when everybody’s asleep.”

The kid’s got a good imagination. He’s probably like me— his dad leaves him to entertain himself so he escapes into his own little world.

“Is this fat enough?” She squiggled out a peanut shape. “Man, she’s totally breaking the couch in two. Whoever walks in the door is going to lose their legs and their arms.”

Kendra rounded out the figure and went to the next, glancing up so she could get the perspective right. “There’s Dorrie, fat as a donut hole,” she said. “Now for–”

Jesus.

For a split second, Dorrie was sitting there, pouting in a plain brown frock, hair in a terrible page cut that made her face look even rounder. Her fists were clenched on her knees, as if she were going to spring up from the couch and punch somebody. Twelve, maybe, swollen with her first period, confused about the changes of her body, chunky boobs already sagging.

Kendra blinked and the vision cleared. “Man, I hope Dorrie doesn’t mind being ugly.”

“I wouldn’t say that if I were you.”

But Kendra was already adding the details she’d just imagined. When inspiration flowed, you bottled it. “Okay, tell me about the other one.”

She decided to make them Emily Dee’s mortal enemies. The creepy kids who terrorized an old hotel. It probably couldn’t be an on-going series, because there were only so many storylines you could squeeze out of one location, but maybe it could fill up a graphic novel and catch some Hollywood producer’s eye. Another dumb haunted house story, just the way they liked them.

“Rochester’s even meaner than Dorrie,” Bruce said. “He’s got a pointy nose and he smells like mice. You know how mice smell, when they die behind the walls? My dad has to put out the poison every winter, because they move in when it gets cold. The poison sure tastes yucky.”

Kendra chuckled. High-larious, kid.

She drew a stick figure, giving it a long rodent’s tail. She wanted to get the job finished. Bruce stood there, not blinking, silent, holding his breath. And, worse, now she could smell the mice, like that high school science lab where the hampster cages never shook that odor of death.

“Rochester the Rat Boy,” she said with cheerful bravado. She realized she was afraid to look up, lest Rochester was sitting there with his red, beady eyes and sharp, yellow incisors. The gaunt rendering horrified her.

She gave him oversize Mickey Mouse ears and ripped the sheet out of the pad. In her haste, the rip was uneven, dissecting a chunk of Dorrie’s head. “Here you go, Brucie. No charge.”

Bruce was gone.

She forced herself to look at the couch, and it was empty. Bruce couldn’t have squeezed past her to the door without nudging her chair. Maybe there were other entrances, ones she couldn’t see. Even if the walls held secret passages, it was hard to imagine someone sneaking away without a revealing creak of wood. But if Bruce had been stuck here playing for years by himself, he’d probably figured out the best hiding places.

“Dorrie Dough-Face and Rochester the Rat Boy,” she said aloud.

The company of fictional characters provided no comfort. Her fantasy life, the cherished escape from a world where her mother had abandoned her and her father regretted the inconvenience, had turned on her, and she didn’t like it. Because if that went bad, then what else did she have left?

The pictures added up to nothing.

Painted into a corner.

On the bottom of the sketch, she scribbled “To Bruce, for the forever inn,” before adding the flourish of her initials. One day she’d be as famous as Jack Kirby, Moebius, and Todd McFarlane rolled into one, and her initials would be gold. In the meantime, a girl could always dream.

Always and forever.

She left the drawing on the table and headed for her room, clicking on her walkie talkie. Maybe Digger had actually noticed his daughter was gone and was fuming because he needed some help. He would be huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf in a cancer ward, muttering curses under his breath, his blood pressure rising. His impatience and frustration would only be rivaled by his helplessness.

She wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Chapter 19

The group was really getting on Burton’s nerves.

Ninety percent of paranormal tourism was about keeping the travelers safe while delivering the illusion of danger. That’s why the liability waiver was so loaded with phrases like “inherent risk” and language that implied the hunter might end up being the hunted.

So Burton wasn’t above the occasional “Look, did that shadow move?”

The tactic never failed to draw a few gasps, and once in a while a newbie would get so shaken the hunt would be disrupted. Then a twenty-minute debate would ensue as people recounted their versions of what they did or didn’t see, and those with cameras would flip through the thumbnails. Burton would review the evidence and reluctantly validate whatever happened to appear in the images, whether it was an orb, a flash of light, or the Second Coming of Harry Houdini. All in a day’s work, all part of the show.

But sometimes a group collected at random would yield such an obnoxious array of personalities that Burton felt like he was punching a time clock in a Portajohn business instead of serving as a shamanistic guide to the land of mystery and spirit. When you got right down to it, shit was shit, and you didn’t want to step in it, either here on Planet Earth or in the otherworld.

And the dude in the Henry Fonda fishing cap was a two-hundred-pound bag of shit that was bursting at the seams.

“Where’s the Percival Ghost?” whined Cappie. “You promised us the Percival Ghost.”

“There are no guarantees in ghost-hunting,” Burton said.

“She may not even be dead,” said an unfortunate woman whose make-up was thick enough to make an undertaker proud. She was way too old to put Kool-Aid-blue highlights in her hair. Her T-shirt read “Ghosts believe in me,” and Burton figured she was a paranormal slut who’d get in bed with any group or ideology that whispered “boo.”

“She’d be dead by now, one way or another,” said a woman who looked over the top of her glasses like a librarian. “Even if she didn’t die in 1948, she’d be well over a century old.”

“Maybe that’s why her ghost isn’t here,” Cappie said.

“One theory is she was killed at the inn and her body was taken off site,” Burton said. “That could explain the lack of any evidence. She could be an intelligent spirit and moving between the place she died and the place where her body is buried.”

“True,” said the Kool-Aid woman, as if such things were established fact. “If she were a residual, we probably would have seen her by now.”

“With all this foot traffic, we’ve probably stirred up enough dust to hide an elephant,” Cappie said.

“All this talking doesn’t help,” Burton said. The walkie talkie on his hip squeaked and Wayne announced, “Okay, all groups head for their next scheduled stop.”

Burton ushered the group to Room 318, counting to make sure no one had dropped out, though he wouldn’t mind losing a couple of them.

“Hey, the light doesn’t work,” someone said.

Burton retrieved the flashlight from his belt and flicked it on, pointing it into the dark room. Good move, Wayne. Pulling the fuse will keep them guessing every time.

“Watch your step,” he said. “Let’s see what the FLIR picks up.”

He passed the instrument to the person closest to him. Even with the door open, the room appeared thick with darkness. The flashlight barely dented it. Burton whacked it on his thigh, though he routinely added fresh batteries before every hunt.

“I feel a cold spot,” said the Kool-Aid woman.

Burton was willing to bet she felt hot spots, too. And maybe even purple polka dots.

“Margaret, are you here?” Cappie bellowed.

“Easy, now,” Burton said. “No need to provoke yet.”

“Come out,” the Kool-Aid woman said. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

That’s a good one. Ghosts afraid of people.

“Did you hear that?” said someone on the far side of the room.

“Shhh.”

“What was it?”

“Tapping. Up above.”

Burton found himself squinting in the darkness overhead, though he kept his flashlight trained on the floor. Since Digger was staying in 318, he’d stowed his personal gear in the closet and locked it. That sealed off the attic access, so unless someone had ascended the closeted stairwell off the main hall, then the noise was likely caused by animals.

Still, opportunity knocked.

“Tap once if you’re Margaret Percival,” Burton said in a calm voice.

The room fell silent, and wood creaked in the distance as the inn settled.

“Tap once if you’re with us,” Burton said.

Nothing but Cappie’s labored breathing. Burton flicked off the flashlight and closed the door, figuring absolute darkness would inspire reaction.

The door swung open again.

Burton turned, knowing he’d been the last to enter. The hallway was empty. “Is that you, Margaret?”

Burton wished he’d thought of the trick. Fishing line, a hidden spring, even a subtle kick of the heel would have been enough. Was Wayne at work behind the scenes?

No, for all his boss’s enthusiasm, Wayne was not the type to rig an encounter. And Burton’s few solid paranormal experiences were enough to convince him that there was more to this world than met the eye. Ghosts happen.

The room was quiet, and Burton could feel all eyes fixed on the doorway. “You’re welcome to close it now.”

“I’d crap my pants if it did,” somebody said.

“Shhh.”

The tension in the room was like a taut, quivering wire. Burton took an easy step toward the lighted rectangle of carpet. If he played it right, the open door could give the guests a weekend’s worth of talking points.

“Margaret, we’ve—”

Creee-kuh-BLAM.

The door swung closed so fast that Burton dropped his flashlight, and the wall shook with the force of its slamming. One woman screamed, and a man who sounded like Cappie issued a breathless curse. Furniture banged as several people fled deeper into the dark room. Burton mentally counted the steps to the door, then moved to it and tried the handle.

It was stuck.

“Easy, folks,” Burton said.

“The door closed by itself,” said one of the faceless hunters.

“No way,” Cappie said. “This isn’t a poltergeist room.”

“Yeah, but it could be something that even a poltergeist doesn’t want to mess with,” Burton said, scooping up his flashlight. He swept his flashlight across the room and into the squinting, confused faces.

“She’s here,” whispered the Kool-Aid woman.

“What’s the FLIR saying?” Burton asked the man who was looking into the device’s small monitor.

“Seven of us,” he said. “Warm blooded.”

Burton passed his flashlight to the woman on the left. “Hold this,” he said. “I want to get some infrared video.”

Burton backed against the door, pretending to fumble in his pack while he surreptitiously tested the door handle. Still locked.

The flashlight blinked out and the room was once again nearly dark, with only the dim green lights of cameras and EMF recorders to break the endless expanse of black.

“Shit, gone dead.” The man banged the flashlight with the palm of his hand.

“She’s charging up,” the Kool-Aid woman said. “My camera just drained.”

Burton had once been in a séance where the medium had allegedly dredged up the spirit of a mass murderer, and whether it was the power of suggestion or the real thing, the room had fairly crackled with tension and expectation. This room had the same electricity. Burton wondered if Wayne or Cody was monitoring the remote cams in the control room.

He reached for the walkie talkie on his hip. He thumbed the “send” button and said, “Wayne, we’ve got phenomena in 318.”

He released the button and realized there was no wireless signal. The walkie talkie didn’t even hiss. He clicked the button a couple of times. Dead.

“Your walkie talkie’s broken, too, isn’t it?” said the Kool-Aid woman, with spaced-out satisfaction.

“Dead spot,” he said.

“Exactly. Margaret wants her room back, and we’re in it.”

“She can have it,” said the man with the flashlight. “I’m outta here.”

The beam jittered as he took a few steps toward the door, throwing the room into a kaleidoscope of images: the Kool-Aid woman’s blissful smile, the FLIR meter tilted toward the center of the room, a couple standing by the bed holding hands, Cappie fiddling with his digital camera.

Burton blocked the door. “Easy. You’re breaking hunt protocol.”

In truth, SSI policy was to allow any hunter to break off at any time, for any reason, whether diarrhea, boredom, or fear. But Burton didn’t want to deal with the fallout from a roomful of adults trapped against their wishes. Plus he’d have to come up with a reasonable explanation for the locked door. Even if the door had been locked from the outside, it had a privacy latch that should have released the lock with a turn of the handle.

The man pointed the light into Burton’s face. Burton forced his facial muscles to relax into a smile. “This is what we paid for, right? The Trophy Room.”

“Yeah,” the Kool-Aid woman said to the man. “You’re going to scare her off.”

“Jesus,” said the man with the FLIR. “There’s something here.”

He turned the small monitor around until it showed the seven other people in the room outlined as orange-red figures. A bluish-green shape flickered in the middle of them. Burton grabbed the flashlight and pointed it at the spot, but it was only an open expanse of carpet. The shape solidified on the screen, then began undulating.

“Margaret,” the Kool-Aid woman gushed, with an air of worship. “I knew you’d come.”

Burton checked his EMF meter but it had drained as well. Fully charged, it was good for at least six hours, and he’d only been using it for an hour. The only evidence of the phenomenon was the FLIR, which had a digital drive for recording.

“You guys see this?” said the FLIR operator.

The man who’d been holding the flashlight pushed past Burton and lunged at the door. “Hey, it’s locked!”

The bluish-green shape on the FLIR never quite took on a human outline, though many forms were suggested as it shifted. Several of the hunters had moved forward to watch the meter, while two–the couple holding hands–edged closer to the door. Burton kept the flashlight trained on the carpet.

“It’s moving,” said the FLIR operator, and something brushed Burton’s face like the cool, slimy tentacle of an octopus. The man at the door rattled the handle and then moaned.

“Get it off me,” he said, and then the door swung open with such force that the man landed on his ass, blinking into the explosion of light from the hallway. The FLIR now showed only the orange forms again, depicting the warm-blooded people in the room. Whatever had caused the anomaly had now evaporated.

The overhead light flickered, blinked, and then stayed on, leaving the group of hunters looking at each other with a mixture of fear, awe, and disbelief.

Burton checked his equipment and found it working again. He thumbed the walkie talkie and spoke into it. “Control Room, we’ve had a doozy.”

Chapter 20

Noonie.

The word had taken on a double meaning for Wayne and Beth, in the way long-time companions formed their own language. At first it had been a code word for their lunchtime sexual encounters, when they invariably ended up late returning to work. The word had evolved into a synonym for Beth’s vagina, though Wayne always found it too cutesy for a place that served up such powerful mysteries, mind-blowing pleasures, and the miracle of a child.

The word had been theirs, and he couldn’t imagine how Amelia Gordon had learned of it. If the board had spelled out “Beth” or “wife” or “I’m here,” he would have dismissed it as coincidence, but she had picked the one word he couldn’t deny. Wayne stared down at the abandoned Ouija board in 218.

“Beth,” he whispered.

The thought of her name somehow seemed safe, because he’d carried her inside him for years. But saying it aloud gave it weight and imbued it with the power of possibility. Making a wish was foolish and believing in ghosts was an act of cowardice. If he really thought he knew better than God, then he would pick up a bottle and hide in the sewers of his own ego and fear.

“Beth,” he said aloud.

I can’t believe in you. Not like this. I believe in how you used to be.

Wayne touched the surface of the Ouija board. The planchette still lay on the floor, where it had fallen after Amelia’s fainting spell.

Amelia had talked about  an angel in the ceiling. Room 318 was directly above.

Do I want to know? If I got an answer, would I accept it? Or would I rather cling to the stories that have given me comfort over the years?

Comfort.

No, it wasn’t comfort.

It was survival.

The board was slick and relatively new. He’d bought it as a prop after one of his conference guests had complained that the discussion panels were too tech-oriented and boring. “You can learn all that stuff on the Internet,” said the crank.

So he’d started sexing up his events, tossing in psychics, palm readers, and everything but one-armed, mud-wrestling midgets, and if he could figure out a way to tie those into the paranormal instead of the plain old abnormal, he would do it in a heartbeat. The Ouija board always drew a crowd because people longed for oracles and throughout history had searched for messages in everything from animal intestines to tea leaves.

During their honeymoon, when they’d played with the Ouija board, that’s what they were doing—playing. As they knelt at the coffee table, drinking wine in their bath robes, they summoned Margaret. All for laughs, all for foreplay, all part of the fun of a haunted hotel.

But then the talk had turned serious, and as a cold wind blew in from nowhere, Beth gazed into his eyes and made him swear. Wayne gave an uncomfortable giggle, playing along. So he’d nodded and smiled. An agreement and an invitation.

When Beth had made The Promise, Wayne never imagined he’d outlive her. He was still drinking in those days. Not so much that it had drowned their relationship, but plenty enough. They were too young to acknowledge the inevitability of middle age, let alone mortality. When you had forever, promises were cheap.

The pact was simple: if one of them died, the other would return to the White Horse Inn. The deceased would try to make contact from the spirit world. Harry Houdini had made the same promise, and as far as anyone knew, the greatest magician in history had not found a way to pick the locks of the afterlife and make a successful return.

Wayne might even have forgotten the pact, throwing it on the pile of somedays and pledges and promises, if she hadn’t reminded him of it as she wasted away in a hospital bed. A mastectomy hadn’t stemmed the spread of cancer, and when it showed up in her pancreas and liver, she swore off the chemotherapy and kept her pain medication to a minimum, wanting to be alert for her final days. Wayne went in the opposite direction, crawling into a bottle and pickling himself like a living laboratory specimen.

Beth didn’t scold him or judge him, and her unconditional love radiating from dimming eyes filled him with shame. In some ways, alcoholism was an even more insidious disease than cancer, because it gave the illusion of choice. Beth’s mother, who always knew best even when she knew nothing, had taken on Kendra, showing her granddaughter how to react to the death of a loved one: the stages of anger, denial, fear, acceptance, and then deep, abiding sorrow.

And when the countdown came, when the heart monitor beeped erratically and Beth’s breathing became ragged, she beckoned him close and whispered, “I’ll see you at the inn.”

She smiled and her gaunt fingers gripped his sweaty ones, and Wayne could only nod. Later, days after the funeral, he realized she’d been referring to the White Horse and the glib deal they’d made years before, fresh after making newlywed love in Room 318.

It took a while, but here I am.

Wayne picked up the planchette, half expecting it to throb with unseemly warmth.

It was plastic, made in China, nothing divine about it.

He hurled it across the room and it bounced against the television.

The television switched on.

“–OPEC has pledged to boost production so that heating oil prices will stabilize for the holidays. Crude oil is currently trading at seventy-eight dollars a barrel and–”

Wayne shut it off.

“Okay, Beth,” he said. “If you want to speak to me, do it directly and not through cheap electronics.”

The curtains fluttered even though the window was closed.

Draft, probably blowing through the ventilation system.

“About that promise,” Wayne said. “It wouldn’t be the first we’ve broken. We both said ‘forever,’ remember?”

He sat on the chair by the desk so he could survey the entire room, including the bathroom with its clawfoot tub, tiled floor, and gray wallpaper. He could spare a couple of minutes. He owed her that much. Promises were cheap.

The lights blinked.

“Are you afraid?”

He wasn’t sure if the words were in his head or if they had wended from the corners of nowhere.

He waited 30 seconds, listening to the distant thrum of the ventilation system and the squeal of the elevator. That gave him plenty of time to consider the question, whether he had posed it to himself or not. It was the kind of question that had only two answers, and both were wrong.

If Beth appeared, all the failure would come sluicing down in a gray avalanche. His skeptical convictions would be challenged, and he’d be forced to change the way he viewed the world. He didn’t want to be knocked out of his comfort zone. He preferred to think of Beth in a better place, far removed from the worries of this troubled plane. If he’d dragged her from eternal bliss just to satisfy his whims, he’d have yet another reason to feel guilty.

“I tried,” he said. “I wanted to be there for you but I didn’t know how.”

The shadow in one corner of the room grew lighter, though the sun was sinking outside and purple dusk crawled across the mountains.

“I haven’t done so bad with Buttercup,” he said. The claim felt thick on his tongue, as if he had licked dust.

Wayne fumbled in his pocket for his EMF recorder, made sure it was off, and laid it on the desk. Such a toy embarrassed him, here in the face of awesome mystery.

A distinct outline fuzzed a few feet from the wall. Wayne held his breath.

The outline grew threads and walked.

And here she was.

Eight years after cancer had ravaged her, eight years after her heart had given one final flutter that barely registered a green quiver on the monitor, several thousand long days since she’d entrusted Wayne with guiding Kendra to adulthood, and here she was. Not all of her, to be sure, but even through the tears dimming his eyes, he could tell.

“Beth.” His voice didn’t crack, but everything else did.

He sought the features of her face in that amorphous mass, but the threads were swirling, fading in and out like a fog in the breeze. Her hair, her legs—is that her funeral dress, or wedding dress?—and the hand reaching toward him all shifted in the twilight, and he couldn’t tell if she were smiling or grimacing. The eyes, the holes in her face, were black and deep and told nothing.

This was the only ghost he’d ever wanted to meet, and now that she was here, he wished he were dead, too.

“Beth, I’m sorry...”

The sibilant trailed off into a sigh. Stupid. Time for apologies is past. What have you got for her? What does she need? What can you pour from your empty cup?

He wanted to stand and move toward her, meet her halfway. If the door between worlds were opening, then maybe he’d see more and understand. But he could trust neither his legs nor his eyes.

The air was brittle with anticipation, as if the ions were charged. A faint smokiness rode above the musty, cleaning-chemical smell of the room. The smoke was pungent enough to sting his nostrils and reminded him of the old coal-burning furnace from his elementary school, tucked away in a brick shed and surrounded by piles of reddish-gray cinders.

Why doesn’t she smell like patchouli or lavender, the scents she always dabbed on her wrist? Or the roses I laid on her casket, or the dirt from her grave, or the diesel fuel from the gravedigger’s tractor?

He was trying to impose logic on a miracle, but his mind was skittering away from the confrontation. What do you say when you need to say everything but don’t know how little time you have?

The threads weaved themselves in and out, a fabric of animated unlife.

You never have long, which is why you should never waste time.

And his thoughts were coming in her voice, the way they had in the months after her death, when he’d tried to pray but all he could do was blame God. Funny, but she’d never blamed the Big Guy Upstairs for her cancer, and Wayne had never had much use for an entity that supposedly had the power to make everything better but refused. But God was handy when you needed a scapegoat.

Anything besides accepting responsibility.

He swallowed and grabbed some air. “You look...wonderful.”

Like a teenager watching his prom date undress. Words without thought, another lie, because he wasn’t sure what she looked like.

Her face grew more solid, the mouth forming words, and he was no lip reader but it looked like she was trying to say “Kendra.” And something else.

Wayne squinted into the shifting morass of her eyes. They took on a frantic light and Wayne felt his muscles sag, as if she were drawing energy from him in order to deliver her message. And she looked afraid.

“Kendra,” her lips formed again, and her voice echoed in his mind, faintly enough that he could deny its existence if he wished, write it off the way he would if someone else had described the phenomenon.

“Yes?” he whispered, wondering if she could hear his voice in her head, too, or if that ephemeral, temporary skull could even hold thoughts.

“Get her out.”

He’d made a promise to meet, she’d held up her end of the bargain, jumping through God-only-knew-how-many hoops to get here, and now she wanted him to leave?

Right when she’d hinted at every secret he’d ever wanted to know, right when she held some answers, right when she could make him famous as the ghosthunter who had successfully proven life after death, right when Digger could become the world’s leading expert in something and finally gain Kendra’s respect and make her proud? Right when all the years of fooling around with gizmos in dark spaces was about to pay off? How could she be so goddamned selfish?

And her face was changing, as if she could read his thoughts, the cheeks crinkling in disappointment, and the face kept twisting, and Wayne didn’t know where his thoughts had come from, because it wasn’t the kind of thing he dwelled upon, all he wanted was to see her, love her, hold her one more time—

Her words, the world’s words, maybe even God’s words, roared through his flesh with a dozen voices.

“THIS IS NOT ME.”

Sounds from outside the room, tapping, knocking, pulled Wayne from his trance and he reached a trembling hand to his beloved wife, but she was changing, her face wizened and mottled, the shadows eating away at the fleeting flesh and only her teeth remained, gleaming pearls that seemed far too sharp. They were arced in a menacing, gleeful grin.

The door opened.

“Dad?”

Wayne stared transfixed into the corner where his wife—and Kendra’s mother—had drifted moments before.

“Dad, I’m sorry about...”

He couldn’t shake the image of Beth’s face in that last glimpse, before the night had reclaimed it. It wasn’t her, she’d said. Or had he only thought it?

Had any of it happened?

All he knew for sure was his cup was empty again.

“Jeebs, Dad, you’re crying.”

Lost her again.

Lost.

Chapter 21

Ann Vandooren had come to science the old-fashioned way: poking dead animals with sticks and dropping worms onto anthills. The offspring of an artist whose bisexuality had transformed into full-blown surgical transexuality and a Realtor specializing in rehabilitated commercial properties, Ann had evolved a world view that embraced both liberation and rigidity.

Her Catholic mother had dished out more than enough structured mysticism and church-approved dogma, rules that encouraged free thought as long as you stayed within the white lines. Her father, a devout Taoist whose favorite argument was that true Taoism couldn’t exist, constantly jousted with anyone who said there was only one path to God, enlightenment, or even the local drug store. But perhaps Mother was right after all, because when Dad turned, he legally changed his name to “Mary.”

Ann’s school years were a litany of academic awards and trips to the counselor, as she learned early on that intelligent, creative people were afforded more leeway and were more easily forgiven. Public education had little to do with children and everything to do with adults controlling, suppressing, and feeling good about themselves, so the prevailing wisdom was that any intelligent, creative kid was bound to be screwed up. And things would only get worse as that kid sought a slot in the real world, where only half of all drivers used their turn signals yet demanded air bags and other expensive safety gear for their vehicles.

By the time she attended North Carolina State University, she’d come to understand the delusions under which most people lived. Because they couldn’t accept the cold, hard facts of their lives, they concocted elaborate fantasies of religion and culture. They saw reality as somehow less inviting than a glorious heaven and harbored hope of better times ahead, even if that future could only come through the rite of passage known as “death.” And because most of them had made bad grades in science, all scientists were viewed with hostility and popular culture often painted them as crackpots, well-meaning but ultimately destructive subversives, or dispassionate observers of small things that didn’t matter.

Ann prided herself on being all three.

So when the paranormal fad started and even respected professional journals ventured into the field in an effort to publish something people would actually read, Ann took it as a tossing down of the gauntlet. Angels, Bigfoot, aliens, and conspiracy theories rarely depended upon objective measurements, but when hunters started buying high-tech equipment, the war was on. She was fully aware that debunking nonsense took away time and energy from real research, but if she could guide even a handful of people to their senses, then the human race ultimately logged an overall gain. For that was the real work of the scientist: to nudge the species just a little further along the path to enlightenment, truth, and understanding.

And, she had to admit, pissing off a flake gave her a serious case of damp squirmies.

“How’s my halo hanging?” Ann asked Duncan.

As usual after sex, Duncan was withdrawn and self-absorbed, his sweating head sunken into the pillow. Despite his verbal cockiness, he was sensitive about his performance, always trying to gauge the letter grade she would assign. She wasn’t as difficult to please as she acted, but figured playing with his ego would keep him rising to the challenge. Plus, when the inevitable day came that she needed to terminate the experiment, it would be easier to pour him down the sink.

“I saw it, Ann,” he said.

“You let a voodoo priestess put a picture in your head, boy. Power of suggestion.”

“It was creepy.”

“‘Creepy’? That’s hardly an objective description of a psychological experience.”

He rolled over, his eyes narrowed. “Damn it, Ann. I know your whole game is to get these people coming after you with torches and pitchforks, but I don’t know why you have to fight me, too.”

“Because I’m not sure whose side you’re on.”

“Reality isn’t a ‘side.’”

She reached for his bare belly and stroked the wiry hairs there, feeling him relax. She moved her fingers lower and he tensed. “We’re on the same team, boy.”

“The Vandooren Team.”

“The winners. Always stick with the winners.”

He exhaled heavily, his body responding to her touch. Brain chemicals aside, the manipulation of certain sensitive glands elicited a natural arousal response. People gave it names like “passion” and “love,” but the same response could be achieved in a frontal-lobotomy patient.

“You know how to run up the score,” he said.

“And don’t you forget it.” She gave him one final, alluring stroke, then released him and rolled out of bed, feeling his hungry eyes on her flesh. She turned away to hide her smile of triumph. “Almost midnight. Time to upload the images and let the show begin.”

She slipped into a black nightgown that was just flimsy enough to keep him distracted and crossed the room to the desk. The laptop and video gear was university property, state of the art, and Duncan’s ingenuity had allowed them to patch into SSI’s control-room monitors. The split screens showed the various hunts in progress, some operating with military efficiency and others scattered like a third-grade class field trip. She didn’t see her main target, Wayne Wilson, but a little more chum would help bloody the waters.

A group of six headed down the hall, led by the guy listed on the program as “The Roach.” He was decked out with enough gear to impress any armchair paranormalist, a walking advertisement for pseudoscience as sponsored by Radio Shack. If he shouted “Snake!” then no doubt his followers would jump.

By the time she’d clicked up the projection program and sent her image of the Jilted Bride onto the wall in front of the group, Duncan had joined her.

“Ease back on the contrast,” he said. “It’ll look too solid otherwise.”

He took the mouse from her and manipulated the image so that it faded in. The image had been taken from a slide in the university’s Appalachian history collection, a silver daguerreotype whose iridescent coating made the woman appear even more ephemeral. The woman’s large, dark eyes and the bouquet in her slack fingers didn’t project the joy of a new bride. Instead, she looked like a teenager in the end stages of tuberculosis.

The image was barely visible when one of the group, a short woman dressed completely in black, pointed and exclaimed. Though the monitor system had no audio track, her lips clearly formed the word “Look.”

Duncan had edited the video clip so that the contrast fluctuated, creating the illusion of a ghost trying to flicker into existence. The resulting handiwork, as viewed through the spycam, was almost as good as the cinema tricks coming out of Disney and Pixar.

“Suckersss,” Ann said, with an exaggerated hiss.

“Check out The Roach,” Duncan said, pointing to the screen at the man fumbling with the equipment on his belt. “Looks like he’s having a panic attack.”

Ann chortled, surprised by the sound erupting from her throat. She was enjoying this far more than she thought she would.

“Who ya gonna call?” she sang, mauling the 1980s movie theme. “Roach busters!”

“What’s he got in his hand?”

Chapter 22

A hotel full of living, breathing demons, and a weakling like this comes along?

The Roach was almost annoyed that such a puny residual would dare show its face, sort of like a peg-legged pirate stumping onto the marble mezzanine at the royal ball. But you dealt with the entities as they came. It was all part of the training. It was all part of the War.

The hunters behind him were no good, too busy oohing and aahing and thinking about what they’d be blogging next week. The problem with paranormal tourism was that, when it came to crunch time, they tended to get in the way of the real work. But, like the demons, they were a necessary evil.

They made good bait.

The entity appeared to be the Jilted Bride, though the descriptions had varied over the decades before settling into an acceptably homogenized urban legend. And though the bride was already losing steam, failing to draw enough power to pose for a photo, The Roach wasn’t willing to let it go without a fight. So while the hunters behind him fumbled to bring their cameras and EMF meters to bear, he pulled a vial of holy water with all the deftness of a Wild West gunslinger.

He thumbed away the rubber stopper and sent a clear arc of water across the wall, flicking his wrist so the path of the water widened. If the spirit was a demon in disguise, it would piss and moan, and if it were merely a possessed puppet, it wouldn’t feel pain but should dissolve on contact.

The water splashed on the wall and carpet, and the bride stood there frozen, her face locked in the sick misery of her eternal death.

“Did you see that?” said a woman in black, Terry was her name, who’d been pestering him non-stop during the hunt. From the lack of hot water in the shower to overpriced Manhattans in the bar, she’d expressed her displeasure at every opportunity. And though she’d squealed with fear at the bride’s appearance, she now was pushing her way through the group, her jaw slack in rapture.

“Careful,” The Roach said.

Terry evaded The Roach and reached for the vanishing entity. “Don’t go.”

A man in cowboy boots, evidently her husband, rushed forward as well. “It’s a residual, honey.”

Ignoring him, the woman said to the spirit, “If you need to draw power, you can take it from me.”

The Roach had found ripe bait. You’re lucky it’s not a demon. That’s practically opening up the refrigerator door to your soul and letting Evil sample the buffet.

As the image faded away to nothing, the group of hunters broke into chatter.

“Did you see that?”

“What was it?

“I couldn’t get my damned camera to work–”

After the image had faded, one disturbing impression remained. For a flicker of a second, the Jilted Bride’s arm had been superimposed over Terry’s skin, as if Terry had penetrated the entity’s spirit stuff. And a sleeve of dust was visible in the air overhead. Maybe the phenomenon had tunneled out from a peculiar hole in the heavens, and the entity hadn’t been a demon after all.

An angel? Angels were just as common as demons, but tended to be ineffectual. The Roach had learned never to count on them at Crunch Time.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” The Roach said. “I believe we’ve just had an encounter.”

“Anybody get a reading?”

“EMF was flat.”

“Her eyes were so sad.”

“We’ll corroborate this later,” he said. “Let’s get some baseline readings in case she comes back.”

Terry wiped at the water The Roach had spattered across the wall. She sniffed the substance on her finger.

“What’s this?” she asked, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Protection.”

“From what?”

“I hope none of us have to find out.”

Terry’s husband took her arm. “Let’s check our audio and see if we got any EVP’s.”

She shrugged away from his grasp. “I paid to be here and I didn’t come to see this clown play ‘Exorcist.’”

The rest of the group, whom The Roach figured was as tired of the woman’s complaints as he was, gathered close to hear the confrontation.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “SSI policy puts the safety of the hunters first.”

“Safety? From what? She didn’t exactly look like the Bell Witch.”

“I got a picture of an orb,” said an overweight man who leaned on a wooden cane, balancing precariously while he checked his viewfinder.

“Dust,” said another man. “I saw it swirling when you hit your flash.”

“No, it was energy,” Terry said. “I felt it.”

“Whatever it was, it’s gone now,” said a weasel-faced woman.

Oh, yeah? Then what’s watching us from the end of the hall?

The Roach’s original count of active demons was six, but it figured they would try for seven if possible. While the number “666” had gained infamy because of its purported role as the Mark of the Beast, scholars had traced old translations and found the number had been recorded in error. Besides, the Holy Bible was hardly more than a field guide for the surface struggle. The real battles waged outside the pages, in rare air and poisoned darkness. Seven was appropriate, a number of magic, mystery, and perfection.

“Where’s Artie?” a woman said. “He was right behind me a second ago.”

The Roach looked down both ends of the corridor and at the locked doors lining each side of the hall. A quick head count showed he had indeed lost a group member. He hoped Artie was sitting on the stool down at the bar, indulging in spirits of the liquid kind, but the energy in the ancient structure had grown palpably stronger, and The Roach wondered if a demon had taken Artie for a spin across the dance floor.

The Roach activated his two-way radio. “Digger, I got a Lost Boy.”

Cody’s static-filled voice came back, the signal saturated with noise so that the words were barely audible. “Digger’s a Lost Boy, too. What’s the prob?”

“We had a sighting and someone must have fled the scene.”

“He wasn’t scared,” said the woman. “He loves ghosts.”

The Roach nodded while ignoring her. Paranormal tourism had all the inherent risk factors of traditional outdoor adventuring, with the same fear response and endorphin rush. The Roach frowned upon speed dating with the dead, but he figured he could best serve on the front lines where the metaphysical bullets flew hot and fast. He’d learned long ago that just closing your eyes to a problem didn’t make it go away.

And there was wisdom in the old saying about being careful what you wish for.

Because he wished a demon would invade Terry and shut her bitching mouth.

Chapter 23

Violet wasn’t sure what was worse—that old bitch Janey Mays hovering everywhere like a vulture crossed with a hummingbird, or disappearing when things went to hell.

Violet had called Janey several times from the front desk since the mummified manager had called the front desk. No answer each time, and Wally Reams had knocked on her door to no avail. J.C. Henries from night shift had gone AWOL, one of the gas burners in the kitchen stove had flared and burned a cook’s arm, the hot water was on the blink, and two of the guests were complaining about children running up and down the halls. Despite the lie she’d told Digger, Violet was positive no children had checked in, since most of the rooms were taken up by the ghost-hunting crowd.

The customer’s always right, even when they’re assholes.

“You sure she reported a leak?” Violet asked Rhonda.

The girl gave a nod, bouncing her red pigtails and smacking her gum. “‘bout 25 minutes ago.”

“Doesn’t it seem weird? She expects someone to clean her ashtray the second she crushes the butt. You think she’d wait 25 minutes without chewing the whole maintenance crew a new pooper?”

“Yeah, it’s weird,” Rhonda said. “Her car’s still in the lot and I can’t see her walking two miles to Black Rock. And where else is there to go?”

You got that right.

“I can’t believe she’d bail out of a big conference, especially with a freaky crowd like this,” Violet said. “I’m surprised she’s not counting the silverware and towels.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. She busted me for taking a roll of toilet paper.”

“Well, it’s hotel property. It’s her job.”

“Nobody should like their job that much.”

“This place is falling down around our ears. If anything else goes wrong, we’ll have to call in FEMA.”

”Life goes on,” Rhonda said, turning her attention back to People magazine, where Angelina Jolie was adopting another baby, this time from Madagascar. The clerk was slouched against the drawer that served as cash till, except most customers used credit cards these days. Violet eyed it, wondering how much loose change was in there. The best filching was done in the bar, but with Battle Axe away, then why not go for a few twenties?

Violet tried the phone again. It gave a sad bleat, the death of an electronic sheep. She banged the handset against the wall, and then checked the signal on her cell phone. It was hopeless, because cell phones never worked around the inn. Some said it was because of the inn’s location straddling the Eastern Continental Divide, while others called it a “dark zone” the wireless companies had not yet found lucrative enough to pursue. Whatever the reason, she had no bars.

Wally came huffing and puffing to the front desk, his ruddy face dotted with sweat. “Elevator’s gettin’ squirrelly,” he said.

“Squirrelly? Is that the engineering term for ‘out of service’?”

“It’s still working, it just don’t stop on the floor you push the button for.”

“We’ve only got three floors. How much of a problem can it be?”

“Normally, it wouldn’t be one, but these Christ-dang ghost hunters are crawling from floor to floor like piss ants in a sugar factory. The way the floors are divided, you got to walk a mile to get from 210 to 324. Down, around, and up.”

“And Janey didn’t answer?”

“I pounded on the door near hard enough to break it down. If she’s in there, she’s either dead or deaf.”

One of the guests approached the desk, a hawk-faced woman wearing an ill-fitting pants suit that spelled trouble. Wally stepped away, falling into invisible-worker mode. Violet was annoyed at being thrust into command, especially since she was due to clock out in half an hour and Phillippe Renaud, the new cook—”chef,” he had insisted, in that gorgeous French accent—had offered to buy her a Beck’s in the hotel bar.

“Excuse me,” the guest said, rapping on the counter with her room key. “My door’s messed up. I got locked inside my own room.”

The bony woman’s avian eyes darted past Violet as if expecting someone older and more mature to hear her complaint. An adult. Violet was annoyed. She had a community-college degree, for crying out loud. And one of these days, she’d own a pants suit, too. As soon as she paid back what she’d borrowed.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Violet said, giving her falsest, sweetest smile. “But our keys only work from the outside. All inside doors have privacy locks and deadbolts. Are you sure you didn’t turn the knob the wrong way?”

“I know how to work a door, Miss,” the Hawk said, with enough frost in her breath to lower the room temperature. Which Violet noticed had gotten colder in the last few minutes. A malfunctioning heater was all she needed.

“Yes, ma’am,” Violet said, her smile locked in place. “Wally, would you please look at the lock?”

Wally nodded, though his face curdled as if he’d swallowed a slug. “I’ll get J.C. on it right away.”

“And don’t disturb anything,” the Hawk said. “I have some very valuable equipment in there.”

As Wally hurried away, she added, “You people should do something about the heat. It’s freezing in here.”

Tell it to someone who cares.

A few guests were milling back and forth, as if the conference had hit a lull. Violet fished under the counter and came out with a couple of brass tokens. “Here, good for complimentary drinks at the bar.”

And you better not sit with Phillippe, or I will break a bottle over your head.

The woman took the tokens, scratching Violet’s thumb with her long, painted fingernails. “That’ll take the chill off. Thanks.”

Rhonda put down the People after the Hawk was gone. “No wonder Janey’s so crabby all the time.”

“She’s only crabby when we’re around,” Violet said. “Where’s the master key?”

“Master key? We don’t have any master key.”

“Figures. Do we have a copy for Janey’s suite?”

“You’re not going in there, are you? You might not come out of alive. I’ve never even seen inside it.”

“Come on, you think she has pentagrams drawn on the floor and a bunch of mutilated cats nailed to the walls?”

“Maybe she’s got J.C. in there.”

“Yuck. Don’t want to think about it.”

Rhonda sorted through the extra keys, reading their tags, until she found a skeleton key that bore Janey’s suite number. The ring also held a key that Violet supposed went to the office. “Here you go. Looks like it hasn’t been used since Ricky Martin was still hetero and hot.”

“Okay, if I’m not back in ten minutes, call in the National Guard,” Violet said.

“If the phone’s working.”

“Don’t remind me.”

Violet headed for the stairs, determined to bypass the squirrelly elevator. All she needed was to get trapped and spend the night in a rusty metal box while Phillippe sipped Merlot and talked French to all the drunken girls. The sooner Janey Mays was back in charge, the better.

She bounced up the stairs, calves sore from a long day in high heels. A man in a black jumpsuit met her at the first landing, heading down. One of the SSI guys, not the young hottie, but a middle-aged, chunky man.

“How’s the conference going?” She almost regretted asking , because she could think of a hundred things that could go wrong and her shit list was about full at the moment. But he just shook his head and said, “We’re getting some pretty good results.”

“Are results good or bad? Assuming you actually want to find a ghost.”

“Oh, you don’t have to find them. They’ll find you.”

“Great.” Fucking sadist.

She continued to the second floor, feeling his oily gaze on her ass. It gave her no pleasure. She had her mind set on Phillippe—not her heart, she wasn’t that stupid—but a girl could always dream. Dreams were all you had in this world, but never enough money to make them come true. Why should a couple of sweet boys like Chad and Stevie have all the—

She found herself in front of 226. The idea of opening the door had seemed as simple as the mechanical insertion of the key, the triggering of the tumblers, and the turning of the handle. But now a hundred scenarios howled for attention.

What if she really IS boning J.C.? Or worse, what if she’s settled in for a date with the old battery-operated boyfriend? Or if she’s drunk and grouchy? Snorting coke? Or even something innocent, like reading Agatha Christie? Is this worth it?

In the end, Violet decided the only way she’d make that date—not a date, just hanging out—with Phillippe was to rouse Janey and let her know the White Horse was coming apart at the seams. She steeled herself and rapped on the door, but it lacked any thunder.

Chicken dooty pants patootie.

Surely Janey wouldn’t kill the messenger? Violet had tried hard to solve the problems, right? And this was the last resort?

She hammered with the bottoms of her fists this time, bruising a bone in her wrist. She should have brought Wally with her, but there were too many holes in the dike and not enough thumbs to go around.

She was fidgeting for the key when she instinctively tried the door handle. It turned easily, the clack of the catch like a gunshot in the quiet hallway.

Whatever Janey’s up to, it wasn’t worth locking the door over.

Violet pushed the door open a couple of feet. “Miss Mays?” she called into the darkness.

No radio or television, no sound of a shower, no snores, no moans of passion or grunts of surprise. Only a hush to match that of the hallway.

Jany pushed the door open wider, calling again. She squinted and tried the light switch. Nothing. Darkness crowded the room and Violet had the distinct feeling of being watched, as if nocturnal predators lay in wait. She stood in the doorway, letting the weak light from the hall spill into the room, hoping Janey would wake up and not be too crabby.

“Sorry to bother you,” Violet said, wishing somebody, even one of the fat-assed SSI perverts, would come along. Because the room smelled like a possum had died in the walls and something fluttered against the ceiling—either bats or the world’s largest mutant moths. Violet decided she’d done her duty and was about to back out of the room when the hall light caught a metallic glint.

She squinted at the short tube and the bulk behind it.

A gun? On the floor?

There were only a couple of reasons why a gun would be out in plain sight, and neither were the stuff of flowers and sunshine. Violet took another step forward, peering into the gloom, half expecting to see Janey sprawled in a pool of her own blood and brains. Janey didn’t seem the suicidal type and was the kind of crotchety old bag who’d probably live to be 120 just to piss off the nurses in the old folks’ home.

“Janey?”

Her vision adjusting, Violet saw the bathroom door was open, and the kitchenette was bare. That left only the bed….

It was partitioned off from the main room but enough showed so that the rumpled, dangling blankets were visible. Janey went three steps deeper, looking for a pallid foot.

Murder...yeah, plenty of people got motives.

Violet stopped.

Including me.

Janey wouldn’t keep suspected embezzlement a secret. She pretended to loathe gossip but those creased, cracked, reptilian lips loved to spit poison. When Rhonda had been busted with the toilet paper, her name had blared out in bold letters from the staff memo. And Janey’s glee was evident in every sentence, right down to the reminder that “Employees who don’t put the White Horse Inn first will not be employees for long.”

Violet was innocent. She couldn’t hurt a fly, unless it was landing on her pancake syrup. Then she could mash it good, mash it, mash it, mash it--

She glanced back toward the hallway and the low murmur of approaching voices. She couldn’t be seen in this room. “Motive, means, and opportunity,” as the cop shows put it. Sure, forensics tests might eventually prove she’d not fired the weapon, but in the meantime she’d be out of a job, broke from legal fees, and sleeping on a cold iron cot surrounded by lonely, desperate convicts instead of snuggling next to Phillippe.

Plus, Janey’s office was waiting, and Violet held the all-access pass in her hand, skin sweaty around the metal. With luck, she could search the bottom cabinets before anyone found Janey’s body.

She backed to the hall, hearing distant laughter. She looked both ways to make sure no one was watching and closed the door. She banged on it until the approaching group of ghosthunters rounded the corner, then gave one more emphatic, “Miss Mays?” before shrugging and heading back downstairs. She glanced at her watch.

Ten minutes of prowling for loose cash, then a date at the bar.

Chapter 24

“You’re freaking me out, Dad.”

Not that Wayne Wilson’s tears were as scarce and sacred as Buddha bones or anything, but Kendra hadn’t seen him cry since—well, probably five years ago, when he’d quit drinking for the last time.

He’d cried when Mom died, choking and wailing and occasionally letting slip with “Why, God?” But sometimes he’d be sitting in front of the television and silent tears would slide down his cheeks, his eyes as dull as whatever baseball game he happened to be watching. Tears that reflected the colors of the screen, made somehow more disturbing by the sparkles of green and blue. They were the kind of tears that had no cause or reason, and she’d wondered if they would ever end.

These tears had that quality, of having leaked from cracks on a parched cliffside after seeping, crawling, and trickling for miles to find their way to the surface.

He turned his head, as slowly as a ventriloquist’s dummy. He was smiling, and that was even creepier.

“She’s here, honey,” he whispered.

Kendra looked around the room, expecting that fat lady in the lime-colored blouse. But the room was empty except for the Ouija board on the coffee table.

“Some of the hunters are getting antsy,” she said. “You might want to check in at the control room.”

“We’re done,” he said, in that same spaced-out voice. “Now I know.”

“Know what?”

Dad stood up, so wobbly that Kendra’s breath caught and she glanced around his feet for a bottle. Her nursing days were done. She was Emily Dee, not Florence Nightingale.

“Your mother’s okay,” Dad said.

“I barely had a mother, remember? Pictures and stories, that’s all I got, and I don’t have much more of a father.”

Ouch. The words hurt to say them, but they felt good in a way, because they were honest. Digger was more of a fictional character these days than a human being. If only she could erase him like she could Mom.

The verbal slap seemed to pull Wayne back to Planet Earth. “I saw your mother.”

A quiet “Wacaroni” was all she could manage.

His face was earnest, eyes shifting from dull gray to a bright green. “She was standing right there in the corner and she...and she….”

His pointing finger lowered. “She said your name.”

“Mine? Like, she’s dead, she jumped the shark on me when I was barely out of kindergarten, and now she cares?”

She’d said the words louder than she’d meant to, and they rattled off the flat walls of the room and gave an echo among the bathroom tiles. The force behind them was driven by fear as much as anger, because she’d found ways to push Dad’s buttons over the years, through careful trial and error. But now he appeared beyond control, ready for a shrink and a rubber room.

Dad didn’t believe in ghosts. Dad barely believed in Dad.

“Man, you two must have been the perfect couple,” she said.

“No, but we made the perfect child,” he said, fumbling at his hip for his walkie talkie.

“Dad, there’s nothing here,” she said. “There never was.”

“I made a promise,” he said.

“When have you ever kept a promise? How many times was the Tooth Fairy three days late? How many times was I the only kid whose parent didn’t show up for the soccer game?”

“Kendra, this isn’t the time to—”

“I know. It never is. There’s always ‘one day.’ In case you didn’t notice, I’ve got boobs and all my permanent teeth and a driver’s permit and ‘one day’ I’m going to be packing my stuff and heading for art school. And a year later you’ll be sitting there wondering where what’s-her-name went.”

Wayne held the walkie talkie in front of him, thumb resting on the “send” button. “She’s here.”

He brushed past her, lifting the walkie talkie to his mouth. Kendra reached out and slapped at it, knocking it onto the floor. The case cracked open and the batteries tumbled across the carpet.

Her heart fluttered with rage, but a ball of ice lodged in her belly. Dad had never hit her, never even really spanked her, but once in a while he exploded over the smallest thing. And now she was just like him, a character in her own comic book.

Not Emily Dee, not a hero. Just The Digger’s Daughter. A loser.

She looked at her right hand, the one that had drawn reams and reams of goofy mice, fanged fairies, satirical superduperheroes, and even a few sly caricatures of Digger himself. Despite all Mom’s guidance, maybe this was the hand’s true purpose—not to create, but to destroy.

“She told me to get you out of here,” Wayne said, falling back into space-cadet mode.

“She’s dead,” Kendra said, her voice quavering.

“She came back.”

“Where?” Kendra flung up her arms to indicate the shabby elegance of the dark room. “Where?”

“Here.”

“Here is nowhere, Dad. Why should she come back to this dump, of all places? Why couldn’t she show up for my eighth-grade graduation or when I won my red ribbon in the Smart Art contest? Pierced ears and first period? When I got my skateboard scar? I guess I should be glad she bothered to show up for my birth.”

“You were born here.”

“Jesus in butter toast. I was born in Charlotte, remember? Unless I was abandoned by gypsies or dropped by a UFO.” Her hand still trembled, so she wrapped it into a fist, but that was even scarier because it felt good.

“This is where we made you. We weren’t trying or anything, it just happened.”

“Dad, you’re scaring me.” And, Mom, if you can hear me, YOU’RE scaring me, too.

“On our honeymoon. Here. In this room.”

“Too much information.” She didn’t want to think about her parents making out, but she wondered why Dad was so sure this was the place. When Cassie, the trailer-park chick at middle school, started swelling in the belly at age 13, she’d told her classmates that “a woman knew.” But she doubted if the man ever knew.

“In a weird way, this is where we all started. The three of us. And now we’re all together again.”

“Except the part where Mom’s dead. I’m worried about you, Digger.”

He stooped and gathered the walkie talkie batteries. As he did, the shadow behind him seemed a little slow in shifting. But the room was dark, she was jumpy, and she didn’t trust her senses right now. Especially the faint aroma of smoke and the soft, slithery sounds coming from the corners of the room.

Wayne pressed the button on the reassembled walkie talkie. “Digger here. We got activity in 218.”

The speaker spat static and Burton’s voice came through in broken bits. “...problem...control room...equipment on the fritz....”

“On my way,” Wayne said. He looked at her. “Come on.”

“Be there in a minute.” She wanted to prove she didn’t need him. She could stand on her own, tough it out, take his best shot. I ain’t afraida no ghost.

“She’s here,” Wayne said, and then he was gone, as elusive as any wayward spirit.

He left the door open, but the entering light did little to repel the gathering gloom. If only she had her sketch pad, her shield, her greatest weapon. Doodle Girl, saving the world one sketch at a time. Saving herself.

“Okay, room,” she said aloud, startled by the sudden shattering of the silence. She addressed the room because she didn’t want to address her mother. Her mother was only an idea at this point, a memory. A dream of a warm, loving lap, crayons, and laughs. Nothing you could hug when the night grew deep and cold or you scabbed your ankle or freaked out after taking your first puff of grass.

They always leave you with nothing.

“Whaddya got?” she said.

Meaning: Mom, I’d get really freaked out if you’re here.

Sounds came from the hallway, and they were the normal chatter of a ghost-hunting group, complaints about logistics and equipment failure. Kendra wasn’t brave enough to close the door, because then she’d be alone with—

Alone with her thoughts, and no pen and paper to hide behind.

“Mom, where are you?”

“Hey,” someone whispered.

She jumped, though the whisper sounded real enough.

“Who’s there?”

“Me,” said the boy, and Bruce stepped from the shadows.

“How long have you been here?” she said, hiding the quaver in her voice. For just a heartbeat, she’d hoped—or feared—it had been her mother after all.

“Not long,” he said.

“Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

“Daddy doesn’t know where I am.” The boy’s head hung down and his skin was sallow in the weak light.

“You overheard our argument, didn’t you? Is that what you do, sneak around and spy on people?”

“No, just bored.”

“Well, go be bored somewhere else.”

“You mom’s gone.”

“That’s what I figured. But it’s not any business of yours.”

“Hey, look, 218 is open,” said someone in the hall.

Bruce moved with startling speed and slammed the door. The room was now almost fully dark, lit only by light from the lampposts below.

She couldn’t discern the boy’s outline, so she shouted in the direction of the door. “What did you do that for, twerp?”

He giggled as if playing a game. Someone pounded on the door from outside.

Kendra moved across the carpet, bumping her shin on the coffee table. She bit back a curse and continued to the door, feeling her way in front of her. Voices from outside the door expressed annoyance:

“It’s locked. We’re supposed to hunt here.”

“This is the worst-organized paracon I’ve ever attended.”

“At least the ghosts are having fun.”

Kendra felt along the door until she found the knob, then turned it, bracing herself for embarrassment. Instead, the handle froze.

The room grew darker and Bruce was making a strange noise behind her, halfway between a yowl of pain anda low chuckle. She clawed at the door, desperate for light and air, longing for escape. She knocked on the wood, which was pointless, since the people on the other side were knocking as well.

Fingers brushed across her hair. The little twerp was pestering her, playing games. “Stop it, Bruce. Or I’ll….”

What? Tell on him? Give him a spanking?

The voices on the other side of the door were receding, as if the hunters had given up. “Wait!” Kendra shouted. “I’m locked in.”

The fingers were gone and now there was a squeak, as if Bruce had climbed up on the bed. Then the bedsprings creaked in rhythm, and she could barely make out his form jumping up and down as he cried in a sing-song chant:

“Lock the door and throw away the key,

Stay and play with Mommy and me,

Lock the door and throw away the key,

Stay and play with Mommy and me.”

“Is your mommy here?” Kendra shouted.

He giggled and scrambled off the bed. “No, but yours is.”

Then he crawled under the bed, his muffled laughter almost spookier than his sudden appearance. The little guy had probably gone bonkers, stuck here at the hotel all the time. Nothing to do but find hidden doors and hallways, sneak around and play tricks on the guests, and get people in trouble. She’d probably feel sorry for him as soon as she got done kicking his little butt.

She was kneeling and peering under the bed when the room exploded in light, the door swinging open. Cody stood there in his SSI jumpsuit, a flashlight in his hand.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“Nothing,” she said, trying to act cool, though her cheeks were hot and flushed. “This little twerp—”

She looked under the bed. Nothing there but a rumpled tissue and a thin coat of undisturbed dust.

“I saw Digger leave the room on the video monitor,” Cody said. “When you didn’t come out, I got worried.”

Kendra rose and sat on the bed. “Digger’s not the only one seeing things that aren’t there.”

“You can’t trust anything here,” Cody said. “The MAC Attack is going apeshit. The readings are all over the place. Something’s active for sure.”

“Not you, too,” she said, exhaustion seeping into her bones. Here she was in a darkened bedroom with the stud-muffin Future of Horror, who was apparently paying attention to her whereabouts, but all she wanted was a warm bath and a stack of Red Sonja comics. She was so sick of ghost hunters and their pathetic attempts to reach the Other Side.

“You better get out of here,” Cody said as Digger’s voice erupted in a burst of fuzz from his walkie talkie.

“Nah, I like this room,” she said, lying back on the bed.

“I don’t mean the room,” he said. “I mean the inn.”

“And let the Digger win? You got to be kidding.”

“Damn it, Kendra, don’t be so hard-headed. You don’t mess around with demons.”

She was almost pleased at his anger. Passion was passion, after all, and even though she didn’t quite know what to do with it, arousing it inspired a certain kind of creativity and power. No wonder ghost hunters created their own drama, and invisible drama was the best kind of all. “You better get that,” she said, as Digger repeated his request for all SSI personnel to report to the control room.

“I’m not leaving without you,” he said.

“What’s with people and promises?” she said. “They must have put something funny in the complimentary coffee.”

Cody crossed the room and she closed her eyes, sensing him looming over her. She wondered if he would try anything, but he’d left the door open and he was still wearing that ridiculous jumpsuit. And she wasn’t sure what she would do if he bent close, what with the peeping twerp and the mysterious self-locking door and the fact that she was going to carry her virginity to college. She held her breath and Digger summoned his staff once more.

She sensed Cody’s hesitation, and then the child’s whisper came.

“Stay.”

Kendra opened her eyes. “Did you hear that?”

Cody shook his head. “Come on. The hunt group is coming.”

Chapter 25

The Roach was sure the portal lay below, in the basement.

Intellectually, there was no reason to assume demons would emerge from the ground. Hell was not a lake of fire beneath the surface of the Earth. God had sent the fallen angels to do His dirty work, and so they were as likely to drift down on snowflakes, sluice along on a river current, or ride the wind like the spores of a diseased fungus. No, demons didn’t come from a place—they were everywhere, at all times, in their own dimension and moving parallel to the human world.

In some locations, the fabric between the two dimensions grew thinner, particularly in sites of geographic tension, and The Roach had formed a theory that the nearby Eastern Continental Divide had played havoc here. The blue quartz he’d observed was pocked with crystals, and while the New Age devotees held crystals to be a healing power, The Roach believed energy itself was neither good nor bad. The results of that energy, however, meant the difference between salvation and damnation.

When Wayne Wilson had summoned everyone back to the control room, The Roach had directed his group to rendezvous with the rest of the hunters. He worked best alone, though he wasn’t above using innocents to lure demons into the open. If a spiritually vulnerable person opened themselves to invasion and possession, no demon could resist. The trick was to destroy the demon before it took over the host.

The Roach navigated the first floor, running into several frustrated hunters who decided the bar offered more entertainment than the hunts did. One guest had asked him what was going on, and The Roach shrugged and said, “The hunts got off track. It happens.”

A surveillance camera was rigged in the top corner of the hallway, and The Roach gave it a little half-salute. He turned down the dim and dirty hallway that led to the basement. Two women stood by the door, wielding EMF meters, cameras slung around their necks.

“Are you the hunt leader?” said the one with bottle-blonde hair.

“The basement hunt is tomorrow night,” The Roach replied.

“Sheezus, Nancy,” said the other woman, who was a decade younger, ebony-skinned, and shaped like a pear. “We’ve wasted an hour.”

“It wasn’t wasted,” Nancy said. “We got some good readings. But I’d sure like to get in that basement. I know there’s something behind this door.”

“How’s your spiritual condition?” The Roach asked.

“I’m born again but getting over it,” Nancy said.

The pear-shaped woman said, “Well, I usually don’t talk about it, but I’ll tell you anyway. I’m a demonologist. Eloise Lanier. Maybe you’ve read my blog?”

The Roach bit back his smile. Another armchair warrior in the battle between Good and Evil. He doubted if she’d endured the six-month purification process or undertaken the enlightened conversation with God that separated the Dark Arts dilettante from True Warrior of Light. Eloise had probably seen too many “Touched by an Angel” re-runs and now felt the calling to go forth and save the troubled and wicked.

“If you’re a demonologist, we’re in good hands,” he said.

“It was the sin of pride that made them demons,” Eloise said. “And the last thing I want to do is brag about my abilities.”

“Pride is Lucifer’s main weapon,” The Roach said. “But I doubt if he’s hiding in the basement of the White Horse when he could be out somewhere doing some real damage.”

“We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out, I suppose,” Nancy said, a little relieved.

“Well, I happen to have a key,” he said. While he’d been prepared to work alone and at least make contact with the demons, if not engage in full spiritual combat, he figured God had delivered these two women for a reason. And who was he to doubt the wisdom of God’s ways?

The Roach fished the key out of his pocket while Eloise beamed and Nancy fretted. Wayne and the rest of SSI would notice his absence, but they were aware of his calling. You could argue religion, you could argue paranormal evidence, you could argue science, but you couldn’t argue faith.

And The Roach’s faith was strong. Here was proof of God’s blessing. God had provided bait.

“Are you ready to meet him?” he said, with appropriate gravity.

“Him?” Eloise said to Nancy. “See, I told you it wasn’t Margaret Percival.”

God, keep me strong in thy service.

The basement door opened to the expected musty, earthen smell, but The Roach detected an underlying whiff of coal ash. Lucifer had no problem gathering around the campfire and swapping war stories. But The Roach sensed that Belial was the shaper here, the one treating the inn as his personal dollhouse. Belial, as the demon of lies and deceit, had a special power to corrupt, as humans were all too willing to believe what they wanted to believe.

“Shall we, ladies?” he said, bowing and ushering them forward with his arm.

“It’s dark,” Nancy said.

“Better that way,” Eloise said, though she no longer seemed so eager to enter the basement.

“Don’t worry,” The Roach said, fingering his crucifix so they couldn’t miss the gesture. “I’ll take care of you.”

He tried the light switch just inside the basement door, though he knew it was dead. He switched on the miner’s-style mag light strapped to his toboggan and descended the stairs. “Follow me.”

The two women must have been avid watchers of the popular paranormal shows, for both had flashlights recommended by the “experts.” Eloise came first, her yellowish flashlight beam mixing with the mag-light’s blue beam to cast the basement floor in a sickly green glow. Nancy had enough presence of mind to switch on her audio recorder and whisper, “Entering the basement. 11:56 p.m. Three people present.”

Four minutes until midnight. In many occult systems, midnight marked the thinnest point between the physical and spiritual realms. In locations of high energy or turbulence, invisible doors opened and realms overlapped. The lost and the weak from both sides wandered where they shouldn’t, and some never made it back to their side of the border.

The trio reached the concrete pad at the foot of the stairs, the crumbling gray platform giving way to a sea of dirt. The Roach surveyed the battlefield and decided it was as suitable as any. Higher ground was easier to defend, but frontal assaults were best made on level terrain.

“What was that?” Eloise said, her flashlight cutting frantic swathes along the support timbers and slick stone walls.

“Something moved over there,” Nancy said, drawing nearer to The Roach.

He pulled the tiny flask of holy water from his belt. His Latin was rusty. The Catholic Church got all the credit for holding back the tide of demons, but in truth it just had the best publicity department. With their coy denial of exorcisms and their pretense at secrecy, the church leaders held a monopoly on awe. They were no more immune to pride than any of God’s servants.

The beauty of a dead language was that the average person had no idea what you were saying. Demons spoke in tongues and cared more about intention than literal interpretation. But words conveyed magic and gave force to beliefs and desires. Spoken aloud, they were the difference between mere thought and true will.

“Repeat after me,” The Roach whispered.

The two women would assume he was casting a protective spell, though cloaked in the church instead of witchcraft. From the shadows, Belial pulsed with pleasure at the trickery. But he would not make a full appearance until the hosts were ripe and willing, and in its greed and lust the demon would become vulnerable. The best time to slay a pig was when its nose was buried in the trough.

“Beati possidentes, et di minores abyssum invocat.”

The women echoed a jumbled, half-hearted imitation.

The invocation was swallowed by the dead, heavy air of the basement. The Roach waded a few more feet into the murk, luring his sacrifices closer to the portal. As he swiveled his head, the mag-light bounced along the walls, illuminating chinks and crevices in the stone. A low suspiration wended through the maze of beams and pipes, a noise that could have been mistaken for flowing water or the hum of the ventilation system.

“What did he say?” Nancy whispered, but Eloise shushed her.

Belial was dangerous because he had a chip on his shoulder. Whereas most of the demons in the pantheon were happy to commit evil for its own sake, Belial had once been celebrated as the main fallen angel, and early texts even called him the father of Lucifer and the one who inspired the revolt against God. Yet somewhere between the butchering of the Old Testament and the giddy pop presentation of the EZ Read Bible, Belial had slipped down the ladder and Lucifer now lorded over the lesser gods.

While Lucifer was content lapping up the cream God so generously dished out, growing fat and contented, Belial was working overtime. The Roach had crossed paths with it before, but that was years ago and The Roach had made many mistakes, most of them born of overconfidence. Belial had no doubt grown stronger, for the world was ripe with the fruit of sin, but The Roach was wiser, too. He’d learned to play the game on their terms and turn their own arrogance against them.

“What’s that sound?” Nancy said.

The breath of your worst nightmare.

“It’s a discarnate spirit,” Eloise said, her sureness waning as they moved deeper into the basement.

“11:59,” Nancy whispered into her recorder. “Apparent audio evidence noted.”

“Belial, master of this world,” The Roach intoned. “I offer you these gifts and hope you find them worthy.”

At the edge of the mag-light’s reach, swirls of darkness struggled to coalesce. The beam dimmed and The Roach’s skin puckered despite the surge of warmth. Even the rectangle of light from the doorway above went a shade toward orange, as if Belial were draining the hotel’s electrical system to power up and drag himself into the material world. Belial could manifest in any form it chose, though most demons went with the old standby of horns, fangs, and reptilian eyes, at least until they found a suitable subject to possess.

“I see it,” Eloise whispered.

“Margaret Percival?” Nancy said.

“Yes,” came the response, though the sibilant word was lost in the distant thrum of the elevator.

“Taking a flash photograph,” Nancy duly noted for the benefit of the recording. The Roach wondered which image the demon would allow to be captured. The flash illuminated half the basement, and Eloise gave a choked squeal.

Belial decided to give the full Monty.

Though it was only for a split-second as the flash died away to a beeping that indicated dead batteries, the image burned itself into The Roach’s retinas. At least eight feet tall, three horns brushing against the floor joists, a wrinkled, trollish face, narrow eyes with yellowed, elliptical pupils, grotesque green musculature of the torso set atop scrawny legs that ended in cloven hooves, and between its thighs dangled—

The door slammed as their flashlights died.

“God help us,” Eloise shouted in the utter darkness.

Must be midnight. Let’s party.

The Roach held up the crucifix, confident that he’d be able to sear Belial’s form back to ash and sulfur. A hot wind rushed by him in the dark.

There was a thump and a heavy, sodden sound as one of the women moaned.Forgive me, Lord, for I have been mistaken.

Belial grunted and smacked drenched lips. The Roach slid his night-vision goggles into place, crouching into a defensive posture. He wielded the crucifix like a knife, shocked to see the demon bent over Nancy, slavering away at her throat.

Sucking her soul…

Belial dropped Nancy’s corpse and roared, dark liquid dripping from its serrated fangs. It snarled at The Roach, no trace of cunning in its beady eyes.

“I rescind my invitation,’ The Roach said, his voice quavering.

Belial either didn’t hear him or didn’t care. It turned toward Eloise, hot breath raising the temperature of the basement. Eloise backed away, probably seeking the stairs but inadvertently heading deeper into the basement. The Roach’s night-vision goggles painted a green landscape that looked like the surface of an alien and hostile planet. And, indeed it was, for this world was now ruled by Belial.

“God have mercy,” Eloise blubbered. God had been merciful by darkening the room and taking away the vision of the horned beast before her. But her faith was weak. And that only made Belial stronger.

“Leave her, Belial,” The Roach challenged. “It’s me you want.”

The demon’s claws reached for the woman’s tear-stained face, but then it hesitated and turned its hideous face toward The Roach. The crucifix didn’t deflect the hostility of the stare, nor the wariness in the hooded eyes.

Obey me, you horny-headed bastard.

The Roach listened for God’s instructions. He was a mere emissary, and only through the power of the Lord could he stand a chance here. Otherwise, he would share the fate of the two women whose faith offered no protection in the face of supernal evil.

But Belial’s bellow drowned out any message God might have delivered, and it set upon Eloise like a torrid lover, wrapping her in sinewy arms and squeezing her in the throes of depraved passion.

She issued a final gasp as her lungs emptied in Belial’s embrace. The forked tongue whipped out and licked its cracked, wet lips. Belial’s head dipped and the creature buried its grin against the woman’s gaping mouth.

Eloise struggled with the last of her energy, her digital camcorder bouncing to the dirt. Her eyes bulged and then she went limp in Belial’s grasp. He exhaled and filled her with loathsome unlife. As her fingers twitched and curled, The Roach took a tentative step forward, begging God for courage and wisdom and strength.

“Now you are mine, Belial,” The Roach said. “You have taken what I gave and must do my bidding.”

Belial hesitated, still pumping his foul wind into Eloise. Her eyelids fluttered and she reached one hand to Belial’s neck for support.

The Roach lifted the crucifix higher, expecting the demon to recoil in disgust. “By the master of angels above, I command thee to obey.”

Belial gave a bone-deep shudder and threw its head back, growling in agony and rage. The Roach pressed his advantage now that the demon was caught between its intended host and its current corporeal manifestation. He jabbed the tip of the crucifix into the creature’s back, the silver slicing through the scaly flesh.

Ichor gushed from the wound, appearing black through the night-vision goggles. The roar of rage gained pitch and intensity, almost the keening of a teakettle. Belial thrashed about, sending a clawed fist toward The Roach, but he’d already withdrawn his weapon and stepped away. He reached for the holy water, knowing it would burn like acid on the split skin.

But before he could react, Belial collapsed.

The tip must have reached his heart and poisoned it with the love of Christ.

The Roach stood over the trembling bulk. He had eradicated demons before, and they could only be defeated, never destroyed. Belial would return at another time and place, and The Roach or some other soldier of light would be there in God’s service. He tested the corpse with the tip of his boot, but the corrupt flesh was already decaying to ash and dust.

Eloise moaned and The Roach knelt to her prone form.

“May God bless you,” The Roach said, checking her pulse. With luck, she would remember nothing, and he’d only have Nancy’s corpse to deal with.

Eloise rolled to her knees, graceful for such a robust woman recovering from shock. “Dark....”

“Easy,” The Roach said. “I think you fell down the stairs and bumped your head.”

“Dark is....”

He reached for her, intending to help her to her feet. The blow came suddenly and powerfully, taking his breath and loosening his teeth as bone crunched in his cheek. He lay in the dirt, blood pouring from his nostrils as he squinted through the cock-eyed goggles.

“Pride goeth before a fall,” Eloise said, though her voice was rough and thick as if she were unused to the size of her tongue. The woman knelt and wiped a hand beneath his nose, then licked at the blood on her fingers. He watched her walk toward the stairs, his green field of vision going gray.

CHAPTER 26

“The jumper is awesome,” Duncan said.

Ann didn’t understand him at first. She’d drowsed after the hurried round of lovemaking, intending to recharge her batteries and be at full alert for the after-midnight hunts. She opened her eyes thinking they were in Duncan’s apartment, a cramped walk-up two blocks from campus. The smell of coffee reminded her of Sunday morning, and she smiled at the thought of those languid hours ahead, with no classes, no responsibilities, and nowhere else to be. Duncan clicked the computer keys, the first out of bed as usual, browsing all his favorite Internet haunts.

This is how a woman should awaken. The only thing missing is breakfast in bed.

She’d been dreaming of horseback riding, an activity she’d pursued in her teens before the high maintenance costs forced her family to sell her pony. The metaphorical connection was so obvious that she jarred fully awake and recalled she was at the White Horse Inn.

Duncan, not realizing she’d been asleep, said, “That footage is so good it almost fooled me. Who shot it for you?”

“What footage?”

“The jumper. The guy who skewered himself on the lamp post. I thought you weren’t going to have time to do that one.”

She kicked the blankets away and reached for her blouse. “All I shot was the Jilted Bride.”

“Come on, Ann. I’m not one of those idiots who believes anything you tell them.”

She grabbed for his coffee mug and took a mouthful of cool, bitter brew. “We’ve already used up all the footage. I told you we’d have to go into replay mode.”

“Well, I don’t know how this got on the hard drive, then.”

Duncan leaned away from the screen to reveal grainy, pixelated movement. She squinted and recognized the room. It was 312, the curtains featuring ornate braided piping that was at odds with the furniture. The room appeared to have been outfitted with leftovers, with imitation Queen Anne chairs, hand-hewn tables, a sagging art-deco vase holding flowers, and an impressionist painting that suggested a wooded lake. Though the picture was monochromatic, her memory filled in the autumnal color scheme of the room.

“We didn’t put a projector in 312,” Ann said. “Remember, we ran out of time.”

Duncan consulted his notes, brow furrowed, face stark and haggard in the lamplight. “You sure that’s 312?”

“That ugly painting. I made a remark about a flea-market find.”

“Yeah,” Duncan said, tapping the keys. “Let me run the program again.”

A window popped up on the bottom of the screen, revealing a video-editing program. He scrolled backward with the mouse and hit “Play.” The footage loop began. The first 10 seconds showed the still room, but then a man entered the camera view and threw the curtains wide, nearly knocking them from the rod in his haste. He wore a bow tie and had slicked-down hair, pouches under his tired eyes. He flipped the window latch and lifted the lower pane, shaking with what appeared to be sobs or rage.

“Check the clothes,” Duncan said. “Izod shirt and LL Bean plaid pants. Totally Eighties.”

Ann nodded. Those were the types of details she’d have included if she’d had time to rig another loop of fake footage. The suicide jumper had died in 1981, the dawn of the Reagan Era.

The jumper punched the window screen out with one foot and climbed onto the ledge. He gave one baleful, hopeless look back at the camera, and then he launched himself into the night beyond the window. The curtains swayed and settled back into the place, and again the room was still.

“I’ve never seen that before,” Ann said.

“It’s on the hard drive and the file is called ‘Jumper.’”

Ann looked at the split monitors in the corners of the screen. “Bring up the control room spycam,” she said.

Duncan enlarged one of the boxes, revealing the room where several SSI members gathered around a computer. The good-looking, long-haired skater punk was working the keys, drawing their attention to the computer screen. A rack of various meters, sound equalizers, and video gear towered on the table beside him. Whatever the teen’s skill level, he had enough tech toys to put on a show.

“The little fucker must have hacked us,” Ann said.

“Impossible,” Duncan said. “We’re double-firewalled. Plus he’s running a Mac.”

“How else do you explain it?” Actually, there was one other explanation: for some reason, Duncan was engineering an end run. He must have uploaded the footage while she wasn’t around and now was staging a “What the hell?” act.

“Let’s watch it again,” Duncan set, restarting the video file. The scene played out just as before, only this time the jumper had a faint smile on his face. The difference was subtle enough that Ann convinced herself it was part of the con Duncan was running.

After the man disappeared through the window, Ann said, “Back it up.”

She didn’t understand why Duncan would go to such lengths just for simple revenge. She’d warned him repeatedly that their relationship was doomed to end before the semester was over, and that she never let her dalliances linger too long.

Never screw a Scorpio. They always plant the stinger when you step on them.

As Duncan worked the mouse and reset the file, Ann decided to play along instead of busting him. The jumper repeated his sullen trek across the room, pausing at the window, and this time he lifted his hand slightly in greeting.

“Did you see that?” Duncan said.

“His hand.”

“I swear this is the same file. Something freaky is going on.”

“Maybe it’s just another haunted computer.”

“The kid hacked us.”

The jumper went out the window, recreating his suicidal leap. Duncan let the clip play through until the curtains were once again still.

“If SSI was on to us, do you think they’d bother playing games?” Ann said. “Wouldn’t they come right out and challenge us instead of wasting all these resources?”

“Don’t forget the time and energy we’ve spent on debunking,” Duncan said. “When you’re on a mission, common sense goes out the window.”

“Literally,” Ann said as the file repeated. This time the man paused at the window but didn’t climb onto the sill. Something about the picture was different.

Curtains.

The curtains were now flimsy white cotton, thin enough to be translucent. Like the curtains in their room.

Ann and Duncan turned toward the window at the same time. The jumper gave a small wave and forlorn grin, and launched himself through the window. The closed window.

“Was that a video file or real time?” Ann asked.

“I have no idea.”

“See if I show up on the clip.” Ann moved toward the window, holding her hand in front of her as if expecting to sweep the jumper away like a cobweb.

“Nothing,” he said. “All it shows is the window.”

“Still frame?”

“No, the curtains are blowing.”

“Maybe I scared him away,” Ann said, reaching the window. She glanced to the ground below, where a spill of lamplight laid a wide yellow circle on the dying lawn. The jumper stood on the lawn, looking up at her.

She took an involuntary step backward. “He’s down there.”

Duncan left the computer and joined her, but just before he reached the window, the jumper pointed above Ann and stepped back into darkness. Except she wasn’t sure he stepped. He could have simply drifted or dissolved.

“I don’t see anything,” Duncan said.

“I’ll bet SSI rigged the game,” Ann said. “Doing the same thing we’re doing, planting images and clips to work the hunters into a frenzy. They took it a step further and hired an actor.”

“I don’t see how they could hack our system,” Duncan said. “The computer’s hardly been out of my sight and we’re not networked, so there’s no way in.”

“Either that, or admit we’ve had a supernatural encounter.”

“I’m not admitting anything.”

“Whoever he was, he was pointing above my head.”

Duncan leaned back and peered at her. “Shit.”

“What?”

He waved his hand over her head as if brushing away a fly. “Your black halo.”

Ann put her own hands above her head. “This is no time for—”

She caught her distorted reflection in the window and there it sat, floating a couple of inches over her hair. Beyond the glass, the jumper slumped broken and skewered halfway down the lamppost, the lamp housing shattered but still radiating a sickly yellow light. As she tried to gather enough air to speak, the jumper slid down and separated himself from the pole. He patted it as if to say, “It’s here when you need it.”

“Get Wayne Wilson,” Ann said.

Duncan opened his mouth to protest, but Ann twisted her face into Bitch Mode. He nodded and retreated.

After the door closed, Ann went to the bathroom and checked the mirror. The halo looked as solid as forged steel. She grabbed at it, not knowing what she’d do when she had it, but her fingers passed through. Her eyes glittered in fright but her face was locked into Bitch Mode, no matter how much she worked her jowls to erase the expression.

She hated to admit it, but the halo was a nice accessory to Bitch Mode.

There had to be a scientific explanation, even if her brain was flooding itself with toxins and upsetting her perception.

As a researcher, she understood that the simplest answer was usually the right one.

And, in this case, that meant she was most likely a demonic bitch possessed by a denizen of hell.

And it wasn’t so bad.

A smile wended its way into the Bitch Mode facade.

Chapter 27

Wayne hummed the Monkees tune “I’m a Believer.”

He’d seen her face, and now he could no longer doubt. He didn’t know what she was now—a lost soul, a displaced memory of God, a photographic impression on the emulsion of reality, or simply an angel—but she was back again.

When she’d said “Forever,” she meant it.

Wayne couldn’t decide whether Amelia or Cristos would be the better channeler, but somehow he had to maintain contact with Beth. He rounded the corner toward 218 and nearly slammed into Burton.

“Digger,” Burton said. “Where ya been?”

“Busy,” Wayne said.

“Roach is AWOL, and so is the hotel manager, the MAC Attack is on the fritz, and we’re getting lots of actives. If I didn’t know better, I’d say all hell is breaking loose.”

“Cancel the hunts,” Wayne said.

Burton’s jaw dropped. “Fifty-seven registered and we got a lot of money tied up—”

“Give it back. I’ve got something more important to do.”

Wayne brushed past Burton, who grabbed at his shoulder. Wayne slapped the hand away and wheeled, eyes narrowed. “She’s here. I don’t care what the machines say.”

“Boss, we better—”

“Handle it,” Wayne said, already halfway down the hall. “The Digger is hanging up his shovel.”

He decided on Cristos Rubio, remembering how the man’s eyes had darkened while conning Gelbaugh. As Wayne descended the stairs, music and laughter trickled from the bar. Probably some of the hunters had found an outlet for their spare time.

You could pop in for a quick one. Just one little bitty shot.

He licked his lips and could almost taste the whiskey. His head swam in imagined pleasure and he nearly lost his balance on the steps. That was just the kind of thinking that caused people to say, “The Devil made me do it.” Because who’d ever want to own up to poor choices, bad behavior, and swallowing sweet poison when there was someone or something else to blame?

“What’s the harm in it, Digger?”

He looked around, unsure where the voice had come from. Someone was laughing on the second floor, but that voice was distant. This one had been near his ear.

He continued down the stairs, intent on passing the bar without a glance. A Rolling Stones song was grinding across the room and spilling from the door like cigarette smoke. Glass clinked and several dozen tongues blended into one thick murmur, televisions casting kaleidoscopic light. He couldn’t help himself. Blame the bar mirror, blame the Devil, blame the goddamned weather, but he had to look.

His eyes went first to the row of amber bottles stacked at the back of the bar, then over to the bartender, a spike-haired young man with a thick neck, then back to the bottles. He told his feet to keep right on walking, because he had a date with his dead wife, but drunks knew how to screw things up at the most inconvenient times. That’s what they did best, and who was he to try to be better? When the devil made you do something, well, what could you expect besides the worst?

Besides, Cristos Rubio was sitting at the bar, perched on a stool like a frog sitting on a lakeside rock and waiting for a fly.

I can kill two birds with one stone.

Wayne was already through the door before he realized there was no second bird. He waved to a group of ghost hunters gathered in a booth. A couple nodded at him, apparently harboring no ill will over the disrupted schedule. Booze greased the squeakiest wheels, Wayne well knew, and he was feeling a bit rusty himself. The beer signs, dart board, karaoke stage, cigarette machine, and half-empty glasses were screaming “Welcome home,” and even the solemn Cristos was smiling at him.

Wayne made it to the bar before his knees went weak, and the bar stool was there to catch him.

“Deegger Weelson,” Cristos slurred in this thick accent.

“Cristos, I need some help.”

“You need a drink, compadre.”

Wayne swallowed. He’d promised Kendra. He’d even promised Beth, in the closest thing that ever passed for a prayer from his lips. Today I can do it. Today will be different. This time I can control myself.

“No, I just want to talk to you about something,” he said. On the television in the corner, two prize fighters were swapping body punches, one of them riding the ropes as if waiting out the bell.

“I know,” Cristos said. “That’s why I wait here for you.”

Cristos slid a drink coaster toward him. Wayne looked down at the design. It was the same snake illustration that had adorned Gelbaugh’s surprise Tarot card, the serpent entwined with a tree, its forked tongue flicking out from a vague reptilian smile.

“How did you do that?” Wayne asked, but Cristos was signaling the bartender. The Peruvian seer tapped his glass and held up two brown fingers.

“You wonder about fate,” Cristos said. “The will versus the randomness of chance.”

“I...had an experience.” Actually, he’d had several, but lies were easier than promises.

“Chance or will?”

“Does it matter?”

“I have read the cards for many years. The outcome is always the same.”

“I saw my dead wife.”

Cristos stared at his own reflection in the bar mirror. Wayne looked beyond the row of glistening bottles and saw Violet at a table, leaning forward and talking with a handsome, curly-haired man. He considered asking her about Janey Mays, but then the bartender was pushing a whiskey sour under his nose and his world was reduced to four ounces of golden fluid and half a dozen ice cubes.

“We see what we want to see,” Cristos said.

“Don’t give me that crap about wishful thinking,” Wayne said. “I’ve been selling it for years.”

“And it led you to the White Horse Inn, Black Rock, North Carolina. The way it should be.” Cristos tilted back his head and tasted his fresh drink.

“I’ve been here before.”

“We each live many lives.”

“No, I mean in this one. My wife and I were staying here sixteen years ago when we made a pact. If one of us died, we’d meet here.”

“And now you are surprised. Would you not have kept the promise if you had been first to die?”

“It should have been me. The world needed her more.” Wayne reached out and touched the dew that beaded the whiskey glass.

“Maybe the next world needed her even more. Angels aren’t born. They die.”

Wayne searched the man’s eyes but they were black and cold, as impassive as midnight on a distant moon. “I can’t believe beyond this one.”

Wayne nudged the drink away, but only a few inches. Through the bottom of the glass, the snake on the coaster undulated, the forked tongue slipping in and out. The music, chatter, and laughter swelled to a crescendo, as if a church choir had hit the Rapture chord.

“Perhaps a question,” Cristos said. “Did you come back because you expected to meet her? Or because you were certain she wouldn’t?”

“This conference.” Wayne swept his hand out to indicate the hotel. “It had nothing to do with the promise. It’s a haunted hotel and that’s what I do.”

“Will or fate?”

Wayne touched the glass again. “The outcome is the same.”

“Not yet.”

Wayne had the glass to his lips and the first swallow burned a sweet path to his belly. He thought of Kendra and the expression in her eyes when she found him—a look that said she knew it all along, that the Digger was determined to hollow out his own grave and bury himself. The second swallow washed that vision away, and his gut warmed as if the banked coals of hell had been stoked into a cheerful blaze.

Cristos nodded in approval. “Welcome back.”

Digger Wilson could summon the courage to face Beth and do what he had to do. He figured three drinks would be enough.

Chapter 28

“So, what do you think of this place?” Violet picked at the label of her Corona bottle, aware that it was the international bar-scene signal for horniness. She wasn’t sure she was horny, not yet, but Phillippe definitely had potential. According to Cosmo and Glamour, women knew within three seconds of meeting whether they would sleep with a man. Violet was suspicious of that formula, because the advice was geared toward the upper-class single woman with a busy career. Three seconds was not enough time to calculate someone’s net worth and, more importantly, his willingness to shower that worth on a lover.

“The decor is not even shabby chic, just plain shabby,” he said, pursing his plump lips. “I would give the whole place a makeover.”

“Janey’s going for the creep factor. She realized ghosts are good for business.”

“Janey Mays.” Phillippe fluttered his eyes toward the smoke-stained ceiling and sipped his chablis. “Pisser dessus. Piss on her.”

“Yeah,” she said, noticing the bar was fuller than it had been in weeks.

“She’s petasse, a whore for donkeys.”

Violet barely heard him over Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,” the ballad of self-pitying barflies around the world. A wine-drinking chef with a flair for interior design who used phrases like “shabby chic”? God, he wasn’t gay, was he? Just her luck. She’d taken his French accent as a sign of European hunkness and had totally overlooked the signals. Cosmo never said anything about this.

“You want another?” Phillipe said.

Violet had only finished half her beer and it was getting warm and flat. “I’ve got an early shift.”

He took the bait and she took it as proof that he wasn’t gay, or he might have been more concerned for her well-being and less about the potential for a score. “Hey, the night is young and so are we.”

“Okay, but if I get wobbly, will you take care of me?”

He grinned, and some wolf glinted in his teeth. “You can trust me, mademoiselle.”

The way he said implied that she couldn’t trust him a bit, which she took as an even better sign. As he approached the bar, her eyes roamed from his taut buttocks and she surveyed the room, noting in particular the off-duty staff smoking and drinking. Dead-end slaves killing time. Violet was better than them--she was a dreamer. Why, with a break here and there, she could take Janey’s position. Assuming the old Battle Axe was really dead.

When Phillippe returned with their drinks, he said, “So, what’s all this talk of fantomes? Ghosts? A couple of the cooks were talking about the knives that fly across the room by themselves.”

“Well, they say the place is haunted. That’s why these people came, to hunt the ghosts.”

“Like on the TV shows?”

“Yeah.” She pointed. “That man at the end of the bar, that’s Digger Wilson. He put this together.”

“He sure knows how to drink.”

“Well, it’s only a little after midnight. I don’t know why they gave up so early.”

“Maybe they found what they were looking for.”

“You don’t believe that junk, do you? You’re French, for God’s sake. You’re supposed to be enlightened.”

“These ghosts, where do they hang out?”

“Well, they say Room 318 is the spookiest. The wiring is a little tricky, but other than that, it’s just another room.”

“How about a little tour?” His eyebrows raised in suggestion. He definitely wasn’t gay, and she shifted in her seat.

“The hunt rooms are reserved for the guests. Wouldn’t want to barge in on anyone. Janey would have a hissy fit.”

“The basement?” He smirked, a challenge in his European eyes. “Nobody down there, oui?”

“Nobody,” she said, leaning forward so she could whisper over the jangling strains of “Crimson and Clover.”

He knocked back his wine and stood, holding out his hand. She considered the choice between Phillippe and the unknown or the petty cash in the bar till.

What the hell, the cash will always be there, and Janey could fire Phillippe next week for all I know. This might be my only chance. Sure, he’s only a cook now, but he has a chef’s degree, and that could lead to management.

She was out the door before she’d really made up her mind, and by then it was too late.

Chapter 29

Cody had dropped her at the door to 318 like a perfect gentleman.

Not a kiss on the cheek, not a hint that he’d tuck her in if she wanted, not even a handshake, just a “Get some rest, and I’ll catch you in the morning.”

Kendra was disappointed but also relieved, because she was tired and edgy. At least the room lights worked. After all that weird stuff in 218, she welcomed some down time with her sketch pad. The room had two twin beds, which wasn’t too awkward because she’d traveled a lot with Dad, but Kendra didn’t want any goodnight hugs. With luck, Dad wouldn’t show up until she’d drawn herself to sleep.

She settled on her bed and chose a charcoal pencil. She opened the pad to find the sketch of Dorrie Dough-Face and Rochester the Rat Boy.

I tore that out and left it for Bruce.

Except this picture wasn’t quite the same. Rochester’s eyes had a glint in them and his whiskers lifted in a sneer, while Dorrie grinned as if to say, “I ate the last doughnut and the bitchin’ crumbs, too. Whatcha gonna do about it?”

The little twerp must have sneaked into the room and copied the sketch back into her pad. He obviously had a master key. But his fingers were way to plump to draw at such a level. Kendra was proud of her skill, but she was also realistic about the work involved. Talent meant little until you had logged those endless hours of development and made the shift from art to craft. That was way too refined a concept for a 10-year-old to grasp, and prodigies were in short supply.

“You like my picture?”

Kendra dropped her pencil.

Bruce stepped from the shadowy bathroom, still wearing his too-short trousers and dirty green shirt. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare ya.”

“That’s exactly what you meant to do, you little creep. What kind of game are you playing, anyway?”

“Hide and seek.”

“It’s way past your bedtime. Your dad is going to kick your butt.”

“He’s busy.”

“What if I’d been changing into my pajamas?”

Bruce grinned uneasily. “Rochester said he saw you in the bathroom.” He giggled. “He saw your noonie.”

“Crap.” She clenched her fists and rose from the bed as he retreated into the bathroom.

“Just wait till I—”

The bathroom was empty. She clicked the light just to make sure. She checked the cabinet under the sink, expecting him to jump out and yell “Boo.” Nothing but spare rolls of toilet paper and the rank, musty smell of moist pipes.

The shower curtain was pulled closed, opaque enough to hide him, but there was no way he could have ducked in without the curtain swaying. He might be lying down, though. She yanked the curtain back with a flourish, anger tightening her jaws.

The giggle came from the bedroom.

Creak creak creak.

The creep was bouncing on the bed. If he stomped her sketch pad, that would be one dead kid. Except it wasn’t just a creak, another sound accented it, as if he were brushing the ceiling with each leap.

Creak flup creak flup creak flup.

His singsong rhyme was syncopated by his bouncing.

“Stay—”

Creak.

“—and play—”

Flup.

“—with Mommy—”

Creak.

“—and me.”

Flup.

She raced into the bedroom, more intent on rescuing her precious sketch pad and its cast of characters than on mashing the little brat’s teeth down his throat.

The creaking had stopped, and Bruce dangled in midair, a piece of fiber-coated electrical wire wrapped around his neck and tied to the light fixture. His black tongue protruded, and his blank eyes bulged, the flesh around them sunken and purple. Flies buzzed around his head and his skin was the color of cottage cheese.

Christ—

Before she could decide whether to touch him or if he was too far gone, the lights went out.

Christ and back again.

She didn’t know whether to retreat or feel her way forward. The afterimage of the light burned orange blobs behind her eyelids, but the image of the dead boy burned just as brightly.

You’re cracking up, kiddo, just like Bradshaw said you would. Too much imagination. Too much fantasy. Too much believing in the monsters you make.

Too much being the Digger’s daughter.

Her cracked laughter sounded too loud in the dark room.

It wasn’t real. She could make it to the light switch, get the room back in working order, and find some way to jam the lock so Bruce wouldn’t bug her anymore. And as soon as Dad came in, she’d make him report the little twerp to the hotel staff. Surely they had some sort of security, even if it was just that old mummy of a manager. One scowl from her wrinkled, witchbag face would scare any kid straight.

Yeah. Logic and reason. Much better than the koo-koo choo-choo to Nutsville.

One hand in front of her, she took brief steps forward across the carpet, mapping the room in her mind. The beds were over there, coffee table and TV cabinet to the left, an open path in the middle, right where Bruce would be hanging--

He’s NOT hanging, damn it.

Still, she slowed a little and waved her hand in front of her. Despite the lamps outside that girded the walkway to the hotel’s front entrance, the room was way darker than it should have been.

She thought of that screwy line the ghost hunters used when they were ushering a restless spirit to peace in the Great Unknown: “Go toward the light.”

Count to three and do it.

Count to three....

Stay and play with Mommy and me.

“Kendra?”

The woman’s voice froze her heart in mid-beat.

She couldn’t quite place it, but she couldn’t quite forget it, either. The familiarity was stored in her cells, at a genetic level, and she’d heard it on a few of Dad’s home videos on those late nights when he wanted a serious dose of melancholy. She’d heard it as a she sat on a warm, loving lap and painted herself into a hundred corners.

“Mom?” Kendra whispered, which was plenty loud enough in the stillness of the room, practically a scream that tore the faded, rose-patterned paper from the walls and sent gypsum snowing from the ceiling.

Kendra wrapped herself in the shadows of the room, waiting for a response, dreading it and wanting it all the same.

If I’m stepping on the koo-koo choo-choo, at least I’m going with a smile on my face. Reunited and it feels so good. Even if it feels so wrong.

In the solitude of her childhood, browsing through her mother’s artifacts and parental love notes and even the last letter penned on the deathbed, Kendra had often considered the many questions she’d never gotten to ask. All that mother-daughter talk, all the advice and wisdom, all the scolding and conflict, all the wonder and mystery of that special bond—all interrupted, all stolen away by some asshole in the Great Unknown, a punitive, sociopathic little Wizard of Oz hiding behind the curtain and pulling strings, giggling all the while.

Digger said she was here. But when can you ever trust Digger?

“Mom?”

No response.

Thirty seconds.

Someone was breathing in the corner of the room.

Which made no sense, because dead people didn’t breathe.

Games. More goddamned games.

Bruce.

Feeling silly now for thinking her mother would actually come back as a ghost like some trucked-up “Touched By An Angel” episode, she marched across the room, steady, steady, steady. Lunatics likely felt no shame, so her embarrassed rage was proof of her sanity.

The light switch would set things right, make it just another room, just another lonely hour with her sketch pad, painting herself into corners.

Before she could reach it, the door handle clacked and the door swung open, something thumping heavily against jamb. The wedge of light that cleaved into the room lit up the person crouched in the corner. Not Mom, not Bruce, not the Wizard of Oz.

It could only be Rochester, and he was even worse than she’d drawn him.

Then the light flicked on, Rochester was gone, and the real horror began.

Dad staggered in drunk as a senator, mushing out an atonal jumble of song. “...shaw her faysh...muuuh bweever….”

The koo-koo choo-choo had just derailed.

Chapter 30

“I haven’t seen him in a couple of hours,” Burton told Ann Vandooren.

She blinked at him as if waking from a nap. “This is important.”

“He had something come up,” Burton said. “Trust me, Digger wouldn’t bail on a conference without good reason.”

“Do we tell them?” Duncan said.

Burton looked from the woman to her young companion, then at the stack of video gear on their desk. “Tell us what?”

Cody, who had been with Burton in the control room when Duncan burst in, glanced at the computer and the various firewires and cables that protruded from the machine’s ports. “Nice system.”

“What’s the deal?” Burton asked. Ann looked like she’d aged a couple of decades since he’d last seen her, or maybe she’d taken off her make-up. She was hollow-eyed and evasive, a junkie without a fix.

“I’m possessed,” she said.

Drama queen. There was one at every conference, usually more than one, sometimes entire bus loads. Somebody had to be the most sensitive, see the most ghosts, endure the deepest sympathetic link with the dead. He wouldn’t have figured Ann for it, because his money was still riding on that fat loudmouth Amelia G. But she was the first to declare herself possessed, and that counted for something.

All Burton could do was humor her. “Is this a demonic possession or more of a communing with the dead?”

Her eyes narrowed. “What’s the difference?”

Cody, who had moved closer to the computer set-up, said, “Demonic possession is subtle and insidious. It’s not like a boogieman jumping into your skin and yelling, ‘Hey, Lucy, I’m home.’ Demons tend to find the weak, search the brick wall for chinks, and then hitchhike into your soul by way of your worst traits.”

“Hey,” Duncan said. “I understand psychology, but we’re not talking a meltdown here. I tell you, I saw a black halo over her head.”

“I saw it, too, in the mirror,” Ann said. “You can’t convince me we’re both cracking up. We’re scientists, for god’s sake.”

“Science,” Burton said. “The last refuge of the faithless.”

“Look at this,” Cody said, pointing to the split screen on the computer. “You’ve got a camera in the attic.”

He reached for the keyboard as if to click the image to full resolution.

“Get away from there,” Ann said, leaping at him with her fingernails extended.

Burton moved forward to grab her, but Duncan reached her first. She shrugged him away and reached for the computer. Cody turned at the motion and her fingernails clawed his cheek. Ann slammed down the lid of the laptop, mashing Cody’s fingers.

“Jeez, lady,” he said. “I’m trying to help.”

“Ease up, everybody,” Burton said. “Look, it’s the middle of the night. We’re all a little tired. Why don’t we get some sleep and work this out in the morning?”

“And let the demon get even deeper inside me?”

“We’ve got a guy on staff who’s an expert on such things. The Roach will be glad to talk to you, no matter what the problem is.”

Ann put her fingers to her lips as if savoring the tiny bits of flesh she’d raked from Cody’s face. “This place...there’s something wrong with it.”

“Scientifically speaking?” Cody rubbed his cheek.

“Okay,” Duncan said, putting an arm around Ann. “I can take care of her. Sorry I bothered you.”

Burton nodded. To hell with it. Let Digger deal with her. Better get Cody out of here before the kid blows a fuse.

“Come on,” he said to Cody. “Let’s set up the recording gear for overnight.”

Cody left without another word. Ann’s face, already puckered with anger, twisted a little bit more. Burton decided she was putting on an act. He was turning to follow Cody when the black ring materialized over her head.

What the fuh—?

The walkie talkie squawked from his hip and by the time he’d thumbed the receiver, the image was gone. Must be getting combat fatigue.

“Burton,” he said into the walkie talkie.

“Shaw her faysh....”

“Digger?”

“Are you a bweever, Burton?”

“Who is this?”

“The lost and the lurking.” The voice trailed off into giggles.

Out in the hall, he caught up to Cody. “Did you hear that? Some kid screwing around on the channel?”

“No.”

“Sorry about those two,” Burton said. “You get every kind—”

“They were broadcasting. Not just recording.”

“Well, I don’t—”

“I caught video that looked a little suspicious. I thought somebody might be playing around. I figured it was an inside job, maybe you and Digger—”

“Watch it, Cody. You might be the ‘Future of Horror’ and all that happy horseshit, but we’ve been doing this since you were in diapers.”

“You’ve got to admit, Digger’s all about the show. I wouldn’t put it past him to pull a little stunt like that.”

Cody’s anger had shifted targets, and Burton realized the kid was bothered more by phony science than Ann’s talons. Burton prided himself on keeping cool, and now he was seeing things, hearing things, and bitching at his teammate. While Digger’s technical expertise was the weakest of all the team members, the man had a way of holding them together. And Digger was as invisible as the shyest ghost.

“If you don’t want to be part of SSI, you can pack up your toys and go home.”

“I got my own reasons for being here,” Cody said.

As Cody stomped down the hall, giggles leaked from Burton’s walkie talkie.

Chapter 31

“It’s supposed to be locked.”

Violet had wanted to use the basement key she’d swiped from Janey’s office, a small symbol of access and power, a hint of all Phillippe could have with her.

“An invitation,” he said, taking her elbow. Not a great line, but at least his grip was firm and confident. A little tingle of anticipation raced up her spine, just as it had done when she was prowling in Janey’s office. As she’d sat in the chair and rifled the desk drawers, she fantasized herself as Janey’s replacement. Queen of the White Horse, the new Battle Axe. Somebody had to carry on , now that Janey had permanently checked out....

How do you know she’s dead?

Phillippe reached through the basement door and flipped the switch, revealing the dirt floor. “Let there be light,” he said.

Because they said so.

“I don’t see any ghosts,” she said.

“I think we need a closer look.” Phillippe wiggled his eyebrows in a suggestive manner. He pulled her closer to the top landing of the stairs. The basement air was moist and stagnant, and a coppery corruption settled on her skin like mist. Her nipples went taut, but not from arousal.

As Phillippe led her down the stairs, she said, “Now I know why the stupid kids go down in the basement in the horror movies, even when they know something bad is down there.”

“Why is that, madamoiselle?”

The French got her going again and reminded her of the goal. “Because they might get lucky.”

Phillippe grinned at her with those plump, exotic lips, and by the time they reached the basement, his face was near enough that she could smell the Chablis. “Worth a little risk, no?”

He pulled her close and she shivered against his body heat. “The door,” she said.

“Stay right here,” he said, as if she might wander off into the cobwebbed corners. He propelled himself up the stairs and she glanced into the shadows, wondering if anyone was hiding among the posts and support walls. She had the distinct sense of being watched.

By the time Phillippe rejoined her, she went into his arms, more for warmth than passion. The basement had gotten colder.

“Where we were?” he whispered.

“Nowhere,” she said.

“Yet everywhere.”

It was a line he’d probably used a hundred times, feeling up Parisian girls in cramped walk-up apartments where art littered the walls. She didn’t care. Once they were married, she’d pick out the art, and it wouldn’t be square purple cats and pastel vomit. And when she became queen of the White Horse, all the drab curtains and reproduction Victorian furniture would be on the curb and Martha Stewart would get a hefty royalty check.

He pulled her closer, and she molded into his body, feeling his erection tenting against her belly. He nuzzled her neck and his breath drifted across the fine hairs at the base of her skull.

“Mmm,” she said, looking over his shoulder to the rusty, hulking boiler in the recesses of the basement. The coal gate was open and something dangled from the dark recess. Phillippe nibbled at her ear and she giggled.

“Ticklish?” he whispered.

More like thinking he was silly, with all his well-oiled moves and suave maneuvers. She was used to the high school boys in their pick-up trucks, whose rough hands would grab and squeeze and push her into compliance. Not that she’d spent much time on that scene. She’d seen enough classmates pregnant at fifteen, with nothing but bruises and food stamps in their futures. She dreamed bigger, and if it meant she had to endure Phillippe’s wine-softened tongue, well, a woman couldn’t count on looks forever.

Besides, his tongue wasn’t so rough, and his lips were not too slobbery. But she couldn’t relax under his tactics, because of the thing dangling from the boiler. She squinted, trying to make out more detail.

A rag, maybe?

Phillippe’s hands did a slow crawl across her back and shoulders, kneading and stroking. They were strong but also gentle. Like she was a soufflé and he had to fold the eggs just right so the whole recipe wouldn’t collapse.

“Your skin is lovely, ma cherie,” he said, his nose against her cheek.

“I still don’t see any ghosts.”

“Perhaps we should turn out the lights, my sweet.”

But the switch was at the top of the stairs and the whole moment would be blown. And she couldn’t quit staring at the thing dangling from the boiler. It was cloth, but it wasn’t a rag. And there were...what?

Fingers?

“Phillippe,” she whispered.

“I know,” he moaned, grinding against her as if he were trying to break the wooden totem pole in his jeans. His hands slipped lower and cupped her buttocks, and then he locked lips. His little goatee irritated her chin, but at least he didn’t suck all the air from her lungs. But the moment she parted for a breath, he slipped his tongue in, like a snake heading for a hibernation hole.

“Murr-umpha,” she said into his mouth, trying to pull free, but he was too busy proving his French manhood to listen. One hand slipped to her breast and circled, stretching the lace of her bra. The bra cost her $35 at Victoria’s Secret, and if he popped the elastic, it was coming out of his wallet without his permission. His fingers found her nipples and he pinched as if it were a generous helping of salt.

The cloth thingy in the boiler...had it moved?

No breeze, except for the lust hurricane from Frenchie’s mouth.

God, maybe it was a rat’s nest. The hotel had plenty of them. She’d have J.C.—

Ouch.

“Easy,” she whispered. Maybe they went for pain on the Seine, and the French had a million reasons to be masochists, but if she wanted to be abused, she’d have married a cop.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, rolling out the words with a husky richness.

Good one. What’s next, “I love you”? Just do your thing, or at least the warm-up part of the act.

He thumbed free the middle button of her blouse, not even pausing in his oral attention, and then his hand was inside, teasing bare skin at the elastic frame of the bra. She wasn’t stacked by any means, but she had enough there to fill the cup without padding. She’d let him go at it a bit, maybe even a finger in the panties, but no way was she giving the milk before she got the deed to the farm.

The cloth thingy definitely moved, and it wasn’t just Phillippe that was breathing heavily. She looked around. That pervert J.C. might be down here drinking and goofing off, doing God-only-knew to kill time. It would be just like him to watch. Phillippe’s turgid snake was demanding to be free, and she’d have to make a decision soon or he’d whine about blue balls and she’d never get another chance.

She touched his zipper but all she could think about was the rats in the boiler. And the heavy breathing was louder, like a hundred pieces of sandpaper on wood.

“Phillippe?”

“Oui, ma cherie?” He was focused on his little mammary maneuver, inching toward raw nipple and disrespecting expensive lingerie.

“There’s something in the boiler.”

“The ghost thing...we already played that game. Now time for a new one.”

He squeezed hard and bit her neck, sending a jolt through her. Not all of it hurt, and she was disgusted by the tiny hotwire of pleasure that raced to her vagina. She moaned and closed her eyes. Encouraged, he bit again, this time hard enough to leave marks. His zipper was halfway down and heat plumed from the opening.

“Eeee-zy,” she said, knowing he was pushing the limits to see how much he could get. Men thought they were so damned clever, like they were setting the ground rules. But even if she’d wanted to bone him up, the dreary, creepy basement was jangling her nerves. She never relaxed during sex, not completely, because a girl had to stay on guard. But here, with that weird noise and the cloth thingy moving and—

His teeth clacked together and drew blood.

“Ow. Goddamn it.”

Before she could consider the consequences of having an enemy on staff, she slapped him across the cheek. If his goatee were long enough, she’d have yanked his head off and tossed it into the corner for the rats.

“I’m sorry, eez not like me....” Phillippe stared at his hands as if they belonged to someone else, but she was already to the stairs, adjusting her clothing, patting the narrow gash below her ear. Her fingers were warm and wet. The heavy breathing now sounded like giggles oozing from the dark, secretive nooks of the basement.

By the time she reached the door, she was somewhat composed. She’d been hit harder by better, and Violet Felkerson would make sure to sharpen the guillotine as soon as she became manager. Phillippe was toast, French or not.

“Cherie?”

“Stay down there and rot,” she said.

Behind Phillippe, the rag thingy was crawling out of the boiler, wormy fingers clawing at the door for traction.

Rats.

An old hotel like this, what could you expect?

By the time she’d slammed and locked the door, the giggling had turned into a laugh track.

Chapter 32

The Roach pressed back against the stones, fingering his crucifix. He’d drifted in and out of consciousness and couldn’t tell how long he’d been in the basement. Eloise’s—check that, Belial’s—blow had given him a concussion. His tongue probed a few loose teeth, and his nose was clotted with dried blood, which forced him to mouth breathe. His broken jaw throbbed and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to speak.

Not even the prayers he would need.

He awoke the first time with something touching his leg. The touch had given way to a slithery, slick stroke, all the more disturbing because it was vaguely sensual. He opened his eyes to near-total darkness, his night-vision goggles knocked somewhere across the uneven floor.

A dull orange glow emanated from a distance, like a star trying to wink in the gathering dusk. The touch became a turgid rope, and it continued across his thigh and moved on. Seconds, minutes, or maybe hours later, he heard the skuffff of something heavy being dragged across the dirt. Then he remembered Nancy’s corpse.

Disoriented and too sore to move, all he could was lie in the clammy dirt and assess his injuries. The scuffing lasted several minutes, followed by a meaty thunk, like encased bone hitting metal. The orange glow deepened and the fire roared to life. The woman’s body was thrown in silhouette against the bed of embers, then the fire roared to life and engulfed her flesh.

Rodney tried to crawl away, feeling exposed and vulnerable in the bright light cast by the flames, but the going was slow and painful. Blood seeped from his nose and he had to pause every few feet to wipe it from his lips. He expected the slithering limb to latch onto him at any moment.

Are you finished with me, God? Is this the price of arrogance?

But as he clawed his way inch by inch over greasy dirt and protruding rocks, he wasn’t sure he’d be granted such a quick release. After all, the blood of at least eight people was on his hands. Sure, it was all part of his holy work, but that didn’t bring them back to life or give their souls peace. Like Belial and the other fallen angels who did God’s dirty work, he was a necessary evil.

But an evil nonetheless.

And evil masquerading as “good” was in a class by itself, and deserving of a jalapeno enema in the scorching bowels of hell.

After the flames died down and the embers fell into a lulling pulse that made a mockery of a heartbeat, Rodney checked the luminous dial on his wristwatch. It had gone dark, along with the lamp attached to his headgear. Most of his equipment had scattered during the demon’s assault, but his digital camera was still strapped around his neck. Its batteries, too, were dead. The demon had drained all the energy from him, which explained his enervation.

He must have dozed again, because he awoke to near-total darkness, the embers dampened as if the source was entering a long sleep. He could barely make out the stairs, and figured they’d provide some refuge until he could recover enough to climb them. He dragged himself under them and huddled with his prayers.

“Give me a sign, Lord,” he whistled through his shattered mouth.

And the Lord provided, as the basement door creaked open above him and He let there be light.

Rodney thought about calling out when the woman and man descended the stairs, but he wasn’t sure whether one or both were possessed. Belial could have changed hosts, or Eloise might be manipulating people by now, spreading its profane influence like an infection.

Rodney recognized the young woman as one of the hotel hostesses. The man was obviously trying to make a move on her, in the slick, clumsy way of someone who hadn’t mastered his own power. The source would take them both, Rodney decided, and he controlled his uneven breathing so he could watch unnoticed.

The teasing of their coy embrace gave way to an argument. Then she mentioned the boiler and Rodney couldn’t help looking at the rusted hulk. The glow of embers had given way to a roiling pile of smoke. The tendrils of smoke looked solid, and Rodney recalled the tentacle that had brushed his leg. The woman said the things were rats, but she wouldn’t be able to know the demons for what they were.

Only the Chosen could see.

When the woman slapped the man and fled up the stairs, Rodney had called out for her to wait, but his mashed-up mouth could only emit a moan. After the door slammed, giggles slithered from the corners of the basement.

After the door slammed, the man gave a slow turn at the foot of the stairs, as if only now acknowledging his surroundings. “Beetch,” he said.

Rodney called again, this time doing a better job of wiggling his tongue.

“Who’s there?” the man said, squinting beneath the stairs and backing up a couple of steps. Toward the furnace.

Rodney slid a hand in the gap between the crude steps so the man could see he was human. “SSI,” he said, in a sibilant mush.

“One of the paranormal people?” The man had a French accent.

Rodney used his grip on the step to raise himself to his knees and moved his ruined face into the light.

“Mon dieu,” the man said. “What happened?”

“Belial happened,” Rodney said, though the words were unclear and he doubted the man would know the demon’s name anyway.

The man rushed to help him, but Rodney was reluctant to leave the relative safety of his hiding place. He licked the blood from his lips and said, “She locked you in?”

The man nodded. “What were you doing down here?”

Rodney pointed to his camera and the meters on his belt.

“Ah. The ghosts in the basement, no?”

“Worse than ghosts.” His words were still a little mushy, but his tongue and lips were now on speaking terms with one another.

“You must have fallen in the dark? The manager was afraid this might happen.”

“I’ve fallen, all right.” Rodney let the man help him to his feet, and the rush of blood to his head carried an electric jolt of pain. He leaned against the steps and checked his equipment. The EMF meter, audio recorder, and thermal-imaging camera now seemed like stage props. He hadn’t needed them to detect the demons. All he’d needed was his blind faith. “Do you work here?”

“I’m a chef.”

“My cell phone and walkie talkie are dead,.”

“I’ll check the door,” the man said. He thundered up the stairs and tried the handle, though they’d both heard the lock click into place after the woman slammed it. “American women. I should have heeded everyone’s advice. Don’t play where you make your pay.”

Rodney wasn’t listening. He was studying the coal boiler at the far end of the basement, where Nancy’s body had been consumed. If Belial were upstairs, inhabiting Eloise’s body, then what entity was down there feeding?

The man banged on the door. “Maybe one of the ghost-hunting groups will come.”

“No,” Rodney said, fingering his crucifix. “The basement is off limits.”

“Then why—oh. You don’t like to follow rules, either.”

“Join the club.” Easing around the steps, holding on for balance, Rodney’s head began to clear a little. His night-vision goggles lay in the dirt 20 feet away. He retrieved them, along with his video camera and flashlight. The camera lens dangled loose and the data card was cracked, the card slot crammed full of mud. Any footage he’d taken of the encounter was likely ruined. So much for proof.

“What do we do now?” the man said, sitting on the top step. “Wait for morning?”

“There’s probably a service access that leads to the outside.” Rodney checked his flashlight to verify it was dead. “You want to wait here?”

“As if she’s going to come back? No, mon ami, I have been slapped like that before.”

“Okay, then, let’s get out of here.”

“Your face—”

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” It was probably worse, but he didn’t want to risk slipping into unconsciousness again. If he kept moving, perhaps the pain would keep him awake.

“This isn’t a place for a man to be alone.” The man tried the door again and came down the stairs. “I’m Phillippe.”

“Rodney,” he replied, without shaking hands.

“So how does this ghost-hunting thing work?”

“You get all this equipment out, you raise hell, and you hope you get some evidence.”

“Have you ever found anything which convinces you?”

“Not lately.”

“You sure your head is okay?”

“It only hurts when I laugh.”

“That is funny, no?”

“Yeah.”

Rodney tried to recall his reconnaissance of the building’s foundation. Because of the Margaret Percival disappearance, SSI had made notes on the structure and its access points. Such maps helped debunk noises caused by wind, rain, or even someone’s inadvertently entering a hunt zone and later being dubbed a supernatural anomaly.

Because Rodney had suspected demonic activity in the lower levels of the building, he’d paid particular attention to the stonework. If demons had been passing through on a regular basis, there were apt to be scorch marks in the cracks.

Where there was smoke, there was fire, and where there was fire, there were demons.

Some believed that Lucifer’s greatest trick was getting people to not believe in him. But Lucifer, like all gods, angels, and demons, needed belief in order to exist. Lucifer didn’t invest a whole lot of energy in human subterfuge. He simply didn’t care.

In the same vein, demons were indifferent to the various classifications described by sages and scholars, from King Solomon to Peter Binsfield to modern role-playing-game companies. Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, the titles didn’t matter. Evil always knew its name, and evil always knew which hearts had a little room to spare.

Rodney gave the furnace plenty of distance, navigating around the crumbling block wall that marked off the newer wing of the hotel. Phillippe followed close behind.

Beyond the support wall, the basement was darker, with only a couple of dangling bare bulbs for illumination. Above them came the muted thunder of footsteps and the throbbing of bass and drums.

“We’re under the bar,” Phillippe said. “They’re past closing time.”

“I don’t think it’s closing at all tonight,” Rodney said. Belial had already poisoned the conference. The disintegration would be subtle and insidious, but that was how evil performed its best work.

“The kitchen is back there,” Phillippe said, motioning to the right.

“Is there a service access? You probably have to deal with rats and grease drains and things like that.”

“No rats,” Philippe said. “We run a clean ship.”

Rodney leaned against a support post, letting his head settle a little. He considered shedding his equipment belt, but he might need the gear later. The basement was lower in the newer wing and they’d had to crouch as they looked for an access. “You think all this is a bunch of crap, don’t you?”

“Strange things happen. Like a woman gives up a chance with me. Crazy world.”

Rodney’s walkie talkie sputtered. Batteries that appeared drained sometimes contained a last reserve. Or maybe he’d moved beyond the immediate influence of Lucifer and back into the good graces of God. He spoke into it. “Roach here.”

“You’re not finished,” came the response.

“Who is that?” Phillippe said.

Rodney looked at the power level on the walkie talkie. It was flat. Whatever had brought the device to life had provided its own power source. “The boss.”

“Mr. Wilson?”

“A higher authority.”

“More,” came the crackling voice from the walkie talkie.

Rodney fingered his crucifix, sweating despite the moist air of the basement. When God spoke, he had no choice but to obey. He freed the long silver crucifix from its clasp.

“What ees thees?” Phillippe said, losing his carefully controlled English.

“Strange things happen.” Rodney brought the crucifix sweeping upward before Phillippe could detect the motion in the dark. It pierced his throat.

“Gak,” the Frenchman uttered, spouting blood from both the wound and his mouth. He wobbled around for a second, clutching at the crucifix. He slid it out with a thip and looked at it with wide eyes, not comprehending why Jesus would want to share the torments of the cross.

“Jesus died for our sins,” Rodney said. “Now you get to die for yours.”

Phillippe collapsed and Rodney wiped the crucifix on his victim’s shirt. He didn’t know how the body would be retrieved—maybe the ropy tentacles would slither across the floor, or maybe the wires overhead would carry it back to the furnace. Rodney wanted to be out of the basement before that happened.

Lucifer’s greatest trick wasn’t getting people to believe he didn’t exist. His greatest trick was playing God better than God ever had.

Chapter 33

Morning dropped like a bag of broken rocks.

The thirst was the first thing he noticed, and his tongue felt like a wool sock. His skull throbbed, each sluggish heartbeat punching through taut, angry arteries. He found himself lying on his back, but the bed was floating. He touched his forehead, afraid to open his eyes.

God, why did you make me wake up?

The Digger had done it again. He wasn’t sure where he was or how he’d gotten here, or even if he was anywhere at all. If someone would yank the vibrating screwdriver out of his temple, maybe he could remember.

There was one other option. Maybe he was dead. This might be his afterlife, his condition forever and ever. Not even a glass of water, not even enough bile in his stomach to puke.

A clacking sound rattled his ears and then light poured over him, sharp enough to slice his eyelids.

“They’ve been looking for you, Dad.”

“Who?” The word tasted like dirty pennies.

“SSI, the hotel people, the hunters, everybody.”

“What...time is it?”

“Don’t worry, I told them you were having a nervous breakdown. Saw your dead wife and it blew you mind. They’ll cut you some slack.”

He gave an experimental blink and found the room was fuzzy. “You shouldn’t—”

“Cover for you. I know.”

Digger was in his rumpled clothes, still wearing his boots. He rolled away from the sunlight that sluiced through the window like an accusing finger. He swallowed down nails, fiberglass, cobwebs, and sand, and dry acid slithered back up. His pulse was erratic and fluttering.

“Shit,” he said.

“Could be worse.”

“How could it be worse?”

“I’m not sure, but it could be. Mom could be dead or something.”

Digger opened his eyes. Kendra sat on the opposite bed, fully dressed, the box of registration information beside her.

“Shouldn’t you be downstairs registering people?”

“Registration’s ended.”

He licked his chapped lips. “It goes until noon.”

“It’s nearly two.”

He tried to rise, but a sit-up position brought too much blood to his head, so he flopped on his side and rolled up on one elbow. His knuckles were bruised. He hoped he hadn’t punched anyone. “I blew it again.”

“Nah,” Kendra said. “The show must go on. Burton and Cody are leading the panels, and Holmes and the others are looking for Roach.”

“Roach?”

“He’s missing.” She peered at him. “Guess you don’t remember that part, huh?”

He swung his legs off the bed and sat up, and the nausea hit him almost instantly. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to make it to the bathroom. “Besides Roach, how is everything else going?”

“A lot of people are mad about the messed-up hunts. A couple asked for refunds.”

“What did you tell them?”

“The fine print. ‘No refunds after Nov. 12.’”

“Are you mad?”

“Why should I be mad?”

“You know....”

“What? Another broken promise? Another disappointment? Another chance to babysit my dad? What’s to be mad about?”

“It’s...the thing with your mom....”

“I know, I know. After you pulled that bit, I thought I saw her, too. Power of suggestion. Neat trick.”

“It’s her.”

“And what if it was? You were afraid to face her so you crawled back in the bottle like you always do?”

No, I was....”

Excuses. He always had some handy. Cristos made him. Gelbaugh. Blame this, blame that, blame those people. All their fault. When all else failed, God made the ultimate fall guy.

“I was out of control,” he finished, fighting down a knot of vomit. “I knew better than to take that first sucker drink.”

“Well, I got my own problems. I’m being stalked by a ten-year-old brat who has keys to the whole hotel.”

“No kids here.”

“Tell him that. It’s like I’m his personal entertainment. He keeps showing up out of nowhere, pestering me and playing tricks. I think his dad works here.”

“I’ll talk to the manager about it.”

Kendra shook her head, her dark hair swinging across her shoulders. “Don’t rat him out. I can handle it. Besides, it’s only for another day.”

“Two o’clock. Two more panels before the dinner break.”

“Speaking of which, can you keep anything down? I can get you orange juice and some toast.”

Digger winced. That was the menu for his “headaches,” when young Kendra would bring him breakfast in bed, thinking he had a cold. The glass of water was there on the bedside table, though its ice had melted. He tried a sip. “This is fine. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“I wanted to—”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Kendra, I—”

“You’d better clean up and put in an appearance. The Digger can’t keep his fans in suspense forever.”

He took a few more drinks of water, the fluid racing through the greasy tunnels inside him. “She wants to tell me something.”

“We don’t believe in ghosts, Dad.”

“I made a promise.”

“Like that means anything?” She jumped to her feet and grabbed her sketchpad. She tossed his walkie talkie beside him. “Give me a call when you get your act together. Maybe I’ll still be around.”

Then she was out the door, the slam echoing through his head like a thunderstorm, leaving him alone with the pain and sickness and self-pity.

He clutched at the walkie talkie and held it with a trembling hand. “Beth?”

Nothing. The batteries were dead. Just like his soul.

Chapter 34

The panel entitled “Christianity and the Paranormal” had gone about as well as could be expected, meaning the few true believers who approached hunting with a missionary zeal were not stoned by the hardcore atheists in the crowd. Burton had to admit, Wayne had done a good job of balancing the panelists, with an Episcopal minister, a physicist from Westridge University who viewed supernatural phenomena as dimensional disturbances, a member of the Eastern Seaboard Skeptics Society, and a Jewish scholar who specialized in the Old Testament. Despite Martin Gelbaugh’s repeated heckling, the divergent viewpoints had filled the hour and entertained the attendees.

With the audience dividing up for break-out sessions on EVP technology, Ghosthunting 101, and ectoplasmic detection, Burton had a couple of hours to round up Roach, sober up Wayne, and find out why Cody had a bug up his ass, but first he had to clear all the keys for the evening’s hunt locations.

At the front desk, he encountered the same gum-popping teenager who’d worked the night shift. From the way she slumped in her chair, the magazine curled to the shape of her grip, she could have perched there around the clock.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Is the manager in?”

She scarcely glanced up from her magazine. “We don’t know where she is.”

“Someone on your staff has been locking the doors behind us. We were told all the hunt locations would remain acessible.”

“Nobody could be locking the doors. The only set of master keys belongs to our maintenance supervisor, Wally Reams, and he’s off today.”

“Both 302 and 218 are locked. And we were promised—” He looked around, lowering his voice in deference to the guests. “Look, I’m okay with the staff playing tricks. I know it’s all part of the haunted-house show. But we’ve already got some pissed-off clients, and if they miss out on any more hunts, we might all be looking at some refunds.”

He glanced around the shabby foyer. “And I don’t think either of us can afford that.”

“I’m sorry, Burton,” she said, reading the name stenciled on the left breast of his uniform. “The maids are gone for the day. No one else would have access, and the locks require a key.”

Burton fought an urge to reach over the counter and slap the magazine out of her hands. “I can’t—”

“Excuse me,” An attractive young woman stepped from the alcove behind the clerk. “Are you having a problem?”

The gum-popper said, “Violet, this man says we’re locking doors on them.”

Burton recognized her. She was the one who’d shown Wayne around during yesterday’s set-up. “Look, we have a lot of hunts scheduled tonight, and we can’t have any accidents that will throw us off track.”

“Please come to my office,” Violet said.

“Janey’s going to kill you,” the desk clerk said.

“I’ll take my chances.”

The gum-popper shrugged and went back to her magazine. Burton rounded the corner and entered the office via a short hall. The fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed, giving their skin a seasick look. The space was cluttered, but Violet took a stack of papers from a chair and indicated that he should sit.

“I can’t stay long,” he said.

“This won’t take long.”

“About the keys. Wayne told me you guys were playing along, setting up stuff so our guests will think they’ve had supernatural encounters. You know, a little knocking on walls, whispering in the air ducts, messing with the electricity. We’re fine with that. I have to admit, you’re putting on a good show. Those projected images went beyond the call of duty.”

“What projected images?”

“You know, in the hall. That ‘Jilted Bride’ thing.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Violet had settled behind the warship-gray desk. She lit a cigarette.

“I thought you had a ‘No smoking’ policy,” he said. She held her cigarette with an easy familiarity, though she winced at the strength of the smoke.

“There’s an exception to every rule,” she said. “I’m the exception.”

“We can’t have problems with the keys.”

“There’s no problem. You’ll get where you need to be, when I need you to be there.”

Because she was attractive, Burton had extended a little extra patience. But her blank, cold eyes offset the pleasing angles of her face. “I want to talk to the manager.”

“I’m afraid she’s unavailable.”

“Doesn’t she have a pager?”

“It wouldn’t matter if she did. She’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“If I knew that, all this would be pointless.”

Violet flipped her palm, but Burton couldn’t tell whether “all” meant the conference or the hotel. He also couldn’t believe the manager would skip out on the biggest event the White Horse had hosted since the Eisenhower administration. “Someone must have a master key.”

“Only the Master.”

Burton edged forward, only now noticing the corrupt odor of the office. The mop bucket in the corner was the likely cause of the stink. A greasy snake of unease slithered in his gut. “Look here, Violet.”

“I’m not Violet.”

Burton slapped the arms of his chair. “Fine. Just be ready to find another job next week.”

“Thank you and please come again.” She smiled but the gesture was disconnected from the rest of her face.

“The rooms better be open, or you’re going to have sixty unhappy campers on your hands.”

“Please enjoy your stay.”

Burton’s walkie talkie hissed and broadcast Cody’s voice. “Burton, you’ve got to come see this.”

As he was leaving, he glanced down into the mop bucket. The liquid in it was dark and thick, almost like....

Nah.

Chapter 35

Ann Vandooren was afraid to leave the room.

The reason she was afraid was because she wanted to leave the room. Ever since Duncan had brought the two SSI guys to the room, the paranoia had grown. They knew about the rigged images she’d broadcast. She’d be ridiculed and probably reported to the departmental dean at Westridge University. And she really didn’t give a damn.

Because now she understood. The supernatural wasn’t some bit of monkey business concocted by scared primitives; it was the overt manipulation of the dark gods. Give the people something invisible to fear so they didn’t see the demons in their midst.

“What should we do about it?” she asked Duncan, who had shut down the computer and was packing away the cables.

“Consider the experiment a failure.”

“I don’t like to fail. Is the halo still there?”

Duncan nodded. “There has to be some sort of simple explan—”

“Yeah. It’s a halo.”

“I need to get the cameras and projectors.”

“Don’t leave me alone.”

“You’ll be fine.”

Despite what the silly boys in their black jumpsuits had said, Duncan was happy to leave her in this condition. Maybe after sixteen hours observing the black halo, he’d grown accustomed to it.

“You know about succubi, right?” she said, moving from the window toward the bed. “Women believed to be demons or witches who draw power by having sex with their victims?”

“I know the mythology.”

She peeled her Dale Earnhardt T-shirt over her head and tossed it to the floor. The cool air of the room drew her nipples into taut purple points. “Want to see what that’s all about?”

“You’re not a demon, Ann.”

“Right. I am a fucking angel.” She laughed, and the sound trailed off into a muted shriek that frightened her. “Get it? A fucking angel.”

“This isn’t the time to—”

“Test the theory?” She unbuttoned her jeans. “Afraid you might learn something?”

Duncan tossed the coils of cables on the bed. “Damn you.”

“I’m already damned.”

He pushed his crotch against her, the fabric of his pants gently chafing her skin.

“Shit, baby, what’s going on?” He was hoarse.

Raw, pulsing possession. The science of seduction. The age-old dance of the devil. “Shut up and worship.”

He brushed her hair with his fingers, then clutched a handful of strands and lifted her face from the bed. His other hand reached for the nearest coil of cable. Bitch Mode allowed her to smile and let her lips grant permission.

“Yessssss....”

Lilith, harpy, siren, witch, eventually it all came to this. No folklore, no religion, no rigorous adherence to scientific method. Just women taking it. Women loving it. And men dying for it.

Ann slammed back to meet his thrust and he was fully inside, reaching deep into the poisonous pit of her womb. He yanked one of her hands back and looped the cable around her wrist, then pressed her harder into the bed, her breasts squeezing into the mattress. She gave him her other hand and he bound her without missing a stroke, the crude knots straining her shoulders. He grabbed the bond and used it for leverage, banging himself deeply into her. The room was thick with the odor of their rutting.

The electric freeze jolted her brain and she screamed into the blankets. Her urgency carried him along on its tide, and her scream turned into a sibilant hiss of satisfaction. He swelled and exploded, and she felt his energy gushing into her.

He groaned and collapsed on top of her, pinning her bound arms between them. “My God, baby....”

God. How strange he’d invoke the thing he couldn’t believe in, the one thing she’d now come to understand and despise. God was the reason she was trapped here in the hotel, exiled among these pathetic humans, when she could have been tasting all the delights of heaven and hell.

The pleasures and pains of the flesh had their attractions, but even those extremes served the will of that oppressive entity that hid behind the clouds. God needed her kind, their kind, on Earth because God didn’t like to get His hands dirty. If only He knew how much fun it was.

“Ann,” Duncan whispered in her ear, and she barely recognized the name. With his life force now added to hers, she was closer to fully possessing this body.

“Ann, I....”

She was afraid he’d let slip that last pathetic lie, that utter excuse for every mortal failing. “Shut up and die already,” she said.

He obliged.

Before he could say “I love you.”

She rolled him off, flexed her potent limbs, and snapped the cable. Sitting and shaking the circulation back into her hands, she looked between her legs at the blood.

Outside, the late-autumn shadows stretched as the sun slipped low. The approaching night offered many chances to offend and rebel and, perhaps, gain a foothold in which the real war could begin.

Chapter 36

Rodney must have passed out yet again, and he’d gone foggy first.

Because he was all the way across the basement, some 200 feet from where he’d killed Phillippe.

No, not “killed.” Sacrificed. In this war, words were important, because they staked the moral ground.

He was nestled in an alcove snaked through with conduit and plumbing pipes, propped against the block wall. A hot bullet of agony ricocheted from temple to temple inside his skull. His lower jaw was numb, but the bleeding had stopped. The crucifix was back in place on its silver chain, the weight cool and comforting against his chest. His digital audio recorder was clutched in his right hand.

The lights in the basement were still on, suggesting no one had visited the basement since the hostess had locked the door. That seemed unlikely, since at least three people were missing from the conference.

But Belial wouldn’t report Nancy, because Belial was probably having the time of its life, unleashed on a playground of gullible acolytes. And Rodney doubted the pissed-off woman would tell anyone about her own embarrassing encounter. But SSI would be looking for Rodney. He was important, and the team members took care of their own.

A casual glance of the basement wouldn’t have revealed his presence, though. He’d instinctively tucked himself out of sight.

Or something dragged you here.

He was hungry and thirsty, meaning hours had likely passed. He looked at the audio recorder. Its red power light was on. He pressed the “play” button.

“Is anyone here?” he heard himself say on the recording.

He thumbed up the volume but heard only a slight electronic hiss.

“Are you here?” his recorded voice said.

Nothing.

“Is there someone with me?” Rodney’s tactic for EVP’s was to repeat each question three times in different wording, giving the target a chance to translate and respond.

Still nothing. He let the hiss play out for another fifteen seconds, studying the overhead pipes. The largest pipe appeared to be a sewer main, its white PVC a contrast to the cast-iron pipes of the original building. He’d already decided to follow the main—assuming he could stand—when the recorder said, “Yes.”

“What is your name?”

Asmodeus, Astaroth, Mammon. It could be any of the demons. Or perhaps just a ghost, but at this point in Rodney’s spiritual journey, God wouldn’t waste his time on mere disembodied spirits. No, Rodney had a special role on this battleground.

Nothing but Big Daddy Bad-Ass Demons for me.

“What is your name?” he repeated.

“You know,” answered the recording, in a coarse whisper.

Rodney clicked off the recorder. The red light blinked back on.

“Listen to me.”

“I only obey one master.”

“You’ll obey who I tell you.”

Rodney clasped the crucifix. “Are you God?”

“Would God lie?”

“You’ve already made me kill, and you killed your only begotten Son.”

“I didn’t kill Him, I gave Him to the world.”

“You gave other things to the world, too. Like Lucifer and his army.”

“I didn’t give Lucifer to the world. I gave the world to Lucifer.”

“Do you always have to talk in riddles and nonsense?”

“Do you always have to question God?”

“I’m your humble servant and I pray for guidance.”

“And all your actions have been sacred.”

“What is your will?”

“Go toward the light.”

“Die, you mean?” Rodney’s heart galloped, the surge of his pulse causing his head to ache.

“No, the light at the end.”

The basement lights went out, and the weight of darkness was a solid thing, pressing down and pinning him against the wall, suffocating him. Hands girded his neck, cold and flexing bands of corded muscle. As his throat constricted, he fumbled for the crucifix. Already weak, he knew he wouldn’t last long.

“The light,” whispered the voice, and then the hands abandoned his skin, leaving bruises in their wake.

Rodney coughed and rolled to his knees, tossing the digital recorder aside. A faint glow emanated from the far wall, toward the area Phillippe said was beneath the kitchen. Rodney crawled toward it, not understanding. But few had understood God’s calling, even the great prophets of the Old Testament. All they knew was that faith required faith, and faith often required action.

He bumped into a support beam, sending a sharp spark of burning pain across the backs of his eyelids.

Go toward the light, go toward the light.

His knees ached. The progress was so slow he wondered if he were moving backward. “What is the mission, God? Please show me your purpose.”

The absurdity struck him: he was following a sewer main that began at the kitchen. Follow the shit.

By the time he reached the far wall, he was gasping and clammy. A wave of dizziness hit him, and he eased down onto his stomach in the slick soil. To the left, up a series of three crumbling concrete steps, was a wooden door. He hadn’t seen it from the outside, so it must be an internal service door. If he remembered correctly, the laundry room and access alley were behind the kitchen, so the basement didn’t extend into those areas.

The light blinked on the digital recorder. He clicked it on and said, “Yes?”

“Do you see the light?”

“Yes, I am in the light.” His mouth was a jumble of rocks and glass but it was important to communicate clearly. So much pain and misery had been inflicted because God’s messages had been misinterpreted. Rodney wanted to get this one right.

“Look beside the light.”

Rodney squinted up into the nest of floor joists, wires and pipes. Pink fiberglass insulation hung loose like cobwebs out of a Dr. Seuss nightmare. From above came the dull clangor of kitchenware, and water sluiced through the pipes with a liquid rumble. It might have been the breakfast crew, or lunch, or maybe even dinner. He wondered if Phillippe had missed a shift.

“Show me the way, Lord.”

“You already see.”

Amid the tangle of utility pipes was a dull copper line, turned green with age. It descended from the kitchen floor and angled to the masonry wall, where it went through a hole that was patched with concrete. He pictured the kitchen, with its dishwashers, counters, racks of pots and pans, and the deep fryer baskets. The stoves, with their little blue pilot lights.

Fed by propane gas.

He smiled in understanding. Lucifer had made this basement his domain, and the White Horse had become the home of demons. Take away their home, and they could no longer play. True, evil could never be defeated, but it could be delayed. And the victims he’d delivered unto them would make the six demons sluggish and susceptible. Already they thought him weak, a puny servant of God who couldn’t even stand on his own two feet in the face of adversity.

Fight fire with fire.

That wasn’t in the Bible, not in so many words, but Exodus prescribed an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, foot for a foot, and burning for burning. Close enough.

Belial owed him a couple of teeth, at least. And Lucifer had earned quite a burning. Maybe not the eternal lake of fire that God would cast him in after Armageddon, but hot enough for now.

He fiddled with his equipment belt and pulled out his multi-use tool. A wire cutter, knife, screwdriver, and more, it also contained a pair of pliers. He’d be able to work on the copper. Just as soon as he was able to stand.

Soon.

But first, sleep.

Chapter 37

“Come on, Twerp Face, I don’t have time for this.”

Dad had gotten drunk, Cody was flipping out, the panels had bought them some time but the natives were getting restless, and the last thing Kendra needed was Bruce pulling another one of his “Now you see me, now you don’t” bits.

To make matters worse, that creepy little Rochester was with him. Bruce had popped out around the corner, about fifty feet down the hall, and held out her sketch pad. “Looking for this?” he’d said.

She’d left the sketch pad in the room with Dad, but if Digger was nursing a colossal hangover, an elephant parade could have waltzed through the room without his knowing it. Rochester the Rat-Faced Boy had also poked his head around the corner, and their footsteps and giggles faded down the hall.

Rochester was dressed in oddly formal clothes, a little black jacket and bow tie that looked like they’d been scavenged from a thrift shop. It was the frilly white shirt that was most out of place, the kind of clothes any normal boy would have ditched at the first opportunity.

Kendra was winded by the time she turned the second corner. The giggling seemed to come from all over, as if the boys had separated and were hiding in places behind the walls. One of them, probably Bruce, must have reached the attic through a hidden set of stairs. Except it sounded like several pairs of feet running overhead, not just one little twerp’s.

As she ran, she passed a couple of open rooms. People were getting ready for the night hunts, assuming SSI got its act together. Somebody yelled her name, but she didn’t slow down. Bruce knew all the secret nooks and crannies of the third floor, and if she didn’t rescue her sketchbook soon, she might not get it back by the end of the conference.

Then all her favorite characters would be lost—Emily Dee, the Circuit Rider, the Truth Fairy—and even though she carried them all in her head, the sketches represented months of work. They were more than her work; they were her life, her sanity.

But you saw him hanging.

Nah, that was just the ride on the koo-koo choo-choo. Sometimes you were the engine, sometimes you were the caboose.

When you opened the door to your imagination, you invited such things. It came with the territory. Creativity wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows and primary colors. Once in awhile, you scribbled with the gray crayon.

She came to a narrow door she hadn’t noticed before. It looked like a service door of some kind and it was parted a few inches, cool air oozing from the crack.

Bingo.

She opened it to find a narrow set of steep stairs that led up to darkness. The giggling grew quieter, followed by a shushing sound.

“Okay, Brucie, I know you’re up here. Just give me the sketch pad and nobody gets hurt.”

His voice came from the far corner of the attic: “Somebody always gets hurt.”

“I’m not in a real good mood right now.”

“What’s going on?” This voice was from the hall, below her.

Cody stood in the narrow doorway, gazing up at her. She was glad she was wearing black tights, or he’d have seen right up her skirt to her panties.

She shifted so that her legs were drawn together. “Just getting back some personal property,” she said, realizing how absurd she must look.

“I saw you on the camera, running down the hall.”

“That boy I told you about. He took my sketch pad.”

“What boy?”

“The one I was chasing.”

“K-babe, there wasn’t anyone. I was watching.”

“Cut the crap, Cody. He was there.” Just like when he was hanging, right?

“You’ve been around The Digger too long. You’re starting to lose it.”

“They ran up here. I heard them laughing.”

“They? Now you’re having multiple hallucinations?” Cody took a flashlight from his belt and flicked it on, angling the beam into her face. “Nobody’s supposed to use this access.”

She squinted back at him. “Are you going to let me go up here in the dark alone, after all your bitching and moaning about demons and danger?”

“Uh...guess not.” He started up the stairs, and she eased onto the dark platform of the attic before he got too close and they’d have to rub bodies. Once they were both in the crawl space, Cody played the beam around, revealing low-hanging ceiling joists.

“We have a camera at the other end of the attic, remember?” he said. “I haven’t seen any kids.”

“They’re hiding. It’s what they do. Bruce, he’s the caretaker’s kid, he knows all these secret stairs and passageways and keeps popping out of nowhere.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“And there’s Rochester the Rat-Faced Boy, whose dressed like somebody out of a funeral parlor. Then there’s Dorrie the Doughball, and—”

“Whoa. These are characters from your comic book, right? The one you’ve been drawing?”

“No. Real people. And Bruce stole my sketchbook after I saw him hanging around in my room.” She’d bent the truth a little, but it was just a little white lie. Dad had taught her that lies were always better than promises. But sometimes they were the same.

Cody raised the flashlight so they could see one another’s face. “Okay, I know you’re under a lot of stress. Burton told me about your dad. We’re hoping we can pull off these hunts so SSI doesn’t get burned. And... your mom....”

“What about my mom?” Her lip trembled, despite herself.

“It must be weird with your dad thinking he’s run into her.”

“She’s dead. That’s all I know for a fact. The rest is just stuff for you to throw on Facebook for a laugh.”

“Kendra, I followed you because—”

“Because you feel sorry for me? Because you want to ‘help’ me? Like I’m some lost spirit that has to be guided to the light?”

“Because I—goddamn it, you sure don’t make it easy, do you?”

“Not my job. Now help me look for Bruce.”

She snatched the flashlight from his hand and navigated the uneven rows of support beams. A bed of shredded paper served as insulation on the attic floor, though a series of gangplanks allowed access through the crawlspace for needed repairs.

“Careful,” Cody said, close behind her. “If you step through, you’re liable to keep falling all the way to the basement.”

“Shh. Did you hear that?”

They were silent a moment. Muted conversation came from below them, obviously guests getting ready for the night’s hunt.

Kendra swept the flashlight in an arc. Cody grabbed her arm and guided it, pressing against her from behind. Even in her anger and fear, she noted the contours of his body. “The chimney,” he said.

She recognized it from the video Cody had shown her. “That’s where Dad saw the ghost.”

“The rigged image, you mean. We busted those clowns. Come on, let’s find their projector.”

His breath was on the back of her neck and she closed her eyes. Emily Dickinson never had these problems. “I’m more interested in my sketch pad at the moment, thank you.”

Cody let go of her arm. “I guess we all have our priorities. Piercing the veil between life and death or a bunch of pages of cartoon doodles. Tough choice.”

“What’s with you, Cody? You used to be so cool. Now you’re starting to believe your own blog posts.” She flipped the light toward him, and the beam was waist high, shining up into his face and casting his eyes in deep red shadows.

“We’ve got some real evidence here. A lot of active readings. If we can just keep it together, we may be able to make a case.”

“You’ve been drinking Digger’s punch, huh?” The dust nearly made her sneeze, and she wiped her nose so she didn’t blow her temper tantrum. “SSI and the White Horse Hauntings. Buy the DVD, read the book, eat the goddamned cereal, and by the way, I’ll come lecture at your conference for ten grand a day. That’s what the future’s all about, right?”

“This isn’t about money or ego,” Cody said. “It’s about knowing.”

“Who cares?” The attic was chilly and she shivered, wishing Cody’s body heat would enwrap and kindle her.

“Don’t you want to know where your mom went?”

“Leave her out of this.”

“Digger told me, so don’t act like a child.”

“Damn you, I’m not a child.”

She let the flashlight sag to her side, their faces in darkness. Where they were safe.

He touched her cheek. Emily Dickinson may have been a moribund virgin but maybe she still drifted over her beloved New England meadows, places she dared not walk while alive.

Sleeping the churchyard sleep? Or searching for that missing master?

His breath was close, soft on her cheeks, and then his lips found hers. She flicked the flashlight off, afraid of his dangerous eyes.

First kiss...and it tastes like strawberries and pennies.

Giggles erupted. A child’s voice whispered, “He’s going to touch her noonie.”

Cody’s lips froze and pulled back. “What the—”

She jabbed at the flashlight casing, fumbling for the switch. The giggling swelled, as if half a dozen kids were gathered around in the utter darkness, teasing and making fun of their kiss. She finally thumbed the light on and waved it wildly around.

“You heard it?” Cody asked.

“Yeah.”

“Now do you believe me?”

“Do you believe me?”

Cody nodded. “Maybe we’re both right. There are ghosts here and this Bruce guy stole your sketch pad.”

“What kind of ghost plays tricks like that?”

“Well, it’s not a residual, because they reacted to our—you know.”

She touched her lips, which still tingled. “Yeah.”

“I hate to say it, but based on the other evidence, I believe we have a true demonic haunting.”

“A demon? Like in ‘The Exorcist’ and all that?”

“Worse. Multiples.”

“Christ. What are we waiting for? Let’s get out of here.”

“What about my sketch pad?”

“Your weakness. They’re using it to gain power over you.”

He guided her toward the access opening, his hands firm and confident on her shoulders. Cody called out to the recesses of the attic. “I’ll be back.”

Kendra thought the challenge was a little foolhardy, even though she didn’t believe in demons. She’d heard SSI talk about them, theorizing that they were fallen angels who were rebelling against God for being cast out of heaven. Why would demons bother playing such silly pranks, when they supposedly had the power to inflict real harm and destruction?

That kind of talk was for later, in the safety of a well-lighted room with a cup of herbal tea in her hand. She’d get Cody to tell her about it, asking enough questions that she could gaze into his eyes for hours, maybe luring him into another kiss or two. She was nearly to the square of light marking the access when the door below slammed shut.

“Cody?”

“Right behind you, kid.”

She turned and Cody was nowhere in sight, but Rochester seemed happy to see her. He grinned like a rat wallowing in contaminated cheese.

Chapter 38

He hadn’t seen Kendra in three hours.

Wayne Wilson splashed cold water on his face, his stomach finally settled enough for hunger to emerge. He cupped his hands and drank from the bathroom sink, watering down the bile. The erratic pulse had given way to the occasional tha-dump of a skipped beat. He winced as he studied his reflection, adjusting the top hat that now felt foolish, as if he were Bugs Bunny pulled out of some magician’s ass. His face was pale but he’d be able to fake it.

“Showtime, Digger,” he said. “It’s a new day.”

Bury the past yet again.

His last clear memory was sitting next to Cristos at the bar and making the decision to go for that third drink. After that, only flashes remained, a jigsaw puzzle of his night he’d never be able to reassemble: the hostess, Violet, waving from across the bar...a Bud Lite commercial featuring Mike Ditka...the cryptic message “Yaz manchoo” scribbled on the wall above the urinal...Kendra taking his boots off...and…

No. Please, God, you didn’t let her see me like that, did you?

And what if Beth had been watching? His encounter with her swirled in with the broken memories of his binge and the shards of frantic dreams, until he couldn’t sort one from the other. But maybe there was no difference.

Wayne changed the batteries in his walkie talkie and pressed the button. “Burton?”

“Aye, Kip-tin,” Burton answered, in a Scottish brogue parody of engineer Scottie from “Star Trek.”

“How’s it looking?”

“Assembling for night hunts.”

“I’ll be in the control room shortly. Over and out.”

“Roger.”

Professional, controlled, relaxed, just the way Wayne had taught him. And everything Wayne wasn’t.

The trip to the door went smoothly. He made it just fine to the stairs, greeting a couple of ghost hunters and smiling as if to say, “Sure, I’ve been around all day, you just haven’t seen me.” His head swam a little as he ascended, but nothing too unmanageable. Based on distant past experience, he’d have pegged his consumption at between a quart and a half gallon. Only his bar tab knew for sure.

He was nearly to the top of the stairs, breathing hard and wobbling, when one of the guests confronted him. He recognized her face but she wasn’t wearing her name badge. Her clothes were rumpled and dirty, as if she’d been ghost-hunting in a basement somewhere. But it was her eyes that got him.

“Where’s the party, Digger?” she said.

“In the control room. We’re gathering for hunts.”

“I don’t need a group.”

He remembered her now. Eloise Lanier, one of the panelists for “What’s My Line?,” a discussion of why some people were more attuned to supernatural and psychic phenomena than others. He made a polite step to one side to indicate he was in a hurry. His throat was already dry despite the glass of water he’d downed. “Well, ma’am, we can’t accommodate solo—”

She shoved him against the railing with enough force to knock his top hat over the side and twenty-five feet down to the landing below. Off balance, he grabbed at the slick oak rail. “Ma’am, if you’re upset—”

Eloise grabbed a fistful of his ruffled shirt and shook him. Even though she outweighed him by a good eighty pounds, he was startled by her strength. “Upset? Why should I be upset?”

He gripped her wrist with both hands, forcing himself to remain gentle despite the pain. “I’m sorry if—”

“I’m not upset, I’m grateful.” Her voice changed and deepened. “Thanks for inviting me to the party.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re having fun,” he said. “But we also hope to get some serious data on the White Horse Inn.”

She leaned her face closer, spittle flying from her broad, dark face as she hissed. “You want answers, Wayne Wilson? Do you really want to know?”

Wayne blinked. Had her eyes flashed yellow or was he still wobbly from the drinking? He couldn’t trust any of his senses, and it made him feel even more lost than before.

He pulled free but she grabbed his wrist as he tried to slip past her.

As her eyes burned into his, he caught a glimpse of a dim, dirty opening and a crumbled carpet of gray and black. Ashes. In the vision, a tiny dot of red sparked to life underneath, then orange-red sparks winked to life.

He reeled against the railing as the hallucination swept over him. Eloise’s grip was like molten iron, and an electric wire of heat stabbed up his arm. The hallucination broadened and the embers burst into flames, images of naked bodies in the flickering bands of red, yellow, white, and blue.

Hell... the gate of hell....

But he didn’t believe in hell. This was someone else’s illusion, a fire-and-brimstone story from a Southern tent revival. Or a bad horror movie. Yet the warmth engulfed his chest and his heart stuttered. He clawed at the searing band around his wrist, his head jangling with more than a hangover.

The vision swelled until he could no longer see the dull white walls of the stairwell. He was surrounded by darkness, and the searing band was now a lasso, tugging him into the roiling pit of burning human forms. The crackle of the flames was like a soft, sibilant whispering, an almost seductive lulling.

“Dance with us, Digger... stay and play.....”

“No,” he said, straining against the lasso. “I don’t see this.”

And just like that, his eyes snapped open, and he was in the stairwell, holding onto the railing and gently swaying. Eloise Lanier stood a couple of steps above him, her brow furrowed in concern.

“Are you okay, Mr. Wilson?” she asked.

Wayne looked around and reached for the top of his head. His hat was missing. “I’m just a little...late.”

“I heard you were under the weather.” She gave a sweet smile of sympathy.

He looked over the railing. His black top hat lay on the carpet of the first-floor landing, the brim dented from the fall. When he turned his attention back to Eloise, she eased down a step. He fought an urge to back away. This wasn’t the embodiment of evil.

According to the biography she’d sent in for the conference program, Eloise was a public librarian who fancied herself a psychic medium. She probably baked cookies for her grandchildren. If he gave her credit for channeling a vision through him, she’d probably quit her job and start dressing in black gowns and owl feathers.

It was easier to believe he’d gone through a delayed case of delirium tremens, the scientific name for shaking yourself sober.

“I dropped my hat,” he said.

“Good thing your head wasn’t in it.” Her smile remained frozen in place.

Wayne’s walkie talkie crackled and he jerked at the sound. “Come in, Digger,’ came Burton’s voice. “Where are you?”

“On my way.” He eased past Eloise, half expecting her to trip him up. He was nearly at the top when she whispered, “Catch you later, Digger.”

From the third floor, he looked down to see that his hat was gone. Children’s laughter echoed up the stairwell.

I’m going to have a talk with that goddamned manager. But first things first.

Get the night hunts rolling, find Kendra, and get out of this hotel before my brain pickles in its own juice.

Chapter 39

“Cody?” Kendra swept the flashlight beam past Rochester and into the recesses of the attic. Cody had been right beside her. How could he have just disappeared?

Rochester laughed. “What, want to play ‘kissy face’ some more?”

She thrust the beam into his face. He didn’t squint and his dark eyes seemed to soak up the light. “None of your business, you little rat-faced creep.”

His lips curled in anger. “Don’t call me that.”

“Just like a rat—sneak around in the dark and stink.” The words were louder than she’d intended, but she was scared and didn’t want the brat to know. She forced her hand to hold the beam steady on his puckered, pointy face.

“Take it back,” he said.

She glanced around, but all she saw were shadows. Why didn’t Cody answer? Had he dropped off his flashlight? Where were Bruce and those other kids?

“Why are you guys playing games?” she said, then aimed the beam behind Rochester. “Oh, I get it. Bruce, you’re such a dork.”

Rochester fell for the trick and turned to look behind him, and she glimpsed a dark depression in the flesh of his neck. It was an unbroken line, with mottled skin around it. As if....

No. He couldn’t have hanged himself, because then he’d be dead. Just like Bruce. And I don’t want them to be dead.

Because then I’d have to believe all this crap.

Maybe Cody was in on it, using her as bait in some bizarre research project. He could have set up his audio recorders, decimeters, and other devices beforehand, then tried to scare her so he could measure her skin temperature, pulse rate, electromagnetic energy, and screams.

Probably even the kiss had been part of it, causing her to let guard down, make her vulnerable to his suggestions of demons.

Now it made sense. Bruce grabbing her book, leading her on a chase, Cody conveniently guiding her to the attic, planting ghost stories in her ear—

Christ, my first serious crush had to be wasted on an asshole.

The Future of Horror. If this is what the future looks like, then put me down with Emily Dee in the churchyard sleep. I’ll die a virgin, and the sooner the better.

She had to admit, though, Rochester’s make-up job was pretty decent. He turned back to face her again, and she studied the black folds of skin beneath his eyes and the pale cheeks. Even the fey little Victorian get-up had the air of stage costume.

The kid was a pretty good actor, but ten-year-old boys already had a lot of creepiness inside and it wouldn’t take much to bring it to the surface. Like maybe fifty bucks and the promise of a good laugh. Or a credit on Future’s Web site.

She reached out, planning to push him back into the fluffy shredded paper that served as insulation. With any luck, he’d hit a soft spot in the ceiling and tumble through to the third floor. The flashlight dipped with the movement, and she lost her balance. She grabbed where his shirt should be, but her hand went cold and she clutched air as she fell.

“Cody!” The cry was a mixture of anger and fear, because now she was the one falling toward the insulation.

The attic was a kaleidoscopic swirl of dust, brown rafters, and white, plastic-coated wires as she fell. Just before she landed, she saw Dorrie peeking from behind the brick chimney. Then she was choking in the shredded paper, the flashlight lost.

Something creaked beneath her and she pictured the gypsum ceiling and its ancient cracks. If she struggled, the ceiling might give way. She’d probably survive, but it wouldn’t be fun, and it was hard to get revenge from a hospital bed.

She coughed, her throat tickled by the thick dust. “Cody, you bastard.”

“Over here.” His voice was strained and far away. How had he reached the other end of the attic, navigating the maze of support posts and wires in the dark?

From somewhere to her left, the flashlight cast a muted glow, as if it were half buried. She had the sensation of swimming as she fought for traction, and for a horrible second, she imagined she was in a dark morass of thick liquid that would suck her down and into... into what?

The hotel.

The hotel will pull you down and drown you and keep your bones inside forever, and no one will ever know where you went.

“No one will ever know,” Bruce whispered from the darkness.

As her knuckles struck a floor joist, she yelped in pain. But the pain was solid, as was the wood, and she clung to it, dragging herself to her knees. Her vision was bleary from the paper as she squinted into the depths of the attic. “Cody?”

“Run for it,” he said, and she once again wondered if he was playing with her. He sounded scared himself, and she recalled the wistful tremor in his voice as he’d said “Multiples.”

She didn’t know about demons, but three kids were sure as hell tormenting her. She gained purchase on the floor joist and spied her flashlight nestled in the insulation ten feet away. Crawling the beam so that she didn’t test the ceiling, she recovered the flashlight and pointed it toward Cody’s voice.

He hovered in the air, his face stricken and pale, mouth open and gasping for breath. His hands were at his throat, and his legs flailed six inches above the attic floor. He made a rough sucking sound, as if swallowing rocks, and it was then she saw the wire descending from the roof.

Kendra shouted his name and ran toward him, somehow managing not to trip. Rochester taunted her from the shadows: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

“The old gray goose is dead,” Dorrie sang in an off-key, nasally whine.

By the time Kendra reached Cody, his eyes were bulging and glazed. She ducked between his legs and placed her head between his thighs, lifting him. Maybe that would buy him time....

Unless this was part of the act, and cameras were trying to capture his spirit leaving his body. A suicide video would really rack up the Web hits.

But she couldn’t think about that now, or the warmth of his crotch against her neck, or the laughter of the hidden children. She was working on instinct, and if she could release the tension on the wire, then Cody could untangle it.

But he didn’t kick her away, and air whistled into his lungs as his windpipe opened above her and he fought for breath. She couldn’t see what he was doing, but his arms were busy, and then his full weight was on her and they both fell. She thumped her hand again—luckily not her drawing hand—and the gypsum groaned beneath them. Cody rolled over, still wheezing, and she shined the light on his face.

“Thanks,” he croaked, and she sent the beam to the wire that descended from the roof. The wire was still swaying, two bright points of copper protruding from its frayed end.

“Is this for real?” she asked, sensing the small forms of the children looming around.

He nodded, grabbed her hand, and gave it a weak squeeze.

Chapter 40

“Roach is still missing, and so’s Cody,” Burton said.

Wayne Wilson looked around the control room, checking the monitors. Though a few people had dropped out of the night hunts, probably due to exhaustion or excessive celebration, there were thirty people in the room. He’d have to divide them into three groups—one led by Burton, one by Jonathan, and the last for himself.

That left no one to monitor the video screens and coordinate the schedules. Most likely Cody would show up in a few minutes, but he couldn’t delay any longer. The hunters were already irritable, infected by the unease that permeated the hotel. Wayne wanted to get them rolling before they had time to revolt.

Beth, please watch Kendra for me. If you’re really an angel.

Cristos Rubio, standing alone in the corner of the room, raised his cupped hand in an imaginary toast. Wayne wasn’t sure whether the psychic was smirking or smiling in approval.

“Okay, Burt, you take the first ten and head for room 312,” Wayne said, more decisively than he felt. “Jonathan, take the next ten to the dining room and set up. With any luck, you’ll get an appearance from the Waiter.”

“Right, Chief,” Jonathan said.

“I’ll take the rest to the basement,” he said. “My group will be a little bigger but we have plenty of room down there to spread out. That should keep us all occupied for a couple of hours, then we’ll regroup when we lose a few stragglers.”

“You get Gelbaugh,” Burton said. “And Amelia George.”

“Sure,” Wayne said. “I’m feeling masochistic tonight.”

Jonathan silenced the murmuring crowd with a commanding bellow, and Wayne ran through the hunt logistics. As the crowd divided, Burton took Wayne aside. “Listen, I know it’s none of my business, but do you think Cody and Kendra—”

“None of your business.”

“Right.”

Wayne checked the monitors. The attic cameras were stable, showing no activity of any kind. The hall cameras showed sparse traffic as people went from room to room, headed for the bar. He glanced out the window and saw the fog had settled around the hotel, and the lamps on the lawn threw off fuzzy halos of light.

The surrounding forest was obscured, and the lane leading from the main road was swallowed by the mist. It was as if the hotel had broken loose from the world and floated into a forgotten sea.

“So, when does my guaranteed ghost show up?” Gelbaugh said, when Wayne was left alone with his group.

“The night is young.”

“But we’re getting older by the second.”

“And closer to death,” said the short man in a sailing cap.

“The spirits are active tonight,” Amelia said, gripping her husband’s arm for support.

The basement provided enough dark shadows, cobwebs and weird noises to keep the whole group happy. Even Gelbaugh should come away with something to grumble about. Wayne just wanted to survive the night, before he stopped by the bar for another round, Kendra got pregnant, and his dead wife made another appearance.

“Okay,” Wayne said to everyone. “You guys are lucky because we get the basement. Everybody got a flashlight?”

Nods all around. Wayne passed out a couple of audio recorders, EMF meters, and spot thermometers to some of the more inexperienced hunters. They probably wouldn’t produce any useful data but they would feel more involved. He gave one more glance at the bank of monitors, wishing Kendra would pop up on one of the screens.

You just have to trust her. After all, she’s the adult in this family.

He led the group down the hall, Gelbaugh sniping from the rear. By the time they’d reached the first floor, Wayne was thirsty. Jimmy Buffett’s voice spilled from the bar, preaching rum and sand as a way of life, and the laughter and clinking glass begged for Wayne’s attention. He swallowed hard and hurried past without a glance inside.

“Get ready to rock, people,” he said, navigating the narrow hall that led to the basement door. He stood aside to let the hunters pass while he fished the key out of his pocket.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Cappie.

“What?” Wayne said.

“The door,” someone said.

Wayne moved through the crowd. Written on the door in red letters was the word “Stay and play.” The paint was wet and running down the wood, as if the perpetrator was waiting around the corner to see the effect of his prank.

The door was unlocked, held in place by the deadbolt. Wayne opened it, and fecund darkness oozed up from below. The air had changed since his first visit the morning before. Now it was rich with the musk of decay and fungus. He flipped the light switch but the darkness held its ground.

“Bulb’s out,” he said. “Ready with the flashlights.”

“‘Play’ indeed,” Gelbaugh said. “What’s next, a brood of bats erupting to the accompaniment of cheesy organ music?”

“The place is 150 years old,” Wayne said. “What do you expect?”

He descended the wooden stairs, following his own flashlight beam, sweeping it around to verify that the basement floor was relatively level, though pocked with broken rocks, depressions in the soil, and building materials left over from long-ago repairs. Reaching the bottom, he stood to the side and illuminated the stairs to aid the rest of the hunters. Once everyone was down, he launched into the obligatory backstory.

“The basement has no particular legend attached to it, though one of the workers reported smelling pipe smoke,” Wayne said, though the olfactory hallucination had actually been reported on the second floor. Still, those were the kinds of legends that traveled well, and probably one of the hunters would end up smelling some scorched Prince Albert.

He flicked his beam to the rusting hulk of metal. “That furnace over there is said to light all by itself. As far as we know, no deaths have been recorded down here, though there’s evidence that this site is near an old Civil War stockade where prisoners probably died of disease if they weren’t killed outright.”

“Come now,” Gelbaugh said. “Surely there’s an Indian graveyard right under our feet. Or a pet cemetery.”

“Yeah,” said Cappie. “Or maybe a serial killer buried his victims here in the crawl space.”

“Shut up,” Amelia shouted, her voice swallowed by the dirt and dangling insulation. “Don’t you feel the energy?”

She lifted her arms as if about to conduct an orchestra, and then performed a slow, graceless pirouette. “It’s all around us.”

“Christ, if she faints down here, we’ll never get her up the stairs,” said a woman who had witnessed yesterday’s aborted Ouija-board experiment.

“My meter’s going wild,” said a man on the edge of the crowd. The device was a K-II EMF reader, so Wayne downplayed the value of the evidence. Most likely the man was standing under a bundle of electric wires. Still, the excitement in his voice was enough to distract Gelbaugh and the sailing-cap man from their razzing.

The hunters, who had spread out upon reaching the ground, now instinctively gathered more closely together. The basement was cool with the November night, the crumbling foundation walls full of cracks and loose masonry.

“If you’re here, let us know,” Amelia said.

“We came here just to meet you,” added her husband.

“Make my millennium,” Gelbaugh said, quoting the movie “Beetlejuice.”

“If you need energy, you can draw some from me,” Amelia said. Her flashlight dimmed.

“Feel that?” someone asked.

“It touched me!” shouted the man with the K-II meter.

“I think we got an active.” Wayne’s ears popped as the air pressure subtly changed. The floor resonated with a deep, steady thump—da boo boo da-boo—but it was clearly caused by the lower registers of the bar’s sound system. It had the rhythm of a heartbeat, as if the hotel were alive and slumbering.

Flashlight beams cut swaths through the darkness.

“Did you see that?” a woman whispered.

“Behind me,” said the excitable K-II operator.

“Ghosts don’t reveal themselves to just anyone,” Amelia said. “You need to be sensitive.”

Wayne played his flashlight around. Due to the disordered layout of the support walls, he couldn’t see much of the basement. But something flickered orange at the edge of his vision, and he thought at first his beam had reflected off some stray ductwork or abandoned machinery. Then he realized the glow was emanating from within the furnace.

“Flashlights off,” Wayne ordered.

“Bossy, aren’t we?” Gelbaugh said, though he complied along with the others.

In the pitch black, the throbbing of the bass notes took on even more power, and the muted light in the furnace was readily apparent. Wayne assumed someone had built a fire in it earlier, perhaps as a joke. The same person who had painted “Stay and play.”

The darkness skewed perception enough that Wayne couldn’t clearly judge the distance to the furnace, though he’d guess it was a hundred feet from the stairs.

“What’s that?” someone said.

“The haunted furnace,” Gelbaugh said. “Digger did a great job of setting that one up.”

“I haven’t been down here yet,” Wayne said.

“Maybe one of your minions. Paranormal activity or your money back.”

A flashlight clicked on and the beam bounced as its owner fled toward the stairs. “It touched me again,” said the K-II operator. “I’m done.”

“Touch me,” Amelia implored, addressing any spirit in the vicinity, desperate for attention.

“Careful,” Wayne hollered after the fleeing man, whose feet banged up the wooden steps. He switched his light back on and aimed it at the man’s back.

“A broken neck and we’ll have a new legend,” Gelbaugh said.

Cappie, who had become Gelbaugh’s ally in skepticism, added, “Let me guess. The door is locked from outside.”

The K-II operator hammered at the door. “Let me out,” he said.

“Shakespeare said, ‘All the world’s a stage,’” Gelbaugh said. “And that was long before the age of reality shows.”

A couple of the others turned on their flashlights, illuminating the K-II operator as he rapped his hairy hands on the door.

“You serious?” a woman said.

“Great,” Amelia’s husband said. “Spending the night down here when we’re paying a hundred and fifty a night for a bed.”

“Don’t worry,” Wayne said. “I’ll get maintenance.”

As he clicked on his walkie-talkie and removed it from his belt, he tried to picture how the door could have locked itself. It was key-operated from either side, and didn’t have a latch or button like a privacy lock would. Mechanically, the door was designed against accidental locking. But the White Horse now seemed intent on breaking the rules.

“Burton?” he said into the walkie-talkie.

“Here’s where they wait five seconds for dramatic effect,” Gelbaugh said.

“You’re a jerk,” Amelia said to him, which elicited a bark of derisive laughter.

“Cody?” Wayne hoped the teen—and Kendra—were now back in the control room.

“Whoa, we’re really locked in,” someone said. “They won’t hear us until the bar closes, and knowing this place, that could be four in the morning.”

Wayne tried again, not wanting the hunters to panic. “Jonathan? Anyone from SSI?”

The K-II operator was nearly in a state of panic now, tugging on the door handle and pounding the wood with the base of his flashlight. Cappie lit a cigarette and headed up the stairs. “Easy, man,” he said. “No need to break your gear.”

Wayne tried the walkie-talkie again, glancing at the furnace. Is the fire brighter now?

If someone had built a fire, it should be dying down, not growing larger. But the bed of red embers pulsed in time with the bass notes, growing brighter as it drew oxygen. The brusque aroma of sulfur and coal smoke was overwhelmed by Cappie’s cigarette.

“Flashlights off,” came Wayne’s voice, but he wasn’t the one who said it.

The flashlight in his hand went dead, as did the others.

“Hey,” somebody said. “I didn’t do anything.”

The furnace roared to life with a whoosh, flames illuminating the rusted metal and open grate. The fire cast fingers of yellow light along the slick walls.

“Whoa,” Gelbaugh said, trying to maintain his acerbic ennui. “Did anyone bring marshmallows?”

“How’s it doing that?” a man said, shielding his eyes against the brightness. “There’s no wood in it.”

“As long as it stays in there, we’re fine,” Wayne said, though the metal was now ticking from the heat. Had he ordered the group to turn off flashlights? He couldn’t afford to become disoriented.

“What are you sensing?” Amelia’s husband asked.

She closed her eyes, her face pink, shadows crawling across it like small rodents. The group fell silent and waited, even the man at the door, who had given up on the lock.

“The one from the Ouija session,” she said.

Wayne swallowed, wondering if Beth was making an encore appearance. Despite his denial, her memory—her possibility—had fueled him with anxiety, and that was part of his eagerness to leave the White Horse. Promises were lies to comfort the dying, and everyone was dying, all the time, moment by moment.

I’ll never drink again, I’ll take good care of Buttercup, I’ll meet your spirit at the White Horse Inn. I’ll love you forever.

Amelia turned slowly, as if homing in her inner radar to a weak and distant signal. Her mouth opened, and the words that issued forth were from a different, younger voice.

“In the walls,” she said.

“Who are you?” asked her husband, obviously trained to coax out the spirits Amelia channeled.

“You know,” Amelia said.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

“To feed the fire.”

“The fire in the furnace?”

“Yes.”

“Did you make it burn?”

“Yes.”

“Congratulations, we’ve solved the energy crisis,” Gelbaugh said, drawing a snicker from Cappie. “While I have you here, can you give me some tips on the stock market?”

Amelia’s response was drowned out by the roar of the furnace, which vomited a wave of flames toward the group. The heat wafted across Wayne’s face, not hot enough to burn but plenty enough to get his attention.

A couple of people shouted, and someone dropped a camera to the dirt. Most of the group headed toward the stairs, but the flames were already rolling back upon themselves, like a tidal wave that had smashed against a cliff, and the fire drew back into the furnace.

It glowed almost white for a moment, condensing into a shrinking globe, and then winked out, leaving the basement pitch black.

Chapter 41

“Okay,” Kendra said, more bravely than she felt, kneeling over Cody. “Come on out.”

She shined the light around the attic. Dust swirled from all the activity, and something fluttered in the distant eaves, a disturbed bat or bird. Cody’s breathing was heavy but even, so he wasn’t too seriously injured. But she’d have to lead him out of the attic before the Brat Pack played any more of its games.

“That boy,” Cody wheezed. “He’s the leader.”

“Rochester,” she called out. “Are you a scaredy cat?”

He appeared three feet in front of her, smirking, his hands behind his back. “Cat? I thought I was a rat.”

He brought her sketch pad out from behind his back and opened it to her drawing of him as the Rat-Faced Boy. “Not bad, but I think my whiskers are a little longer in real life.”

She blinked, as his face seemed to sharpen for a moment, drawing his nose to a point and exaggerating the size of his two front teeth.

“Cody,” she said. “Are you seeing this?”

“Be cool,” Cody replied, still too weak to stand. “Demonic haunting.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, trying to remember Dad’s lessons on the various classifications of paranormal activity. She had tuned them out as yet more Digger blabber, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that “demonic” was not good.

If I live through this, I’ve got one hell of an idea for my next character. How would Emily Dee handle this?

Well, Emily Dee wasn’t a ghostbuster or a priest, more of a ninja Goth, and this situation didn’t really call for a flying skull kick. And she’d already tried screaming for help. That left relying on smarts. She stood and faced Rochester, figuring that the best approach was to show no fear.

“Help me out here, Cody,” she said. “What do demons want, exactly?”

“Different things,” he said.

“Like my soul?”

“Maybe.”

“Hey, Stick Figure, why don’t you ask me?” Rochester said.

“Because you’re acting childish,” she said.

“I am a child. I just happen to be dead, so I’ve been one for a long time.”

“I liked you better when you were sneaking around and playing pranks,” she said. “I’d think a demon would find a better host to possess. That one looks like it has worms.”

Rochester’s face narrowed and his teeth grew sharp again, his nose twitching in rage.

Oops. Maybe I better get a clue from Cody about how to handle this before I get my face bitten off.

“So, Mr. Future of Horror, what’s the next move?” she asked.

Cody raised himself to a sitting position, still rubbing his neck. “Well, a demon only has power over you if you invite it in,” he said.

“You invited us just by coming here,” Rochester said. “So bow down.”

Kendra’s feet flew out from under her and she banged hard on her knees, kneeling beside Cody as if the two of them were repentant sinners seeking forgiveness. Kendra had not been raised in the church, but she was offended both by this mockery of religion and the ease with which she could be manipulated. She tried to rise, but a great weight had settled on her.

“So,” Kendra asked Cody. “What does the book say about how to handle this?”

“There’s no book.”

“I don’t suppose I can all of a sudden ask Jesus into my heart?” she asked Rochester, planning to do the exact opposite of whatever he said.

“Be my guest,” he replied. “Jesus and me, we’re on the same team. Working for the Man, putting in time until time’s up.”

His delivery had changed, voice older and almost weary. She glanced toward the direction of the access door, but it now seemed impossibly far away.

“Where are Bruce and Dorrie?” Kendra asked.

Rochester shrugged. “Around.”

“We already knew the hotel was active,” Cody said. “If you’re a demon, why do you hang around with all these ghosts? Are you a scaredy cat like she said? Maybe you’re afraid of the dark.”

“I’m only afraid of one thing,” Rochester said. “And if you can figure it out, I might—” he gave a rodent grin—”might—let you live.”

“There are worse things than being dead,” Cody said, leading Kendra to wonder what those things were and how he knew.

“Suppose we don’t want to play your guessing game?” Kendra said. “What if we just walk out of here and pretend you don’t exist?”

“Free your spirit and your feet will follow?” Rochester adjusted the collar of his plush jacket and thrust out the sketch pad. “I don’t think you could leave without this.”

She propelled herself forward, but it was difficult to launch from a kneeling position, and she fell into the shredded paper that served as insulation. She was reminded of a rat’s nest her dad had found in the garden shed behind their house, and how much of it had been paper nibbled from Digger’s comic-book collection. The nest had smelled of old hair and pee, and this insulation was almost as bad.

A hand latched onto her, squeezing hard enough to hurt, and she figured Rat-Face was digging his creepy little paws into her, but when she glanced up, it was Cody stooping over her. The gypsum beneath her cracked, and she was reminded of Cody’s warning: Be careful, or you’ll step straight through to the floor below.

Sounded like a good idea.

“Okay, Rochester,” she said, as Cody helped her rise. She gave her best Emily Dee leap into the air, and landed squarely on the spot where she had been lying. The gypsum splintered and bent, but didn’t collapse. She glanced at Cody, who caught on, and he jumped beside her, their combined weight too much for the ceiling material.

She just had time to hear Rochester’s squeal before she was flying through the air, weightless, seeming to hang forever, or at least long enough to grab Cody, and then she struck the wooden floor ten feet below, and all was black.

Chapter 42

“Shit,” Burton said.

The lights had blinked just as his group was settling into Room 318, then the power dimmed and went out after one final surge.

“Flashlights, everybody,” he said.

As the individual lights clicked on, throwing erratic dots of orange around the walls, Burton paged the other SSI members on his walkie-talkie. No answer.

Cody, Kendra, and The Roach out, and Digger on the ropes. Jonathan out of contact, too.

He tried the walkie-talkie again. Outside the window, the lawn was dark, the only illumination cast by the half moon stitched behind a gauze of fog. The hunters in Room 318 didn’t seem alarmed by the power outage, talking in occasional low whispers and enjoying the gloomy atmosphere.

Burton felt his way along the wall to the door. “Be right back,” he said to the group before slipping out of the room. He dreaded having to deal with the vacant-eyed Violet, but maybe the manager had turned up.

Yet another person gone AWOL…what is it with this place? Is it eating the guests?

With the lack of power, the ambient noises of the hotel—televisions, elevator, bar—had given way to almost complete silence. Those few guests not on the hunts were likely reluctant to leave their rooms. The creak of his footsteps was magnified, and only when his beam glanced against a mirror could he see more than five feet in front of him. He debated checking in at the control room, but the equipment there would be useless even if someone were manning it.

Burton turned the corner and headed for the stairwell. The woman stood there with her arms folded, and he almost bumped into her. She would have seen the flashlight approaching, but she hadn’t called out. He recognized her from one of the earlier panel discussions, where she had sat in the back and cracked her knuckles, a sour expression on her face as if she had eaten bad eggs and they had given her gas.

Her onyx pupils absorbed the flashlight beam and there was no glint reflecting from her eyes. She was a stolid statue, carved from rock by a civilization long gone, except her full lips lifted in a grin that showed most of her teeth. Her breath washed over him in a sulfuric wave.

“Power’s out,” he said, in an excuse to move past her, lowering the beam from her face.

“Power’s in,” she said in a taunting voice.

“Excuse me?” One of Digger’s rules was that every guest should be treated with respect, no matter how odd or flaky, because the paranormal community was small. The customer was always right, even the psychotic alien love child.

“I took it,” she said.

He aimed the light at her name badge. Eloise Lanier. He tried humor. “Do you mind giving it back?”

Her smile dropped. “I’m not finished with it yet.”

“Okay, Miss Lanier. Did you lose your group?”

“They’re down there.” She rolled her eyes toward the floor.

“Yeah, that’s where I’m headed. Do you have a flashlight?”

She reached out and snatched his away before he could react. “Now I do.”

She held the flashlight over her head like it was a chunk of meat and she expected him to leap for it like a dog. Her face was steeped in shadows.

“Ma’am, this is an emergency,” he said, biting back his irritation.

“More than you know.” She brought the flashlight down in an arc, crashing it on top of Burton’s skull. He grunted and staggered away, stunned by the blow, sparks of purple and electric lime jumping across the backs of his eyelids. He touched his head and felt the wetness of blood.

As he recovered, anger surged through him, joining the pain to give him a burst of energy. “What the hell was that all about?”

“Bad attitude,” she said.

He tried to place her, wondering if she were one of the unstable drama queens Digger had warned SSI about. He recalled her name from the program as one of the speakers on a panel he hadn’t attended. If she were an aspiring para-celeb, going psycho at a paranormal conference might get her some infamy and the ensuing Internet hits.

He decided to give professional tact one more chance. “I’m sorry you’re not enjoying your stay—”

The flashlight swung again but this time he was ready. His experience as a rock ‘n’ roll roadie paid off as he ducked the blow and came underneath, jabbing his fist toward her elbow. He’d been raised never to hit women, but preservation instinct overrode it and he smacked her hard enough to force her to drop the flashlight. As it hit the carpet, its batteries jostled free and the hall went utterly dark.

And she was on him, sour breath oozing across his face. She was six inches shorter than he, but in her dark fury she seemed to have grown two feet. She knocked him back against the wall, and her weight bore him down.

“Christ, lady,” he yelled, but he no longer had any restraint. As she pressed him against the floor, he wriggled to escape, feeling along her shoulders until he found her face. He’d claw her eyes out—

“Yarggg,” he squealed, as she bit one of his fingers hard enough for a tendon to pop. He yanked his hand free and balled it into a fist, then pounded it against her back. It was like beating a sack of sand.

Her hair scratched Burton’s face. Her smell was metallic and smoky, as if she’d been sweating in a foundry all day. Her weight crushed his lungs. He fought for breathe, still startled by the suddenness of the assault.

“Get off, bitch,” he said, throwing an elbow against her. He’d been in a few bar brawls, but rolling around in the neon-lighted beer and piss seemed almost normal compared to this struggle in the dark.

“I’ll make you my bitch,” she said, and her voice seemed far too large and distant to have come from her foul mouth.

He gave a twist and felt her body shift, and then he rolled the opposite way, using her momentum to toss her aside. He shoved her away with his feet, drawing sick satisfaction from the cracking of her skull against the wall. He rose to his knees, not sure whether to look for the flashlight or find the stair banister and flee. Before he could act, cold rivers of pain sluiced along the length of his left arm.

He touched the wound and his fingers came away wet. Blood? Did the lunatic have a knife?

Then she was on him again, only now she seemed heavier, more solid. He raked at her, caught the turgid tendons of a flexing wrist, but her strength had grown. Barroom bad-asses sometimes freaked out on meth or angel dust, taking on the strength of ten in their panic. But Eloise Lanier had gone from zero to eighty without even hitting the pedal.

He grabbed her face again, but her skin was slick and scaly, not like flesh at all. As he gouged for her eyes, his fingers stung as if he’d grabbed a fistful of barbwire. He wrapped his bleeding hand around a hank of her tangled hair, tugging at it to pull her filthy mouth away from his. But he was weakening, and her cracked, grimy lips pressed against his. He tried to scream, but she bit his tongue.

Commotion and lights down the hall....

“What’s going on?” someone shouted, but the words sounded as if they’d poured through a wall of cotton. The agony in his mouth was indescribable—mostly because he could no longer form words.

A flashlight beam swept over and past him, and he turned to see Eloise—no, not Eloise, not a human, but something scaly and lumpy wearing her clothes—skitter away and down the stairs, trailing a reptilian tail behind it.

Burton almost smiled at the illusion, understanding the grim trickery the mind played when the body went into shock. But the pain in his mouth was too intense, and the spreading pool of liquid beneath him had probably leaked from his blood vessels, and the hunters from the room must have heard the noises and come to investigate.

“Shit, what was that?” said one of the hunters, and a woman screamed, and another said his name, and a flashlight beam bobbed across his face, then another, and he wanted to open his eyes and he realized they were already open.

“Eloise,” Burton tried to say, but all that came out was a fresh gush of salty, stinging hurt, and he shut up.

Now that his eyes were open, all he wanted to do was close them and block out the pain, the lights, the gasps and whispers and frantic chatter.

“What happened to his mouth?” somebody said.

Burton wondered the same thing, but somehow he couldn’t narrow the words into a cohesive thought, and even with his eyes closed, the image of snapping dragon’s teeth burned into his brain, plunged in the feverish forge where the flames went white-hot.

Go toward the light.

It was the corny joke of all paranormal investigators, though some took it more seriously than others. But Burton didn’t have much choice, nor was he laughing now, because the light was a distant spark dimming to yellow and then to red, finally blinking out and giving way to a rapidly cooling darkness.

Chapter 43

“We can’t bust the door down,” Gelbaugh said. “It’s two inches of solid wood.”

“The hinges are on the other side, too,” Wayne said. He jammed a screwdriver into the catch, but even if he managed to trip the tumblers, the upper deadbolt was secure. His tool kit would do no good.

The two men stood shoulder to shoulder on the stair landing, having felt their way up the banister in the dark. The rest of the group waited below, talking in low, frantic whispers. The furnace was now behaving itself, but Wayne didn’t trust it. Gelbaugh had posited a theory on the cumulative telekinetic powers of the group, a magnified form of wishful thinking, but even Cappie had dismissed that one.

“The work of demons,” Amelia George said. In the dark, her disembodied voice took on a creepy authority.

“Get us out of here, Digger,” a woman said, in a near panic.

“Be reasonable,” Gelbaugh said from his perch, as Wayne continued rattling the lock. “If demons were here, why would they play tricks with pyrotechnics? Why not just turn the basement into a boiling puddle of Napalm and be done with it?”

“Because they want you to believe,” Amelia said.

“Then their work is half done, because half of you seem to be buying into the foolishness.”

“I don’t care what it is, I don’t want to be down here another minute,” the unseen woman said.

“I’m getting claustrophobic,” a man said, his words clipped by gasps.

Wayne slid the screwdriver back into the tool pouch on his belt. “There’s got to be another way out,” he said.

He spoke with more confidence than he felt, because he hadn’t conducted a thorough survey. The basement had been Roach’s turf, and Cody was in charge of logistics. Because the walkie-talkie was dead, he wasn’t sure if either had shown up in the past hour.

And Kendra is with Cody. I hope. Or maybe not.

“Get me out of here before that furnace blows up,” said the claustrophobe.

“Stay calm,” Wayne said, feeling his way down the stairs.

“Yeah,” Gelbaugh said. “Enjoy the atmosphere. You don’t get this on ‘TAPS.’”

Something rumbled in the far end of the basement, and the floor timbers creaked above their heads.

“Either Beelzebub just farted or the hotel is about to collapse,” Gelbaugh said, the joking tone shot through with nervousness.

Once Wayne left the familiar landmark of the stairs, he was adrift, with no sense of where the walls were. The group in the middle of the basement, still huddled together, had not moved since the furnace had gone out. Amelia was carrying on in strange tongues, and Wayne welcomed the distraction. If the hunters felt the demons were speaking through her, maybe they wouldn’t freak out.

Wayne put out his hand and took short, shuffling steps, careful of the protruding rocks and clutter on the dirt floor. He could be heading toward the furnace, for all he knew. But he had to keep moving. It might be another hour before Burton and Jonathan returned to the control room and figured out Wayne’s group was now among the missing.

The rumble came again, and this time Wayne felt it in his feet.

“It took her,” Amelia shrieked. She was at least fifty feet behind Wayne, so he figured he was nearing the back wall.

“Who did?” her husband asked, ever the willing sidekick.

“Belial.”

Great. My first case of demonic activity and not only is all our gear on the fritz, but I get the biggest baddie of them all.

“The fire,” someone said. “Did the demon do it?”

“It can make more,” Amelia said.

“Where is it now?” her husband said.

“Upstairs.”

“Have it come down and unlock the door.” Gelbaugh had moved away from the stairs and was apparently across the room, near the furnace.

“Channeling doesn’t work that way,” Amelia’s husband said.

“Margaret said it doesn’t want us to leave,” Amelia said.

“Why did it take Margaret?”

“Not Margaret. The angel.”

“A beastie gets lonely?” Gelbaugh said. “I thought all those hounds of hell hung out together in one big pack?”

“You don’t understand theology,” said the claustrophobe, forgetting his panic in the rush of a channeling experience. “In the pantheon of demons and angels, there’s a definite hierarchy, and some are lesser demons.”

“Wonderful. So we can look forward to yet more politics in the next life. That’s comforting.”

Wayne touched the cool masonry with his hand, easing his way toward the newer portion of the hotel, where the kitchen and dining room were. He felt disembodied in the utter darkness, no longer sure of his moorings. He could have been drifting in deep space, submerged in oil, or encased in liquid nitrogen and dreaming of one day having his corpse reanimated.

“Okay, people,” he called, more to reassure himself than to keep them informed. “I’m checking out the new wing.”

“Meet you there,” Gelbaugh called from the other side of the basement.

Amelia continued her spacey, droning delivery, talking about Margaret Percival coming down to the basement through the service entrance and—

Service entrance?

“Amelia,” Wayne yelled. “The service entrance. Where’s that at?”

“She can’t talk right now, she’s channeling,” her ever-helpful husband said.

“I need to know where that entrance is.”

“Behind the kitchen,” she said, then continued recounting Margaret’s visit to the basement. “And Belial found her her here. She never left.”

The boiler gave a dismal sigh but didn’t ignite, as if something in there agreed with Ameila.

Wayne reviewed his mental snapshots of the basement. The kitchen likely lay in the section where the pipes and wires had tangled and multiplied like a nest of snakes. He moved faster, chafing his hands on the crude stonework. A sense of urgency juiced him up.

If Amelia’s right about a demon running loose up there, and Kendra—

He bumped his head on a pipe. Even if he was lucky enough to find a door, it would probably be locked, too, but he might have more luck jimmying it open if it was flimsier than the main entrance.

The rumbling came again. He was nearly to the kitchen when a scream ripped through the dead air of the basement.

Chapter 43

“Kendra?”

The voice came swimming down to her through a sea of night.

She grunted, trying to suck oxygen into the brick tombs of her lungs. Maybe this was death, and God was calling her onto the carpet. Time to pay for that Tegan and Sara CD she’d shoplifted, all the movies she’d illegally downloaded, that lie she’d told her teacher when she skipped out on a chemistry test. So it all caught up with you, just the way the televangelists said.

Emily Dee paints herself into one last corner.

She heard her name again. God must have figured out she was hardheaded and had to be told several times. Might as well go in with attitude blazing.

“Who turned out the lights?” she whispered with a scant scrap of air.

“Whew, thought you’d knocked your noggin,” Cody said. His hands moved over her, unhurried and confident. “Any broken bones?”

“It hurts too much to tell.”

“Well, at least we’re out of the clutches of Demon Child up there.”

Cody helped her sit up, and she brushed the plaster dust from her face and shoulders. She could just make out his face, and only a dim square of distant light from a window broke the blackness.

“The electricity must be out,” Cody said.

“Did the demons do it?”

“So you’re a believer now, huh?”

“Nothing says ‘bone-chilling horror’ like floating kids with bloody red eyes,” she said. “So, now what?”

She could barely make out Cody’s silhouette as he glanced back up at the ceiling. “Sure you don’t want your sketch pad?”

Something fluttered down from the torn gap and Kendra ducked, thinking it was a bird or a flock of bats. Or a flock of flying dead kids.

The pad landed at her feet and she swooped it up. “Thanks, Bruce,” she whispered.

A thump came from the service closet, as if the flashlight had bounced down the attic stairs. Then the floor quivered beneath her feet, wood groaning. Broken glass tinkled in the distance. The motion stopped as suddenly as it began.

“Whoa,” Cody said. “Earthquake.”

“No. The Appalachians are stable. Oldest mountains on Earth.”

“Bummer. So we can rule out natural causes?”

“Better hit the control room and see what’s going on. There’s nobody on this floor.” Kendra tucked her sketch pad under her arm and headed down the hall, wondering if any guests occupied the rooms. If so, they were staying put, and since most of them were participating in the hunt, they should be prowling around and enjoying the darkness.

As her eyes adjusted, she was better able to see the hole in the ceiling. A wisp of shadow appeared there, and she was about to mention it to Cody, but it faded fast enough for her to chalk it up to imagination. Wishful thinking worked two ways in the paranormal game: seeing things that weren’t there, and not seeing things that were probably there but you hoped weren’t.

Rochester, Bruce, Dorrie. How many other kids were hanging around the hotel when they should be off playing in the Great Playground in the Sky? And what about you, Mom? What’s here that’s better than wherever you’re supposed to be?

“No flashlight, no walkie-talkie,” Cody said behind her.

“And no weapons,” Kendra said, knowing how silly the declaration sounded. You couldn’t suck ghosts up into a vacuum cleaner and dump them out on a stiff breeze. You could give them the paranormal version of talk therapy and convince them to go toward the light, but they had to be willing to listen.

If Cody was right and these entities were demonic, then they would have no reason to check out. After all, they’d probably been here so long they had metaphysical squatter’s rights.

Which means Mom is a demon?

Cody reached out, touched her back, and let his hand trail down until he found her hand. They walked side by side, limping a little, moving carefully in the gloom.

“Why here?” she asked Cody, feeling a little safer now that they’d moved some distance from the attic access and the hole in the ceiling. The sense of security was illogical, because spirits didn’t need doors, but it was instinctive and reassuring nonetheless.

“You could spend years researching,” Cody said. “But at some point, somebody invited one in. And the others probably showed up like sharks at a bloodbath. They feed on weakness and depravity. The idea of ‘sin’ is not just something invented by priests to control people’s behavior. It’s about knowing right and wrong and still choosing wrong.”

“So demons sniff out a broken soul and come set up shop?”

“Something like that.”

“How do you explain the kids?”

“It’s a shell game. Demons use whatever façade does the job. And the job is to create doubt and confusion, to weaken all they encounter, to disturb the structure and rules of this world. This is God’s turf, and nothing makes them happier than to piss in the shrubbery.”

The rumbling came again, and this time Kendra steadied herself against the wall until the quake passed. They were near the window, and they could see the lawn and the dirt road leading to the White Horse. “No traffic,” Kendra said.

“It’s after midnight in the offseason,” Cody said.

“Nobody comes, nobody goes, huh?”

“That’s your dad’s decision. He’s still in charge, after all.”

A stocky form stepped from the shadow of a doorway in front of them. “That’s what you think,” the woman said.

Kendra jumped back, nearly dropping her pad, and Cody stepped in front of her. Give the guy points for macho heroism in the face of danger.

“Who are you?” Cody asked.

“One of the hunters,” she said, in a husky alto, though her tone was flat.

“Have you seen any of the SSI people?”

“I ain’t seen anybody since the power went out.”

“We should gather in the control room,” Cody said. “We’re headed that way. Want to come with us?”

“There ain’t no more control,” she said. Kendra’s eyes had adjusted enough to make out the woman’s shiny eyes and ebony skin. She recognized the woman from check-in but couldn’t recall her name.

“We apologize for the inconvenience, but I’m sure—”

“Cool it, Cody,” Kendra interrupted. “This isn’t about Haunted Computer Productions anymore. Weird crap is going down.”

“Going down,” the woman said, as if she liked that idea.

“Have you tried your cell phone?” Cody asked her. “I think every battery in the place is dead.”

“Dead.”

Kendra didn’t like the woman’s zombie monotone. “Well, I’m sure the lights will be back on soon. Be careful.”

She grabbed Cody’s arm and tugged him down the hall.

The woman called after them. “You be careful, too. Your momma said to tell you that.”

“Your momma?” Cody asked, confused. “But your momma’s—”

“Dead.” Kendra ushered him toward the control room. “Like a cell phone. You call and get no answer.”

“You’re not telling me something,” he said.

“I’m not telling you lots of somethings,” she said. “Mostly because I don’t know what they are.”

The woman was now lost on the shadows behind them, though she might have chuckled. At least, Kendra hoped the woman had chuckled. Otherwise, the floating kids from the attic were tracking them.

They traced the camera cable running the baseboard of the hall, following it around a corner and to the opening of the control room. The interior was utterly dark, having no windows.

“Damn,” Cody said. “A couple of the pieces have battery back-up, but it looks like they got drained, too.”

“I can’t believe the hotel doesn’t have emergency generators, especially for the exit signs. What if there was a fire?”

“Nobody’s here. We’d better head downstairs and look for your dad.”

Just as they were about to turn, one of the camera monitors blinked to life. The sudden green light threw dots behind their eyelids, but they welcomed the illumination.

“Guess some of the batteries still have juice,” Kendra said, entering the room.

“Kendra,” he said, putting out his arm to bar her entry. “That one doesn’t have back-up.”

As they watched, the monitor image focused on a scene in the attic, where Rochester and the others had taunted them. They saw themselves on the screen, Kendra speaking to nothing, then jumping to slam down on the gypsum. That was followed by Cody landing beside her and the ceiling giving way beneath them in a flurry of dust.

“No Rochester,” Kendra said.

“If they’re making the monitor tape run, then editing themselves out of the image would be no problem, right?”

“You’re the expert.”

The loop replayed two more times as they watched. In the last one, Kendra thought she could just make out a misty form in the background, but it could just as easily been her imagination.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result,’ Cody said.

“What do you call it when you watch insanity on TV?”

“Time to pull the plug.” He led her from the room, the flickering images still playing behind them.

Chapter 45

The scream had come from the edge of the group, as if a shark had sliced from the dark depths and taken prey.

All Wayne could do was cling to the wall and wait for the clamor to die down.

“What the hell?” Gelbaugh shouted.

“It touched me,” a woman said.

“I thought you wanted it to touch you.”

“Not like that.”

“Are you hurt?” Wayne shouted across the basement.

“I can’t tell,” the woman said. “It was all slithery.”

The group members talked over one another, and one of them must have braved the stairs again, because the door shuddered with dull blows. Someone else fled the group, smacking into a stone wall and groaning in pain.

“Stay where you are,” Wayne said.

“Easy for you to say.” Wayne recognized the voice as Cappie’s. “You’re way over there and something’s probing around.”

“Belial,” said Amelia George.

The furnace burst to life again, with a great chuffing of heat. The flames drew sighs and screams from the group, and Wayne could see some of them had fled. The woman, presumably the one who had been touched, was kneeling at the foot of a support wall, holding her bloody head in her hands and rocking back and forth. Another hunter, a short man in a vest, was hammering at the door, shouting against the thick wood. Amelia stood in the middle of the others, arms raised as if calling forth demons.

And maybe she is.

An hour ago, he might have believed in telekinetic powers. But now the rules seemed to be changing minute by minute, and the White Horse Inn no longer belonged to the realm of physics and logic.

This was now Demon Country.

The flickering flames cast long fingers of light across the basement and onto the scared faces of the group members. Wayne could see the maze of pipes around him, cast iron, lead, and polyvinyl in different sizes. Twenty feet away was a shadowed recess that suggested a door.

The furnace inhaled—that was the only word Wayne could use to describe the action—and the flames subsided to a dull glow. Wayne took advantage of the lingering glow to move forward.

“Come to me,” Amelia said. “Use me if you need it. Take me.”

Amelia’s husband eased a couple of steps away from her, unwilling to be caught in the crossfire of her spiritual recklessness. “Honey, maybe you should—”

“Kill you,” she bellowed, lowering her hands from their uplifted, summoning position and reaching for her husband with curled fingers.

“Christ, lady,” Gelbaugh said. “The cameras aren’t working so there’s no need for a show.”

“Open this damned door,” said the man on the stairs, now yanking on the handle with the force of his ample weight.

Wayne hurried to the recess, which blended with the larger shadows when the flames weakened. He ducked under a rusty drain pipe that disappeared into the dirt, and came up ready to reach for the door he hoped would be there. His hand struck soft, yielding flesh.

“Digger,” wheezed a voice.

The furnace breathed again and the basement flashed orange and red. In the fleeting light, Wayne made out a bruised, bleeding face, the eyes swollen nearly shut and the grin missing a couple of teeth. But it was the uniform, and the night-vision goggles perched atop the soggy mess, that clenched his guts.

“Rodney?” Wayne whispered.

The light dimmed again, but Wayne assembled the memory of the glimpsed image: The Roach’s dark jumpsuit was soaked with blood, the equipment belt empty. The Roach held his thumb over the jagged end of a copper pipe.

Wayne squinted into the shadows. “What happened?”

“You wouldn’t believe.” The Roach’s voice cracked like an ice sculpture under an axe blow.

“Are you hurt?”

“You wouldn’t believe.” A sob in it.

“Is that a door behind you?”

“You wouldn’t fucking believe.”

“You might have a concussion.” Wayne moved closer as the furnace pulsated again, throwing a lunatic sheen onto Rodney’s bloody, sweating, filthy face.

“I have proof now, Digger.”

“I know. But right now we need to get these people out of here.”

With his free hand, Rodney slid his night-vision goggles into place. “They won’t allow that.”

The basement went dim again, and Rodney released the copper line. Wayne smelled propane. The line must have run from an outside tank to the kitchen stoves. Rodney must have found the ruptured pipe, and maybe he’d stayed down here holding it closed until someone could shut off the tank. That would explain his absence, but not the gashes and bruises.

“Got a light?” Rodney asked.

As if in answer, the furnace roared again, and the propane fed it.

Whooosh.

“Mission accomplished,” Rodney said, just before the concussive blast stole the air and shot an expanding fireball across the basement. The heat slapped Wayne like a volcanic tidal wave and shoved him against Rodney, and they fell together against the door as support timbers groaned and splintered.

In the chaos of collapse, Wayne thought he heard Beth’s voice, or maybe it was the muffled screams of Amelia George.

Chapter 46

Kendra was pitched against the stair rail when the explosion sounded, and Cody grabbed at her as he lost balance in the dark.

She took a step forward, but the stairs seemed to give way beneath her, and her stomach took that same queasy somersault as when she’d fallen through the ceiling.

The subdued thump reached them a split-second later, and by then Kendra was gripping the rail, hugging her sketch pad to her chest as if it were a sacred text that would solve the crazy riddles of the night.

“Dad,” Kendra said, probing a foot out to see if the stairs still remained.

“Hear that?” Cody said.

On the floor below, people were shouting and scurrying in the dark. Deeper, the squeal and snap of straining wood mixed with a rumble of loose stones and a faint crackling sound. The hotel shifted again, as if knocked loose from its moorings and sliding down a slope.

“We need to get out of here,” Cody said. “This place has got a bad case of the shakes, and it was matchsticks and glue to begin with.”

“I can’t leave without Dad.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

“Who’s there?” someone yelled from the landing below, a man with a gruff, clipped voice.

“SSI,” Cody responded.

“One of your—our guy—I think he’s dead.”

Kendra and Cody headed toward the commotion, aided by light that leaked from a distant window that had broken open during the tremors. “Please don’t be Dad,” Kendra whispered.

“What’s going on?” Cody said, trying to project authority, though Kendra could hear the suppressed panic in his voice.

“This—thing—like a big lizard or something—”

“It was a black woman,” someone else cut in. “She had a knife.”

“It wasn’t a knife—”

“And then all our flashlights went out at once—”

Kendra couldn’t tell how many people were gathered on the landing, but by the time she and Cody reached the body, five had offered opinions. From the description, the victim didn’t sound like Dad. They bent over him, Cody checking his pulse. Kendra was afraid to touch the body but she forced herself to put her palm near his mouth. She felt no breath of wind.

“Did anybody report it to the front desk?” Cody asked. “The land line ought to get 9-1-1 even if there’s no cell signal.”

“You kidding?” said the gruff man who’d originally hailed them. It was too dark to make out his face, but he was tall and heavyset and Kendra remembered he’d put “West Virginia” on his registration address. He spoke with a rural Southern accent. “You reckon any of us wants to wander around in the dark when some nut has a knife?”

“It was a lizard,” a woman insisted. “I saw its scales and it had...it had....”

“Had what?” Cody said. “Nothing could be crazier than what we’ve already heard.”

“A tail,” she finished.

“Lord, help us,” another said.

“Ain’t the Lord’s doing,” said Gruff. “Somebody with a knife. See?”

A metallic skritch was followed by a small flame erupting, and Gruff bent down with the Bic lighter, illuminating Burton’s corpse. “Yuck,” he said, wiping at his ragged moustache. “Took his tongue, looks like.”

Wet, dark gore surrounded Burton’s lips and his mouth was a torn maw. His eyes were open and staring, blank with death and already losing their luster. His left arm was ripped and his jumpsuit was blotched with dark stains. A rusty, cloying odor hung over the landing.

“Ah, Burt,” Cody said with a sad sigh. Kendra touched his shoulder in a gesture of compassion. She’d liked Burton, and Dad would be devastated, but right now she was too shook up to feel much grief.

“It wasn’t one of the ghost kids that did this,” Kendra said.

“Ghost kids?” said Gruff.

“How many are in your group?” Kendra asked. And have you seen Digger Wilson?

“Eleven,” said a short woman whose silhouette was barely visible at the edge of the Bic’s light. “Burton told us to wait in the room when the power went out, but then we heard the fight.”

Cody tried the window, but it was sealed by ancient coats of paint. He yanked the curtain, pulling the rod down with it. A little more twilight leaked onto the landing. Cody wrapped the fabric around the wooden pole and held it out to the man with the Bic. “Torch.”

“This is going to stink,” Gruff said, but he applied the lighter. The linen curtain burst into a smoldering, oily flame.

“Are you the only group on the floor?” Kendra tried to remember the list of haunted rooms where the hunts would take place, but they all jumbled together. Digger said it didn’t matter whether the hunt location had activity or not, as long as people got their money’s worth. But he’d assumed there was no difference between a cold spot and a dead spot, and now it appeared the entire hotel was one big open grave, spilling out creepy spirits and things that should have been left buried.

“The rest went to the basement,” Gruff said. He snuffed out the lighter now that the torch crackled. A bit of curled ember fell to the wooden floor but Cody stomped it out.

“Smell that?” Cody said.

Kendra’s nose was full of Burton’s raw stench, but she took a sniff. “Smoke.”

“Yeah, but it’s not from this.” He waved the torch. “Come on, people.”

Gruff didn’t like being bossed by a teenager. “Where you going?”

“Out.”

“Them stairs are dangerous,” he said in his Southern accent. “Earthquake or something. You could fall right through.”

“I’m not staying here and waiting for the roof to fall in,” said an elderly woman, in a high tremulous voice. A shawl was draped around her frail shoulders and her darting eyes glittered in the torchlight. She tried to step past Burton’s corpse but slipped in the blood. One leg flew to the side and her bones clattered as she landed and skidded down a few stair treads.

“Dear Christ,” she muttered, moaning in pain and writhing, holding her left ankle. “Broke it.”

Kendra was immediately by her side, squinting at the injured limb. A bone appeared to bulge beneath the pale skin and flaccid muscle. “We’d better get her down.”

“Here,” Cody said, passing the torch to a rotund man in a leather jacket. “Lead them down.”

Cody stooped and picked up the old lady, cradling her in his arms. “Hang on, ma’am,” he said, as she whimpered at the sudden movement.

The smoke was thicker now, and undeniable. “Musta had a short,” Gruff said. “Blew some fuses.”

People who had huddled in the second-floor hallway moved past Gruff and the body, some of them refusing to look down at the mess. The pool of blood had spread so that it now dripped from the landing and onto the lower step in a sickening rivulet. Cody followed the leather-jacketed man, intent on not hitting the old woman’s leg on the shaking stair rail. Kendra counted the group members as they passed to make sure everyone escaped.

“Eleven,” she said. Cody had already made the turn in the stairs, which creaked under the combined weight of those descending, but enough torchlight lingered that she could see Gruff’s scowl.

And you make twelve. Did we gain somebody?

“A nut with a knife,” he said.

She glanced down at the descending group, and a woman looked up at her.

Mom?

The woman—the illusion of her mother, nothing more, surely nothing more—waved at her to follow, and then she made the turn and was gone.

Kendra took a step but slipped in the blood. The man caught her arm and squeezed hard enough to hurt.

“Easy,” she said.

“No, honey, it ain’t easy,” Gruff said. “It’s real, real hard.”

She looked at him, and his eyes were just as dead as Burton’s, the smoky moonlight pushing gray across his skin, the moustache lifting to reveal blunt teeth and a mocking grin. She recognized him now, though it was only through her artistic talent of sizing up facial features.

“Rochester,” she whispered.

“Among other things.”

She tried to pull away, shouting Cody’s name, but another rumble came and the stairs skewed sideways. The wall broke open at the end of the hall, spilling night into the hotel. The smoke made her cough, and the first flickering flames rose from below. The ghost hunters yelled frantically over one another, now fully aware of the danger.

“Maybe if you draw me purty, I’ll let you live,” Gruff said. “Just long enough.”

Her sketch pad was on the landing, forgotten in the chaos. She thought of the fantastic creatures she’d drawn on those pages, the imagined ghosts and disembodied spirits. Her morbid art now seemed like a survival instinct, because she had already dreamed the worst and could so easily accept the unreal.

“What do you want with me?” she said. “You could have anybody.”

“Don’t you get it?”

Her arm was almost numb under his grip. She wondered if Cody had noticed her absence, or if he was so intent on playing hero that he only had room for his ego. A few stair balusters fell from the landing above, clattering against wood.

“I just want out of here,” she said.

“You came back.”

“I’ve never been here before.” She tried to tug free as the hotel groaned around them, timbers snapping overhead.

“You think Digger brought you here for no reason?” Gruff’s face morphed and shifted in Rochester’s, looking almost silly because it still had the moustache, but then the face grew hairy, pointed, and rodent-like, two yellow incisors gleaming in the moonlight. “You don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

In her panic, she couldn’t remember what Cody had said about demons. Something about power. The only power they had was the power you gave them.

“You can’t have me,” she said.

The rodent face twisted and became softer, rounded, clear as a photograph. It was the woman she’d seen on the stairs, the woman who’d spoken to her the night before.

Her mother.

Kendra quit struggling. The smoke grew thicker and flames crackled below like rumpled cellophane.

“I only had you for a while,” her mother said, and though the voice was feminine, Kendra knew it was really Rochester’s. Kendra saw a lot of her own reflection there—the dark hair and moody eyes, the broad nose—and her panic was dampened by sadness. It didn’t seem right that her mother would stay thirty-two forever, would always wear the face in the photograph on her dresser back home, would remain constant while Kendra grew up and older.

Just like my characters. Made from scratch. Not good or evil, just drawn that way.

“What?” Kendra said, coughing against the acrid smoke. “Do you want me to die here? Afraid to be alone?”

Mother’s voice hardened, became a chorus. “We’re never alone.”

The floor tilted, and Burton’s body slid across the landing and thumped down a few steps, rolling over so that his arms were splayed as if in jubilation.

Her mother—demon, she’s a demon, a ghost kid in disguise—released Kendra’s arm and she fell against the wall. She glanced out the window, expecting to see fleeing guests on the lawn or the distant red lights of emergency vehicles, but the grounds were still and empty under the moonlight. Smoke drifted toward the surrounding forest like an army of ghosts, melding with the mist in the shroud of night.

The hotel lurched and timbers grated, plaster board crumbling as the hotel shook again. Dad was downstairs somewhere, maybe trapped under the falling rubble or cornered by the fire.

Free now, she clambered up the stairs, thinking she could navigate the third floor and go down the stairs at the other end. She glanced back at her mother—not my mother—and Gruff blinked, confused, as if wondering what he was doing standing there with hell erupting around him. He shouted, ran over Burton’s back as he hurried down the stairs, and lost his footing. He tumbled, gasping in surprise, and slipped through a gap of torn wood where the stairs had given way.

Kendra paused, knowing she should run, knowing she could trust none of her senses, but tugged by a heroine’s instinct to save the day.

Emily Dee to the freaking rescue.

Gruff was only visible from the chest up, and he reached toward her with one arm while scrabbling for purchase with the other. His eyes were wide and scared.

“Help,” he wheezed, smoke billowing up around him.

Despite herself, she reached for him. Rochester, or the thing that owned Rochester, had made Gruff delay her until the stairs had collapsed. And now that Rochester had played his game, Gruff was just another toy to be discarded. She stooped and extended her hand, bracing herself against the stair railing, judging the man’s weight at 220 or so.

But just before their fingers met, Gruff slid down a few inches, and then dropped away in a sudden eruption of splinters and rising sparks.

She gazed into the smoking well for a moment, understanding he was lost. In more ways than one.

The hand locked around her ankle.

Kendra kicked, but Burton held tight, his eyes now open and filled with mad light.

“The Diggersh daughter,” he said, the words mushed by blood and gore. “You going to leave without burying me?”

“Sorry, Burton,” she said. “But I know it’s not you.”

She brought her other foot down on his wrist, jamming her heel into the flesh. He didn’t wince but the muscles tensed. She stomped again, sick to her stomach but driven by fear and rage. Bones snapped and the clutching fingers loosened.

Kendra danced away and ran up the stairs to the third floor.

Chapter 47

Violet stood by the main lobby entrance, arms folded.

The small crowd pushed against her, shouting as the smoke blinded them. Rhonda had spit out her gum and Jonathan Holmes, the burly, bald member of SSI, tried to shove past her. The only light was from a torch held aloft by one of the guests. She searched for Philippe among the flame-licked faces but didn’t see him.

Maybe her friends in the basement had taken care of him. She had a new maintenance staff, and they would be on call around the clock, forever.

“Remain calm,” Violet shouted.

“Let us the hell out of here,” Jonathan said.

“The door’s jammed,” Violet said.

“The second floor’s caving and the stairs are shot,” said Cody, the young, good-looking SSI guy. He cradled a whimpering old woman in his arms.

Janey? Her heart clutched. No. This place is mine now.

The old woman rolled her face away from Cody’s chest. Violet was relieved. Besides, Janey was too proud to accept help.

The hotel gave a deep shudder, settling on its framework. Outside, shingles tore loose and rained down past the windows. The floor was warm beneath them, the carpet steaming. Some of the people were groggy and bleary-eyed from the carbon monoxide.

Sleep tight, my valued guests. Enjoy your stay.

Jonathan Holmes threw his shoulder against the massive door. He bounced off with a thrunk, cursing, while a couple of people joined Jonathan and put their weight against the door.

“The windows,” someone yelled.

The lobby featured large bay windows set with old-fashioned ripple glass. Like most of the windows, they were painted tight in their casings. The smoke now hung in a solid, roiling sea just beneath the ceiling, and a dim red glow blossomed from the far ends of the halls. The hotel was like a great ship going down, and Violet lifted her chin against those who would abandon it.

“Don’t break anything,” she shouted, knowing they’d ignore her. Few understood the soul of this old place. To them, it was just wood, carpet, and glass.

One guy picked up a settee and hurled it against the window. It bounced away, but the glass cracked. A couple of people had dropped to their hands and knees to dodge the smoke. Even the torchlight did little to penetrate the murk.

“The couch!” Jonathan waved a few people over. Two men joined him and they bent and lifted the furniture to their waists.

“You’ll have to pay for damages,” Violet said, but no one was listening.

If Janey were here, they wouldn’t dare.

She could sense them—she wasn’t exactly sure what they were, only that they’d always been here and they had something to do with Janey’s disappearance—hovering around the corners, their laughter mingling with the distant crackle of flames and the cacophony of destruction.

“Heave,” Jonathan commanded, as the three men rocked the sofa backward. On “ho,” they hurled it into the window and the glass exploded. Cool night air poured through the jagged opening and the frantic crowd rushed to escape.

“Women first,” Cody yelled, carrying his injured patient to the window.

Rhonda made a move toward the window, but Violet grabbed her by the back of her blouse.

“Lemme go,” Rhonda said.

“You haven’t punched your time card.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Where’s the cash drawer? At the desk?”

“How should I know?”

Cody passed the injured woman through the window, and she was reluctant to let him go, clinging to his neck with tapered, skeletal fingers. He finally passed her to Jonathan, who was standing outside in the hedges. A man in a toboggan was helping women over the lip of the window, but not everyone was as chivalrous. Violet smirked as a chubby young man in T-shirt and jeans shoved his way through the crowd and clambered out, revealing the fleshy swell of his upper buttocks.

“Kendra?” Cody called, looking around the rapidly thinning crowd. He was just like the rest, calling a woman’s name like she was a possession.

Well, no one is going to possess me.

Now that the curtains were yanked wide, the lobby was filled with moonlight and was almost beautiful. Smoke curled around the piano as if it were on a nightclub stage and some music-school dropout were about to peck “Heart And Soul.”

But the audience was vanishing. Violet grimaced at the thought of guests leaving before they’d checked out. Had they no respect?

Janey would never stand for it.

But Janey’s no longer in charge. Now they’ve made me caretaker. And what am I supposed to do about it?

Good question.

But one thing she knew, there was no sense letting good money go up in flames. She elbowed through the chaos and headed for the office.

Chapter 48

Wayne opened his eyes to dirt, his head like a bowl of mashed potatoes with blood gravy.

Moist, forest-scented air wafted over his face, but smoke boiled from behind him. He tried to stand but couldn’t feel his legs. He remembered the darkness, the basement, and then....

He was lying on the ground just beyond a concrete pad, the wooden door split and sagging to one side. Behind him came screams and the rending of wood. He rolled over just enough to see the outside of the hotel, the back end with its sloping addition and a tin-roofed maintenance shed. The November night chilled his skin but the warmth of the fire crept along his spine like a molten snake.

“Yo, you okay?” someone asked. It was a college-aged man in dirty chef’s whites, obviously a cook who’d fled the kitchen. He stood near the edge of the forest, at a safe distance, nervously puffing a cigarette.

“Kendra... the others....”

“Get out of there, man, the place is going to blow,” the cook said. His face was streaked with grease and soot and his eyes bright with fear.

“My daughter’s in there.”

“They’re all out except—Jesus, there’s a dead guy behind you.”

Wayne’s first thought was “ghost.” But ghosts didn’t exist. That meant—

Wayne reclaimed the glimpse of Rodney Froehmer’s deranged face. He tried to turn but he couldn’t. Somehow it didn’t matter, whether it was a ghost or just a normal, everyday corpse.

Kendra is safe. I can just lie here and rest. “I can’t move.”

“Just my luck,” the cook said, tossing his cigarette aside and approaching Wayne.

“Never mind me,” Wayne said. “Other people are in the basement.”

“You must have hit your head. They all evacuated when the power went out.” The chef bent over Wayne. “How come you’re still here?”

“We were hunting in the basement.”

The sputtering flames licked light along the chef’s moist face. “Don’t know if I’m supposed to move you or not. What if you’re paralyzed or something?”

“Well, I can lay here and burn to death or lay over there and still be alive,” Wayne said.

The cook looked dubious, though he was in a hurry to retreat from the burning structure. “You won’t sue me?”

“Never saw you,” Wayne said. “And this didn’t happen.”

The cook lifted Wayne from beneath his armpits. Tingling needles of ice worked down Wayne’s thighs as blood began flowing through his legs. When the cook dragged him out of the doorway, Wayne at last saw what he’d left behind. Red light limned the entrance, revealing Rodney’s prone form on the basement floor. A steel pipe protruded from his chest.

“Don’t look back,” the cook said.

“Too late,” Wayne said.

“Least he don’t have to worry about burning to death.”

By the time they were 20 feet from the building, Wayne had regained some feeling in his feet. He raised himself up, wobbling, as smoke crept from the basement and drifted toward the trees.

“You ain’t paralyzed,” the cook said.

“Guess not.”

“Man, I hope I turned off the gas to the deep fryer. Janey Mays would have my balls in a blender.”

“So everybody evacuated?”

“Yeah, they’re out front. You’re one of them ghostbusters, right?”

“I guess.” But we’re the ones that got busted.

“Sorry about your friend there,” the cook said, already lighting another cigarette. “You must have been the last two in the building.”

The flames had just begun to penetrate the first floor. Wayne swayed on his numbed legs and took a trembling step toward the hotel. “I have to find my daughter.”

The cook grabbed his arm. “Hold on, man. I told you the place was empty.”

“I have to be sure.”

“Hear that?”

Wayne listened beyond the crackle of the flames, the whisper of the Blue Ridge wind in the trees, and the groan of straining timbers. A wail poured over the valley like the scream of a wounded dragon.

“Sirens,” the cook said. “We’ll get you an ambulance.”

Wayne nodded, wondering if Kendra was worried about him. He glanced up at the window of the room where he and Beth had conceived her—

And there she stood.

Chapter 49

Bad move.

Kendra had ducked into 318 because it was the first open door she’d found while feeling her way down the smoky hall. She’d hoped to escape through the window, but it was jammed tight and the lattice framework was too narrow. Even if she broke the glass, she wouldn’t be able to slip through. She looked down at the crowd milling on the front lawn, hoping to spy Cody, but also hoping he’d noticed she was missing.

Dad must have escaped. If he’d been in the basement, he’d probably been one of the first to spot the flames. No doubt the same short-circuit that had caused the power outage had also ignited the hotel. The place was a real tinderbox and wouldn’t withstand the flames for long.

She ran to the other window, saw two forms on the lawn behind the hotel.

A row of red strobe lights made a wash across the treetops, emergency vehicles rolling in from Black Rock. If she could only hold out for a couple of minutes, trucks with ladders and firefighters would arrive on the scene. She’d wave and some hunky hero with an ax would climb up and smash the glass and chop apart the frame, then escort her down to safety. Dad and Cody would be impressed and—

The door slammed shut behind her.

In the darkness came the unmistakable sound of bedsprings. Then came the rhythmic creak made by jumping feet and a soft whisper:

“Lock the door and throw away the key, stay and play with Mommy and me.”

“Bruce,” she said, not turning around.

The boy repeated, with more insistence: “Lock the door and throw away the key, stay and play with Mommy and me.”

His jumping grew more violent and she expected to hear his head thump against the ceiling. He repeated the line again, nearly shouting.

And the rain began. Kendra squinted and sputtered against the deluge, realizing the sprinkler system had activated. A little late, perhaps, but working nonetheless. Except she now believed something else controlled the White Horse Inn, a malevolent brat that abused its toys and pouted when things didn’t go its way. And now it was taking a whiz, letting loose all its frustration and rage, drenching her so that her clothes stuck to her body.

“It’s no good, Bruce,” she shouted against the spray.

“Stay and play...stay and play...stay and play....”

“I can’t stay,” she said.

The beating red rays of light were closer now, pushing up from beneath the trees and down the lane that led from the highway.

“Stay and play,” it said, but it was no longer Bruce’s voice. A woman’s.

A spotlight tracked across the front of the hotel, momentarily illuminating her face. It was Ann Vandooren, the woman Cody said had rigged a prank camera.

“I’m not staying and I’m not playing,” Kendra said, trying to sound tough, though it came off more Dr. Seuss than Emily Dee.

“You should have been mine,” Ann said, moving closer to Kendra, hands upraised, ignoring the falling water.

“I didn’t do anything to you.”

“Besides getting born, you mean?”

Kendra backed to the window, flipping wet hair out of her face. All she could make out of the woman was her sinister silhouette, but the form didn’t matter that much, whether it was Bruce’s, Burton’s, or Eloise Lanier’s. They all drew water from the same well, and they all wanted her dead, for some reason.

Christ, what a comic book this is going to make. Assuming I ever get out of here.

But “here” was where it had to end, right?

According to her mother’s ghost, she’d been conceived in this very room. Her first spark of life had glinted when Digger’s stone had struck her mother’s flint. She’d crawled out of the mysterious pool of spirit matter and became the quirky kid with the crooked smile and a talent for doodling, the sad kid who watched her mother waste away at an age when her biggest worries should have been soccer and long division, the troubled kid who had to grow up way too fast because her father needed a parent.

This was where it all started.

The spotlight swept by again, the sirens blaring nearby, and the carpet was warm under her feet, the falling water mixed with smoke and steam. The room was fog, and she could be left here and lost forever, to wander the seams between living and dead, or maybe this was the dream an infant had suffered in the womb of Beth Wilson on the way to being stillborn.

Maybe she was already dead.

And had never been.

A memoir writ in invisible ink.

“You’re the life he never had,” Ann said, but it wasn’t Ann. It was Margaret Percival. It had always been Margaret Percival.

“Kendra!”

Dad was just outside the door, banging, kicking, screaming her name.

Her name.

Kendra Wilson.

She had been born after all, and she was alive.

“You took his life,” Margaret said.

“I didn’t take anything that wasn’t mine,” Kendra said, water streaming down her face, eyes stinging, the tears flushing away as fast as they escaped.

She flung her arms out in the fog, knowing Margaret could see her, because Margaret saw everything in the hotel. Margaret was the hotel.

“Because you still have this,” Kendra said, shouting over the hissing of the water and the pounding on the door and the creaking of imploding lumber. “All yours.”

She lunged toward the door, bracing for the collision, wondering if Margaret would be as yielding and suffocating as damp cotton, as sharp and brittle as an iceberg, as splintery and hot as a burning hotel. No matter the material, or the immaterial, Emily Dee was kicking ass and taking names and writing it all down in a little book.

The room was suffused with a sudden glow, as if a thousand candles had been struck to life, the water drops sparkling like amber and rubies. Ann Vandooren’s face emerged from the exotic mist and she swiped out with a hooked stack of talons, going for Kendra’s face. But someone—something—caught Ann’s wrist, twisting it behind her back, yelling at Kendra to run.

Chapter 50

Wayne fell into Room 318 when the door flew open.

Spitting, coughing, crawling, he forced himself forward, though his body was one big bruise and numbness enervated his legs. The climb up the dark, smoke-filled service stairs had sapped him.

And he’d almost given up hope when he found the door stuck tight, as solid as the wall, and in a burst of frustration and fear, he’d slammed himself against it, calling Kendra’s name. But then—if he believed in miracles, he’d give it that name, though other names were possible—the room allowed entry.

Water cascaded down, stirring the air enough for him to fill half his lungs, not enough to carry a shout but enough to make the next lunge forward.

The door...allowed...entry.

The room had let him in. Not because the lock yielded or the stubborn hinges gave way or structural damage had loosened it from the jamb.

No, the door had said, “Come in, Digger. We’ve been waiting.”

The same room where he and Beth had booked a second honeymoon, making serious love and silly promises, and 17 years on, he was right where he’d never wanted to be again. In many ways, he was deader than Beth would ever be.

Wayne squinted into the steam. He made out two shapes near the window, silhouetted against the backlit window. One was large and hulking, with wild, stringy hair, towering over the smaller figure, who was crouched in a stance of self-defense. Her Emily Dee act.

The White Horse had his daughter.

He roared in rage, throat raw, and launched himself from the floor. He didn’t understand the forces here, and all the tiny paths that had led back to Room 318, but he understood that Beth had trusted him with this job.

It was time for Digger to shovel shit.

He caught the woman’s arm as she clawed at Kendra’s face. She turned and snarled at him like a feral animal. He barely recognized her—Ann Vandooren, the hoax artist—and the fierce glow in her eyes reminded him of the pulsing furnace in the basement.

“G-get out.” His words came in a spasm of coughs. “Run.”

“Dad,” Kendra said, sounding scared, but he couldn’t reassure her because he was scared, too. The strobing emergency lights outside threw a red wash across the walls, making a chaotic kaleidoscope of the room.

Ann shrugged free from his grip and thrust her hand toward his neck, nails slicing flesh as fingers locked around his throat. Kendra gave a flying side kick, but her sneaker bounced off the woman as if she were made of rubber-coated steel.

Wayne glanced around for something to use as a club. The bedside lamp had a heavy base, but it was out of reach. Ann’s fingers clung with unnatural strength, and the drumming water blurred his vision.

The floor shuddered, signaling a portion of the building had collapsed. The eastern wing had been the most engulfed, and Wayne figured the flames were chewing their way down the hall. The firelight pulsed in syncopation with the emergency lights. If Kendra didn’t escape soon—

She leaped onto Ann’s back, wrapping her arms as if going for a piggyback ride. The attack was just enough to throw Ann off balance, and they all fell onto the soggy king-size bed. As Ann writhed on top him, pinning him to the bedspread, Wayne couldn’t help but think of Beth and how their long-ago wrestling had created Kendra.

Ann raked her fingers down his chest, ripping his skin and shirt collar, but at least he could now suck enough air to scream.

He wallowed for traction against the sodden cloth. Ann had turned her attention to Kendra, but her face was close to his, sulfuric wind oozing from her mouth. He drove his forehead into her nose and she shook, flinging water from her hair.

Blood gushed from her face. Whatever she was, she wasn’t invincible. Her flesh was still human.

Wayne didn’t know if there was anything left of Ann inside the hissing, flailing form, but instinct compelled him to hurt her in any way he could.

But before he could punch her, the ceiling fell, chunks of gypsum pounding his face and delivering him to darkness.

Chapter 51

Kendra bounced on the bed—stay and play—and grabbed the sprinkler pipe, planning to swing until she could kick the crazy woman off of Dad. But the pipe came loose from the ceiling, yanking jagged sheets of gypsum with it.

Kendra fell, snapping off one of the bed’s posters, then sprawled backward with a spluff, her fall softened by the wet blankets.

Ann hovered over her, and in the strange flickering light, her eyes were bright as embers, pulsing with the rage of the world.

“You can’t have it,” Ann said, grabbing Kendra’s hair with one hand. The woman grinned, and her teeth were impossibly long, far too big for her mouth. She was no longer a woman, really. More like a badly drawn creature from the imagination of some sicko crytpozoologist.

Rat face.

Dad moaned from somewhere miles away in steamy jungle night.

Kendra rolled until she was halfway off the bed, but there was no floor below, only a deep, inky blackness that looked like it would suck everything down into the dead belly of the world. The walls were still there, the bulky outlines of furniture still revealed by the emergency lights outside, but the abyss below was big enough to swallow it all. The water drops fell on and on until their reddish silver glints vanished forever.

Even if she escaped the clutch of the demon, she wouldn’t dare leave the bed and touch that bottomless morass. It looked cold enough to kill.

Ann tangled her fingers in Kendra’s hair and jerked. The demon wallowed on her, hot breath on her cheek. The mouth descended and teeth scraped the soft skin around her jugular.

Kendra squirmed and felt the pressure in her pocket. Pencil.

“You should never have been born,” the demon hissed in her ear.

Kendra dug her hand in her pocket, fingers settling on the solid thickness of Big Fattie.

Works for vampires, but it won’t reach the heart. If this creature’s even got one.

She flipped up with her hips, which drew Demon Thing’s mouth closer but allowed her to yank the pencil free. Hot slaver spilled on her neck, erasing the chill of the spraying water.

The creature’s grip eased just a little and she opened her eyes. Dad had Demon Thing by the shoulders, trying to pull it away. The creature had gotten even uglier, with wrinkled grayish skin and eyes burning toward blue-white intensity.

As the teeth closed, Kendra drove the pencil into the creature’s ear.

“Draw blood!” she yelled, as Big Fattie’s sharpened tip plowed through the fragile chambers into the demon’s ear.

The creature’s shriek drowned out the latest wave of fire sirens, and it stiffened and jerked upright. The spotlight swept the window, revealing the creature in silhouette as it wiped at the wound. Black ichor gushed from the thing’s head. It swung an arm out, knocking Dad from the bed.

Kendra called his name and reached for him, expecting him to be gone, just as Gruff had gone, down into a dark hole in the heart of God. But the floor was solid now, and he came up with the bed’s broken poster.

“Go back to hell,” he yelled, driving the jagged tip into the creature’s chest.

Another shriek shattered the room, and the demon’s face contorted, shifting rapidly to Ann Vandooren’s, Rochester’s, Eloise Lanier’s, Gruff’s, Rodney Froehmer’s, then dozens of others, shuffled like cards, moving back through time until at last it settled on the woman in the first-floor painting.

“Margaret Percival,” Dad said.

Margaret looked down at the chunk of wood protruding from her chest. “You should never make promises,” she said, her voice no longer deep and demonic.

She pulled the bedpost from her chest. She looked happy in the rain.

“This way,” came a voice from the door.

Cody.

Chapter 52

“Get out,” Wayne said, shoving Kendra out the door. “Now.”

Smoke roiled in the hall, and flames flickered in eager fingers of golden heat.. Cody had yanked his shirt up over his face so the cloth acted as a filter, but his eyes were red and narrow. The ceiling joists groaned overhead.

“Service stairs,” Wayne shouted.

Future of Horror, I hope to God you’ve got a future.

He slammed the door behind them and flung the deadbolt. Kendra screamed at him but he offered no answer. She yanked on the door handle, but Cody must have had enough sense to lead her away before all hope of escape was lost.

Satisfied that now his daughter had a chance, he turned to face his demons. All of them.

The sprinkler system gave one final gush and then fell to dribbles. Steam curled above the carpet, and Wayne’s boots conducted heat up through the soles of his feet. For an absurd moment, he wished he had his top hat. The prop would have given him a little courage, as if playing a Victorian undertaker conferred an indifference to death.

“You’re not Margaret.”

“I’m way older than that,” it said. “She is just another vessel.”

“I didn’t believe in you, and now I do. Isn’t that enough?”

“Faith is never enough. You need proof. That’s why you’ve been looking so hard.”

Wayne glanced at the bedpost that lay on the bed, a gooey slickness coating its tip. It hadn’t worked the first time, but it was all he had.

Unless....

“How long have you been in the basement?”

“As long as people have needed me.” The demon touched the hole in Margaret’s chest, as if curious about the ephemeral nature of flesh. “As long as God asked me to be.”

“Look. Only two ways this can go. You kill me, or I die when the hotel caves in. So either way we’re stuck together.”

“More than you know.”

The smoke grew thicker. Boards detonated from stress. A huge piece of roof sheeting slid past the window. The heat was palpable now, and each breath carried pain to the bottom of Wayne’s lungs. Outside, the forest glimmered with the reflection of the rising conflagration.

The fire fighters had probably reached Kendra and Cody by now. No reason to wait any longer. It wouldn’t do any good for him to stay here forever, too.

“I kept my promise,” he said.

The demon reached up and yanked the pencil stub from its ear. “Took you long enough.”

“We just said we’d meet again. We didn’t say when.”

“I went to a lot of trouble for you.”

“You caused a lot of trouble, you mean.”

The demon’s face shifted from Margaret Percival’s to Beth’s as fire leapt across the attic and lit up the gash in the ceiling. “Well, I didn’t want Kendra to see me like this.”

Even with her damp hair, the bloom of blood on her chest, and the reflection of the encroaching flames in her eyes, she was beautiful. Digger’s half-dead heart twitched in his chest, revived enough to ache. “She’s not ready to know what she is.”

“She’s almost a woman, Wayne. Haven’t you noticed?”

“I’ve been trying not to.”

“Thanks for bringing her. It was so good to see her.”

“Sorry I waited so long. I was just—”

“Scared. I don’t blame you.” Beth sat on the soggy, gypsum-covered bed as smoke and steam swirled around her face. “We knew something was here. Dumb as we were, we somehow knew.”

A gutter banged against the windowsill and glass shattered. Another chunk of the ceiling fell down, and the attic rumbled and copper roofing flapped from the heat of the updraft.

“Go now,” Beth said, looking at the sketch pencil in her hand. “Get her away.”

“I can’t lose you again.”

“Somebody’s got to fit her for wings.”

“I’m not much—”

“But you’re all she’s got. Dying is the easy way out. I should know.”

“The hotel....”

“Ashes to ashes and all that. Get out of here. I’m tired of goodbyes.”

“Six demons against one angel. Odds are not good.”

“When God gives you a job, you just do it. Come hell or high water.”

Wayne wished he had Beth’s faith. He struggled to leave her with something, even as the walls crackled, but all he had was doubt. “How will I know who wins?”

“See me in heaven and you’ll know.”

He staggered through the smoke and kissed her. She was already gone, air, ether, mist, a cloud in heaven. All that was left was crackling flames, a cacophony of splintering wood, and the filthy sketch pencil lying on the bed.

He grabbed the pencil and ran for the door. The deadbolt blistered his fingers as he racked it loose and swept the door wide, then entered a hall of hell.

“I love you,” he shouted, words lost in the roar of Belial’s fury.

Chapter 53

Violet’s fingers played over the petty cash. A few hundred. Not so hot, but it would do until the unemployment checks came through.

Outside the office, windows shattered and the fire fighters sprayed their futile hoses. They must have thought everyone was out by now, because no hero types were barging through the lobby looking for lost souls.

The real pity was that there was no time to raid the cash register in the bar.

She folded the rumpled stack of bills and slipped them in the waistband of her pants. She wasn’t worried about the fire, not yet, because most of the damage had occurred on the two wings. The front door was barely 50 feet away. She played the flashlight around the office, glad she’d found one that worked.

Violet wondered what else Janey might have stashed away. Maybe there was a lost-and-found drawer, with jewelry, watches, and wallets. She opened the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and rifled through papers. Aside from a half-empty bottle of Merlot, there was little of interest.

She tried the one above it, now conscious of the smoke collecting in the office. The cabinet was empty except for a photograph of a young woman. The photograph was yellowed with age and chipped at the edges, and Violet would have disregarded it except the face looked disturbingly familiar.

She retrieved the photograph and peered at it.

“Margaret,” Janey said.

Violet turned, nearly dropping the flashlight. The round cone of light framed the manager’s face as she sat behind her desk, smoking a cigarette.

“We couldn’t let her leave,” Janey said. “She was pregnant.”

“We don’t have much time.”

Violet started toward the door and saw it was closed. When she spotlighted Janey’s face, the woman’s eyes were utterly black and no light reflected from them.

“We have a lot of time,” Janey said, except her voice was deep as graves, as cold as a winter tombstone. “And the White Horse needs a new manager.”

Violet tried the door but the handle was so hot that the flesh of her palm sizzled. She yelped and banged on the wood with the bottom of her flashlight, now desperate for heroes.

Chapter 54

Almost....

The floor had nearly fallen away, but Wayne managed to reach the service stairs. Her energy had sluiced before him like a cool winter storm, pushing the flames away, parting the red sea of hell. The demons grabbed at him, claws curled, their howls of rage melding into the larger scream of the dying hotel.

Beth’s ether enveloped him, proving the permanence of devotion, yet he couldn’t touch it. The substance was like mist, white vapors that pushed against the darkness and chaos.

The womb of God....

This is how it feels to be reborn.

But even now, clambering down the stairs, he couldn’t surrender to the mystery. If God had taken Beth just to have another warrior on the front lines, Wayne saw no grace or mercy in it. Just the endless cycle of desire, merry-go-rounds of good and evil, little games to validate the fallibility of mortals.

You’re saving my ass, but you’re a sorry bastard, God.

He almost wished God would summon his wife home and grant her peace, even if it meant his death. At least then he would have sacrificed something. And it would prove God was listening.

But all he had was the will to live, and a daughter to raise, and a second chance—

“Lock the door and throw away the key,

Stay and play with Mommy and me.”

The kid stood below him, on the first-floor landing, his back against the door.

As he squinted through the angel haze and black smoke, two more kids emerged from the walls. They were dressed in ill-fitting, archaic clothes.

They chanted in unison as he descended, knowing Beth’s shield couldn’t long withstand the pressure. If he hesitated, they might yet win.

And Kendra would never know....

“Play with your goddamned selves,” he said, plowing toward the door, throwing his shoulder into it. The wood yielded and the door creaked open, the night pouring in and feeding the flames, pulling Beth away in the updraft of flames, screams, and the vanity of God.

DECEMBER

“Too bad all the equipment burned up,” Cody said.

Wayne didn’t think it was bad at all. Some things were better left as mysteries. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life reviewing audio files and video clips, trying to determine what was real and what wasn’t.

The inn was a brittle, black skeleton, wobbling on a few support beams as if a strong wind would push it over. December was underway, a few snow flurries twisting in the air among the ashes. That should do the trick.

Nine bodies had been found in the wreckage. All were considered victims of the fire, including three staff members and the manager, Janey Mays. Rodney Froehmer’s injuries had been caused when a pipe burst from the basement ceiling, and the initial investigation pointed to Rodney as the cause of the fire. He’d been messing around with accelerants, and for some unknown reason had been trying to start a fire in the old rusty furnace below.

“The court would take everything anyway,” Wayne said. “Once the civil trials start.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Kendra said.

Sure, it was. In ways you’ll never know.

“That doesn’t matter, honey,” he said. “People always need somebody to blame.”

He should know. He had God to blame. Not that it was getting him anywhere. Maybe one day he’d get on his knees, or get out an Ouija board and look for Beth again, make a few more promises.

The three of them stood behind the yellow tape that marked off the investigation scene. The fire had scorched the lawn, and the wind played through the surrounding trees, bare branches clashing and tangling.

They were sequestered at the Holiday Inn in Boone, waiting for the authorities to finish identifying the victims. It could take a while. They might even be spending Christmas in the mountains.

“Do you think it was Margaret?” Cody said. The investigators had discovered the bones of an adult woman walled off in the basement. In her abdominal cavity were the tiny bones of a fetus. The bones were old, and the DNA tests conducted on them had yet to return a match.

“Probably.”

“Why don’t you guys let it go?” Kendra said. “All we know is what we saw. Everybody thinks we sucked down too much carbon monoxide.”

“They have a way of covering their tracks,” Cody said. “They’ve been doing this awhile.”

“Demons,” Wayne said. “What do you expect?”

Two members of SSI had been killed, and the group’s Web site had been visited so many times the server had crashed. Three networks had already called with offers, but they were more interested in Cody than Digger. Paranormal enthusiasts around the world had posted their own theories about what had happened at the White Horse Inn. All of them were wrong.

“Let’s roll,” Wayne said. He climbed behind the wheel of the SSI van and closed the door. Kendra got in the passenger seat and Cody bounded into the cargo area.

Kendra was already opening her sketch pad. He’d bought her a new one the day after the fire, while she was recovering. She was busy with Big Fattie, wearing out the last of the lead. She had developed a new set of characters with gruesome, demonic faces, and she could hardly wait for Emily Dee to kick them back to the far side of hell.

Cody had suffered a few second-degree burns and minor lung damage, but, as he put it, it would have been a lot worse if that Bruce kid hadn’t led them through the blinding smoke.

Wayne glanced at his daughter, wondering whether her halo would come in black or gold.

She looked up from her sketch pad and caught him. “Dad, how did you know I was in 318?”

“I saw you in the window.”

“But you were in the back of the hotel. I was at the front window.”

Wayne started the engine. She looks a lot like you, Beth.

“Where there’s a demon, there’s an angel to balance it out,” he said. “Or so the theory goes.”

“Hey,” Cody called from the rear of the van. “I thought you were finally a believer.”

“Prove it.”

As he wheeled down the drive to the highway, he glanced in the rearview mirror at the charred bones of the White Horse. He half expected to see Beth’s face, or the smoky shape of a laughing spirit, or perhaps just a hole in the sky that led to heaven.

Nothing.

Just like always.

THE END

Return to Table of Contents

###

Private investigator Richard Steele must solve his most difficult case ever—his own murder—while caught between women on both sides of the grave.

THE DEAD LOVE LONGER

By Scott Nicholson

Original print title, Transparent Lovers

Copyright ©2010 Scott Nicholson

Scott’s Amazon Author Central page

Table of Contents

1.

Rude awakenings sometimes dawn slowly, even gently.

When you’re dead, they take even longer, whether you’re on the sunny West Coast or in a land so cold and white even the angels are afraid to piss in the snow. Maybe this place was heaven, where nothing ever happens, or if it does, it happens again and again with little change besides the price of admission, which goes ever higher. Wherever I was, it didn’t smell like L.A., a city where rude awakenings arrived by the millions each morning and didn’t get any better after two cups of espresso.

I fell out of half-sleep and slid into awareness in the Waiting Room, on a bench as hard as granite. My fingers were numb, my head was cotton, my lips were as tight as a teddy bear’s stitches. I figured it was another tequila sunrise, but usually I wake up alone after a slow dance with Jose Cuervo. Sitting next to me was some loser who had a steering wheel in his chest. His face looked like he’d cut himself while shaving with a scythe.

“What you in for?” he said, his mouth not moving. He had a lost look in his eyes, like a holiday shopper who’d been trounced in the toy aisle.

“In? I don’t know. I don’t even remember coming through the door.” I shook my head and nothing rattled but cobwebs. Gin and tonic, maybe. Cheap stuff, third shelf. No doubt heaven is well-stocked with it.

He grimaced, and his face made wet noises. “I mean, how did you get it?”

I studied the bad art on the wall. Where was Santa’s grinning evil face? The bearded geezer had been all around me the last thing I knew, plastered in every store window and ringing little bells on the sidewalk, dozens of them, armies of the fat little beggars. Christmas had wreathed the nightclubs and sleazy dives with green tinsel and red faces. “What do you mean?” I said to the stooge.

“Buy the farm, kick the bucket, go six feet south, win a one-way ticket to the dirt-shirt dance. How did you die, dummy?”

I didn’t like being called a dummy. But I didn’t have a chance to get mad because I was too busy mulling the evidence of his face. A vague memory floated into my head, but as I tried to surround it, the thought scattered like fake snow in a Santa Ana wind. A woman sat across the room from me, eyes closed and sunken, black as Goth pudding. Loose skin hung from her cheeks, her skull visible through a crevice of rotted flesh. She didn’t look a day over a hundred and fifty. Some mortician must have skimped on the formaldehyde.

On the wall above her was a clock, a round and plastic relic from a 1950s elementary school. Its two black hands ran in opposite directions while the red hand, presumably marking seconds, jittered one notch clockwise and two notches counter.

I put my hands to my jacket and ran my fingers over the tweed. There were four holes in it, just above my heart, not that I was often accused of possessing such an organ. I stuck my pinkie in one of the holes. It went through the cloth and kept going for a while.

“Bullets, eh?” said my bench mate. He tapped the steering wheel that had reorganized his rib cage. “Beats the fuck out of a car crash.”

“This suit cost me a hundred bucks.”

He laughed, making a sound like someone grinding a frog in a blender without the ice. “Don’t worry. They’ll dress you up real nice before they bury you. You should have seen my funeral. The makeup was so good, my wife even kissed me on the forehead. First time she kissed me in two years.”

He smiled, and his lone tooth glinted like a broken Chiclet. I looked away from his obituary face and checked out the holes in my chest. I’m a deductive kind of guy, one who likes to put all the little pieces together. I like to see things coming, so I can brace myself. I’ve always hated rude awakenings, no matter how slowly they hit me.

I’m like everybody else, I believed I was immortal. Not in that afterlife or eternal-soul sense, but in the sense that I was quite fond of the lumpy bag of meat I’d been dragging around for forty years. I’d even grown accustomed to that off-kilter bristled face that stared back at me from the mirror each morning. Death was one of those intellectual issues, something poets debated in high school while they were busy not getting laid. Death was something that happened to the other guy, never to you.

“Yeah, kinda threw me for a loop, too, when I first realized,” said the crash test dummy beside me.

“How...how long have you been dead?” It’s a question I never thought I’d ask, even though I’d been around my share of corpses. It’s also a question I never thought would be answered. I’d read some Stephen King like everybody else, I’d watched a few episodes of The X-Files, and I’d browsed the good parts of The Holy Bible—where Jesus got betrayed and nailed, and the Revelation, all the bloody, scary stuff. Now here I was waiting for a stranger to tell me the facts of life—or the afterlife.

“About five days, on Earth. It’s my second time through. You may have noticed time is kind of weird here. Sort of like catching a bus to Cleveland. You can’t wait for the bus to pick you up, then you get in a big hurry to arrive, but you dread where it’s going to take you.”

“What are you here for? Where do we go? What now?” I fell back on asking a lot of questions. I guess human habits die a lot harder than humans do.

“Oh, I got red-flagged for lying on my application,” he said. “See, after your funeral, you’re supposed to get promoted to the afterlife. Only, they got so many rules here that you’re guaranteed to be on Social Security before you’re good and proper dead.”

He held up a manila folder stuffed with enough pages to start a sacrificial bonfire. “I’m what they call a ‘tweener.’ I was on my way to church with my mistress when some clown in a pickup ran a red light in front of me. As my soul was drifting away, I saw him open his door and walk over to where my ‘64 Buick was tilted on its side. I had only three payments left on that baby, and it was totaled. The lunkhead didn’t have a scratch on him.”

“What happened to your mistress?”

“She broke an arm and some fingernails. The lunkhead asked for her phone number. She gave it to him. Talk about your rude awakenings.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “I don’t remember getting killed, or any ‘drifting.’“

Buick-brains shrugged. “Maybe it’s different for different people. You’ll just have to ask one of the experts.” He nodded down the long hall that broke into a half dozen offices.

I figured action was the best course of action. Besides, Buick-brains was starting to smell bad. Or maybe it was Pork-Chop Face across the room. Or maybe it was me.

I tried to stand, but my rear felt like a sack of wet cement. Gravity was pretty serious here. And I thought ghosts were supposed to be light, vapory, able to sneak and flit around. Being dead was a terrible fad diet.

“You got to wait your turn,” Buick-brains said. A few tiny squares of bloody glass fell from his bare grin.

I leaned back and looked around for a newspaper. No luck, but there was a copy of Time on the coffee table beside me. Right under a plastic potted plant.

The cover featured John the Baptist. Man of the Year. The magazine was wrinkled and smelled like a pool hall. I put it back and noticed an ashtray under the plant. I checked my jacket pocket.

Buick-brains made a clucking sound, snapping his tongue off of a bare upper gum. He pointed to a “No Smoking” sign that was duct-taped to the cheap paneling.

“Are you sure this isn’t Hell?” I asked.

“That’s what they tell me. And I don’t think they would lie.”

I sighed and folded my arms. Another year or two passed. I wondered if, back in my old life, the Christmas cards I had mailed were in a dead-letter box somewhere. Including that one special card, sealed with seven kisses and some ribbon.

“What’s your name, pal?” asked my seatmate. Obviously a chatty type.

I’d always hated small talk. If talk didn’t get me what I wanted, it was a waste of time. But it looked like I had plenty of time to waste. The clock was still ticking sideways. “Richard Steele.”

“Steele, eh? What did you do...back there?”

I didn’t like the way he said “there,” as if reality were a place from which we had been paroled.

“I’m a—” I hesitated. This gig made my head spin. Past, future, and present tenses jumbled together in a mess that made Mrs. Dempsey’s seventh-grade chalkboard look as simple as the ABC’s. “I was a private detective.”

“A detective? For real?” His snicker brought another shower of glass.

“Yeah. What of it?” Everybody thought detectives wore Bogart slouch hats and Columbo overcoats. But costumes didn’t really help with the undercover work or the legwork, or the waiting that was 90 percent of the job. Pulp novels had given us an undeserved reputation as callous, alcoholic womanizers. As if there were any other kind of womanizer.

“You’re a dick,” he said, a little too gleefully. “A dead dick!”

If I could have moved, I’d have slugged the clown in the face and claimed his final tooth, or at least given the steering wheel a twist deeper into his chest. But I didn’t know what my karma situation was. If this was the crosswalk between heaven and hell, a bit of last-minute good behavior couldn’t hurt. So I closed my eyes and thought of Lee.

Ah, that was a think for sore mind’s eyes. Lee, with short blond hair that curled around her face just so, naturally, without any visits to the hair salon. And grass-green eyes, speckled with yellow and brown, the kind you can look into for a lifetime or two. And her body...nice and meaty, not one of those brittle stick figures that the magazines use to sell contrived fashion and migraine-inducing perfume. She didn’t break when you bounced her.

She was the most interesting person I’d ever met, and contradictory, too. Loved books and guns, gardening and NFL football, karate and boutique shopping. She’d been a member of the rifle team in college, but despised the National Rifle Association’s politics. She would never dream of shooting a live animal, but I had no doubt she could take down a fleeing rapist with one shot.

We liked only a few of the same things, but respected each other’s tastes. When she turned on the TV set on late-autumn Sunday afternoons, I’d go for a drive in Santa Monica. When she did one of her karate routines, I’d watch admiringly and smoke cigarettes from the safety of the couch, half afraid she’d challenge me to step onto the mat. Now I was dead and she was somewhere on that mythical “other side.”

“Lee, if you can hear me, wherever you are, I love you,” I whispered to myself.

To her.

I should have said those words more often while I had the chance. But, hell, that wasn’t my style. I hated sentiment and Valentine’s Day and Peace on Earth and all that other confusing touchy-feely horseshit. Lee put up with me anyway. So far.

But others hadn’t.

“Mr. Brumfield, please come to the office,” came a static-filled voice from a cheap speaker. I opened my eyes with reluctance, because Lee was looking damned fine inside my head. Buick-brains got up and staggered down the hall, leaving a trail of lug nuts and paint chips. A door slammed around the corner.

More years passed, years that weren’t all bad with a dream Lee as company. The clock on the wall spasmed, the fat hour hand heading for some distant dawn while the minute hand reached toward the night before. I thought of all the dead people who had gone before me and wondered if I would see them. That thought sent a chill through my cold, amorphous flesh.

You see, there was someone I had betrayed once. Someone who had loved me back before I knew such a thing was more than just a word in a Beatles song. I didn’t understand at the time, but I enjoyed the hell out of the fringe benefits—someone to make me coffee in the morning, nurse me when I caught the flu, bed me without my having to make a fool of myself in a sleazy dive. We didn’t have a care in the world, and I wouldn’t have hurt Diana for a million bucks and a British Bentley. Then I inflicted the most horrible punishment imaginable.

I married her.

Pork-Chop Face groaned across the room. I thought she was having a seizure, but it turned out she was trying to sing “Amazing Grace.” I always liked that melody, despite no one ever knowing the second verse. To hear her crippled caterwauling, though, was about as far from a religious experience as you could get.

I slipped back into my reverie. The popular afterlife image was of “going toward the light” where all your loved ones waited around to welcome you. I didn’t have any loved ones, unless dogs were getting into heaven the way Mark Twain believed they should. My parents were still alive, and I’d never met my grandparents, so I didn’t have any feelings for them one way or the other. They were nothing but faded Polaroids to me. There was only one person close to me who was dead, and Diana would probably not be petitioning St. Pete on my behalf.

After all, she blamed me for putting her here.

Said as much in the note she scrawled, just before she taped the garden hose to her car muffler and ran the business end through the driver’s-side window.

As I waited, I had a thought that grew into a hope that graduated into a full-fledged burning desire. Lee was an angel, no doubt about it. And if I could get to heaven, then, some day, some way, I’d find her again. I didn’t understand this death business, but I was a detective, wasn’t I? I’d figure it out.

So when my name was called, I stood up, feeling airy with determination, balls loose in my pants, chin up just a smidge. I went down the hall, passing Buick-brains on his way back out. His lower lip protruded in a pout that would make any adolescent girl proud.

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“They’re sending me to Detroit.”

“Hey, I thought you loved cars. That sounds like heaven.”

“Yeah. But my mission is to bring back the Edsel.”

I slapped him on the back, causing something to rattle inside him. “Sorry, pal. I feel your pain.”

I went into the door he had exited. Filing cabinets lined the walls, the drawers overflowing with forms, fliers, and receipts. Stacks of paper teetered on the desk like flimsy monuments. Apparently computers hadn’t made it to the netherworld. A female voice crawled out from behind the mess. “Take a seat, Mr. Steele.”

I sat in a wooden chair that made the waiting room bench seem like a throne by comparison. Through a gap in the mountain range of paperwork, I saw a wrinkled woman with a flowered hat and librarian glasses. “Uh...hello,” I ventured.

She was reading from a folder that I assumed was my dossier. Her mouth twisted in an expression of clerical torment. “Why do I always get these cases?” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Punishment for a fun-filled past life, maybe?” I couldn’t resist a little stab at sarcasm. That was my defense mechanism, the way I dealt with uncertainty. Dying changes some things, but not others.

She didn’t look at me as she thumbed through the documents. “Some good...a lot of bad...but then, a few really, really good deeds. You know what you are?”

“A megalomaniac?” I answered. I’d picked up the word from some paperback I’d read while casing an adulterer’s love nest. I didn’t know what the word meant, but it sounded impressive.

She took off her glasses and stared hard at me. Her eyes were like oil drops. “You’re a tweener. A tough call. A half-baked excuse for a soul that could never figure out what its deal was.”

“And...that’s a bad thing?”

She flapped some papers, and in that moment, I knew she had made it to heaven. Exasperation was her favorite mode, and she had been rewarded with an eternity of it. “Well, I can work with it. But it depends on what you want.”

She was making it sound like I had a choice, here, now, dead. So much for living right on the mortal coil. I briefly regretted the sinful opportunities that I had let pass unsavored. Not that there were many. “Why does it depend on me?”

She put her glasses back on so she could glare at me over them. “Do you want to go to heaven or go to hell?”

“Heaven, of course.”

“That’s what they all say, but think about it a little. Hell is easy, and your friends will be there. You’ll get a decoder sheet to Led Zeppelin’s backwards recordings. There are lots of cats, and plenty of Hollywood agents around to pick up your lunch tab.  But getting to heaven takes sacrifice. And a hell of a lot of faith.”

Now, sacrifices I could make, but faith was one of my weak points. Back in the land of the living that I had so recently departed, half the world was getting ready to celebrate the birth of their savior, though I’d bet most of them would go into shock if they opened the door to find Jesus Christ standing there. I’d never taken the dude’s birthday personally myself, but I did go in for candy canes and eggnog a little. And I had a weak spot for “Silent Night.”

Getting to heaven was probably a long shot, but I’m the kind of guy who likes challenges. A self-motivator. Before my death, I wouldn’t have given two seconds of reflection toward religion and virgin births and God and schmoozing my way toward an eternity of further servitude. But dying changes things. Some day you’ll find that out for yourself.

I folded my hands in my lap, like an undertaker who is feigning solemnity for the sake of business. “Well, I guess you can sermonize me the Gospel and I’ll believe it, if that’s what it takes.”

She slammed her fist down on the desk, causing the paper stacks to tremble precariously, threatening an avalanche. “It’s not about God or the Devil, Mister Steele, or even good or evil. It’s about faith, a belief in right and wrong and justice and hope and love. Love, as in caring about something bigger than your own sorry ass. And, based on what I see, I don’t think you’ve got the equipment for it.”

I thought of Lee, I thought of her face, and how I ached to touch it one more time. Then I thought of Diana.

If Diana was in heaven, I could finally clear the decks with her. While alive, I had stared down the barrel of a .38 Colt Python, I had left the road airborne doing ninety, I had fallen three stories and bounced off the railing of a metal fire escape, and apparently capped it all off by taking four bullets from an unknown murderer. Yet nothing had ever frightened me as much as those words that sometimes came from Diana’s luscious lips: “We need to talk.”

I somehow avoided talking for three whole years, through two affairs and countless bottles of Scotch. I may have talked to her when she was in her coffin, but the lid was closed, so she probably hadn’t heard me. Carbon monoxide poisoning does ugly things even to a beautiful face.

“A moral dilemma?” the clerk said, lifting one corner of her mouth. “Unfinished business?”

Maybe she was a mind reader. I didn’t know what sort of job qualifications were needed to get you hired as one of the afterlife’s gatekeepers. If she already knew everything, then why the torture? Then I realized it was just like with the God thing. God understood, but which of us are strong enough to own up to our failures?

Hell offered booze, casual sex, an obligation-free Sunday, and, best of all, rock’n’roll cranked up to eleven. Who wanted to hang around someplace hearing fruity harp music all the time? But heaven offered second chances. I could make amends to Diana, or at least tell her how sorry I was. And Lee would eventually arrive, and we’d have forever to fulfill that “Love you forever” promise.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

The clerk’s face was as cold as that of the clock on the wall, another whose hands spun in different directions.

“Sure,” she said. “I’m here to serve, like a Hooters waitress but with saggier boobs.”

“What’s your religious belief?” I figured she was wiser in these matters than one freshly dead.

“Jewish, of course.”

“And how does that work in with heaven? It’s not like you guys believe the Savior has arrived or anything.”

She waved her hands at the paperwork piled around her, at the Labrador retriever calendar on the wall whose days went unnumbered, at the empty can of generic cola on her desk. “The answer’s in here somewhere. Jews believe in living right on Earth for the sake of righteousness, not for eventual reward. And it doesn’t change in this world.”

I wondered if maybe it was all a karmic wheel, an endless reincarnation, going through the same stupid motions again and again. Yet that couldn’t be right. Because she had offered me a choice. I don’t know upon whose authority she was acting, but she obviously had no ulterior motives, or she would have shuttled me toward whatever corridor was most convenient to her. Her sincerity was as pure as my stupidity.

I pointed to my file opened before her. “Umm, I assume the thing with Diana’s in there.”

She snapped the file closed, creating a breeze that rushed through the holes in my chest. “It’s all in here. You can lie to yourself until you’re blue in the face, but we have it down in black and white. We know the truth.”

I’d always thought of the truth as a flexible thing, something tapped when convenient and avoided when it carried consequences. In other words, I expected honesty from other people but was always amazed when people expected it from me. But up here (or down here, because I still couldn’t shake that Protestant idea of the afterlife as a “place” in physical relation to Earth), the truth was apparently universal.

Bummer.

“So what do I do about her?”

“She was only your wife. The woman you promised to cherish and love until death did you part. And you sure as fuck kept that promise, didn’t you?”

I blinked. Truth be told, I was batting my eyes because, just maybe, a couple of tears were collecting. Sometimes if you act like a gnat flew between your eyelids, you can get away with squeezing off a few without anyone noticing. “Mistakes were made,” I said.

“Passive voice,” she said, as if she were a former grammar teacher. “That way, it’s not your fault. It’s the fault of the big old uncaring Cosmos, and all of it was out of your control. God dealt you a bad hand. Fate took its whoop-ass stick to your life while you stood by helpless. You couldn’t lift a finger to stop it.”

“That’s right,” I said, blinking faster.

She almost grinned. “But you can lift a finger now.”

The door to the room slammed open, the same door I had walked through minutes or hours before. Except the corridor had changed; it was no longer drab, with gray industrial carpet and the occasional vapid nature print on the wall. Instead, tendrils of flame curled forth like the tongues of a hundred snakes, whispering, sibilant, seductive. In the midst of those flames I saw Diana’s face, as beautiful and lusty as it had ever been, but the lust had taken an ugly turn. She was Eve after the first apple’s bite, wicked and knowing, bloated with the Devil’s spunk and utterly unapologetic. Her amorphous eyes fixed on me in that familiar glare, the one of simultaneous accusation and self-loathing.

“Mistakes were made,” came her voice in a rush of volcanic wind. “Mistakes were made.”

I swallowed what felt like a fistful of ground glass. Volleys of agony sluiced through my chest as if someone had poured battery acid in my bullet holes. My eyes were dry as shriveled grapes. You’d think the dead don’t feel pain, but we do. It’s a different kind of hurt, and it runs graveyard cold and soul deep and there are no aspirins for it.

“Diana?” I said, as her face coalesced into the flames. Figures undulated in the red-and-yellow chaos, performing a hateful war dance. Occasionally an arm or knee would pop out, changing to black bones and ash, a puff of gray smoke marking the transformation. Diana’s laughter flickered and crackled.

I turned toward the clerk, expecting an answer, or maybe some help. The room was empty except for the clock on the wall. Now its hands drooped like Dali’s mustache, the clock face soft and sagging. Four dirty impressions the size of quarters marked the floor where the desk had been.

I backed away from the well-lighted door and its whirling dervishes. The Diana face emerged again, leering against the border of the fire. “Till death do us part, huh? Did you really think you’d get off that easily?”

I wished it were only the bright licking of the flames, but it was her voice. Her words. Her anger.

I wanted to back away some more, but the room had gotten smaller. It seemed the size of a coffin. I couldn’t breathe, then remembered I no longer had to.

“You’re going back, but I’ll be with you,” she whispered. “Because you owe me.”

“Owe you?” Anyone who has ever been married can tell you the arguments tend to run in circles, and each spouse falls into old, painful patterns. Shameful patterns.

“You loved me, or at least you said you did.”

“That’s right, I did.” I had loved her. I think. Who could ever know such things except God? Even dead, I wasn’t sure God existed. After all, He had yet to show His holy face, and a merciful God would have spared us this post-suicide encounter. And if God was love, then both of them shared the same lack of existence.

“When you love somebody, you owe them,” she said. “Forever and ever. Amen.”

The word “love” was delivered with a nasty edge, as if every broken heart throughout human history had been my fault. Maybe all lovers are star-crossed. After all, there can be no perfectly happy ending, unless you believe in life after death and both partners are lucky enough to end up in the same place. Love could cook up its own kettle of hell. But love could allegedly douse the flames, soothe the fevered brow, chill the hot and strange ardor that drove people to insane acts. Or maybe I’d listened to too many pop songs.

“I’m sorry for…you know, back then,” I said. Talking feels weird when you’re dead. The words come out of your throat without any air behind them. It gives you the feeling that the words have no substance. Maybe being dead wasn’t going to change my communication style, at least with Diana.

She wasn’t buying my brand of baloney. “You think you can make up for it now.”

She coalesced into a more solid thing, and the fire dimmed behind her. Her eyes were hot sparks of hurt, both hoarding and projecting pain. The flames crawled along her bare skin like the fingers of a hundred rapists. Then they evaporated, as if she had soaked the fire into her soul. She stood before me naked, the hallway dark and endless behind her. The bloated, gray pallor that marked her death was gone, and her skin was flushed pink by some obscene ardor.

She was beautiful, damn her.

“You can’t turn back the clock,” I said, the cliché lame as it left my lips and the contradictory clock on the wall mocking me.

“What’s done is done,” she said in near sarcasm.

I shrugged. “I did love you.”

“Did.” She smiled, and I remembered that smile from a hundred candlelit nights, her hair splayed against the pillows, the bedsprings singing and the headboard like a castanet against the wall. “What’s stopping you now?”

Lots of things. Diana was dead. Lee was alive. I hadn’t yet accepted my own death, and somehow believed I still had more in common with Lee. Not that I made a habit of comparing women. Each has her virtues and flaws, each of them are utterly beguiling and beyond understanding, and I never understood why love was supposed to be a mutually exclusive condition. Love was a big thing, as wide and strange and complex as God, and who was I to attempt to explain it or contain it?

“You deserve someone better than me.” There. The perfect distancing mechanism. Throw the fault back on myself, so she could feel good about rejection.

“I thought you were the best,” she said. The hallway and the room had both grown cold, the lingering heat from the flames now faded. Funny how hot and cold, pain and anxiety, lust and disgust still affected me. You’d think the lack of a heartbeat would strip all those hollow, mortal things. Yet in a way, they seemed more vivid and intense, as if their ephemeral nature painted them in brighter colors, like dying leaves in autumn.

“I was maybe the best once,” I said. “The best for you. But people change.”

“People change even when they’re dead.” The smile came again, but this time it flickered. Fire crawled between her teeth. “But you’ll learn about that the hard way.”

The hard way. Wasn’t death difficult enough without an extra round of trials and tribulations? How cruel was this invisible God? “Look, Diana. I cared about you. I mean, care...”

“I still love you. I’ve always loved you.”

Shit. I hate it when that happens.

“I don’t think we have much in common anymore,” I said.

“We’re both dead.” She sounded almost pleased, as if now I had no door to walk through, no competing lips to kiss, no warm bed on the other side of town to share with someone who asked fewer questions and demanded less attention. As if now we were the only two dead people in the world, and so were meant to be together.

I wondered if Diana knew about Lee. I didn’t even meet my one true love until two years after my original one true love had straight-piped herself into a casket. This was an awkward moment.

“We’re here, now, you and me, and that’s as good as it gets,” I said, and it sounded like a crappy come-on line even to me. The desperation ploy. We’re doomed so let’s sleep together. Or, we’re doomed, so let’s not bother.

“You don’t even know where ‘here’ is,” she said.

She was still naked, and I had trouble keeping my eyes on hers. My moist orbs wanted to wander, to make sure physical glories were untouched by the stain of passage. I had to remind myself that she had first manifested as a ball of indignant hellfire, not as a succulent sex kitten. This could all be a front. I knew how women were when they thought they wanted something.

Besides, the forms that had frolicked behind her in the flames had suggested well-oiled masculine muscles. She wasn’t the type to go without company for too long. Perhaps the afterlife was like closing time at the meat market, when no one went home alone. Maybe she had recruited an army of admirers in the land where sin inspired no hesitation, promised no punishment, and perhaps offered the most eternal of rewards.

“Like you said, we’re both dead.” Repetition did not make the idea any easier to swallow.

“Except I’ve been dead longer,” she said. “I’ve had time to wait for you. Plenty of time to think and plan.”

I thought time no longer existed in the afterlife, or at least not in any progressive sense, as evidenced by the contradictory clock. On Earth, you were always fed the company line that the afterlife was a fixed, unchanging state. A place where it was too late to repent. I’d always accepted that with some relief. After a few decades and a few ounces of lead in your chest, you get tired of saying “Sorry.”

Yet here I was again. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You’re still an arrogant asshole even dead,” she said, the corners of her lips tucked up in a smirk. “You think my suicide was all about you.”

The walls continued to close in, though now so slowly I no longer paid attention. I suppose I thought they were insubstantial, some sort of hallucination. After all, the fire had faded, the clerk and her desk had disappeared, and even the clock had taken a vacation. But the wall behind me bumped my ass and nudged me forward. Closer to Diana and those flames of hellfire she courted.

She was naked, all right, but somehow she produced some pages from nowhere, as if she had hidden pockets in the delightful folds of her flesh. The paper was immune to the flames, thin clay tablets etched with a familiar hand. Mine.

“Remember this classic?” She cleared her throat with a belch of sulfur and quoted my own words back to me. “‘I’m tired of saying I’m sorry. The failure is mine, but it’s a failure that haunts both of us. Cut me out of your heart, wipe my memory from your mind. Burn everything I ever touched. Change your goddamned sheets. I love you, but we can’t have each other.’“

My words, hurled back at me via that flickering and wicked tongue, became the pathetic poetry of a serial loser. In my youth, I’d discovered that words had an effect on females. A few scribbles on ragged notepaper could make a sneaky circumference of the classroom and find the right pair of soft hands. The brightest of women could fall victim to some carefully chosen sentences. It didn’t matter how outrageous the lies were, all that mattered was the presentation. Something poets, players, and politicians all learned very early in their respective games.

“The first time we broke up,” I said.

“We got better with practice.”

“In everything.” There was an old song that said breaking up was hard to do, but I’d found the third time was the charm. Even poets go for the cliché once in a while.

“You know what happens to suicides here?”

I figured they probably carried their pain with them forever, but I was beginning to suspect we all did. At least until we reached that better land hinted at by my dead Jewish caseworker. If only I could find the door to the rapidly shrinking room, because Diana’s heat was making me sweat. When you’re dead, your sweat smells like gone-over goat cheese and has the consistency of tar. Besides, I couldn’t think with Diana crowding my space. Some things never change, all right.

“Suicides need special redemption,” I guessed. “Because it’s the most selfish of sins.”

“Coming from the world’s most self-centered prick, that means a lot.” Her inflamed face flickered into a smirk.

“I already said I’m sorry. If there’s anything else I can do to…help you cross over, pray for your absolution, whatever, let me know.”

“Yes,” she said. “You’ll get your own mission. But my mission is to make your death as miserable as possible. I’ll be haunting your every step. I’ll follow you to Hell and back.”

I had a feeling that if I ever wound up in Hell, it would be a one-way trip, for me if not for Diana. But the afterlife was turning out to be nothing like the preachers and Hollywood writers had painted it.

“I never stopped loving you,” I said, and it was partly true.

The kindness hidden in the words must have had some sort of power, because the flames began fading just as the walls pressed close enough to force me up against her flesh. She was a hottie, all right. I could hear my skin sizzle beneath my suit, but there was no pain. No physical pain, but I was in anguish because I didn’t know whether to wrap my arms around her, grab her wrists to keep her from slapping me, or try to ignore her. My sleepy little magic wand stirred in my pants. I guess maybe all of me wasn’t dead.

The room was now the size of a mausoleum crypt. I closed my eyes and ignored the press of her figure, whispering some throwaway lines. “It was so hard to go on after you died,” I said. “If I had known we’d have a second chance over here—”

“Then you would have waited for me?”

Well, a man’s heart is like a beer mug. It doesn’t stay empty for long. If you don’t stop drinking, you never get a hangover.

“I would have waited,” I lied.

“So we could try yet again.”

I was close enough to kiss her lips, but I was put off by the fact that no breath issued from between them. “Honey, I think we’ve changed. People grow together or they grow apart.”

“I know about her. The other woman.”

Shit. Well, it didn’t make much difference. It’s not like I was cheating on Diana, because we’d been on separate sides of life and death. But maybe cheating was a thing of the heart and not the flesh. I didn’t know a damn thing about the heart, and precious little about the flesh.

Diana grinned, her lips bending like baby snakes. “You owe me, Richard. I don’t know what it is yet, but you owe me.”

Despite the radiation of her ethereal flesh, a chill raced up my spine. Did this mean she was the Devil? Or just an agent of the pointy-tailed guy with the bad attitude? Then again, Diana hadn’t ever needed marching orders to mess with my head. She was a self-starter when it came to inflicting misery on me.

She looked over her shoulder as if summoned by an inaudible command. “Got to go now, dear. But I’ll be back.”

The walls began receding and Diana faded like the light of a candle that had been suffocated, leaving behind only an oily thread of smoke. I blinked as the room regained its former shape. As the clock, posters, and desk came back into focus, I thought of the pledge I’d made to Diana on that June afternoon.

Till death do us part.

And then some.

Women didn’t know anything about love, but they certainly understood possession.

***

2.

The clerk blinked. The clock on the wall had actually moved backwards three minutes, as if I had encountered Diana in a past life.

“Did you see her?” I asked her.

“See whom?”

“Never mind. It’s my problem, not yours.”

“And you got plenty of them.” She tapped my dossier. “I don’t think you can get to your happy place.”

“I can do it. I have a lot of willpower.”

“It takes more than willpower. It takes faith.”

“I thought you said religion was so much horseclabber.”

“Faith isn’t the belief in invisible deities or dead things. Faith is a belief in life.”

“Well, I guess I can’t believe in life anymore, can I? I mean, I’ve always played the cards I was dealt.”

She pursed her pale blue lips and began sliding my folder toward the edge of her desk. It scooted off and plopped into a trash can I hadn’t noticed before. I hadn’t noticed it because it hadn’t been there.

“Hey, hey, hey,” I said, rushing forward on feet that felt like feathers. I dug around in the trash can and pulled out the papers. They were stained by some old coffee grounds, dregs of a spilled beer, and a banana peel, but still legible. I slammed the file down on the desk, pissed at Diana, scared that somebody wanted a piece of my soul, angry that someone was probably getting away with murder at my expense.

Life was unfair, because I was dead. Life was sacred, because the living said so. Life was beautiful, because death was as honest as a mirror. All I had were some broken memories and a lingering mental image of Lee, but I had a desire that no spiteful spouse could ever wipe away.

I stood and leveled a finger at the clerk. “I’ve got a lot to look forward to. I’ve got to get to heaven. I want it. Just tell me what I have to do.”

She sat back and tented her fingers, and her lips slithered into a reptilian smile. “Why, Mr. Steele, I believe there’s hope for you yet. But I can’t tell you what to do. You have to figure that part out for yourself.”

Hope.

If ever a word deserved to be wrapped in gaudy gold foil, it was that one. Hope, the thing that got the living up in the morning, that put strong men on their knees, that melted the hearts of ice queens. The word that drove us to take the next breath, at least those among us whose lungs still worked.

She slid some papers toward me and gave me a pen. I spent what seemed like ten years filling out my application for heaven, though heaven’s official name turned out to be The Bright Place, Inc. It had a pretty nifty logo, too, the letters “BP” with the sun rising over them.

“Say, what’s the deal?” I said. “I thought Christians had cornered the market on heaven. Isn’t that why they say God sent Jesus into the world? What about nirvana, Valhalla, paradise, and all that?”

The clerk’s wiry hands pressed together as if she wanted to slap me but was forced to follow protocol. She regained her composure and feigned patience. “Jesus died for the sins of those who believe in Jesus. Others have their own way of shedding their earthly burdens. Buddha, Satan, Higher Power, Dora the Explorer, Jiminy Cricket, whatever gets you through the night. It all goes to the same place. Now, please, pretty please, get on with the paperwork before I waste another couple of eternities on this case.”

“Merry Christmas to you, too,” I said.

When I finished, I gave the forms back to her, accidentally brushing her fingers. Her flesh was cold.

She noticed my shocked expression. “Titanic victim,” she said with some pride. She checked over my application.

“Un-huh...un-huh…” she muttered under her breath as she read. “Okay, we can work with this. Ready for your assignment?”

“Assignment?”

“Yeah? Didn’t life teach you anything? If you want something, you have to work for it. It’s not as easy as getting on your knees and sucking up to some invisible deity.”

I nodded. “Just tell me what to do.”

“You’ve got to go back and solve your own murder. And you’ve got to do it before your funeral.”

“Back?”

“To Earth,” she said, distracted, already thumbing through the next file.

“Does that mean I get to be alive again?”

“You were barely alive when you were alive, if you know what I mean. You never knew how to live.”

“But I’ll be real?”

“You’ll be able to interact with the world of the living. But it will cost you.”

Well, that was nothing new. And the afterlife wasn’t shaping up as any great shakes in the “free ride” department, either. But at least I’d have a chance to nail down one last case. Justice always prevailed, at least on the TV shows.

“What’s the cost?” I said. As far as I remembered, I’d left behind a couple of hundred in my bank account, an ashtray full of change in my car, and some cheese dip from Thanksgiving in my fridge. Not much when facing a cosmic debt.

“You’ll find out,” she said. “That’s part of your job.”

A nobody like me doesn’t end up with holes in his coat for no good reason. If solving the case meant Lee and I had a chance, then I was anxious to tackle it. And, I must admit, a little old-fashioned revenge is always a pretty good motivator. I didn’t like loose ends, especially when my own end was blowing in the eternal breeze.

“Give me the facts,” I said, falling ever so easily back into my old profession. Finally, something normal. Like fear, it was familiar and safe.

“There are no facts. That’s why we need you, so we can get the records squared away on your murderer.”

“Say, wait a second,” I said. “I thought you guys already knew everything.”

“I don’t know nothing until somebody sends me a memo,” she said by way of dismissal.

***

3.

Just like that, like magic or some film editor’s trick, I was flat on my back, my chest burning and my lungs gurgling. My mouth was filled with the taste of lead and copper, my head was a plastic bag stuffed with thorny cotton. I opened my eyes and saw the ceiling of my apartment. You could see faces in the stucco swirls, if you looked hard enough. One face, actually. Diana’s, multiplied by twenty. She seemed happy to see me dead.

I arose, a real ghost this time, not some heavily burdened human who was a few thousand sit-ups in arrears. I looked around quickly, hoping to catch the perp in the act. But I should have known I wouldn’t pass my test of faith so easily. This had been no close-range assault.

The room was the same as I had left it, except one wall was pocked with four gashes in the Sheetrock. One of the bullets had passed through my Pet of the Month calendar, right through the beagle that was Mister December. Another had sheared my little artificial Christmas tree, cutting a plastic candy cane in half. The clock on the wall said five minutes until four, and it appeared to still be ticking. That gave me a great deal of comfort, though it meant my opportunity to solve the case and save my soul was ticking away with it.

The wall with the holes was to the north, so the bullets had come from the south. Through the open window. I drifted to the window and looked out. Los Angeles was spread out beyond me like broken toys on a brat’s bedroom floor.

The sharpshooter must have been in one of the buildings across the street. A motel, one of the old fake-adobe kind that rented rooms by the hour, was the most obvious choice. But as a detective, I’d learned that the most obvious choice was often the wrong choice. I’d learned that lesson as a man as well, at least when stepping into the snake pit  known as womanly love.

I scanned farther. The used bookstore and the Armenian food joint were on ground level, and my digs were on the second floor. A Scientology church had some Hubbard books arrayed under a neon star in the front window, but the church appeared to be locked up tight. The angle was all wrong for a good clean shot from any of those places. I shifted my gaze to the right. The Hollywood Hype. Bingo.

The Hollywood Hype was one of those combo deals, a tacky souvenir shop on the bottom and suites upstairs. Four windows faced me, leading into rooms named for movie stars. The Marilyn Monroe suite, the James Dean, the Ginger Rogers, and so forth, the sorts of places that tourists gobbled up so they could brag to their friends back home about getting lucky in Marilyn’s room. Each room was tastelessly decorated with old publicity stills and commemorative towels, the kinds of “unique” items that the Hype management hoped the guests would steal as souvenirs. Then they could ring a hefty charge onto the tenants’ credit cards.

I was about to go to the door and head for the stairs when I remembered that I was a ghost. It took a little mental effort, but I put my hand through the wall. Cool. I was going to enjoy this case. But I wondered about the “cost” the afterlife caseworker had warned me about.

I looked around my apartment, then down at my body. I looked dopey, my mouth open as if I’d been asked an algebra question. My fly was half-open, a button was missing on my shirt, and I had ring around the collar. And I wasn’t quite as handsome as I’d always thought. Nothing like being dead to give you a whopping dose of reality.

A red blotch was spreading out across the frayed carpet. I knelt and checked my pockets, just the way I would do if the body were someone else’s. The good thing about being a ghost was that I wouldn’t have to worry about leaving fingerprints. Of course, they would be mine anyway, and presumably my fingerprints were all over my stuff.

Cigarettes. A butane lighter. A few dollars. Very few.

And a note. Of course. I remembered it now, jotted down on torn wrapping paper. Handwritten, in jagged cursive: “Meet me in the lobby. 4 p.m.”

I glanced at my wristwatch. It was spinning backwards, so I checked the clock on the wall. 3:58.

Sirens were blaring, still six blocks away and caught in the permanent rush-hour traffic. I was almost tempted to stay and wait for the cops. But what would I tell them? I still didn’t know my limits, or how I’d be able to interact with the living. Besides, I had a feeling I had to solve this thing on my own. Which was okay. I always liked working alone.

Except in one certain endeavor. Lee’s photograph was on top of my television, and she was much better than any sitcom diva. I went across the room, moving my legs out of unneeded habit. Could I lift the photograph?

Time to test my powers. You’d think they’d give you a user’s manual when they sent you back. But I guess this was part of the test. You had to earn it, baby. That was what faith was all about.

I found that if I concentrated hard enough, if I believed, then my ether would harden just enough to actually function in my former reality. I lifted the photograph and brought it to my lips. She tasted of dust when I kissed her.

Something rumbled under the floor and a blast of warm air crossed the room. I thought it was the heat pump kicking on, but even in late December, Los Angeles can throw you into a sweat. The con men, sexual predators, and street gangs can do that. But this was spawned by no earthly source.

“So that’s the bitch, huh?” came Diana’s voice from the air ducts.

I didn’t have time to argue with my late wife. I was about to be late for an appointment. But you can imagine the comfort it gave me, knowing she’d be looking over my shoulder at every turn. Just like during our marriage.

With great effort, I returned the photo and took one last look around. Nothing here that I would need. Still, it gave me a creepy feeling to drift through the wall for probably the final time. Just when you think you’ve come to accept your lot in life, or even in death, reality comes along and slaps you in the face.

I was in the lobby right at four. The desk attendant was bored, and he looked like a goober in his little red vest. He’d sneered at me that time I’d locked myself out of my room in the middle of the night, caught in my underwear. I thought about playing a trick on him, taking advantage of my invisibility and spooking him good, but I didn’t want to waste my energies.

4:01. While I waited, I tried to guess who would show up. I put two and two together, and came up with either three or five. Math was never my strong point.

4:02, and the bell jingled above the lobby door. The attendant raised one eyebrow, then faded back into his all-consuming funk. He should have looked closer, or else he was gay, because she was a knockout.

Hair that hung like black silk. One of those Anastasia fur hats. A leopard-skin dress whose familiarity with her curves brought out the animal in me. Legs that went all the way down to the floor, and back up again. I know, because I checked twice just to make sure.

Her eyes were almost as pretty as Lee’s, and nearly the same color. She looked at the stairs and the elevator, then clutched her purse to her chest. She was anxious and scared. And in a hurry.

I went around the corner and composed myself while out of sight. I took on flesh and form, and I felt pretty good for a dead guy. I flexed my fingers as if they were in gloves. I was almost normal again, except for the headache I got from concentrating myself back into corporeal existence. And my jacket still had the holes in it. If there was any spiritual cost besides underarm stench, then I assumed I was running a tab somewhere up there on the heavenly ledgers.

I walked into the lobby as if I’d just come from the restroom. “Meet me in the lobby?” I quoted from the note.

She nodded. “Richard Steele?”

“In the flesh.”

“Hi, I’m Bailey DeBussey.”

A porn star’s name or a budding actress. Usually the same.

She glanced at the door to the street outside. The sirens were louder now, audible even over the Muzak strains of “O Christmas Tree” that permeated the lobby, and the attendant snapped out of his stupor long enough to rubberneck. “Let’s go out the back way,” she said, taking me by the elbow.

I’d never minded a woman’s taking charge, especially if she might become a client or lover. The closing of the door sounded frighteningly like one of Diana’s patented hisses of disapproval. We went into the alley behind the apartment building. A wino was leaning against the dumpster. I tossed him all my spare change and wished him happy holidays. Having no need of money was a freeing experience, especially when the cash registers were going full guns all across the city, ringing in the season.

“God bless yaz, suh,” he said, flashing me three yellow teeth with his grin.

“I think I’ll need it.”

“Over there,” the impatient Bailey DeBussey said, pointing across the street.

She took my hand and led me through a gap in the chain-link fence. We went across a parking lot into what used to be called a coffee shop. Now it was a “casa de cafe.” Same deal, only guys like me didn’t hang out there anymore and coffee was three bucks a cup. Still, any port in a storm.

We were seated as the first of the police cars pulled up to the Hollywood Hype. It would take them a while to find my body. Maybe even a day or two, after Lee called five or six times and received no return call. For a moment, I regretted my casual treatment of her. But in a way, I was glad to delay the breaking of her heart. Because, unlike a lot of women I’d known, she had one.

“So why the mystery?” I asked the woman after she had ordered a cappuccino. I didn’t order anything myself, because I wasn’t sure how food or liquid would play in my newly fabricated body. Plus I didn’t know how long I could hold this human act together. I kept expecting something strange to happen, like the wall opening and spilling out a horde of deranged demons.

“I wasn’t sure if I could trust you,” Bailey said.

Trust? Me? I had a pretty decent rep, if she’d even gone to the bother of a background check. If she had received a personal reference, I’d need to worm the information out of her somehow. I figured I’d play the tough guy. I’d watched the Sam Spade movies like almost every two-bit gumshoe, and the rule of thumb was to cut gorgeous dames quick and cold and hard like you would the diamonds that were supposedly a girl’s best friend.

I almost wished I had a cigarette to mutter around. “Well, at my rates, you better learn to trust me fast, because the meter is running.”

“It’s...” She fluttered those long eyelashes and studied the cracked polyurethane coating of the table. “It’s my husband.”

Husband? A looker like her, and she can’t keep a man faithful? Made you wonder about the human race, at least the male half of it. But I’d handled dozens of adulteries for divorce court. Those were bread and butter for private investigators, and rarely were more dangerous than the occasional indignant middle finger flashed in anger. That kind of case had never earned me a lungful of hot lead.

“Is he running around on you?” I was blunt, because my flesh could dissolve away at any moment, and then some wet-nosed waitress would be selling an eyewitness account to Sightings or Unexplained Mysteries, probably pitching a screenplay at the same time.

“Nothing like that,” she said, and there were honest-to-goodness tears in her eyes. Tears. In Los Angeles. Who would have thunk it? But this was a female, and tears come to them as conveniently as lies did. Only men know how to cry, and believe me, we keep it in the dark whenever possible.

“What is it, then?” My head ached. I felt like death warmed over, which I suppose I was.

“It’s these,” she said, pulling three printed-out digital snapshots from her purse. She waited until the waitress brought her steaming drink before sliding them across the table. “I need to know where he got them.”

I glanced at the photos and was about to ask which “he” she meant when I felt myself go lightheaded. My stomach did a flip and my feet felt as if they had fallen asleep. I was losing it. My tab was coming due.

“I got to go,” I said. “I’ll keep these and get in touch later.” I pushed the photos into my pocket, then stood and hurried to the door. Clean-cut yuppies and actors-in-waiting stared at me from their booths. I felt like a stack of clothes, nothing more.

Bailey called out as I battled with the front door. “I love you, Richard. See you at your place?”

I thought maybe I’d misheard in my panic to leave, and that word “love” added to whatever panic I was experiencing at the time. But then she yelled, “Lee can’t keep us apart.”

I staggered into the street. I wasn’t sure if I had gone out the door, or through it. I hope I was in the shadows by the time I fully dissolved. Only the wino behind my apartment building knows for sure.

***

4.

I didn’t feel like going to my room to watch my body decompose. I hung out in the bottom of the elevator shaft. There was an odd assortment of junk in there: a few used condoms and liquor bottles, some spare steel cable, a man’s hat, and a teddy bear. A teddy bear. I spent fifteen or twenty minutes putting my hand in the stuffing, then animating the bear and making it do funny little dances.

Eventually my head cleared. By playing the puppet game, I had learned one of the rules of ghostly existence. Solidifying myself took a lot of willpower, and the more thinking I did while solid, the lower the juice in my metaphysical batteries. That’s why my encounter with Bailey DeBussey lasted only a few minutes: she’d been taxing my deductive powers while simultaneously triggering some deep and patently offensive sexual fantasies.

The other thing was that objects I carried, like the photographs and my clothes, seemed to borrow a little of my nothingness, because they came through the walls with me. I even sent the teddy bear through the wall a few times, but it took a lot of willpower. Maybe the bigger the object, the harder to “ghost” it.

I studied the photographs. Nothing much on first examination. Two of them were of Bailey and a man I didn’t know, standing on the beach with the Santa Monica Pier in the background. Bailey filled a bikini as well as she did a leopard–skin dress, maybe better. The guy with her looked like an extra from one of those California angst TV dramas, perched under his moussed hairdo with biceps the size of grapefruit. He wore the same smarmy expression in each of the photos, his “money smile.”

The third photograph showed Bailey on a fishing boat, one of those that rich people chartered for the half day so they could squeeze in some serious drinking. A white-haired man in a captain’s hat and a knit short-sleeved shirt had an arm around her, his fist clenched in a buddy-buddy hug. The Golden Gate Bridge was barely visible in the background, and S.S. Lady Slipper was emblazoned on the bridge bulwark.

What did all this have to do with Lee? Why had Bailey called out her name? And what was all that staged nonsense about Bailey’s claim of loving me? Had she been setting me up for something? She couldn’t know about Diana—maybe that my wife had committed suicide, but certainly not the part about returning from the dead and knocking back espresso twenty feet from where we sat.

I played over the coffee shop scene in my mind. The two gay lovers in the corner booth, the skinny punk with the baggy jeans and skateboard, the mouse-haired girl with the Kurt Vonnegut hardcover displayed so all could be impressed by her intellect. Then something clicked. On one of the counter stools sat a woman in a trench coat, collar turned up to her ears. I hadn’t thought much of it, because that close to Hollywood, everybody was either an actor, pornographer, screenwriter, or plain, out-and-out schizophrenic figments of their own imaginations.

But now I remembered how she’d taken her coffee hot and steaming from the waitress, gulped it down as if it were lemonade, and exhaled with an air of satisfaction, without a hint of steam or wince of pain. As if she’d absorbed the heat. I wondered if she’d worn anything beneath the trench coat, because the bit of her hair that was exposed had been slightly curly and dark. Like the style Diana had apparently adopted in the afterlife.

No. Surely I would have recognized her just by her mannerisms. When you know somebody, when you’ve slept with them and held them and watched them, when you’ve let them a little into your soul, you know their gestures, the way they move their fingers, the way they lean forward when they sit. That wasn’t Diana.

Then again, people change. And dying was the biggest change of all. If it had been Diana, she had disguised herself well. But I couldn’t imagine her sitting there in silence while I chatted up a beautiful woman. It was the kind of thing that would have ignited her jealous nature back during our marriage. She would have doused us both with scalding coffee, turned over the table, and tried to stab me with a butter knife. After that warm-up, she’d turn nasty. Judging by our initial encounter in the afterlife, I suspect she hadn’t let go of that particular character defect.

I started to light a cigarette, then decided I didn’t want the smoke mixing with my mist. I studied the photos until my head was tired. You wouldn’t think a ghost could get tired, would you? I figured it was just another part of the test. Hell, if being a ghost were easy, everybody would be doing it.

In fact, I wondered why I hadn’t encountered other lost souls, those who had been sent back to accomplish missions of their own. I didn’t for a second think I was getting some kind of special treatment from the gods. Maybe we were all invisible to each other. In everyday life, people pass in total ignorance and apathy all the time, ghosts in their own lives. We each built our own realities as breathers, to some degree, so why should death be any different?

I guess I sort of dozed off, despite the cantankerous screeching of the elevator. When I came back around, my head was clear and I realized I had made my first mistake. I should have drifted on over to the Hollywood Hype while the assassin’s tracks were still fresh. By now, the cops had already dusted and powdered everything, tracked down the shell casings if the killer had been dumb enough to leave them lying around, and probably were trying to figure out why and when the shots were fired. No body yet, so it wasn’t officially a murder investigation. Except in my book.

I mentally thumbed through the cases I had been working on at the time of my death. A few alleged insurance scams, delinquent dads, petty embezzlement on the order of a check-out drone swiping change from the till. Nothing big enough there to justify murder. A missing persons, some kid from North Dakota who ran away to make it in movies. That case was a low priority. Even if you find the runaway, she won’t believe you when you tell her the only films she’ll ever star in are the kind that cost four quarters a peep.

None of my active files provided a link to this case, at least as far as I could tell. So why did somebody plug me on the off chance that I could help Bailey DeBussey? After all, I wasn’t the only P.I. in town, even if I was probably one of the best.

Well, no need to lie anymore, was there? In my new state of existence, honesty was the best policy, unfortunately. I was actually pretty damned mediocre. Sam Spade, rest easy, wherever you are in that fictional character graveyard in the sky.

As usual, thinking was getting me nowhere. Another few minutes with the photos and I headed across the street to the Hollywood Hype. Maybe the police overlooked something. Maybe not even a maybe. The police were about as mediocre as I was, and every mortal’s head was stuffed full of holiday gift ideas and jingles during that most wonderful time of the year.

Drifting is an awkward act. In the movies, it always looks graceful, with the ghost floating around all misty and mournful. Drifting takes its own sort of willpower that is in some ways even more demanding than jerking your leg muscles. I couldn’t shake the old habit of stopping for traffic, either. I’d wasted about two minutes before I realized I could walk right through the cabs, limos, tour buses, low riders, and homeless people pushing shopping carts.

The lobby of the Hype was cavernous and musty, a row of faded scarlet holiday stockings pinned to the front desk. It’s a Wonderful Life was playing on the television in the lobby. I wanted to tell Jimmy Stewart that the only difference between living and dying was the size of your credit card bill. But that was the old, cynical me thinking. This new me, the dead one that was full of hope, kept on plugging.

I could have just floated up to the second floor, but instead I took the stairs. It was a mock-up of those stairs where Clark Gable carried Vivian Leigh in Gone with the Wind. The rest of the Hype was just as cheesy. Painted stars like those on Hollywood Boulevard lined the hallway floor, but the stars were scuffed so you couldn’t read the names. The walls were covered with framed movie posters and memorabilia that were definitely not licensed by the studios.

I checked out all the rooms with north-facing windows. In the first, the sheets were in such a quiver that I thought I had stumbled onto a fellow ghost, and then I realized I had walked in on a loving couple. I’m not a peek freak unless I’m getting paid for it, so I gave the windowsill a quick once-over for any sign of residue or marks. No dice.

The second and third rooms were unoccupied, though suitcases on the bed indicated recent arrivals. The fourth was empty, marked off with yellow crime tape. Why didn’t I think to look for that? The truth is, my brain was getting a little foggier the longer I was dead. If I didn’t solve this case soon, I wouldn’t have enough brains left to attend my own funeral. Afterlife Alzheimer’s was a bitch.

I searched the room but found nothing of merit. The police had given it the comb’s teeth. They’d even snagged the chocolate off the pillow, though I suspect that never made it into an evidence bag. I was just about to skulk off to my elevator shaft when I noticed the mirror.

I didn’t stop to admire myself, because I didn’t want to waste the willpower it would take to don a face. But the dresser mirror had been carefully turned so that someone sitting at the desk had a clear line of sight to my room. The assassin might have had me staked out for days. In that case, why wait until just before I was supposed to meet Bailey before pulling the trigger? Or maybe Bailey was just a coincidence, one of those red herrings life likes to throw at you to keep you confused.

If my murderer had watched me, he or she knew I was a creature of habit. If I had an appointment, I never showed up early. I tried to time my appointments so that the person I was meeting would be checking their watch at the moment I walked up. Gave you an edge on a person, in my opinion.

A quick drift downstairs to the front desk, then I tipped over a couple of boxes in the stockroom. When the hostess ran from the desk to check the commotion, I willed my hands into enough substance to flip through the sign-in book. Room 217 had been rented by a Mr. Raymond Chandler. Jeez. My killer was a damned comedian.

So the name was fake, but at least I learned that the room had been rented two days prior to my death. “Chandler” had paid for a week, cash in advance. The police had all that information, and no doubt were running Chandler aliases through their database, but they still didn’t have a body.

I was reminded of one of Lee’s little endearments, something she’d whisper in my ear on those nights when we lay under the sheets, our sweat drying.

“Habeas corpus, baby,” she would say. “You got the body.” A legal term never sounded so sexy. What I wouldn’t give for just one more night of her sweet whispering.

Lee. Would I ever see her again? I was afraid I’d never make it across town to her place, not with my soul juice tapped. I didn’t have any leads, and I was running out of time. I was down, so down that only another dead person would understand. It can get pretty dark down there.

Feeling like my stores of hope had drained, I drifted back to my apartment.

***

5.

“Where have you been?” Diana called as I entered. Just like old times.

She was waiting in the bedroom. Just like old times.

“Nowhere.” I hovered in the living room.

“Everybody’s somewhere. Who was that woman in the coffee shop?”

“Nobody.”

“That was some body, all right. 38D? I’ll bet those melons were fake.”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Don’t play games with me, Richard. Get your ass in here.”

“This is my place. You can’t boss me around.”

The sliver of darkness under the bedroom door pulsed orange with flame and a sulfuric steam clouded the crack. “I said get your ass in here.”

Shit. Never marry a Leo.

I opened the door instead of drifting through it, dreading the inevitable. She was on the bed, nude, glistening, 36C, throwing off her own candlelight. One leg was cocked in a way that made it seem as long as the bed. The other curled in a provocative arch.

“Is she as hot as me?” Diana said, her voice taking on a low purr.

I averted my gaze. It was damned hard, but her marbled skin, caused by carbon monoxide poisoning, was a bit of a mood killer.

“That woman in the photograph,” she said, her voice low and taunting. “On your television. Does she do that thing you like?”

That thing I like. When you are intimate with one person for a long time, you become vulnerable and slowly reveal your true desires. You let them try things that never happen during one-night stands. You bring your fantasies out of your head and onto the playground of love.

Then, when you are with the next person, or the one after that, you can’t expect them to jump right to the full course. They have to sample the buffet, go through the entire menu, nibbling at things to see which tastes they prefer. You can’t exactly say, “Well, my last lover did this, so why don’t you?”

It sucks, except sometimes it doesn’t.

Diana, for all her faults, was good at some things. She knew how to serve dessert. I couldn’t help licking my lips. They were cracked and parched from the heat in the room.

“I’m aching,” she said, stretching the word out into a moan. Her legs spread and she rolled her hips forward. I swear, a tuft of steam rose. I reached up to loosen my tie or strangle myself.

“This isn’t right,” I said.

“It feels right to me,” she said, moving a hand down to play.

“We’re done,” I said. “I can’t—”

“Come on, honey. I’m your wife.”

“No, that’s over.”

“This was yours. All yours. And nobody else could ever take it the way you could.”

Damn. Hitting me at my male pride. She sure knew how to play me. My fingers tugged the tie free and I was messing with the buttons of my shirt.

“It’s not cheating,” she said. “You didn’t make any promises.”

“Not cheating,” I said, glad Lee’s photograph was in the other room. I didn’t want her eyes on me. Even though she might learn a few things about me. Several fantasies and several realities.

My pants slid down easily. I didn’t look. When you die, you want everything to work just as it had before. All your parts. I wasn’t sure I felt anything. You don’t throb much when your heart doesn’t beat.

But I was game. She was Eve, Jezebel, Delilah, a Siren, a selkie, succubus, every temptress ever devised. 36C, just the way I like them. Forbidden fruit.

I reached for her, leaned over the bed, fell toward the steaming flesh, heedless of the burning I might receive.

I bounced naked off cold sheets. Her laughter purred from every corner of the room. Her voice came as if from a distant elevator shaft: “I wonder what Lee would think.”

Diana had won this round. And she’d sapped my batteries. I could only lie there in my self-disgust and wonder if death really changed anything, if all grabs for redemption were futile, if we were destined to repeat the same mistakes on every spin of the karmic wheel. Could I succeed at anything besides failure?

I must have fallen asleep again, because I dreamed that I gave up. I took the elevator to the top of my building, skinnied up the little ladder to the roof access, and looked down on all the lights. The city was like a giant Christmas tree, blinking red and green and silver. And that expanse of sky, the buildings stretching to the Pacific, the rounded and sandy hills, the tangle of highways, all left me feeling lost and small.

Through the smog I could see a cluster of dim stars. Those stars were forlorn and so far away, adding to my sense of insignificance. Why should I solve my own murder when I would be dead either way? Why did I matter at all, when I was nothing but a few wisps of mist, a palmful of dust, and a random scattering of thoughts? A memory to only a handful, a memory that would die along with those few people.

I was so depressed that I took the only possible exit: I jumped.

I’d never thought much of suicides, especially after Diana turned her little trick. I thought even less of those who tried it over and over again. My definition of a loser was somebody so miserable they even failed at the final failure. And there I was, a leaper, an airborne idiot. Even as the wind whistled past my head, I was thinking how impossible this was. How could you kill yourself when you were already dead? And my second thought was “Why am I not drifting?” even as the concrete rushed up to meet me.

And then all thought was lost as my mystical bones ground to powder and I found myself back in the Waiting Room.

This time a well-dressed woman in white sat beside me. “Hi, stranger,” she said, and held out her hand.

The hand flopped downward, and I got a glimpse of the long red gash in her wrist.

She caught me staring. “Oh, that.”

I looked away, patted my suit, checked to see if any bones were out of place. The bullet holes were still there, but now the fabric was scuffed, too. I was looking more like a rumpled, low-rent detective than ever.

“Got a smoke, sailor?” the woman said. She looked somewhere between thirty and three hundred, and I wondered how many rounds she had made through the Waiting Room.

I pointed to the “No Smoking” sign and shrugged. “Rules.”

“Tell me about it. Rules, rules, rules. You can’t get away from them, no matter where you go.”

“Been dead long?”

She must have taken it as a come-on line, because she tilted her face down and batted her eyelashes. “Long enough to know better but not long enough to be bored with it yet.”

Before I could translate the dame-speak into English, the speaker kicked on with a hiss of static. The voice was my caseworker’s, Miss Titanic, and she was joyously annoyed. “Steele. Get your sorry rump in here, right this second.”

I nodded to my self-loathing seatmate and headed down the hall. I was barely through the office door when I got the treatment with both barrels.

“Richard Stanley Steele. I was hoping to God I’d never set eyes on you again. I gave you the pep talk and laid everything out for you plain as day, showed you right up front the benefits of sacrifice and faith, and still you come crawling back through a door that’s only supposed to swing one way.”

If anything, the stacks of paper around her had grown even higher. She had to stand to peer over them at me. I hunched in the chair like a tardy third grader.

“It’s bad enough to get murdered,” she continued, and she punctuated her next words by slapping papers against her desk. “But—when—you—kill—yourself…”

Lee. What would Lee think, if she ever found out I was too much of a coward to stand up and keep fighting? Or that I’d suffered a moment of weakness with the person I hated more than anyone? Never mind that I hadn’t actually tasted the apple. I’d still climbed the tree.

My caseworker must have read the expression on my face. “Yeah, that’s right. You don’t know a damned thing about sacrifice. You’re nothing but a self-centered pile of—”

She stopped herself and made a quick hand gesture of penance that may have been from some obscure Eastern religion.

I no longer feared an eternity spent with Diana, an endless circle of apologies and blame. I was more afraid Hell was just an endlessly unsolved missing-persons case concerning a person who had never existed and a merry-go-round of guilt. “Sorry,” I whispered.

“Sorry. Christ on a Popsicle stick, Steele. You’re a real piece of work.” She held up my file, which had grown considerably thicker. “I’ve got addendum on top of memo on top of cross-reference. You think you’re the only bozo in the world I’m trying to move along?”

“No, ma’am.” I was beat. I had no get-up-and-go. I couldn’t even muster any sarcasm. They’d probably yank my gumshoe license and send me back to noir school to learn to twist off cynical one-liners again.

Miss Titanic sighed and sat back down. “You better be glad I like you. So what you got?”

“I’m still dead, as far as I can tell.”

“And? Why the hell are you here again? You need to be back there, where you can do some good. If ‘good’ is even in your vocabulary.”

“I’ve been good once or twice.”

“Better make it two or three times, know what I mean? Because I’ll bet you’ve got somebody back there worth believing in. I see it in your eyes, Steele.”

“I wasn’t getting anywhere. Everything was a dead end.”

“Nonsense. Go back to the basics. What happened first?”

“It all started with the note, I guess.”

“You guess? No wonder you billed only a hundred a day plus expenses. A private investigator is supposed to deduce, not guess.”

“The note, then. Somebody slipped it under my door.”

“Who?”

“Maybe the person who shot me.”

“Then why didn’t the person just knock on the door, wait until you answered, then shoot you?”

“Plot complications? Fool the cops? Fool me?”

“Right. It’s never the most obvious answer. Who else?”

“Well, the note was from Bailey DeBussey, I think.”

“Bailey DeBussey. DeBussey.” Miss Titanic went to the filing cabinet, prowled for a moment, then pulled out a slender folder. She opened it and whistled. “Pretty.”

“I seen worse.”

She closed the folder and slipped it back into its proper place in the chaotic universe. “So why would Bailey want you to meet her at a certain time, which you say happens to be the exact same time you got a chestful of hot lead?”

“My killer must have known about the note.”

“Jeez, Steele. You’re so quick on the draw, maybe we’ll reincarnate you as a postmodern Billy the Kid.”

“She must be in on it, then. She was putting on quite an act in the coffee shop.”

“And you thought she was after you for your looks.”

I stood up. “Hey, Lee likes my looks just fine, and she—”

My caseworker leaned back in her chair and smiled. “Aha. I knew there was somebody back there worth fighting for.”

Busted. The worst thing about real love, the kind you feel in your guts and soul, is you can’t really keep it secret. You can hide names and places, but there’s something different inside you that bursts out when you least expect it, a light you can’t hide. Even to yourself, the one person who is often the easiest to fool.

She stooped down and rummaged in a bottom drawer, then came out with a piece of paper. “Here, fill this out. Form 3716, a deadline extension. Forgives the penalty you should have drawn for committing afterlife suicide. And don’t let anybody know I did you a favor. Word gets around fast up here and no good deed goes unpunished.”

I fidgeted with the paperwork. When I was done, she said, “I see something else in your eyes, Steele.”

“What?”

“The thing you’re running from.”

“I’m past it now.”

“Really? It looks like the kind of dead weight that makes a lovely anchor in the lake of fire.”

“Well, it’s my problem, not yours.”

She pursed her ice-blue lips. “Okay. But don’t make it my problem. I’ve got to clear up this clutter or I don’t get to move on myself, and I want to get my lovely bones out of here and meet five people in heaven.”

“Sounds like you’re bound for the great Oprah Book Club in the Sky.”

“It beats learning to play a harp.”

“Hey, wait a minute. I thought you were Jewish.”

She shrugged. “Did I say any of this made sense? If we knew what we were doing, life would have no point.”

She waved me out the door and returned to the heaps of business on her desk. I didn’t ask the way out. I figured there would be an exit sign somewhere. I’d discovered God had a great sense of humor, despite being a heartless bastard.

***

6.

The hall was empty. The woman in white no longer occupied the bench, and presumably she’d been swept off to some make-good mission of her own. There was a door at the end of the hall, but the sign above it said “Emergency Exit Only.” What were they going to do, slap me with a civil fine? Give me the death penalty?

I pushed the door open and took a step, expecting a set of corny golden stairs. Instead, I found myself fighting for balance in a river of red lava. Heat singed my eyebrows as I slipped waist-deep into the bubbling morass. Though the air was hot, the lava itself was clammy against my skin, as thick as sewer sludge and about as odiferous.

The river flowed into a dark cavern that yawned like an afternoon wino. Was this the route I was supposed to take? Because of my slip-up, was I now to take the hard road home?

Turned out harder than I expected.

“Get your ass down here,” she roared. “Now!”

Diana. I turned, fighting my way back up to the landing and the hall I’d left behind. But you know how these things work by now: the doorway had changed and was now a glass wall, with silver rain on the other side, so that it cast a million shards of reflection. In those shards, I saw myself as a multitude, and behind me was a legion of oversize scorpions, something laughable in a cheesy sci-fi movie but not so funny when they were creeping toward you with tails quivering in the air.

Tails full of poison.

I turned to face her wrath. “This relationship is over.”

Laughter again, the whoosh of rising flames, the crackle and drag of a whip uncoiling and testing the air. “You owe me.”

“I said I was sorry.”

She mimicked me in a high-pitched voice, the mockery all the more disconcerting coming from those arachnid lips. If scorpions even had lips, that is. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I wish I had a rosary bead for every time I’ve heard that word. Maybe I could pray my ass out of here.”

I had the feeling she didn’t want to be out. Some people are gluttons for punishment, masochists, misery addicts. She’d married me, after all.

“I have nothing to pay you with,” I said. Back on Earth, when I committed transgressions, she’d sought payback in a straightforward expression of commerce. Staying out late merited a bouquet of flowers, Godiva chocolates compensated for bold-faced lies, and the bigger offenses required breaking the bank for shiny baubles. I was a pretty decent liar back then, so the corner candy store hadn’t seen much business. But when I had the first affair, she’d been fairly content with a set of ruby earrings, especially as I’d had to moonlight as a bartender for three months to pay them off. If the punishment fit the crime, I’d never seen it.

“I want my pound of flesh,” she said.

The lava flowed around my ankles, then up my legs, teasing me with heat. When it was waist deep, it suddenly cooled and solidified. I couldn’t run. She had me right where she wanted me, just like always.

I pinched my wrist and let my finger and thumb meet in the middle. “I don’t have any flesh to offer,” I said.

“I don’t care whether I win or lose,” she said. “As long as you lose.”

“Look, I’m doing my best to clean up the past. I know I made mistakes but all I can do now is make amends and move on.”

“Richard.”

I lifted my palms in the universal sign of surrender. “It’s the best I got.”

“Always a disappointment.”

“Yes, dear.”

“You don’t get it. I don’t care if you jump off this little carnival karmic wheel and land on your head. But you’re never going to have Lee.”

The anger came easily, self-righteous indignation, the only kind of righteousness I’d ever known. “You stay away from her. She has nothing to do with you.”

Her forked tongue flicked out the crevice of her smile. “I’m on a mission.”

She shimmered, the atmosphere around her glistening like iced jewels dangling from thin blue threads.

“Live and let live,” I said, a corny peace offering.

“If I can’t have you, nobody can.” She grinned again, but her eyes were an arctic cemetery as she faded to mist.

I closed my eyes and clenched my muscles against the hardened lava, willing it to shatter and release me to the bigger cage of my eternal life.

***

7.

I took a dead breath, opened my eyes, and I was back in the lobby of my apartment building. I let my fingers do the walking near the lobby telephone. Bailey’s address was on one of those fancy streets just up in the hills below the Hollywood sign, so I drifted over. The house was a Moroccan-Mediterranean type, with a lot of ceramic work and bougainvillea climbing all over the place. Probably cost a mere half-million. Wait till she got my bill. I’d been known to adjust my rates both up and down, depending on a client’s ability to pay.

Darkness was falling by the time I checked the place out. Bailey was sprawled in the hot tub, nude except for some bubbles. She was listening to that song of the dogs barking “Jingle Bells,” which definitely wasn’t mood music. I discreetly left her to her champagne and ice bucket, though I noticed two glasses were set out.

Nothing else aroused my interest except for the photographs on the den wall. Bailey was in one, with the white-haired boat captain from the digital photo. A black-and-white portrait hung below that, of an actress whose name I couldn’t remember. She had a ‘60s housewife hairdo, a strand of pearls, and a plunging neckline, and her cheekbones were as strong as Bailey’s.

A Fiat pulled into the drive, the top down and the hunk from the photos all smiles and sunglasses. He let himself in and went straight to the hot tub. I was right behind him, a real sticky gumshoe.

“It worked,” he said to Bailey. “So far.”

She flicked some water toward him with her toe. “I told you it would.”

“Hey, it was my idea.”

“I’ll remember to tell the cops that, if they ever catch on to us.”

The hunk took off his sunglasses, then the rest of his clothes. He slid into the tub and popped open the champagne. He filled the glasses and toasted. “To our future.”

“Eight million,” she said dreamily. “Acapulco or the Riviera?”

“We have to stay here until the storm blows over.”

“No problem. We’ve got a good lawyer.” She laughed, a chilling sound.

“They’ll find Steele’s body soon. But it’s a risk we had to take. We couldn’t have Lee’s sweetheart finding out that she was set to inherit a fortune.”

Fortune? Lee couldn’t inherit anything. She was an orphan. At least, that’s the story she gave me. Many nights I’d held her as she cried about the not knowing, the lack of roots, the yawning gray emptiness of her childhood. I’d even been looking into it for her, tracing her lineage, but without much luck.

“Think I can manage to look bereaved at Lee’s funeral?” Bailey asked, quaffing some champagne.

“You can pull off anything for a buck. And slipping that love note was a streak of pure genius. No fingerprints, right?”

“We handled it with kid gloves. Except for when I stripped in Steele’s apartment.”

“I hope our friend didn’t touch anything,” he said, his face sweating and his moussed hair going limp.

“Hey, you jealous or something? All he did was take the pictures.”

“Well, let’s just say that you’re a natural for the role of the ‘other woman.’ So you planted the photographs?”

“Yep. They’re in Steele’s pocket, right where the police can find them. The one you took, too, behind the building.” Bailey was getting less attractive by the minute, or maybe it was the presence of Mister Charm.

“Lee will be so guilt-ridden over what she’s done that no one will be surprised. Jealousy does strange things to a person.”

“I’ve noticed. Did you pay him?”

“You mean ‘Raymond Chandler’?” He laughed. “Bet the cops loved that one. I dropped off his down payment right after he ditched the rifle.” He shook his head, dripping sweat from his damp hair. “Damnedest thing, though. He says he shot Steele at four o’clock.”

Bailey sat up. I cursed her for taking away all my enjoyment of nude women. “But it had to be at least 4:15 before Steele went back to his apartment. And ‘Chandler’ met me there at 4:30.”

He-man shrugged. “He’s got enough money now to buy himself a decent watch. Anybody see you go to Steele’s room?”

“I was practically invisible,” she said.

He kissed her and she giggled. He put down his champagne glass and went for her. I left before the scene got disgusting.

***

8.

My apartment was suffocating in its stillness. The blood on the floor had congealed. My body stank. My flesh was colder than a lawyer’s heart.

I checked the answering machine. No calls. If Bailey set me up to make Lee think I was having an affair, Lee would have called by now. She wasn’t really the jealous type. She just liked to know which way the wind blew.

I didn’t want to pay Lee a visit just yet. That would be too draining. I’d probably waste all my emotional energy tearing my heart out at the sight of her. I had too little reserve left as it was. So I just had to trust her to take care of herself for a while. I spent the night in the elevator shaft.

Do you know what the dead dream?

They dream about being alive.

I woke up to a commotion. I floated up the shaft to my floor, then went down the hall. The cops had discovered my body. The super must have noticed the smell and thought the toilet had backed up again.

The cops parted like the Red Sea before Moses as a hulking figure arrived. Lt. Lars Uhlgren. Ugly Uhlgren, they called him, but only behind his back. His face looked as if he could drive nails with it. His eyes were manholes filled with sewer sludge.

“The door was unlocked, Lieutenant,” said a uniform. “Body’s stiff. Dead maybe a day, maybe less.”

Uhlgren nodded and brushed past. “Now we know what happened to those shots from the Hype. What you got?” he asked a mousy-looking tech holding a plastic bag.

“Dug some bullets out of the wall, sir. They were embedded in the concrete lathe.”

Uhlgren glanced at them through the baggie. “And some people get nothing but coal in their stockings. Send them to ballistics.”

Mouse nodded and scurried away. I’d worked with Uhlgren a time or two, and I’d also learned to scurry when he barked. I was a little cheered that he was on the case. He had a good solve rate.

Then I remembered that I was supposed to solve the case on my own. I couldn’t count on human intervention, and my supply of divine intervention was dwindling. But I had as much right to be in the apartment as the police did. I’d paid rent through the month. So I shadowed Uhlgren.

He put on rubber gloves and searched my pockets. He found the note that Bailey had left. Next came my cigarettes, change, and lighter, then he dug into my breast pocket and pulled out three photographs.

I stood behind Uhlgren and craned my neck. The door opened and the breeze knocked me off-balance and I leaned into him. Not just against him, but into him. He shivered and glanced around, his heavy eyebrows low.

I drifted backward, stunned by what I had seen. Two photos were of a nude Bailey, her face hidden but her melons clearly recognizable, lying seductively on my bed. The other photograph was of Bailey and me holding hands, taken when we were heading to the coffee house. The way we were hunched made it look as if we were lovers sneaking off for a rendezvous. Obviously, that photo hadn’t been in my pocket when I died, because Bailey had been walking with a ghost at the time the picture was taken.

“Hmm,” said Uhlgren. “Old Steele got himself a babe. What they say must be true. It ain’t looks that women are after.”

You’re one to talk, Ugly, I thought.

Uhlgren glanced around the room and saw Lee’s portrait on the TV set. He looked from the photos in his hand back to Lee again. “Two beauty queens? I’m starting to lose my faith in romance.”

He passed the photos to a detective, a guy who looked like a budget Fred Astaire. “See anything strange?” Uhlgren asked.

Budget Fred held the snapshots close to his face. He shook his head. “Nope.”

“Steele’s legs.”

“Looks like a bad exposure.”

Uhlgren smiled, a rare sight. “Damned feet ain’t touching the ground.”

“Maybe he was jumping for joy. I know I would be, playing smoochie-face with her.”

Uhlgren looked down at my body, then knelt again with a pop of his knee. He reached inside my jacket to my shirt pocket, his tongue tucked in the corner of his lips. He came away with another note that I didn’t know I’d had. Uhlgren was making like a modern-day Houdini. Next I expected him to pull out a rabbit or maybe a bouquet of dead flowers.

I hovered over him as he unfolded the note. Written on scrap paper were the words, Forget her, Richard my love. So what if she threatened to kill me? She can’t keep us apart. Thanks for the great time last night. Love always, Bootsie.

Wonderful. I couldn’t think of a single witness who could prove that I’d spent the night before my death with a James Herbert novel. I hadn’t even snored loudly enough to wake the neighbors. As far as the cops were concerned, I was a two-timing dirty dog they would have envied except for the fact that they were still alive and I was headed for a toe tag.

Sure, they’d be able to figure things out eventually, with all the powder tests and databases and interrogation tactics the police used these days. Plus there was the obvious thread leading to whoever had snapped the photo behind the building. But I didn’t have time for the modern machineries of criminal justice to creak into action. I’d be deep-sixed in a couple of days at the most, with maybe an extra day thrown in for an autopsy.

“Who’s this ‘Bootsie’?” Uhlgren said to nobody, holding the snapshot and the letter side by side. I almost materialized so I could make my lips move enough to give him an address. But let him have his fun. It didn’t matter to me if Uhlgren was on the trail or not. I had what I needed.

Now it was time to figure out who the white-haired man in the captain’s hat was. He was the link between Bailey and the man who had ventilated my chest.

***

9.

I reached San Francisco just before dawn. Usually, the fog and rain there wraps you up and digs its way into your bones. But when you have no bones, the chill doesn’t bother you as much.

Nothing compares to being a ghost in the fog. Drifting from marina to marina, I was consumed by a peace I had rarely known, the kind they sing about in “Silent Night.” I would have been content to drift for an eternity, succumbing to the pull of tides and shore breezes. But I still had an emptiness inside me, an ache and longing that kept me on task. No eternal peace would be complete without Lee.

There are thousands of boats in San Francisco. I passed over half of them before I found the Lady Slipper. I had hoped at least to learn the captain’s name. I didn’t think I would be lucky enough to find him sitting in the cabin. A half-empty bottle of Scotch, a cup of cold coffee, a cellular phone, and a revolver were on the table in front of him. He was crying.

The mahogany walls were covered with plaques, certificates, and framed photographs, and a trophy case filled one entire wall, brass and silver gleaming even in the dimness. Two of them were Oscars. I checked one of the photographs. The captain, in his younger days, posing with Natalie Wood. I thought he’d looked familiar. The photo beneath it looked like an autographed portrait of Spencer Tracy, but I didn’t study it closely.

Because the captain had picked up the revolver.

His hand trembled, and his eyelids twitched as he kept them clamped shut. He brought the revolver slowly to his head. I understood the darkness that might push someone over the edge. But now I knew the true value of living. I knew what it was like to die with regrets. I was willing to bet the captain had at least one regret.

I materialized. The captain’s eyes were still closed.

“Don’t do it,” I said, my head throbbing from the effort of wearing flesh.

The captain’s eyelids snapped open and his finger tensed on the trigger. I thought for a second he was going to blow himself away in the shock of seeing me. Because of the suddenness of my incorporation, I hadn’t finished the job. I was milky, translucent.

His mouth opened, and he glanced groggily at the cabin door. I came fully back into human form.

“Who—what?” he stammered.

“I’m the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come,” I said.

“How did you get in here?” He pushed himself back in the chair. “The door’s locked.”

I held up my hand and wiggled my fingers. Then I made them invisible. I tried to will myself back to flesh again, but I was weak. I panicked, fought, suffered a moment of doubt. He pointed the revolver in the direction of my heart and fired.

***

10.

This time I skipped the Waiting Room. “Jingle Bell Rock” was playing through the speakers, and I wondered if this time around I had been sent directly to Hell. But then I recognized the office. Miss Titanic was standing over me, scowling down.

“Steele, you miserable piece of dirt. How many second chances do you need?”

“I didn’t kill myself this time. Some guy shot me.” I fingered the fifth and newest hole in my jacket.

“You’re a tweener, like I told you. You got special protections, but you also have special responsibilities. Like not getting yourself killed in the meantime.”

“I didn’t know a dead person could die. Especially not twice.”

“We’re all dying, all the time, over and over. Or hadn’t you figured that out yet?”

“I’ve had other things on my mind. What’s with the bad Christmas music?”

“We’re equal opportunity up here. Before this, it was a Tibetan chant, ‘Hava Nagila,’ ‘Kumbaya’ and something which might have passed for a Unitarian hymn, if they even have one. But that doesn’t concern you, because you still don’t believe in any of them, or anything, for that matter.”

“I believe in Lee.”

“Sure you do. So much that you jumped off a building and then went and got yourself shot. And your funeral’s coming up as soon as the medical examiner finishes the autopsy.”

“I’m going to make it work. For her sake.”

“No. Do it for yourself. That’s the first lesson of love. Settle your own soul before you go mixing up with somebody else’s.”

I looked at the clock. “Jingle Bell Rock” mercifully ended, and an African tribal hymn came on. “I owe it to Lee to finish this job,” I said.

“I can tell. You got to have a little faith, remember?”

“I’m starting to believe there’s a higher power at work.” I said it not as a hollow, rote acknowledgment that might score me some brownie points with somebody on a golden throne. I was getting as many second chances as I needed, apparently, and so far I had done little to prove I could handle my affairs on my own.

Because I couldn’t. And I’d always been too stubborn and scared to ask for help.

“That’s a good boy. Only took you forty human years and a couple of trips through afterlife administration. Hell, if we gave you a few extra eternities you might even turn out to be somebody.”

“Glad you have such faith in me.” I stood and turned toward the door. “I’d better hurry. If Lee’s involved in this, my killer could be planning to get rid of her, too.”

Miss Titanic’s sarcasm stopped me. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

I faced her desk and she waved three pieces of paper. “Schedule X. An override for Form 3716. Sign three times in blood, and you’re out of here.”

***

11.

I smiled back at Wesmeyer in the boat’s cabin, enjoying the aroma of gunpowder and another chance.

“You didn’t die,” Wesmeyer said, shaking his head and rubbing his bloodshot eyes.

“We’re all dying, all the time.”

He looked at the gun, then back at me. “In my case, I just want to speed things along.”

“Nothing’s worth killing yourself over,” I said. “Believe me, I know.”

“Who are you? Really? Because you’re not real. You’re not even here right now.” He stared at the Scotch bottle as if I were its genie.

“I’m a friend.”

“Friend? I don’t have any friends.” The gun barrel tilted down but still pointed in my direction.

“Surely somebody cares about you. Got any family?”

“Two daughters,” he said, his sibilants mushy from the booze. “I lost one, and I never had the other.”

“You’ve got more than you know. Money, accolades, starlets’ numbers in your speed dial. You’re a producer who produces. Dance of Dust, Love in the Afternoon, The Slow Parade. Who wouldn’t want to trade places with the great Ron Wesmeyer?”

He waved the gun toward his head. “I’d like to get the hell out of Ron Wesmeyer.”

“Don’t be a damned coward. Surely you’ve got something to live for. Something besides yourself.”

“I’ve screwed it all up,” he said. “No hope for it now.”

I felt myself fading, dissolving. I fought to maintain my grip on existence. My anger helped, and the discovery that in solving someone else’s problems, I was facing my own.

“Listen here, buddy.” I leaned over the table, trying to look menacing. “If you’ve got a chance to fix things, you better take it.”

He blinked. “I must be as drunk as an agent. Talking to a freaking ghost.” But the gun lowered again.

“You ever see It’s a Wonderful Life?”

He nodded. “I was an uncredited gaffer for that movie.”

“And you worked your way up. To the top, or least high enough that you’re obscured by clouds.”

“Yeah? So what? That doesn’t make me a decent human being. I’ve failed in the only thing that matters.”

“Don’t stop the movie until the final credits roll. You can always set things right. Take it from me. I’m the world’s greatest expert on remakes.”

He put the gun on the table and took a swig of Scotch. “At least when I write my suicide note, I can honestly say I’m crazy. I’ve got a ghost for a shrink.”

I gave him a line so good, he probably ended up using it in his next movie: “Well, you can learn a lot about life from a dead guy.”

Here sat one of the world’s most powerful movie producers, reduced to a leaking sack of self-pity. And I was presuming to inspire him. “Tell me a story, Ron. Make it true, and at least die with it off your chest, if that’s the way you want it.”

He sighed long and empty like a man with numb fingers and nothing to lose. “It’s my daughters. When I was working my way up, I didn’t want kids underfoot. Both were illegitimate. I had a lot of flings in those days. Hollywood’s never been known for its wise mating decisions.”

I interrupted. “I’ve got to dissolve now, but that doesn’t mean I’m not listening. If you think being alive is a pain in the neck, maybe someday I’ll tell you my story.”

My substance slipped away, leaving only me. Wesmeyer’s eyes widened, but he took a sip of Scotch and continued. “Their mothers gave them up to orphanages. I always figured one day I would track them down, see what became of them, maybe help them out if I could. But you know how it goes. I was always too busy making the next deal. Then one of my daughters found me first.”

I threw my voice. “Bailey.”

He nodded, beyond the capacity of surprise. “She knew about the other daughter, too. She also knew my estate is worth about ten million dollars, and the cancer has reached my liver and colon. This late in the game, I figured I’d do way more harm than good if I tracked them down. A year is hardly enough time to patch up such a big hate.”

Sounded like Bailey had a good source of information. A source that must have skimmed a couple of mil off the top. The captain took another gulp of Scotch and chased it with the rancid coffee. I shuddered in sympathy.

He wiped his mouth. “I drew up a will, figuring that even if I’d been worthless as a parent, I could make up for it by giving them lots of money. A poor substitute for love, I know, but it’s better than nothing. Somehow, even that turned sour.”

Sure. Bailey found out about the money and wanted it all. And someone named Lee was standing in the way. My batteries were nearly tapped out, but I mustered my voice for a question. “Does anybody else know about your two daughters?”

“No,” he said, staring through me at the wall. “Their mothers are dead, one in a car crash and one from pills. So...wait a minute. My lawyer drew up the papers for my will.”

Bingo.

“Do me a favor,” I said. “After you finish your story, pick up the phone and call your other daughter. Life’s too short, and there’s no hell as hot as one that’s filled with should-haves and regrets.”

I hoped my caseworker got wind of my good deed. Even Santa knows who’s naughty and who’s nice. If Santa could do it, anybody could. I wafted weakly toward Los Angeles, the city of angels.

***

12.

Lee has a little courtyard outside her La Brea apartment. She takes it upon herself to keep flowers growing, to add a little natural color to the asphalt, concrete, and neon that occupies much of the Pacific basin. She has such a green thumb that even the smog can’t kill her garden. Columbine, posies, marigolds, violets, she can do it all.

I was glad I didn’t have to crush the flowers. I floated, thin as a Pacific wind, to the window. I took a deep breath, remembered I’d given up breathing a long time ago, and peeked through the glass.

A man with a gun stood behind Lee. She was writing something on a piece of paper, probably something she didn’t want to write. Her face was calm except for her trembling lips. Her eyes were puffy from crying, but I was sure the tears were for my death and not her own.

You ever know what it’s like to be loved? Not a lot of people do. Lack of faith had dogged my every step as a mortal, even when wonderful women fully expressed their love, opened their hearts and souls, and invited me to consume all I wanted. Unconditionally. And still I doubted. But, at that moment, seeing my sweetheart weep, with my photo on the table surrounded by a dozen wads of tissue, I knew.

My, she was beautiful. I had been afraid that seeing her would drain me, rip my ethereal fabric into existential shreds. Instead, I was energized, boosted, fueled by anger and love and the hope of an eternity together.

Hope. There it was again.

So big and true even a phony like me couldn’t deny it.

I went through the wall.

Into Diana.

Not just bumping into her, like when you see some ex-lover on the street and give that embarrassed grin and get through the “How are you?” and “See you later” with not much in between.

No, I was into her, merged more deeply than we’d ever managed when engaged in bedroom acrobatics.

I’ll admit, my idea of love had mostly been skin deep, and my only expression of affection was to follow the one part of me that always seemed to be pointed off a cliff edge. I’d tangled with some wonders, and I treasured them all, even though there was no way I could ever respect anybody stupid enough to fall for me.

So this intense, abrupt intimacy really threw me off my game. Diana had never invaded my thoughts, not to any real level of depth, and now here she was in my spirit meat, her ethereal fabric woven into mine, two angels dancing on the same pinhead.

“We have to talk,” Diana said/thought/screamed/whispered.

“What are you doing here?”

“I made a promise. To make your life a living hell. Why stop right when it’s getting fun?”

I glanced over at Lee, and she was still scribbling, the Goon With Gun unperturbed. Diana and I appeared to be invisible.

“Get out of my goddamned head,” I said.

“Come on, lover. You said I was your soul mate, remember? And now that it’s literal, you’re getting cold feet.”

“Because my feet have been dead for a couple of days.”

I tried to shrug her off the way you might shake a pet monkey off your back, but she was duct-taped to my innermost being. The deepest, blackest part of it.

I recalled something my caseworker had said, about regrets and using up second chances. And the big thing I’d been running from.

Guilt.

There, in the mausoleum of my heart, the “Diana” coffin was full of the most maggot-riddled, corpulent putrescence imaginable. I thought I’d walled it off, that it was so safely buried that the stench would never arise.

True, I hadn’t killed her. She’d taken that particular choice herself, in consultation with whatever cosmic guide she’d consulted. My failure had been in refusing to let her be fully alive.

No, she hadn’t been Diana Kelly Rognstad Steele, a creature of love and light, one of God’s special children. She hadn’t been a woman, a sacred entity that I nurtured and honored and celebrated. She hadn’t been a temple of all that was valuable and worthy.

None of that.

She’d been nothing but a dump for my pain and darkness and selfishness.

I couldn’t see her, but I felt her, and she took that journey with me, into the deepest hollows of my soul. Her eyes widened in surprise and maybe a little sympathy.

“Richard,” she whispered, and it was the voice she’d used in her most tender and generous moments, when times had been good, when we were virgins to each other, exploring and brave and not walled off from one another.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and that was enough. For the first time in my life, I’d said it without an inaudible “But...” trailing after it, backloaded with a litany of justifications and excuses for pathetic and cowardly behavior.

Tears ran down our shared cheeks, and they were as warm as the Pacific Ocean in August, as cool as lovers’ sheets when the sweat is evaporating, as hot as Diana’s cavorting flames of Hell, as icy as the finger of The Grim Reaper when he taps on your shoulder and beckons you home.

“Did you love me?” she said, and I embraced her as well as I could while wearing the same arms as hers.

“Yes, and I still do,” I said, and it was true and not at all contradictory. I looked at Lee, who seemed frozen in the real world, hunched over the note, achingly gorgeous and radiating all the light I’d come to appreciate. This love didn’t mean I was cheating or that I was in any way diminished or duplicitous.

I hadn’t realized in my stinginess that there is not a limited supply of love, and that it flows through us from someplace beyond us, someplace better than us. And we are only conduits, and our job is to simply keep the pipeline open and let it gush instead of tightening the valves through our fears.

“I love you and I always will,” I said. “Forever.”

That confession must have leaked through the borders of the dead and living, because Lee’s head lifted. She looked over at the portion of the wall where I was immersed in my dead wife.

“Finish it,” the goon commanded.

Lee gave a wry twist of her lip, turning up one corner in a smile that somehow seemed a secret signal. Approval, maybe? Understanding?

Diana’s warmth flooded me, all the verdant, fecund moistness in which she’d enveloped me countless times, and I felt her rising into the ether.

“Mission accomplished,” she said. “I’m free now.”

And the resentment was gone, just like that, swept up on a breeze as I wished her Godspeed and happiness.

The last echo was her whisper. “I love you, too.”

Diana’s work was done, but mine wasn’t. I brushed the invisible tears away and took inventory of my powers. Even without flesh, I had carried a heavy weight around inside, and somehow dragging it into the light had killed the poisoned darkness inside. Still, my spiritual batteries had been drained by my stubborn clinging to old ways, past damage, and unrequited guilt.

I didn’t think I could pull off another materialization. I had to do something, though. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Lee die unfairly, even if dying brought her to my side of the spirit world.

The goon with the gun had an Errol Flynn mustache and was smart enough to wear gloves. I had no doubt that Lee’s fingerprints were on the gun’s handgrip, and the rifle that had killed me was planted in the closet. I hovered over Lee, sniffing her hair, reading the words she had written:

The guilt is too much to bear. I’m sorry for what I did to you, Richard. You were the only one I ever loved. And that’s why I couldn’t let you love somebody else. Wherever you are, I’m sure you understand.

I can’t pay for my sins, but at least I can keep myself from hurting anyone else.

Lee

Anyone that knew Lee could see that her handwriting was wrong. She held the pen in a different position than usual, between two fingers instead of one and her thumb. What a smart woman. A gun at her back, and still rational enough to throw some kinks into a near-perfect crime by leaving a puzzle for the handwriting experts.

“Nothing personal,” said the goon. He even smelled like a lawyer, pungent with cologne and garlic and wine.

“I hope you fry in Hell,” she said.

“The only place I’ll be frying is on the beaches of Singapore,” he said, bragging with the confidence of a sleazy crook who thought he was getting away with murder. Make that two murders. And he’d been smart enough to stick a frame on Bailey as well, if worse came to worst. That and millions of simoleons would buy him plenty of time to skip the country.

Lee put the pen down. “The police are probably watching my apartment. They’ve already questioned me once.”

“And the pressure has driven you to suicide,” the goon said. “Guilt is a real bitch, isn’t it?”

She sat back and looked out the window. The sun broke through, and the shadow of a palm tree fell across her face. Her eyes were hard, set in that determined look that I knew so well. She would not give her killer the satisfaction of making her squirm.

“You know what I can’t forgive you for?” she asked, as if the gunman were a wayward child. “For taking away the only things I wanted to live for. You took my Richard, and now you’re taking me from the father I’ve always wanted to have.”

“Cry me a river.”

I concentrated, trying to muster some flesh. If the lawyer and Bailey DeBussey and Bailey’s jar-headed lover enjoyed a life of luxury, they won. If Lee died, I failed. If I couldn’t will myself into action, I lost. And eternal love wasn’t something you got many second chances at.

Now that I’d cleaned out the crypt inside my sorry soul, I had no desire to let dust gather in the corners.

I flitted to the goon’s ear and penetrated the canal until I was at his eardrum. Come ON, I thought, Make it happen.

What did my caseworker say? Faith. It’s all about FAITH.

I was screaming inside, but I only managed a slight whisper. “Hey, you.”

The lawyer cocked his head and scratched his ear.

Faith.

I looked at Lee’s face and tried again, raising my voice to gnat level. “It’s God, you idiot.”

“Huh?” The goon glanced around, his mouth parted in confusion.

“You’ve been a very bad boy,” I whispered. Psychic razors slashed at my essence, my batteries pulsed with the last flicker of a charge, but I kept going. “God doesn’t like bad boys.”

Maybe it wasn’t my place to play God. Maybe they’d hold that against me later. But the administration at The Bright Place set the rules, not me. They’re the ones who gave me power and a mission. And another chance.

They had taught me to hope. And, to hell with it, I was just a conduit, after all. “God’s not happy with you.”

The goon shook his head. His gun hand dropped to his side. He’d forgotten Lee in his surprise.

“God’s going to have to kick your ass now,” I whispered. Lee swung a leg out, making contact and sending the gun clattering across the floor. She exploded from her chair, delivering a flurry of chops and kicks to the poor guy’s neck and stomach. The air rushed out of him as I backed away to enjoy the show.

Lee was good. Took her thirty seconds to wipe him out, and she didn’t even make him bleed. He would have some nasty bruises, though. She’s merciful, but not to a fault.

She tied his hands and called the police. I tried to summon myself into flesh, desperate with desire, but I was gone, done, used up. She was already out the door.

If she had heard my God imitation, she hadn’t recognized my voice.

***

13.

Later, I drifted through Uhlgren’s office. He was telling the District Attorney about the case. Turns out that Ron Wesmeyer’s lawyer had actually worked his way through law school as a hit man. When he saw a chance to make a two-million-dollar cut, he fell back on old habits, though his ultimate plan was to filch the whole 10 mil himself.

The lawyer fingered Bailey and her boyfriend. Bailey was the mastermind of the whole setup. I guess smarts run in the family, same as looks. Too bad Bailey wasted hers, unlike her sister.

That was my only regret. Lee had finally found her family, except one of the bunch had turned rotten. Well, you can’t ask for everything, especially in Los Angeles, and doubly especially around Christmas time. You can, but in my experience, you’re just wasting your prayers. I guess even hope isn’t unlimited.

I spent most of my remaining time hanging around Lee’s place. It was a joy just watching her daily rituals, her karate routines, her laundry, her visits with her father. They were getting along great. She was going to be just fine.

I only had one more piece of unfinished business on this Earth.

***

14.

I had a beautiful funeral. I didn’t know I had so many friends. It was good to see Wesmeyer by Lee’s side. The priest’s eulogy was so inspiring that you’d think I was up for sainthood.

Lee put a gorgeous bouquet on my chest, white roses, bluets, and yellow lilies, all grown in her garden. The morticians had done a swell job. I looked as if I were sleeping and visions of sugarplums were dancing in my head. As the mourners filed out and got into their cars to drive to the cemetery, Lee went back to my coffin for a last look.

Faith.

It’s about faith, a belief in right and wrong and justice and hope and love. Love, as in caring about something bigger than your own sorry hide, but also believing in yourself enough so that you had something to give. No, not just believing in yourself, but believing in your piece in the great puzzle, something that fits but not always to the shape you like. Somebody or something, maybe some grinning guru in a corner office of The Bright Place, had a better plan. I drew strength from those things. I could do it. I could live again, if only for a moment.

In the last pew sat Miss Titanic. She grinned, then frowned and pointed to an invisible wristwatch, then held up five fingers. Five minutes left to be dead and alive.

I spent the last of my energy incorporating myself. Lee’s moist eyes widened, but she didn’t scream. She’s not the kind of lady that gets thrown all out of kilter over a little thing like the ghost of her dead lover. Or maybe her father had told her about my visit.

“Hiya, honey,” I said, trying to be suave, which is kind of hard for a corpse.

“Richard?” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

“But you’re...you’re...”

I nodded. “That’s right.”

“Oh, sweetie,” she said, and more tears rolled down her pretty cheeks. I didn’t think you could squeeze that much water out of a person. It made me feel good, in a strange way.

“Listen, babe, I don’t have much time.” I wiped her tears away, glancing behind me to make sure the priest didn’t have his convictions rocked by my appearance. Only one ghost was sanctioned by the church, and that was the Holy Ghost, not Richard Steele. Fine by me. I had other temples to walk through.

The priest was occupied bottling holy water or something, so I went on with what I needed to say. “Here’s the deal. I didn’t say this as much as I should have. But I love you. Forever.”

More tears. This time they were mine.

Ghost tears are cold, serious stuff.

Lee gripped my hands. I stammered, shivering, my earthly molecules about to disintegrate for the final time.

“I don’t mind if you find another guy,” I said.

When she shook her head, I squeezed her hands. “You might not feel like it for a long time, but you might someday. I’m just asking one thing.”

“Anything,” she said, the heartache plain in her voice.

“Save the last dance for me, will you?”

She nodded, laughing and crying at the same time.

With a last effort of will, I kissed her hard enough for her to be sure she wasn’t hallucinating. My lips went numb, then my fingers, then all my borrowed flesh.

“By the way,” I whispered. “Thank you for the flowers. You throw a lovely funeral.”

Then I was mist, scattered on the winds of time and the universe, gone to whatever this nice bright place is.

I like to think it’s heaven.

I’m an optimist, you know.

THE END

Return to Table of Contents

###

When artists gather at a remote mountain estate for a retreat, they are unaware that their energy is feeding something unwholesome. Sculptor Mason Jackson and dying parapsychologist Anna Galloway must uncover the dark secrets of Korban Manor before their spirits are trapped forever.

CREATIVE SPIRIT

By Scott Nicholson

Copyright ©2003 Scott Nicholson

Scott’s Amazon Author Central page

Table of Contents

“If you can dream, and not make dreams your master . . .”

—Rudyard Kipling

“I’ll eat your dreams.”

—Ephram Elijah Korban

For my mother, Delores, who sees

1898

If the fire is out, I’m dead.

As Sylva ran through the dark forest, the laurel branches slapped at her and wooden talons raked through her long, flowing hair.

But it wasn’t her fault. Momma had a fever and Daddy was off the mountain with a load of apples, Sylva had to take care of her two little brothers and she was only sixteen and stuck on this idiot mountain and life shouldn’t be so unfair.

She stumbled over a root and nearly fell. She grabbed up the hem of her coarse linen skirt and ran on through the trees. Briars whipped at her knees. It was only half a mile, but on November nights it felt like forever, as if the Korban estate expanded to join the darkness.

And the darkness welcomed it. But she couldn’t think about that. The fire was her job and the family depended on Korban. All the old families depended on him, especially the ones who had sold their land to him.

She was grateful for the high wedge of moon, but the moon sometimes revealed things she didn’t want to see. Her breath was silver in its light as she whispered little spells of safekeeping.

The manor seemed to be slipping farther away from her, as if the snake-belly trail had gained new curves. But at last she emerged onto the spread of pastures leading to the lawn. She could barely glance at the house, which stood black and brooding against the Blue Ridge Mountain sky. But she had to check the window.

Dark.

She was late.

Sylva sprinted to the house, her heart lodged in her throat and her pulse hammering. She gathered some logs from the firebox and crept up the back stairs. Margaret was away on a trip somewhere, to a place called Baton Rouge, fancy-sounding. If only Sylva could hurry, maybe no one would notice her tardiness.

It’s just a silly little fire. It ain’t like anybody’s going to freeze to death.

She tiptoed down the hall, floorboards groaning at her failed stealth. She paused at his door. If she knocked, she’d be found out. Best to say nothing, start the fire, and sneak out again.

The bedroom was dark. She was afraid to light a lantern because, if any guests were visiting, one of them might look in. Sylva closed the door behind her, hoping the embers still cast enough glow for her to see. But the hearthstones were cold and the room was filled with the pungent stench of the spent fire.

Kneeling, she put the wood on the floor and groped for the newspapers and the tin box of matches that she kept beside the poker. Even sheltered from the cold night air, she felt smothered as if by the waters of a deep dream, and the smallest movement took a great effort. The matches rattled when she knocked over the container. She balled up some pages of the newspaper and stuffed them under the fire irons. As she did, a harsh, low sound came from somewhere in the room.

Sylva struck a match and it flared briefly and died. In that split second of light, she had seen movement out of the corner of her eye. Trying to hurry, though gravity worked against her, she struck another match. A winter wind blew across the room and extinguished the flame before she could touch it to the paper.

Why are the windows open?

Ephram never allowed the windows open in his room. Her fingers were like water skins as she fumbled for another match. The low sound came again, a rattling exhalation followed by the unmistakable creak of the poster bed. She squeezed her eyes closed, even though the room was pitch black, and concentrated on the match that she wanted to scratch across a stone.

A voice came, muffled and desperate and everything but dead.

“Fuh . . . fire,” it said.

Sylva’s heart gave a jump like a frightened rabbit. Ephram Korban was in the room, in the bed. She dared not look in his direction, but the same power that seemed to be weighing down her limbs made her neck turn slowly toward the bed. She opened her eyes and saw nothing but blackness.

“Spell me,” he said, a little more forcefully, almost angrily, but still muffled as if speaking through blankets.

She nodded slowly, though he couldn’t see her in the dark. Nor could she see him. And yet . . .

As she looked at the bed, its form taking shape in her mind from the memory of it, she could picture Ephram lying there, his face stern and his hair and beard flowing onto the pillows. Handsome Ephram, who had never been sick. Ephram, who stayed young and strong while the workers and natives had faded away with their wrinkles and stories and tired, failing breath. Ephram, who was said to never sleep.

Two small dots of light hovered in the darkness of the bed, weakly glowing, the only thing in the room she could see. She tried to turn her head away, tried to strike the match, even though she had now been pulled from mere waking sleep to a helpless awareness.

She washed the sheets. She knew which side of the bed was his. The dots expanded, hovering near the headboard where the pillows were. Where Ephram’s eyes should be.

The eyes smoldered the deep red color of a dying ember.

“Call in the fire,” he rasped, as a sharp flicker of yellow glinted among the red dots. The glowing eyes blurred in her tears as she jerked the matchstick along the stone. It caught and she applied the flame to the paper. At last she could look away from that terrible bed, those impossible eyes. But she had to say those awful words, the ones Momma had taught her.

The spell.

She whispered them, hoping to weaken their power through lack of volume. “Go out frost, come in fire. Go out frost, come in fire. Go out frost, come in fire.”

The fire leapt to life and she put some kindling on the grate. As the wood crackled and heat cascaded onto her face, she found that her limbs were regaining their strength, her scratched flesh no longer stinging.

Not daring to turn now that the room was bathed in firelight, she busied herself stacking a night’s supply of logs onto the irons. Her tears had dried on her cheeks, but she felt their salty tracks. She was in trouble and had committed the most unforgivable of offenses. She could only stare into the flames as they rose like yellow and red and blue water up the chimney.

A hand fell softly on her shoulder. She looked up, and Ephram was standing above her. He was smiling. His eyes were deep and dark and beautiful, alive in the firelight.

How silly I’ve been, picturing them to be red.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her words barely audible over the snapping of the hot logs and the hammering of her heart. “I didn’t mean to be late.”

Ephram said nothing, only moved his hand from her shoulder to her cheek, then up under her long hair until his thumb brushed her ear. She shivered even though the fire was roaring.

She couldn’t help looking around at all the fine things, the oval cut-edged mirror over the bureau, the velvet drapes that plunged from the top of the windows like lush purple waterfalls, the soft silk lace rimming the edge of the poster bed.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice now deep and strong, and her gaze was fixed back to his bearded face.

They said that if you passed him in the dead of night, his eyes changed colors, gold, red, then yellow, the shades of fire. But now his eyes were coal black.

They said when he stood atop the house on the widow’s walk, his shadow stretched two miles in every direction, that he burned black candles in the cellar. But that was what the men said. The house girls said other things, which Sylva equally refused to believe.

He wasn’t a monster.

He was a man.

“Sorry I was late,” she whispered.

“But not too late.”

She started to turn back to the fire, to add more wood, to do her duty. She’d said the words, the way her Momma taught her, and now she was done.

He caught her cheek and his face was near hers. “We burn together.”

She didn’t understand, all she knew was that she had wished for this moment so many times while lying on her straw mattress in the cabin loft. Those dreams had come to her, taken over her body, brought her skin alive. Ephram’s hands on her flesh. But in her fantasies, she hadn’t been this scared.

Then she realized what was wrong. He was behind her and above her, his face lit by the fire. She was kneeling on the hearth, looking up. But, somehow, his shadow was on her face. She couldn’t fix on the thought, couldn’t make sense of it, because other sensations were flooding her. His fervid hand traced the soft slope of her neck.

And again Sylva was smothered in a dream, only under a different power this time, as she rose and let him put his arms around her, as the hellish heat of his lips pressed against hers. She was lost in his warmth, his strength, his great shadow. When he took her hand in his and brought it to the flames, she didn’t whimper or beg. He was the master, after all.

Their hands went into the flames, merged, combusted, and skin and bone were replaced by smoke and ash.

There is no pain. How can there not be pain?

The next thing she knew, she was removing her coarse house-girl skirt and homespun blouse and they merged once more, this time on the floor in front of the fire, the spell lost from her lips, and only Ephram in her senses.

CHAPTER 1

Heights.

Success.

The parallels were so obvious now, as he stood at the edge of the bridge, the steep gorge yawning below, high granite peaks plunging away to a distant death.

“You going?” said the woman behind him.

Mason Jackson grabbed a gulp of the pure Blue Ridge Mountain air. If only it were helium.

The people ahead of him were already across, entering the woods that led to the estate. A horse-drawn wagon had taken the luggage, and Mason was free except for the heavy tools in his canvas satchel.

Enough weight to drop him fast, way, way, down to where—

“Are you okay?” the woman said. The van was already backing up behind them, making the five-mile return trip down the winding road to Black Rock.

Mason nodded. He looked into those cyan eyes, the ones he’d glanced at from time to time during the ride up. At least during those moments when he wasn’t staring out the window at the sheer drop along the shoulder of the road.

“We’re being left behind,” she said. She was nearly as pale as he felt, though she was young, maybe late twenties. Near his age, but he didn’t want to think about that, though she was attractive, with large, dark eyes and straight black hair.

“Run along, I’ll catch up,” he said.

Or, more likely, I’ll run back down the mountain before I step foot on that bridge.

“It’s sturdy enough,” she said. “Those horses must have weighed a couple of thousand pounds.”

“Sure,” he said, tapping the wooden guardrail. “This thing would hold a tank.”

“Acrophobia,” she said. “Everybody’s got some kind of phobia or other.”

Uh-oh. She’s intelligent. This could be bad.

“I couldn’t even climb the monkey bars in grade school,” he said.

“Will it help if you take my hand, close your eyes, and just take a step at a time?”

He smiled, though his throat was tight. “That’s mighty nice of you, Miss—”

“Galloway. Anna Galloway.”

“But how can I trust you not to walk me right over one of those rock ledges?”

She returned the smile, and it was fetching, though a little weary. “You can’t trust me. But maybe while you are walking, you can pretend you are walking on a giant concrete runway, as solid as—”

“No good. Planes freak me out, too.”

The wind shifted a little, and the autumn canopy around them shivered in gold and scarlet. A faint odor of wood smoke drifted by.

“Well, all the good rooms will be taken if we wait any longer,” she said. “I don’t want to spend the whole retreat in a broom closet.”

“After you,” he said, nearly forgetting the long drop. Her eyes were as deep as the gorge and a fall there could be just as fatal.

Anna edged past him and stepped onto the bridge. She put one hand out, clutching her purse with the other. It was a tidy leather purse, brown, not showy or overly stylish. Compact, like she was.

He took her hand and put his other on the railing. Okay, Momma. See? I can make sacrifices for success.

As he walked, he squinted, afraid to close his eyes but not trusting the darkness. He fixed his gaze on an oak stump on the other side of the bridge, imagining how he would accent its natural shape and turn it into a gargoyle or watchdog.

The bridge bucked once as a breeze skirled beneath the girders, and Mason’s stomach fell away. Anna’s hand tightened around his and pulled with more insistence, and he hurried after her. Then they were on solid ground and he let out a cracked laugh of exhilaration.

She released his hand and he wiped the sweat from his palm. He hadn’t noticed his tool bag had banged against his hip, and a bruise started.

“Thank you kindly, Anna,” he said, looking back, feeling silly now.

She shrugged. “A phobia’s a phobia.”

She was already heading down the dirt road that led into the hardwood forest. He hurried after her, his tools clinking. “So what’s yours?” he said, catching up.

“My what?”

“Your phobia.”

She pursed her lips and looked melancholy. “Death.”

“That’s a good one.”

“Makes the other ones insignificant, right?”

“If you’re lucky enough for death to be the end.”

He mulled on that as they walked, her short, brisk steps in a synchronized punctuation to his long strides.

Then the forest ended and Korban Manor stood before them like something out of an antique postcard. The open fields fell away to a soft swell of orchard, a patchwork of meadows, and two barns stitched together with fencing. The manor itself was three outsized stories high, tall the way they were built in the late 1800s, six Colonial columns supporting the portico ceiling at the entrance. Black shutters framed the windows against the white siding. Four chimneys puffed away, the smoke swirling through the giant red oaks and poplars that surrounded the house.

Atop the roof was a widow’s walk, a flattened area with a lonely railing. Mason wondered if any widows had ever walked those boards. Probably.

One thing about an old house, you could be sure that somebody had died there, probably a whole lot of somebodies.

A painter or photographer would probably kill for the view the widow’s walk afforded. Mason might even commit a lesser crime for the privilege, except he knew he’d grow dizzy with all that open air around him and that deadly depth stretching below. At least he’d have an opportunity to study Korban Manor’s intricate scrollwork from the safety of ground level.

“Can you handle the porch steps?” Anna asked.

Mason frowned, unable to tell if she were teasing. “Yeah. I can always crawl if I need to. I’m pretty good at crawling.”

“Good luck, then.” She bounced up the stairs and entered the tall front door. Inside, the group was milling around, getting settled. He wanted to shout out a final “Thanks” but Anna was gone.

Good luck with your phobia, too.

CHAPTER 2

“Have you seen George?” Miss Mamie asked Ransom Streater. She hated to mingle with the hired help, with the exception of Lilith, but there were times when orders had to be given or stories set straight. The best way to head off gossip was to originate it.

“No, ma’am.” Ransom stood by the barn, his hat in his scarred hands, sweat clinging to his thin hair. He smelled of the barnyard, hay and manure and rusty metal. Around his neck was a leather strap, and she knew it was attached to one of those quaint charm bags. These rural mountain people actually believed that roots and powders had influence over the living and the dead. If only they knew that magic was created through the force of will, not by wishful thinking.

Magic was all in the making. Like the thing she held cradled in her arms, the poppet she had shaped with great love and tenderness.

“I need someone to help the sculptor find some wood tomorrow,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.” The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed once.

“When was the last time you heard from George?”

“This afternoon, right after the last batch of guests come in. Said he was going up Beechy Gap to check on things.”

Miss Mamie hid her smile. So George had gone to Beechy Gap. Good. Nobody from town would miss him for at least a couple of weeks, and by then it wouldn’t matter.

And she could count on Ransom to keep his mouth shut. Ransom knew what kind of accidents happened to people around Korban Manor, even to those who wore charms and muttered old-timey spells. And a job was a job.

Everyone had a burning mission in life.

Some missions were more special than others.

She took the little doll from its bit of folded cloth. Its apple head had shriveled into a dark and wizened face, the mouth grim with animated pain. The body was made from whittled ash and the arms and legs were strips of jackvine. Ransom drew back from the doll as if it were a rattlesnake.

“Will you take care of George for me?” Miss Mamie asked.

“He was my friend. It’s the least I can do.” A shadow crossed his face. “I need to wait till morning, though. I don’t go up Beechy Gap at night.”

“First thing, then. I don’t want to upset the guests. You know what’s coming, don’t you?”

“A blue moon in October,” Ransom said. His eyes shifted to the barn door. A horseshoe hung above it, points up, the dull metal catching the dying daylight. As if luck mattered.

“You’ve been with us a long time.”

“And I aim to stick around a lot longer.”

“Then you won’t let me down?”

“I’ll bury him proper, silver on his eyes. I take pride in my work.”

“Ephram always said, ‘Pride will walk you through the tunnels of the soul.’”

“Ephram Korban said lots of things. And people said lots of things about him.”

“Some of it might even be true.” Miss Mamie stroked the doll, suffering her own moment of pride at its skillful rendering. Folk art, they called it. The little poppet contained far more folk than anybody knew. “Excuse me, I have a dinner to host.”

Ransom gave a little bow and tugged the strap of his overalls. Miss Mamie left him to feeding the livestock and headed toward the manor. She carried the doll as if it were a precious gift to a loved one. Even though the house was as familiar to her as her own skin, to see it from a distance always brought a fresh rush of joy. The fields, the trees, the mountain wind seemed to sing his name.

This was her home.

Their home.

Forever.

CHAPTER 3

Anna Galloway pulled back the lace curtains of the bedroom window. A bit of dust rose from the windowpane at the stir of air. Sunlight spilled on her shoulders, the October glow warming the floor beneath her feet. The mountain air was chillier than she was used to, and even the roaring fire didn’t quell her shivers. A painting of Ephram Korban hung over the room’s fireplace, smaller than the one downstairs but just as brooding. The sculptor with the fear of heights was right about one thing: Korban had been thoroughly in love with himself.

She looked out over the meadows. Here she was, at long last. The place she was supposed to be, for whatever reason. This was the end of the world, the logical place for endings. She drove the fatalism from her mind and instead watched the roan and chestnut galloping across the pasture. The display of freedom and peace warmed her.

“It’s so pretty, isn’t it?” the woman behind her said. She’d told Anna that her name was “Cris without the h,” as if the lack of h somehow made her harder and less flexible. And since they were going to be roomies . . .

“It’s wonderful,” Anna said. “Everything I dreamed it would be.”

Cris already had her makeup kit, watercolor brushes, and sketch pads scattered across the bed nearest the door. Anna had nothing but a slim stack of books piled neatly on her dresser. Her attitude toward material possessions and earthly comforts had undergone dramatic changes in the past year. You travel light when you’re not sure where you’re headed.

The pain swept across her abdomen, sneaky this time, a needle poking in slow motion. She closed her eyes, counted backward in big fat numerals.

Ten, round and thin . . .

Nine, loop and droop . . .

She was down to six and the pain was floating somewhere above that far cut in the Blue Ridge Mountains when Cris’s voice pulled her back.

“Like, what do you do?”

Anna turned from the window. Cris sat on the bed, brushing her long blonde hair. Anna was glad the chemotherapy hadn’t made her own hair fall out. Not just because of vanity, but because she wanted to take all of herself with her when she went.

“I do research articles,” Anna said.

“Oh, you’re a writer.”

“Not fiction like Jefferson Spence. More like metaphysics.”

“Science and stuff?”

Anna sat on her bed. The pain was back, but not as sharp as before. “I worked at the Rhine Research Center in Durham. Investigator.”

“You quit?”

“Not really. I just got finished.”

“Rhine. Isn’t that ESP, ghosts, and weird stuff? Like on X-Files?”

“Except the truth isn’t ‘out there.’ It’s in here.” She touched her temple. “The power of the mind. And we don’t do aliens. I was a paranormal investigator. Except I became a dinosaur. Extinct almost before I even got started.”

“You’re too young to be a dinosaur.”

“Everything’s electronic these days. Electromagnetic field detectors, subsonic recorders, infrared cameras. If you can’t plot it on a computer, they don’t think it exists. But I believe what I see with my heart.”

Cris looked around the room, as if noticing the dark corners and flickering fire-cast shadows for the first time. “You didn’t come here because of—”

“Don’t worry. I’m here for personal reasons.”

“Aha. I saw you talking to that muscle guy with the canvas satchel, out on the porch.”

“Not that kind of personal reason. Besides, he’s not my type.”

“Give it a few days. Stranger things have happened.”

“And I’m sure you’re here to throw yourself into your art?” Anna pointed to the sketch pads. “I won’t give you my lecture on the artistic temperament, because I like you.”

“Oh, I think my husband is plooking his secretary and wanted me out of the house so they could use the hot tub. He sent me to Greece over the summer. New Mexico last spring to do the Georgia O’Keeffe thing. Now the North Carolina mountains.”

“At least he’s generous.”

“I’ll never be a real artist, but it gives me something to do on retreats besides chase men and drink. But my Muse allows me those little luxuries, too. Speaking of which, I noticed a bar in the study. Care for one before dinner?”

“No, thank you. I believe I’ll rest a little.”

“Well, just don’t walk around with a sheet over your head. I might mistake you for a ghost.”

“If I die, I promise you’ll be among the first to know.”

Anna lay back on the pillow. A feather poked her neck. The door closed, Cris’s footsteps faded down the hall, dying leaves whisked against the window. The smoke-aged walls gave off a comforting aroma, and the oil lamp’s glow added to the warmth of the room. She felt at peace for the first time since—

No. She wouldn’t think of that now.

The pain was back, a rude houseguest. She tried the trick of numbers, but her concentration kept getting tangled up with memory, as it so often did lately. Ever since she’d started dreaming of Korban Manor.

Ten, round and thin . . .

An image of Stephen slid into her mind between the one and the zero. Stephen, with his cameras and gizmos, his mustache and laugh. To him, Anna was the parapsychologist’s version of a campfire girl. Stephen had no need for sensing ghosts. He could prove them, he said.

Their graveyard dates ended up with her wandering over grass and headstones while Stephen focused on setting up equipment. The night she’d sensed her first ghost, shimmering beside the marble angel in the Guilford Cemetery, Stephen was too busy marking down EMF readings to look when she called. The ghost didn’t wait around for a Kodak moment, it dissolved like mist at sunrise. But before those evanescent threads spooled themselves back to whatever land they’d come from, the haunted eyes had stared fully into Anna’s.

The look was one of mutual understanding.

Nine, loop and droop . . .

That had been her first investigation with Stephen. They’d slept together on the floor of Asheville’s Hanger Hall on a winter night when the wind was too brisk even for ghosts. And two weeks later, she’d overheard him at a party calling her a “flake, but a lovable flake.”

So after six years of study and field research, she was little more respectable than an 800-number phone psychic. There were plenty enough skeptics out in the real world, between the hard scientists and those who were always up for a good old-fashioned witch burning. But the laughter of her own peers was enough to drive her to big, spooky, empty places where she could chase ghosts alone.

Eight, a double gate . . .

Then the pain came, and the first of the dreams. She had stepped from the forest, her feet soft on the damp grass, the lawn as lush as only dreams could paint it. The manor stood before her, windows dark as eyes, the trees around the house twisted and bare. A single strand of smoke rose from one of the four chimneys. The smoke curled, collected, gathered on the roof just above the white railing.

And the shape formed, and the woman’s whispered word, “Anna,” woke her up, as it had so many nights since.

Seven, sharp and even . . .

That was what the pain was, a seven, sticking in her intestines.

Stephen came over the day she found out the colon cancer had metastasized to her liver. He held her hand and his eyes managed to look dewy and glazed behind his thick glasses. The mustache even twitched. But he was too practical, too emotionally void to realize exactly what the diagnosis meant. To him, death was nothing more than a cessation of pulse, a change in energy readings.

So much for soul mates.

Even after Anna had talked the doctors out of a colectomy, accepting the death sentence as the cancer raced to other organs, Stephen still acted as if science would intervene and save her. He probably even prayed to science, that coldest of all gods. She refused his offer of a ride home from the hospital. She’d come to accept that loneliness was a natural state for someone soon to be a ghost.

Six, an arc and trick . . .

Miracles happen, one of her oncologists had told her. But she didn’t expect them to occur in a hospital, with tubes pumping radiation into her, blades removing her flesh a sliver at a time, doctors marking off her dwindling days. And she had stopped dreaming in the hospital. It was only back home, in the wee hours of her own quiet bed, that Korban Manor once more stood before her.

Night after night, as the dream grew longer and more vivid, the shape on the roof gained substance. At last Anna could clearly see the distant face, diaphanous hair flowing out like a veil. The cyan eyes, the welcoming smile, the bouquet held before her from the forlorn stage of the widow’s walk. At last the face was recognizable.

The woman was Anna.

Five, a broken wing . . .

The pain was softer now, snow on flowers.

She’d conducted some research, knowing the manor was familiar to her through more than just dream visitations.  She found a few items on Korban Manor in the Rhine archives. Ephram Korban had spent twenty years building his estate on the remote Appalachian crag, then had leapt to his death from the widow’s walk in an apparent suicide. Some locals in the small town of Black Rock passed along stories of sightings, mostly disregarded as the gossip of hired hands. A field investigation, shortly before the house was restored as an artists’ retreat, had netted zero in the way of data or enthusiasm.

But maybe Korban’s pain, his anger, his love, his hope, his dreams, were soaked into these walls like the cedar stain on the wainscoting. Maybe this wood and stone and glass had absorbed the radiant energy of his humanity. Maybe the manor whose construction had obsessed him was now his prison. Maybe haunting wasn’t a choice but an obligation.

Four, a north fork . . .

She drifted in the gray plane between sleep and thought, wondering if she would dream of the mansion now that she was actually here. She closed her mind to her five senses, and only that other one remained, the sense that Stephen had ridiculed, the one Anna had hidden away from her few friends and many foster parents. The line between being sensitive and being a freak was thin.

Three, a skeleton key . . .

For just a moment, she was pulled from sleep. Something wafted behind the maple baseboard, scurried along the cracks between dimensions. She didn’t want to open her eyes. She could see better if her eyes were closed.

Two, an empty hook . . .

She felt eyes on her. Someone was watching, perhaps her own ghost, the woman spun from the smoke of dreams who held that bouquet of fatal welcome.

One, a dividing line . . .

The line between some and none, here and gone, bed and grave, love and hate, black and white.

Zero.

Nothing.

Anna had come from nothing, was born to nothing, and walked toward nothing, both her past and future black.

She opened her eyes.

No one was in the room, no ghost shifted against the wall.

Only Korban, dead as dry oil, features shadowed by the flickering firelight.

The sunlight’s angles had grown steeper in the room. The pain was gone. Anna rose and went outside to wait for sundown, wondering if this was the night she would finally meet herself.

Chapter 4

Mason stared at the large oil painting that hung on the wall above the fireplace. It stared right back, as severe as any of Mason’s former art instructors. The scowling face of the portrait dominated the room, ten times life-size. The flesh tones of the oils were so realistic that Mason could imagine the figure bursting free of the ornate wooden frame. A brass plate beneath the painting was etched with the name.

Ephram Korban.

Mason studied the black eyes. They were the only features that lacked the realism of the rest of the painting. The eyes were dead, dull, completely unanimated. But Mason wasn’t a painter himself, so he had no grounds for criticism. Critics be damned, and he was actually more interested in the frame than the painting. It appeared to be hand carved.

Mason glanced behind him at the people milling in the foyer. Through the open door, he could see two men in overalls unloading the wagon. A busty, fortyish woman wearing a long black dress seemed to be everywhere at once, giving orders, distributing drinks in long sweaty glasses, shaking hands. Mason moved closer to the fireplace. Though the day was warm for late October, a fire blazed in the hearth, all yellow and orange and other bright autumn colors.

The fireplace mantel was also hand carved. Bas-relief cherubim and seraphim, plump Raphaelite forms winging among the thick curls of clouds. Mason checked his fingers to make sure they were clean, then felt among the smooth shapes. As his hands explored, he noticed someone had left a half-filled glass of red wine on the mantel. The rings the glass might leave on the white paint, like blood on virgin snow. No respect for the work of a craftsman.

He again looked at the eyes in the painting. Now Ephram Korban seemed to be gazing out across the room, brooding over these people who had dared to cross his threshold. The face was alternately compelling and repulsive. Mason touched the frame—

“Lovely, isn’t it?” came a woman’s high voice.

Mason spun, his satchel nearly knocking over the wineglass. Before him stood the buxom woman in the black dress, her dark hair tied in a tight bun. Her smile was fixed on her face as if chiseled.

“Yes,” Mason said. “Whoever carved this must have spent a few weeks on it.”

She giggled, a thin, artificial sound. “I was talking about the painting, silly.”

She toyed with the strand of pearls around her neck, the gems unfashionably interrupted by a small brass locket. Her dark eyes sparkled with all the life that Korban’s painted ones lacked. Mason wondered if that was something you could practice. He could picture the woman before the mirror, fastening her pearls, checking her teeth, adjusting the sparkle in her eyes.

The woman held out her hand. Mason took it, wondering if he was supposed to bow and kiss it like some French dandy in a period film. Her skin was cool. She turned his hand over and looked at his fingers, nodding. “Ah, so you’re the sculptor.”

“Huh?”

“Calluses. We don’t get many calluses here at the manor.” She leaned forward, like a conspirator. “At least among the guests. The hired help still has to work.”

Mason nodded. He looked down at his tennis shoes with the scuffed toes, the hole in his blue jeans. The other people who rode up with him in the van wore leather pumps, Kenneth Coles, open-backed sandals, clothes out of catalogues that bore New Hampshire names. He didn’t belong here. He was dirt-poor Southern mill-town trash, no matter what sort of artistic airs he put on.

But here he was, ready to carve his own success.

“You’re our first sculptor in a while,” she said, her cold hand still clinging to his. “Let’s see if I have the copy memorized: ‘Mason Beaufort Jackson, honors graduate from the Adderly School of the Arts, currently employed at Rayford Hosiery in Sawyer Creek , North Carolina. Winner of the 2002 Grassroots Consortium Award. Commissioned by Westridge  University to create a piece for their Alumni Hall.’ Now, what was the title of that piece?”

She pressed her free hand against her forehead as if reading a page in her mind, then snapped her fingers. “Diluvium. Of course. How terribly lovely.”

Mason groan inwardly. He hadn’t realized exactly how pretentious the title sounded until hearing it pass those well-bred lips. “Well, it was the crowd I was in at the time. Avant-garde, but still meeting for lunch at McDonald’s.”

The woman emitted her bone-rattling laugh and pointed to the canvas satchel slung over his shoulder. “Are those your tools?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing you use them.” Her cold hand still clung to his. “I’m Mamie Goldfeld. I insist that you call me Miss Mamie.”

He glanced at Korban’s portrait, then back to Miss Mamie.

“Ah, you noticed,” she said.

“The eyes.”

“I’m the last living relative of Ephram Korban. I run the manor, keeping it as an artists’ retreat just the way he wanted. Master Korban always appreciated the creative spirit.”

“Was he an artist himself?”

“A frustrated one. A dilettante. He was mostly a collector.”

All artists are frustrated. Isn’t that the point?

Mason took in more of the architectural details of the foyer. The arch over the front entrance was ten feet high, with leaded squares of glass set in a transom overhead. The foyer had a high ceiling, the white walls and trim accentuated with an oak-paneled wainscoting as high as Mason’s chest. Two Ionic columns in the center of the room held a huge ceiling beam aloft.

“This is a pretty place,” Mason said, because Miss Mamie clearly expected him to say something. He’d nearly said “lovely,” an adjective he’d never used before. Five minutes at an expensive artists’ retreat and he was already putting on airs, developing a persona.

God forbid you ever actually accomplish anything. You’d be insufferable.

“I’m pleased you like it,” she said. “Colonial revivalist. Master Korban was proud of his heritage, which is why his will stipulated that the manor be preserved intact.”

“Korban. That’s Jewish, isn’t it?”

“In name only. Not in spirit. He borrowed his heritage, bought what he couldn’t borrow, and stole what he couldn’t afford. He ended up with everything, you see.”

Mason looked at the portrait again, measured the tenacity and arrogance of the features. “Looks like your ancestor was the kind of man who didn’t take no for an answer.”

“Yes, but he was also highly generous. As you know.”

Mason smiled, though he felt as if a lizard were crawling in his throat. He was here on the dole. He could never have afforded such a retreat on his factory pay. When you got right down to it, he was a token, invited so the Korban estate and the arts council could revel in their magnanimous support of the underclass.

Miss Mamie looked past him to where a small group of guests stood talking. “There’s dear Mr. and Mrs. Abramov. The classical composers, you know.”

Mason didn’t know, but he kept smiling just the same. The token grin of gratitude.

“Excuse me, I must say hello. Lilith will be along to show you to your room, and I do hope you enjoy your stay.”

She glanced at Korban’s portrait with an expression approaching wistfulness and was gone with a bustle of fabric. Mason gazed at the portrait again. The fire popped, sending a thick red ember up the chimney. Korban’s eyes still looked dead.

Mason was about to turn away to find his luggage when the fire snapped again. For the briefest of moments, the face in the portrait was superimposed over the flames like a sunset’s reflection on a lake.

He fought a sudden urge to pull a hatchet from his satchel and swipe it across Ephram Korban’s disquieting smirk.

“You look like you could use an eye-opener,” came a voice beside him. It was Roth, the photographer who had shared a seat with him on the van. The man spoke with a clipped and not entirely authentic British accent, alcohol on his breath. A martini was poised in one wrinkled hand.

“No, thanks,” Mason said.

“It’s afternoon, and we’re all grown-ups here.” Roth’s eyes crinkled beneath white eyebrows. His face was sharp, thin, and full of angles. Mason saw it as a natural sculpture, the weathered topography of skin, a crag of a jawbone, the eroded plain of forehead. He had a bad habit of reducing people to essential shapes and forgetting that some sort of soul might exist within the raw clay of creation.

“I don’t drink.”

“Oh, you a religious nut?”

“I’m not any kind of nut, as far as I know. Except for that part about hearing God’s voice in a burning bush.”

Roth laughed and drained some of the martini. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist. You’re terribly young to throw in with this lot,” he said, nodding toward the people that Miss Mamie was greeting. “What’s a pip like you doing on a getaway like this?”

“I’m here on a grant. North Carolina Arts Council and Korban Manor.” Mason looked at the fire again. No faces swirled among the bright colors. No voices arose, either. He forced himself to relax.

“A real artist, eh? Not like these,” Roth said, rolling his eyes toward Miss Mamie’s well-dressed guests. “Most of them need an artists’ retreat like they need another mutual fund. A bunch of tweeds whose highest endeavor is gluing dried beans to a scrap of gunnysack.”

Another critic. Passing judgment on the unrevealed talents of others. At least they’d paid their own way, unlike Mason. “What part of England are you from?”

“Not a pint of Brit in me,” he said. “Was over there in the military for a while and picked up a little of the accent. Comes in handy with the birds.” He winked one of his smoky gray eyes.

“You came here to shoot, I suppose.” Mason had dated a girl at Adderly who’d had a book of Roth’s work. Roth did nature, wildlife, architecture, and the occasional portrait. He couldn’t touch the gritty glamour of Leibovitz or the visceral sensibility of Mapplethorpe, but his photographs possessed their own brand of blunt honesty.

“I got bankrolled by a few magazines,” Roth said. “I’m to do some house-and-garden stuff, scenic mountain shots, that sort of tripe. I do want to shoot that bridge, though. Highest wooden bridge in the southern Appalachians, they say.”

“I believe it. Makes me spin just thinking about it.”

“You bugged by heights?”

“Where I come from, the highest building is two stories, if you don’t count silos. I can handle stairs okay, but I’m not much good on a ladder. Looking down three hundred feet—”

“Drop-off like that one on every side,” Roth said, taking another drink, relishing Mason’s face going pale. “Korban liked his isolation. Wanted his place to be like one of those European castles.”

Roth lifted a toast toward Korban’s portrait. “Here’s to you, old sod.”

Mason’s satchel was getting heavy. He was anxious to get settled in, finish planning the pieces he wanted to work on. And Roth’s accent was annoying.

A pretty woman in black came down the stairs, her dress just short of authentic Goth, a lace shawl over her thin shoulders. She appeared to be a receptionist of some kind. She led a couple away from Miss Mamie’s group. The man was in his fifties, double-chinned, wearing a scowl, the woman, blue-eyed with a clear complexion, who could have walked off the cover of Seventeen. They went up the stairs together, the man clearing his throat, his enormous jowls quivering.

“Might get him later,” Roth said. “Maybe at a rolltop desk with a quill pen in his hand. I’m not keen on personality work, but I could get a tidy bundle for that.”

“Who?”

Roth smiled as if Mason had just fallen off a turnip wagon. “Jefferson Spence.”

“You mean the Jefferson Spence? The novelist?”

“The one and only. The last great Southern writer. Faulkner and O’Connor and Wolfe all rolled into one, if you believe the jacket copy.”

Mason watched the writer labor up the stairs. “What’s he need with an artists’ colony?”

“Fodder. You don’t know much about him, do you?”

“Never read him. I’m more into Erskine Caldwell.”

“One critic called Spence’s style ‘stream of pompousness.’”

Mason laughed. “Well, it was nice of him to bring along his daughter.”

Roth shook his head. “I suppose you don’t read the tabloids, either. That’s not his daughter. That would be his latest, I presume.”

Miss Mamie’s voice rose, her laughter filling the foyer. To her right stood Anna. She met his gaze, gave him a half smile, and turned her attention back to Miss Mamie.

Roth had noticed her, too. His eyes were as bright as a wolf’s. “Cute bird.”

Mason pretended not to hear. “Excuse me. I’ve got to stretch my legs a little.”

Roth gave a faux gentleman’s salute and went to refill his drink. Mason adjusted the satchel strap across his shoulder and went toward the open door. The wagon was gone, the squiggles of its tracks leading toward one of the barns, dark heaps of horse manure dotting the sandy road. The Korban Manor brochure had delighted in the fact that no motor vehicles would be around to “disturb creative impulses.” Likewise, no distractions such as television, telephone, or electricity existed at the estate.

A regular Gilligan’s Island, only without the canned laughter and predictable plot twists. What the hell am I doing here?

Someone in the group bellowed, “Let me tell you about this lovely idea I had for a novel. It’s about this writer who—”

Mason gave a last look at Korban’s face and entered the autumn sunshine.

CHAPTER 5

Pain comes in many colors, but fear comes in only one.

George Lawson thought he’d experienced all the colors of pain in his fifty-three years. White pain, like the time he’d raked the tip of a chain saw across his shinbone while clearing out some locust scrub a few summers back. He’d gotten acquainted with dull sky-blue pain when rheumatoid arthritis had painted a strip along his spine. And the invisible gray gut-punch had hung around for months after Selma dropped him for a rug-weaving hippie back around the end of the Reagan years.

He’d felt pain in a hundred colors, oranges and candy-apple reds and sawgrass greens, and pain had taken just as many shapes and sizes. But he was damn near positive he’d never felt pain like the kind that bear-hugged him now. This was all of those combined, a rainbow of pain, an oil slick in a mud puddle, everything a nerve ending could jangle at a fellow, and then some.

But the fear—

The fear was nothing but black. Bigger, darker, blinding and suffocating, growing like a shadow over those other colors. Black fear lodged in his throat like a grease rag, like a clot of stale molasses, like a lump of coal. He sucked in a gasp of that autumn-sweet Appalachian air.

George tried to move his left arm just as an experiment. Mistake.

Two twenty-penny nails had pinned his biceps to the floor. He even tasted the nails, though he was pretty sure the only things in his mouth were some dust, a little blood, and a few loose teeth. And the fear.

The taste was metal and rust and the kind of smithy, gunpowdery bitterness that filled the air when a fixer-upper worked a hammer. The collapsed shed settled around him with a splintering groan.

George knew he’d better open his eyes. Because inside his head, he was looking down a long dark tunnel, and the deeper he got, the farther away he was from the light pouring in from the mouth of the tunnel. He was riding down into that tunnel as smoothly as if he were on miners’ rails. And part of him wanted to slide on away, down into that cool airless place just around the bend.

But the other part of him was taking over. The part that had pulled his hind end through the jungles of Vietnam, the part that had rolled him out of that hospital bed when the doctors told him he was a heartbeat away from the Big One, the part that had lifted him into the sunshine after the foggy months of loneliness. It was the part that George thought of as Old Leatherneck. Sort of a secret identity that he took on when times got tough. And he really needed Old Leatherneck now, because times didn’t come any tougher than this.

Another bad thing about closing his eyes was that he kept seeing her. The Woman in White.

So he forced his eyelids open, thanks to his secret identity. Wood splinters sprinkled down and stuck to his tears. Something warm and wet trickled down his right temple, but he wasn’t too concerned with that at the moment. First he wanted to figure out what that purplish, raggedy thing was, the thing speared on a split two-by-four a few feet over his head. It was oddly familiar, but out of place, like a sailboat in the middle of a cornfield.

The purplish thing wriggled. No, it had only slid down a little on the broken tip of the board, making a sound like Jell-O dropping onto the floor. Even in the gloomy light and swirling dust, George could make out five little stubs dangling like the teats on a cow’s udder. That’s when Old Leatherneck kicked in like a dozen cups of percolated coffee.

“So it’s a goddamned hand, Georgie-Boy. What’s the problem? How many people in this world was born with no hands at all? Why, you saw Joes in Nam that lost every frigging limb they had, and all they could do was lay around flopping like beached puppyfish. So get the hell over it.”

George gulped, and the imaginary broken glass in his mouth worked its way down his throat. The dead fingers above were splayed out as if waiting for a high five. George hoped Old Leatherneck didn’t cut him one inch of slack this time. Because he didn’t believe there was an inch to spare.

“And since you’re the only bozo laying around down here in this crap heap of a fallen-down shed, then odds are pretty good that it’s your hand, soldier.”

George turned his head a little so that he couldn’t see the hand. He rolled his eyeballs down to look at his body. He couldn’t see anything past his chest because a pile of hemlock ceiling joists was spilled like jumbo tiddlywinks across his gut. He tried to wriggle his shoulders and pain erupted in flaming colorbursts.

“Okay, soldier. You gonna whine like a little girlie-boy, or are you gonna stand up and haul your wrinkled rump hole out of here?”

George didn’t see any way he could stand up. For one thing, he couldn’t feel his legs.

“Excuses, excuses. Well, Georgie, it could be a whole lot worse. ‘cause in case you didn’t notice, there’s a slick sheet of roofing tin about four inches away from your main neck-vein, and that could have just kited on down and done some business. Then we wouldn’t even be having this lovely little chat.”

The sharp edge of the tin caught the dying sunlight. As he watched, the piece of roofing slid closer with a metallic squeak. More cracking came from high above in the invisible carnage of the eaves. Something slithered in the soft shadows.

“No, it ain’t no snake. Never mind that the copperheads and rattlers get active this time of year, doing the last twist before going off to hibernate. Ain’t no ssssnakes in here, Georgie.”

George thought of that old Johnny Cash song, about how the snakes crawl at night. But the song had it wrong. Snakes slept at night because they were cold-blooded. George knew, because he’d looked it up.

George gulped again, trying to squeeze a little of that mountain air into his bruised lungs. A small drop of liquid fell between his eyes. More blood collected at the ruined wrist hanging above him. The swelling teardrop of blood dangled from the end of a stringy bit of tendon. He wondered if the hand was his left one or his right one.

“Hell of a wonderer you are, Georgie. But I’ll tell you, since you’ve always needed to know things. It’s the old hammerer, the crap-wiper, the hand that shook the hand of Senator Hallifield at that Republican barbecue in Raleigh. Yep, them fingers there used to grip the two-seamer curveball that took you fourteen-and-three back in your senior year. Them are the knuckles that got one good sock to the jaw of that hippie Selma run off with. But, hey, it’s dead weight now. Water under the bridge. Let’s worry about the meat that’s still attached.”

George wished he could feel his feet. Then he wouldn’t be so afraid that he was turning into one of those puppyfish. Something inside his crushed gut spasmed and gurgled. With every shallow breath, broken rib bones reached deeper into his chest for a scoop of fresh organs. And who did he have to blame?

“Nobody but you and that snoopy nose of yours, soldier. Just got to poke into things that ain’t none of your business. Just got to goddamned know, don’t you? Always did, and always will. But if you don’t get off that fat rump of yours, always ain’t even going to last till sundown.”

Sure, George liked to know things. He wanted to know why dragonflies were called “snakefeeders.” He wanted to know why Selma had worked the springs of their old brass bed with a flea-ridden liberal longhair. He wanted to know why that picture of Ephram Korban that hung in the manor gave him seven kinds of creeps. He wanted to know why that old bat Sylva and his buddy Ransom had warned him away from this neck of the woods. Most of all, he wanted to know why the Woman in White had been dancing in the shed the moment before it fell down around him.

“Ain’t no earthly good dwelling on what you can’t figure out,” came the distant voice of Old Leatherneck. “You’d best get back to the situation at hand, if you know what I mean.”

Another drop of blood plopped onto his face, this time on his chin. George started to reach up and wipe it away, then was reminded that the arm that did his wiping was severed at the wrist. Pain lanced up his shoulder, as bright and yellow-red as napalm.

George squinted through the jagged and crisscrossed lumber overhead. A few muted shafts of light spilled through the rubble, dust swirling slowly in the air. That meant a bit of daylight was left. Time had taken on a weird, stretched-out quality, kind of like in Nam when the grunts hunkered down for incoming even before the first mortars whistled through the air.

“Hey, Georgie, give me a little credit here. I pulled you out of that mess, didn’t I? So don’t give up on me yet. But I need a little help. You’ve got to have a little goddamned hope.”

Hope. Hope got you up in the morning. Hope put you to bed and tucked you in. Hope was the last thing you held on to when everything else was gone. The thought chilled George, or it may have been the cold sweat that covered his face.

“I’m holding on,” George whispered. He usually didn’t talk back to Old Leatherneck. He figured only crazy people talked back to the voices inside their heads. But then, there sure were a hell of a lot of crazy people around Korban Manor. Ransom Streater claimed to see people who weren’t there, or those who had passed on long before. George wished one of them would have a vision now, do that Sight thing Abigail was always going on about, see him trapped under the old shed.

But Korban Manor was nearly a mile away, and not many messed around in this neck of the woods. Chances were, nobody was in shouting distance even if George could balloon his lungs up enough for a good scream. Chances were, the other hired help was busy around the house, packing in the latest batch of rich artists, Miss Mamie glaring at them if they dared to rest for even a minute. Chances were, even if he managed to crawl out from under three tons of wood and steel and glass, he’d leak away the rest of his blood before he made it back to the trail, let alone to the wagon road or manor.

But first he’d have to get free. Then he could worry about the rest of it. He looked to his right, to the side of his body that was missing a part. A section of the roof that was more or less intact sloped down from a point just above his waist to the ground fifteen feet away. The rubble above him was held up by a single bowed rafter.

If that gave way . . .

“Then it’s ‘Sayonara, Cholly,’” Old Leatherneck said, coming back from whatever shocked pocket of George’s brain that the ornery bastard had been hiding out in. “Now move it.”

A two-by-four rested near George’s cheek, the grain rough against his skin. If he could maneuver it, maybe use it as a lever, he could pry his left arm free. He moved his arm, and the bone of his elbow clubbed against the wooden floor. His right arm must have been asleep, because now it came to tingling life.

He scooted the two-by-four against his side, and the payoff came. The end of his arm exploded in a bright burst of agony. This was orange pain, the color of orange that shot out of the Human Torch’s hands in those Fantastic Four comics he’d read as a kid. Still, he pushed the two-by-four along until he could cradle it in the crook of his injured arm.

“There you go, Georgie-Boy,” said his one-man chain of command. “Give ‘em hell. Only, what are you going to use as a fulcrum for your little make-do seesaw?”

Old Leatherneck had a point, as much as George hated to admit it. But if he gave up now, then surviving Nam and Selma and the stroke and stepping on a copperhead was all for nothing. Sliding down along those miners’ rails in the dark would be that much easier. Just as an experiment, because he needed to know, he closed his eyes.

And he was deeper inside the long dark tunnel. The light at the living end was fainter now, fuzzier. And he was accelerating, sliding fast and smooth as if sledding on snow. The air was thin and cool as the final bend came nearer.

George relaxed, though he was shivering and his blood was starved for oxygen and his heart was hammering like a roofer trying to beat a rainstorm. Because in here, in the tunnel, it was okay to give up hope. Nobody in here would hold it against him. He sensed that others were waiting to welcome him, huddled in the shadows, those who had ridden the rails before him. And he was rounding the bend, hell, this was easy, this was fun, and then, the soft slithering sound pickaxed him in the skull.

What if there are SNAKES around the bend?

George opened his eyes and fought back to the mouth of the tunnel and saw that the sun was still hanging stubbornly in the sky somewhere above, and the AWOL hand was splayed out stiff and livid, wearing a bracelet of splinters and dirt. He’d almost went under, and knew that shock was setting in.

Back in An Loc once, some of the grunts had been sitting around knocking down Schlitz tall boys with George Jones on the record player. A young medic named Haley stubbed out a joint as big as a rifle barrel and told them why shock was a dying soldier’s best friend.

“Some kinds of pain, even a plunger of morphine won’t touch,” Haley said, a wreath of blue smoke around his head. “But shock, man, it shuts you down nice and easy. Blood pressure drops, breathing gets shallow, you get all sweaty, and you don’t even know your Mama’s name. Crash and bleed out, man, then drift off.”

They’d told Haley to shut the hell up. And George had dodged his own run-in with fatal shock, at least so far. But lying under the crush of wreckage and running down Haley’s list of symptoms, he was three-fourths of the way there. He still remembered Mama had been named Beatrice Anne.

The torn hand was slipping off the broken tip of lumber. A drop of blood hit his cheek. George gritted his loose teeth and flipped the two-by-four onto his chest. He pushed with his stump of a forearm until one end of the board was under the joist that had his left arm pinned.

He tried not to look at his ruined wrist. Blood ran down the underside of his arm. If he didn’t get a tourniquet on it soon—

“Don’t wait for that weed-brained Haley to swoop down in his Huey, Georgie-Boy. Some things, a man’s gotta do for hisself. And a fixer-upper like you, somebody who’s a real handyman—course, you’re only half as handy as you used to be, ain’t you?”

George wanted to scream at Old Leatherneck to shut up and go away. But George needed him, needed that taunting inner voice as badly as ever. Walking the lonely roads and horse trails of the Korban estate, he’d taken what companionship he could find. Sure, some of the folks down at Stony Hampton’s café whispered about spooks and such around the manor, but after Nam, George figured the scariest spooks were the kinds that sent their sons into battle.

So when he’d seen the flicker of pale movement inside the shed, he hadn’t given the whispers much of a thought. He’d figured it was a possum or maybe a screech owl. Nothing that would have caused much damage. But George was paid to keep the place up and the critters out, or, as Miss Mamie said, “Just the way things were when Ephram was still lord and master here.” So George had lifted the old metal latch and pushed open the creaking door, hoping that any snakes were scared away by the noise.

“But it wasn’t no possum, nor no screech owl, was it?” whispered Old Leatherneck.

George’s eyes popped open. He must have drifted off. That was another one of Haley’s signs. The two-by-four across his chest rose and fell with his shallow breathing. The sun had slipped low, the dark angles of shadows sharp and thick in the carnage.

Fear gave him a burst of energy, and he levered the two-by-four. His stub of a wrist screamed in fire-juice red.

“Hear that? Wasn’t no possum, was it, Georgie?”

Now he wished the old bastard would shut up. He needed to focus, get the job done in a hurry, he didn’t need—

“Might be sssnakes.”

Or it might be—

—the long white slithery shadow—

—whatever trick his eyes had played on him as he’d stepped inside the shed. Because if a fellow couldn’t trust his own eyes, his days as a to-the-sixteenth-inch handyman were numbered. But right now, all that mattered was—

—that slippery shadow that you could see right through—

—the next push, prying that ceiling joist off his left arm. His chest erupted in hot blue sparks of pain, hell-blazer blue, a blue so intense it was almost white. But the joist gave a little groan and inched upward, awakening the nailed nerves in his biceps.

“She’s moving, soldier! She’s a-moving! And the pain ain’t nothing, is it? Hell, we been through bookoos of this kind of hurt. This is like a pansy-assed waltz through the daisies.”

A waltz. The long white shadow had been doing a waltz. Like a worn linen curtain blowing in the wind, only . . .

“Sure wasn’t no screech owl’s face, Georgie-Boy.”

The shadow had a human face.

George gurgled and the spit trickled down his cheek. He pried again and the joist lifted another cruel and precious inch. New colors of pain came, pus yellow, electric green, screaming violet, crazed ribbons of agony. A big section of the roof quivered and the amputated hand worked free of its wooden skewer, fell and bounced off his forehead and away.

But George barely noticed, because he was back in the tunnel, riding the miners’ rails. And he was rounding that slow curve into darkness, that final turn away from the bothers of breathing.

And suddenly he knew what was around the bend.

She would be waiting, the white shadow with the large round begging eyes, the thing with arms spread wide, one hand holding that dead bouquet of flowers. She looked even more afraid than George. Just before the shed collapsed, he’d seen the long see-through tail wriggling under the lace hem of her gown, a tail as scaly as a—

“The snakes crawl at night, Georgie.”

“No, they don’t,” George said, voice hoarse and weak. “I know, because I looked it up.”

He was weeping because he realized he couldn’t remember his mama’s name. But sorrow didn’t matter now, neither did the pain, nor the nails in his flesh, nor the missing hand, nor the dust filling his lungs, nor the creeping night. Even Old Leatherneck was nothing, just a distant jungle ghost, a cobweb, an echo.

All that mattered were the miners’ rails and that turn in the bend, and the tunnel opening into a deeper, airless blackness. A black beyond the colors of pain.

She was waiting. With company.

Johnny Cash was right, and the encyclopedia was wrong.

The snakes did crawl at night.

CHAPTER 6

The fields were golden-green sheets stretched to the surrounding forest. Great ridges of earth rose along the horizon, carved and chipped and smoothed by that master sculptor, Time. Mason now knew why these mountains were called the Blue Ridge, though the changing leaves splashed such an array of colors that he almost wished he’d stuck with painting.

Pumpkin orange, summer squash yellow, cornsilk gold, beet purple. Van Gogh would have given his other ear to paint this place.

Except such a thought smacked of that dreaded ideal of artistic sacrifice. Mason wondered if the esteemed historical roster of insane artists had not been schizophrenic or poisoned by the lead in their paint, but had instead been driven mad by the whispering of demanding Muses.

He drove the thought from his head because it seemed like an option only a nut would consider. And he’d given up painting not because of a lack of desire or talent, but because of its visual nature. His mother could feel the sculpture with her fingers, but a painting was nothing to her but an endless piece of darkness.

A few horses and cows grazed in the meadow that sloped away from the front of the house. The open land must have been about twenty acres, cleared of boulders and carefully tended. Mason found it hard to believe that these soft grounds gave way to steep granite cliffs on all sides.

Not even a jet trail marked the blue autumn sky, as if the manor were remote from modern civilization not only in distance but in time as well. Majestic hardwoods spread their limbs at carefully spaced intervals along a carriage trail that wound toward the west. An apple orchard covered a rise beside the pasture, the trees dotted with pink and golden fruit. Lush grass swayed softly in a hayfield beyond, ending at the edge of a dense forest.

A soft voice interrupted his reverie: “Now you know why artists trip over their egos to get up here. Especially in the fall.”

Anna Galloway crossed the porch and leaned over the railing, then closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose with an exaggerated flourish. “Ah. Fresh air. A nice change from the stench of pretension inside.”

“You a painter?” Mason asked, still looking across the fields, irritated by her jab at artists.

“No.”

“Me either.”

“What are you, then?”

“Does everybody have to be something?”

The woman tilted her head back toward the house. “If you listen to them, you’d think so.”

“Well, this is a retreat, after all. Back up and go ‘Whoa,’ I reckon.” He didn’t want her to know he felt out of his element. He already missed Sawyer Creek’s dirty little streets with their utility poles and peeling billboards. Back home, he’d be heating up the teakettle and tuning the radio to Mama’s favorite conservative talk show right about now.

“What’s in the bag?”

“This satchel? Nothing. Just some tools.”

“Too bad,” she said. “You’d be far more interesting if it was a parachute.”

Mason tried not to look at her too closely, though that was all he wanted to do. She was pretty, sure, but there was also the sense that she wouldn’t let him hide behind his dumb-bumpkin act, the one he’d used to bluff his way through art college.

Those cyan eyes pierced too deeply, saw beyond the slick face of first impressions. He came up with a snappy comeback a couple of seconds too late. “Think it’s weird I carry my tools everywhere?”

“I think it’s weird you carried them over the bridge. Like you expect art to happen at any moment.”

He wished he could tell her. The tools were not all that expensive, but they had come at great cost. He thought of Mama alone at their cramped apartment in Sawyer Creek, sitting in her worn recliner, a cat in her lap. Eyes never blinking.

This woman he’d only just met was too damned insightful and saw his self-doubt with uncanny clarity. He was worse than the rest, even while pretending he was apart from other artists, not buying into their wankish and vain prattle. He wasn’t sure whether his work revealed anything about the world, but he was determined to shove it in the world’s face and make it notice anyway.

Mason adjusted the satchel on his shoulder, feeling the woman’s eyes on him. “Sculpting tools,” he said. “A hammer, hatchet, chisels, fluters, gougers, some blades.”

“You do wood?”

“I’ve done a little of everything.” He finally looked her full in the face, forcing himself not to blink against her gaze. “Except here I’ll be doing wood.”

She nodded as if she’d already forgotten him. “Six weeks is not very long. It would be hard to tackle something stone in that time.”

Her accent was almost rural, as if she’d tried to be country but somebody had sent her off to college to have it squeezed out of her. One of the horses, a big roan, galloped across the pasture. She smiled as she watched it.

“Some place, huh?” Mason said.

“I’ve seen pictures, but they certainly don’t do it justice.” Again she sounded distracted, as if Mason were as boring as Miss Mamie’s well-heeled gang in the foyer.

Mason stepped between the shrubs and fingered the mortised joints of the railing. Grooved columns held up the portico, the paint thick and scaly where the layers had built up over the decades. The stone foundation of the manor wore a fur coat of green moss. A sudden juvenile urge to impress the woman came over him. “Colonial revivalist architecture,” he said. “This Korban guy must have had the bucks.”

“Do you know anything about him?”

“Only what I read in the brochure. Industrialist, made a fortune after the Spanish-American War, bought out this mountain, and built the manor as a summer home. Two thousand acres of land connected to civilization by nothing except that wooden bridge.”

He hated himself for blathering. He hadn’t come to Korban Manor to mess around. He needed to get serious about his work, not spar with someone who seemed about as interested in him as if he were a piece of lint. Besides, artists were supposed to be aloof.

“So you only have the sanitized biography,” she said. “I did a little research on him myself. That’s my line.”

“You’re a writer?”

“Something like that.”

“Figured. They’re more stuck up and screwed up than artists, if you ask me.”

“Nobody did. As I was about to say, Korban set down in his will that the place be kept as a period piece from the end of the nineteenth century. He stipulated that Korban Manor become an artists’ retreat. While he was alive, he encouraged the servants to fill the house with handmade mountain crafts and folk art. Maybe he liked the idea of his house being filled with creative energy. Sort of a way to keep himself alive.”

“That portrait of him is a bit much, though,” Mason said. “He must have had a hell of an ego.”

“He probably was an artist, then.” She looked tired and gave him a dismissive and maddening half smile. “Excuse me, I have to go to my room.”

Mason fumed inside. Stupid self-obsessed girl, distracted and abrupt, as snotty as any of those Yankees chattering in the foyer. Playing a Goth, white enough without the makeup. Probably used that same little one-liner of “Death” for most of her snappy comebacks.

He should have faked it a little better, acted like a heartbreaker. Maybe he’d start wearing a beret, appear sophisticated, grow one of those wimpy little Pierre mustaches. That would get a laugh out of the boys back at Rayford Hosiery.

“See you later,” he said, trying hard not to sound optimistic. Then, without knowing where the words came from, he added, “I hope you find what you came here for.”

She turned, met his eyes, serious again. “I’m looking for myself. Tell me if you see her.”

Then she was gone, swallowed by the big white house that bore Korban’s name.

CHAPTER 7

“We can just push the beds together,” Adam said.

“Yeah, and when you roll over in your sleep, you’ll be the one whose ass falls into the crack.”

“Wonder what kind of bed the married couples got.”

“Probably a swinging harness rigged to the bedposts, with a mirror on the ceiling.”

“Don’t act so persecuted, Paul. This will be romantic, like in the old days when we used to snuggle on your sister’s couch.”

“Yeah, until Sis found out. That was a scene that won’t make it into a Disney family special.”

Adam sighed. If only Paul weren’t so hardheaded. They would make do. They always had. And God wasn’t out to punish people like them, despite the vehement rants of the rabid right wing.

“Listen,” Adam said. “We’ll push both beds sideways against the wall, and you can have the back. If anybody rolls off in the night and knocks his head on the floor, it’ll be me.”

Paul rubbed his hair in exasperation. A few strands of it stood up, dirty blonde and wavy, young Robert Redford hair. That, combined with his half-lidded eyes and thick eyelashes, made him look sleepy. Adam liked that sleepy look. It was one of the things that had first attracted him to Paul.

“Okay,” Paul said. “I’ll quit griping now. This is supposed to be a second honeymoon.”

Adam smiled. Paul’s tirades never lasted long. “Does this mean I get my virginity back?”

Paul pulled one of the feather pillows from under the blankets and threw it.

Adam knocked it away easily. “Say, did you get a load of Miss Mamie?”

“She could pass for a drag queen if she had a little neck stubble.”

They laughed together. Adam said, “You don’t mince words. And you don’t mince anything else, either.”

“I’ll mince your meat if you’re not careful. And that’s why you love me.”

“Well, that’s one of the reasons.”

“Let’s get unpacked. I want to go out and meet some people.”

“That’s exactly like you,” Adam said. “We go eight hundred miles to get away from it all, and then you have to swing right into the middle of the social scene.”

“Live to party, Princess.”

“Hey, it’s my inheritance we’re throwing away here. And don’t think I’m going to let you forget it.”

Paul gave his fake pout in reply.

Adam carried their luggage to the closet. Paul had three matching suitcases and a heavy-duty case for his video camera. Adam had only a gym bag and a backpack.

“Besides,” Adam said, “when the money runs out, we can always rent that tremendously gorgeous body out for Calvin Klein commercials.”

“As long as I don’t have to full monty with Kate Moss. She gives me the willies.”

“If she gets a look at you, she’ll want to carry your baby.”

“Like that will ever happen.”

“Hey, come on. You’d make a cute dad.”

“Don’t start that,” Paul said.

Adam began putting Paul’s cotton shirts on hangers, careful to keep his back turned. He didn’t want his disappointment to show. Paul was dead set against adoption, against that ultimate long-term commitment. And nobody could be as dead set as Paul.

“Sorry,” Adam said, his words muffled by the closet. “I just thought, out here in the wilderness, away from our old life and all the pressures—”

“I said not to start.”

“You said we could talk about it when we got here.”

“But I didn’t mean right away. I want to relax a little, and you’re making me all tense.”

“Let’s not fight. It’s a bad way to start a vacation.”

“I need to work some, too. How can I get anything done if you’re bugging me about that settling-down crap?”

Adam sighed into the dark hollow of the closet. He finished putting away the clothes, then pretended to be interested in what was going on outside the window. Paul would have fun getting some footage here. A nice, peaceful nature documentary for an uptight Boston boy.

They had a room on the third floor, smaller than the ones he’d seen while the maid was leading them upstairs. The window was set in a gable. The entire upper floor, including walls and angled ceilings, was covered with varnished tongue-and-groove boards. On the way up, Adam had asked the maid about a narrow ladder that led to a small trapdoor in the roof. She told them it went to the widow’s walk and that guests weren’t allowed up there. She said it with what Adam thought was nervousness and a dismissive haste. He wondered if, during some past retreat, a guest had suffered an accident there.

He turned from the window, ready to make peace. If he could get Paul talking about video, the spat would soon be forgotten. “So, do you think you brought enough tape?”

“Got enough for eight hours. Too bad the budget didn’t allow for me to get a Beta SP camera. I’m stuck with crappy digital.”

“Well, you’re freelancing for public television. What do you expect, the budget for Titanic minus Leo DiCaprio’s dialogue coach?”

“Hey, I’d be happy with his hairstylist’s budget. Documentary grants are at the bottom of the list for funding these days. Maybe I should go into ‘Mysteries of the Unexplained Enigmas and Other Offbeat Occult Phenomena.’ With all this talk about the manor being haunted, who knows?”

Adam smiled, counting a victory whenever Paul slipped into sarcastic humor. Paul wouldn’t take any money from Adam to subsidize his videos, but otherwise he had no qualms about being a “kept man.” Paul stretched out on one of the narrow beds and stared at the ceiling. Maybe he was visualizing the edit of some sequence.

“Tell you what,” Adam said. “I’ll see if I can arrange to be abducted by space aliens while you roll the camera.”

“I hear they do all kinds of bizarre sexual experiments.”

“Sounds better every minute.”

“Hey, what can they do that I can’t do better?”

Adam crossed the room. Paul had that sleepy look again. “Kiss me, you fool.”

Paul did. Adam felt eyes watching them. Strange.

“What?” Paul asked, his voice husky.

“Don’t know,” Adam said. He looked around. No one could possibly see in the window from outside, and the door was locked. Besides the furniture, the only thing in the room was an oil painting, a smaller replica of the man’s portrait that hung in the foyer.

I’m not going to be paranoid. It’s okay to be gay, even in the rural South. It’s OKAY to get back to nature. This love is as real as anything in this world.

He slid into bed beside Paul, wondering if the old geezer Korban would disapprove of two boys boffing under his roof. Who cared? Korban was dead, and Paul was very much alive.

CHAPTER 8

Mason was tired from his walk along the wagon trails. He’d spent the afternoon trying to clear his head, relishing the solitude and quiet of the mountain forest that surrounded the estate. Out there, under the ancient hardwood trees, nobody had any expectations of him. He didn’t have to be a hot new artist, he wasn’t the repository for his mother’s hopes and dreams, and he had no obligation to prove his worth to the world’s most unforgiving father. On the grounds of Korban Manor, he was just another loser with a bag of tricks.

The foyer was nearly empty when Mason returned to the manor just before sunset. He nodded at an elderly couple who wore matching jackets, their shirtsleeves laced, drinks poised. Roth and a dark-skinned woman were talking, Roth miming as if he were snapping a photograph. The gaunt maid stood at the foot of the stairs, hands clasped behind her back, staring at the portrait of Korban. Mason waved to Roth and crossed the room, careful to avoid looking into the fireplace. He was afraid he’d see something that probably wasn’t there.

He touched the maid on the shoulder. She spun as if electrocuted, and Mason stepped back and held his hands apart. “Sorry to startle you. Are you the one showing us our rooms?”

She forced a smile and nodded. Mason squinted to read the brass nameplate fixed to her chest. Lilith.

“Name, please?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. Roth’s laughter boomed from the other end of the room, no doubt fueled by one of his own jokes.

“Jackson,” Mason said.

“Mr. Jackson, you’re late.” She tried a smile again, but it flitted across her pale face and settled into the shadows of her mouth. “Second floor, end of the south wing.”

“I hope we’ve got bathrooms,” he said, trying for bumpkin humor. “I know we’re supposed to go back in time, but I didn’t see an outhouse anywhere.”

“Shared baths for adjoining rooms only,” she said, already heading up the stairs. “You have a private bath. Follow me, please.”

Mason took a last look back at the fireplace, then at Korban’s giant face. Even with dead eyes and confined to two dimensions, the man had charisma. But then, so had David Koresh, Charles Manson, and Adolf Hitler. And Mason’s father. The gallery of assholes. Mason shook his head and started up the stairs. Lilith hadn’t offered to carry his satchel. Maybe she’d noticed how possessively he clung to it, or maybe the chivalry and manners of the nineteenth century still held sway here.

Lilith glided over the oak treads with a swish of her long dress. If she was going for big-city Goth, she certainly had the sickly complexion for it. She moved with a grace that belied her brittle features. Judging from her bony hands and the angles of her skull, Mason expected her to clatter when she walked.

The second floor was as grand as the first, with the same high ceiling and wainscoting. A pair of chandeliers hung above the great hallway, each with cream-colored candles stuck in a silver ring and surrounded by crystal teardrops. Astral lamps burned at eye level every twenty feet, the flames throwing enough light to shrink the shadows along the wood trim. Rows of three solid maple doors lined both walls, and oil landscapes were set at intervals between the rooms. The art was of high quality, all of manor scenery. One of the paintings was of the wooden bridge that Mason and the guests had crossed, and the image brought back memories of his light-headed panic. It, like the other paintings, bore no artist’s signature.

Huge portraits of Korban, with different lighting effects than the one in the foyer but possessing the obligatory scowl of the era, hung at each end of the hall.

“Nice paintings,” he said to Lilith.

“Mr. Korban lived for his art. We all did.”

“Oh, are you one of us?” He meant it as humor. Either he was too worried about his imminent failure as a sculptor or she was preoccupied, but the joke fell as flat as canvas.

“I used to be,” Lilith replied.

They passed an open door and Mason looked inside. Jefferson Spence’s bulk was overwhelming a wooden swivel chair as the writer unpacked papers and spread them across a desk. Miss Seventeen was nowhere in sight. Mason noticed that the room only had one bed, then quickly looked away, chiding himself for being nosy.

Lilith led him before a door at the end of the hall. It creaked as she pushed it open. She stood aside so Mason could enter, her eyes on the floor.

“Thanks,” Mason said. His battered suitcase, a Samsonite with electrician’s tape holding the handle together, was already inside the room. The suite was large with a king-sized wooden poster bed, cherry desks, matching chestnut bureaus, and round-topped nightstands. Tall rectangular windows were set in the south and west walls, and Mason realized the room would get sunlight throughout the day. That was a luxury at a place that had no electricity. The setting sun suffused the room with honey-colored warmth.

“Wow. This must be one of the better rooms,” he said.

The maid still waited outside, as if afraid to breathe the room’s air.

“It’s the master suite,” she said. “It used to be Ephram Korban’s bedroom.”

“Is that why his portrait’s on the wall?” Mason said, nodding to the painting that hung above the bedroom’s large fireplace. It was a smaller version of the painting that hung in the foyer, of a slightly younger Korban. The eyes, though, were just as black and bottomless, and the faintest hint of a smile played across those so-cruel lips.

“Miss Mamie chose this room especially for you,” Lilith said without emotion. “She said you’ve come highly recommended.”

Mason tossed his satchel on the bed. The tools clinked dully together. “I hope I can live up to her expectations.”

“Nobody has yet.” Lilith still waited outside the door. If she was joking, there was no sign of it on her wan face.

“Uh, I don’t know much about places like this,” he said, putting a hand in his pocket, falling back on his “Aw, shucks” routine. He’d learned that people were more forgiving if they thought he was a dumb hick because their expectations were lower. He achieved the same effect with his Southern drawl, though that was mostly unintentional. He secretly suspected his success at Adderly had been due to the sophisticated instructors’ amazement that a country rube could break the confines of his heritage and actually compete in the ranks of the cultural elite. “You might think I’m stupid, but am I supposed to tip you?”

“No, of course not. And Miss Mamie would kill me if you tried.” Lilith managed a smile, relieved at being dismissed. She was even attractive, in a nervous, pallid way, like a princess whose head was due to roll. She wasn’t as pretty as the stuck-up woman with the cyan eyes, but Lilith probably wasn’t contemptuous of artists if she herself were one.

Lilith pointed to the door on the west wall. “The bathroom’s in there.”

“Fine.” He sat on the bed.

“Is that all?”

“Unless you want to take off my shoes for me.”

She took a hesitant step forward, staring at the floor.

“Hey, I was just kidding.” He gave a laugh that sounded like a horse choking on an apple.

Lilith flashed her feverish smile again, then said, “Dinner’s at eight sharp, Mr. Jackson. Don’t be late. Miss Mamie wouldn’t like it.”

Then she was gone. Mason turned his attention once more to the furnishings. A lamp stood on each nightstand, an oval glass base filled with heavy oil and encased in brass workings. A fire crackled away in the hearth, a stack of split locust and oak piled near the stonework. It was a miracle the old place hadn’t burned down in all these years. Mason leaned back on the pillows and stared at the hand-swirled patterns in the gypsum ceiling.

Okay, Mase, this is what you wanted bad enough to go to all that trouble for. You did everything but stand naked in front of the Arts Council grant committee and shake your goodies. You swayed the critics, sold your brand of snake oil, and now you’ve taken maybe the biggest step of your career. Maybe even your life. Because if you don’t produce any salable work here, you’re looking at another food-stamp Christmas in Sawyer Creek.

And you’ll have to look Mama in the eye, even if she can’t look back at you, and tell her you failed, that your dreams weren’t strong enough, that you didn’t believe in them enough.

Diabetic retinopathy. A rapid deterioration of her vision, except she’d never said a word even as the tunnel closed in. She’d lied to the doctors long enough for the condition to pass the point of no return, and Mason had only found out when it was too late. She was too young for Medicare and not poor enough for Medicaid, but still could have gone ahead and run up the bills and then declared bankruptcy later. However, that would have depleted the meager savings she’d set aside for his education. Mason had wasted the money at Adderly, beating on hunks of wood and metal, trying to turn them into dreams.

The worst part was that Mason didn’t know whether to admire her for her sacrifice or despise her for being so noble. Now she was scraping by on disability and whatever little bit Mason could afford to give her out of his factory paycheck. But that job was gone now, lost because of his pursuit of art. And still Mama was his greatest fan.

“Don’t ever let go of your dreams, honey,” she said through teeth she couldn’t afford to repair. “That’s all we got in this world, is dreams.”

Mason rolled to his feet and paced the room. It was the same way he paced when he was anxious about an idea, when he felt the itch in his fingers, when some new sculpture began to take shape in his mind. It was the same mixture of excitement and dread, excitement that the new idea was the best ever, and dread in knowing that the finished product could never match the dream image.

Except, this time, the anxiety wasn’t the by-product of exhilaration.

This retreat was the biggest of his big dream images. He’d already decided that if no direction or recognition came from his time at the retreat, he would toss his tools off the old wooden bridge that separated Korban Manor from the rest of the world. Sure, the heights would give him trouble, but he could crawl blind if necessary. He’d listen to the metal clanging and clattering off the far rocks below, and he’d allow the blisters and calluses to heal while he found a real job.

Creativity came at a price. You had to pay the price even for a chance at failure. Doctors and lawyers spent ten years in college and paid tens of thousands of dollars. Criminals paid with the risk of lost freedom. Priests gave up pleasures of the flesh. Soldiers faced an even greater cost. Artists paid with other things, the cheapest of which was pain.

Not that he minded suffering for his art. He just didn’t think Mama should suffer for it. He looked down and saw that his fists were clenched into angry hammers, the rage nearly making him drunk.

He stopped pacing and leaned against the window, looking through the old-fashioned rippled glass to the manor grounds. Even though he was only two stories up, he had to grip the molding to keep the dizziness at bay.

Anna stood by the fence, petting a horse. The sunset gilded the horizon and the gentle light made her ethereal and beautiful, a fairy-tale princess floating above the grass. The green rolling fields, the shimmering sky, the sparkling lake at the foot of the pasture, and the seemingly weightless woman all seemed locked away in a dream.

And, according to his father, dreams were a goddamned waste of good daylight.

Mason went into the bathroom. The plumbing was primitive, though the fixtures were as ornate as the rest of the house. A cast-iron tub sat in the corner. The sink was marble, with gleaming chrome spigots and a framed mirror.

He faced the ceramic toilet and relieved himself, noting the small siphon tank set high on the wall. The pipes behind the wall jumped and quivered when he flushed. He washed his hands at the sink, glancing in the mirror. Though the water was cold, the mirror fogged.

He wiped at it with the sleeve of his shirt. Still the haze remained. He frowned at his bleary reflection. The face in the mirror seemed a little slow in responding, the sad and tired face of a condemned prisoner.

When he returned to the room, his tools were spread across his bed. They almost seemed to taunt him, daring him to take them up and fail. He didn’t remember taking them out of the satchel. Was he that uptight and distracted?

The portrait of Korban glowered down at him, the imagined smile gone. Korban was just another taskmaster, a demanding and cold critic. An observer, outside the creative process, but ready to judge something that no one but the creator could understand. Just another asshole with an opinion.

Mason went to the tools, drawn as always by their power. He bent to them, touched the fluters, chisels, hammers, and gouges, took comfort in their edges and weight. They ached to feed, they needed Mason’s fingers to help them shape their world. And Mason needed them in turn, a symbiotic addiction that would create as much as it destroyed.

He turned his back to Korban’s portrait and wiped the tools with a chamois cloth until they gleamed in the firelight.

CHAPTER 9

October was a hunter, its prey the green beast of summer. The wind moved over the hills like a reluctant hawk—wings wide, talons low, hard eyes sweeping. Beneath its golden and frosty skin, the earth quaked in the wind of the hawk’s passing. The morning held its gray breath. Each tender leaf and blade of grass trembled in fear.

Jefferson Spence looked down at the keys of the old manual Royal. “Horse teeth,” the keys were called. George Washington had horse teeth, according to legend. Spence knew he was wasting time, finding any distraction to keep him from starting another sentence. He stared into the bobbing flame of the lantern on his desk.

He looked up at Ephram Korban’s face on the wall. In this very room, twenty years before, Spence had written Seasons of Sleep, a masterpiece by all accounts, especially Spence’s own. All his novels since had fallen short, but maybe the magic would return.

Words were magic. And maybe old Korban would let slip a secret or two, bestow some hidden wisdom gleaned from all those years on the wall.

“What,” Spence said to the portrait, his voice filling the room, “are you trying to say?”

Bridget called from the bathroom in her soft Georgia drawl. “What’s that, honey?”

“To have and have not,” he said.

“What is it you don’t have? I thought we packed everything.”

“Never mind, my sweet. A Hemingway allusion is best saved for a more appreciative audience.”

Spence had collected Bridget during a summer writing workshop at the University of Georgia. He had led the workshop during the day and spent his evenings cooling off in the bars of Athens. Most of the sophomore seminar students had joined him for the first few nights, but his passion for overindulgence and his brusque nature had caused the group to dwindle. By Thursday of the first week, only the faithful still orbited like bright satellites gravitating toward the black hole of Spence’s incalculable mass.

Three of those were eligible in Spence’s eyes: a bronze-skinned African goddess with oily curls; a hollow-cheeked blonde who had a devilish way of licking her lips and an unhealthy appetite for the works of Richard Brautigan; and the tender Bridget. As always, a couple of male students had also crowded his elbows and plied writing tips from him in exchange for drinks. Spence had little patience with writers. His best advice was to spend time in front of the keyboard instead of bar mirrors. But women’s minds were simpler and therefore uncluttered with literary pretensions.

He had selected Bridget precisely because she was the most innocent, and therefore would be the most corrupted of the three choices.

“Getting the juices flowing?” Bridget asked.

He could sense her nakedness. Maybe it was the raw heat of her fresh skin, or the animal energy she radiated. He dared not look. “Don’t interrupt me when I’m working.”

“I just thought—”

“Since when have you ever thought? Leave that particular activity to those with brains.”

He heard the door close, with a solid, satisfying click instead of the slam of a more confident woman. He had chosen wisely.

Spence looked down at the paper that was scrolled into the Royal. Six years. Six years, and all he had to show for it was this paragraph that he’d rewritten three hundred times. It was the same paragraph with which he’d lured Bridget that first time, the one he didn’t even dare show his agent or editor.

He’d known the time had arrived to get away from it all, seek a fresh perspective, summon those arcane Muses. If there was any place where he could recapture the magic, it was Korban Manor.

He placed his fingers on the keys. The shower came on in the bathroom, and Bridget began singing in her small, pretty voice. “Stand By Me,” the old Ben King song. He typed “stand by me” under his opening paragraph, then clenched his teeth and ripped the page out of the carriage. He tore the sheet of paper into four pieces and let the scraps flutter to the floor.

Spence leaned back in his chair and looked out the window. The treetops were swaying in the wind that had arisen with the approaching dusk. He imagined the smells of autumn, of fallen apples bruised and sweet under the trees, of birch leaves crumpling under boot heels, of cherry bark splitting and leaking rubbery jeweled sap, of pumpkin pies and chimney smoke. If only he could find the words to describe those things.

Spence turned his attention back to the portrait of Korban on the wall. He thought about walking into the bathroom and watching Bridget soap herself up. But she might try to excite him. Each new beauty always thought she would be the one, out of dozens who had tried, to overcome what he called “the Hemingway curse.”

And with each fresh failure, Spence felt angry and humbled. Though he welcomed anger, he loathed humility.

He cursed under his breath and rolled a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter. The paper was heavy, a 20 percent cotton mix. Worthy paper. Lofty, troublesome paper.

The words would come. They had to come. He commanded them to come.

Spence stared into the face of Korban. “What should I write, sir?”

The portrait stared back, its eyes oil-black.

Spence’s fingers hit the keys, the clattering motion vibrated through the desk and echoed off the wooden floor, the carriage return’s bell rang every thirty seconds.

The house sat amid the breasts of hills, among swells, above rivers, above all Earth, reaching where only the gods could dwell. And in the house, in the high lonely window from which he could see the world that would be his, the man smiled.

They had come, they had answered his call, those who would give him life. They would sing his songs, they would carve his name into their hearts, they would paint him into the sky. They came with their poetries, their images, their fevered words, their dreams. They came bearing gifts, and he would give unto them likewise—

Spence was so lost in his writing, lost as he had not been in years, that he didn’t notice when Bridget walked nude and steaming into the room. He worked feverishly, his tongue pressed against his teeth. The gift was returning, flowing like blood through forgotten veins. He didn’t know whom to thank—Bridget, Korban, or some unseen Muse.

He’d worry about that later. For now, the words carried Spence beyond himself.

CHAPTER 10

Anna looked down at her plate. The prime rib oozed juices and steam, and ordinarily would have been tempting enough to challenge her vegetarian principles. The softly boiled broccoli sprouts and red potatoes had elicited several exploratory stabs of her fork. The apple pie’s crust was so tender it flaked all over the china plate.

As she watched the sugary lava of the pie filling flow between the crumbs, she wondered what it would be like to worry about dieting. She glanced across the dining room at Jefferson Spence and saw no hesitation in that man’s fork. She took a few hasty mouthfuls of the vegetables, then pushed the food around a little so it would look as if she had eaten well. The way Miss Mamie fussed over dinner proceedings, Anna almost felt guilty about not appreciating the food.

The dining room was a long hall just off the main foyer. The room contained four tables, a long one in the center occupied by the people that Anna secretly thought of as “the überculture.” The other, smaller tables were relegated to the corners. Apparently Miss Mamie had tried to match people of similar interests when she made out the seating charts. That meant putting all the below-fifties at the smaller tables.

Anna was sitting with Cris and the dark-skinned woman whom Anna had seen carrying a camera earlier. To her left was the guy she’d talked to on the porch, the sullen sculptor. Though his face was plain, something about his green-brown eyes kept drawing her attention. A secret fire buried deep. Or maybe it was only the reflection of the two candles that burned in the center of the table. Or an illusion created by her own desperate solitude.

Cris had mumbled a prayer before dinner. The dark-skinned woman had also bowed her head. Anna wasn’t compelled to join in their ritual and instead took the opportunity to study their faces. The sculptor had kept his head down but his eyes open. Then Anna had seen what he was looking at: a fly circled the edge of his plate, dipping a tentative feeler into the brown gravy.

She’d hidden her smile as he surreptitiously tried to blow it away. When Cris said, “Amen,” he quickly whisked his cloth napkin out of his lap and waved it with a flourish. The fly headed toward the oil lamps that burned in the chandeliers overhead. Anna watched its flight, and when she turned her attention back to dinner, the sculptor was looking at her.

“Darned thing was about to carry off my dinner,” he said. “Evil creature.”

“Maybe it was Beelzebub,” she said. “Lord of the flies.”

“Beelzebubba’s more like it. It’s a Southern fly.”

Anna laughed for the first time in weeks. Her tablemates looked at them with furrowed brows. The man introduced himself to them as Mason and said he was a retired textile worker from the foothills. “I’m also an aspiring sculptor,” he said. “But don’t confuse me with Henry Moore or anything.”

“Didn’t he play James Bond?” Cris asked.

“No, that was Roger Moore.”

He politely waved off the wine when the maid Lilith brought the carafe around. Anna took a glass herself, though she had no intention of taking more than a few sips. The conservatism that came with a death sentence had surprised her. When you only have a little time left, you try to heighten your experience, not dull it.

Her eyes wandered to Mason again. He was watching Lilith as if he was interested in more than just a second helping of hot rolls. She was both annoyed and surprised when a flare of jealousy raced across her heart. She despised pettiness and, besides, possessiveness was the last vice a dying person should suffer. Stephen had taught her that you could never understand another person, much less own one, and the idea of soul mates was best limited to romance novels. She took a gulp of wine and let the mild sting of alcohol distract her, then introduced herself to the dark-skinned woman.

The woman was named Zainab and had been born in Saudi Arabia. She was Arabian-American, but only indirectly from oil money; her father had been an engineer at Aramco. Zainab came to the U.S. to attend Stanford, back before everyone from the Middle East had to jump through flaming hoops to immigrate here, and now wanted to be a photographer “when she grew up.”

“In America, you get to be grown up when you’re fourteen,” Anna said. “At least if you believe the fashion magazines. Of course, when you reach forty, you’re expected to look twenty-five.”

“Hey,” Cris said, polishing off her third glass of wine. “I’m thirty going on twenty-nine. Guess that means I’m headed in the right direction.”

Anna chopped at her pie a little more and pushed the dessert plate away. Cris leaned toward Mason, her eyelashes doing some serious fluttering.

“So, what do the guys in the foothills do for fun?” Cris asked.

“We go down to the Dumpsters behind the local café and throw rocks at the rats. The rats in Sawyer Creek eat better than the welfare families.”

“I bet the rats live well around here,” Cris said.

“We call it ‘living high on the hog’ back home,” Mason said, shuddering in mock revulsion. “I was talking to one of the handymen today. He told me about setting out steel traps, and burying the food scraps to keep the rats down. Garbage disposal is a big chore here.”

“It’s amazing the things we take for granted in a civilized society,” Anna said.

“Who’s civilized?” Cris said, giggling. “Sounds like we’re heading for one of those ‘walked four miles through the snow to get to school’ stories.”

“It was ‘four kilometers over sand dunes without a camel’ where I grew up,” said Zainab.

“I saw one of the maids with a basket of laundry. Not her,” Anna said, frowning toward Lilith, who was uncorking a wine bottle at the main table. “Imagine what it must be like to hand-wash all these table linens and curtains, not to mention the sheets.”

“Seems the sheets get a good workout around here, if you believe the rumors,” Cris said.

“You mean the ghost stories?” Mason said.

Anna’s breath caught in her throat. If she managed to contact any ghosts here, she didn’t want a bunch of would-be necromancers holding midnight séances and playing with Ouija boards. She believed those sorts of disrespectful games sent ghosts running for the safety of the grave. And if she had a mission here, a last bit of business before her soul could rest, she preferred to handle it undistracted.

“I was talking about sex, but the ghost stories are interesting, too,” Cris said. Her sibilants were starting to get a little mushy.

Mason said, “According to William Roth—”

“Oh, I met him.” Zainab’s brown eyes lit up as she interrupted. “I actually got to talk to him. I’ve always admired his work, but he’s not at all like you’d think a famous person would be. He’s so down-to-earth. And he has the most wonderful accent.”

“He’s quite a character, all right.” Mason smirked at the reverence in her voice.

“I think William is charming,” Zainab said, looking at him seated at the main table, where he seemed to be engaged in three conversations at once.

“What were you saying about ghosts?” Cris said, as if she’d just realized the subject had jumped track. “Anna does that stuff—”

Anna cut her off with a look and a subtle shake of her head. She didn’t want everyone to think she was a flake, at least not right away.

“Roth says Korban Manor is haunted, and he’s going to try to take some pictures,” Mason said. “And the handyman I met today sure seems a little spooked.”

“Has anything weird happened to you guys since we got here?” Zainab asked.

“I don’t know about ghosts. I’ll believe them when I see them, I suppose. But old geezer Korban’s pictures all over the place sure give me the creeps.” Mason nodded to the portrait on the wall above the head of the main table.

“A big old place like this,” Anna said, “you always have creaky boards and sudden drafts blowing from everywhere. And all these lamps and candles throw a bunch of flickering shadows. It’s no wonder stories make the rounds.”

“Sure,” Mason said. “If there really were ghosts, do you think all these people would keep coming back year after year?”

“And how could they keep any employees?” Anna said.

“Well, I wouldn’t mind seeing a ghost or two,” Cris said, her cheeks bright. “Might liven the place up a bit. I like things that go bump in the night.” Cris smiled at Mason in lewd punctuation.

Anna watched his reaction. This is it. Right over the heart of the plate. Strike three, or the long ball.

Mason shrugged, seemingly oblivious to Cris’s come-on. “I don’t know. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

A small, cheap glow of victory burned in Anna’s chest. Then she despised herself for the feeling. What business was it of hers if Cris hooked up with this country boy?

After Stephen, men didn’t exist, anyway. Ghosts were far more solid and reliable than men were.

The conversation was broken when Miss Mamie rose from her seat at the head of the main table. She tapped her wineglass with a spoon, and the clatter of dishes and small talk died to a whisper. Lilith and the other maid stood at attention near the foyer, each holding a silver pitcher.

“Ladies and gentlemen, lovely guests,” Miss Mamie said, her voice filling the hall. She looked at the faces lining the main table, clearly enjoying the moment. “Friends.”

Anna was already bored. She hoped the speech would be short. Miss Mamie drew in a breath as if she were a soprano about to leap into an aria.

“I’d like to welcome all of you to Korban Manor,” Miss Mamie said. “As most of you know, this house was built in 1902 by my grandfather, Ephram Korban. After he passed on, God rest his soul, it came into my father’s hands. We turned the manor into an artists’ retreat to fulfill Ephram’s final request. Now it’s my duty to carry on the legacy, and I do that with great pride and joy.”

“And profit,” cut in a British accent, and an uncertain laughter rippled across the room.

Miss Mamie smiled. “That, too, Mr. Roth. But it’s more than just a way to fund the estate’s preservation. It’s a labor of love, a continuation of Ephram’s vision. He himself was an admirer of the arts. And I hope each of you finds fulfillment during your stay here, and in so doing, you’ll help keep Ephram’s dreams alive in your own way.”

Anna sneaked a glance at Mason. He was staring at Miss Mamie with blatant curiosity.

Hmmm. Maybe he’s not as handsome as I first thought. His nose is a little long in profile. And his fingers are too thick. I’ll bet he’s clumsy with women.

Satisfied that she had found enough flaws, she sipped her wine. Miss Mamie was in the middle of stoking the collective artistic fires.

“—so I propose a toast, my friends,” the hostess said, twiddling her pearls. She raised her wineglass toward the vaulted ceiling, then turned and tipped it toward the portrait of Korban. Most of the room joined her. Anna reached for her glass again, but changed her mind. Mason saw her and smirked.

Asshole. Probably one of those holier-than-thou” types. An artist with a superiority complex. Now, THERE’S a rarity.

She grabbed her glass. When Miss Mamie drank, Anna took a large gulp. It was house-bottled muscadine, a little too sweet for swilling. But she took an extra swallow for good measure.

“You’re welcome to join me in the study for after-dinner drinks and conversation,” Miss Mamie concluded. “There’s a smoking porch off the study as well. Again, thank you for allowing us the pleasure of your company. Good evening.”

The room erupted in chatter and rattling silverware. Cris wobbled slightly as she stood, and she put a hand on Mason’s shoulder to balance herself, leaning against him.

Anna pretended not to notice. She was after ghosts, damn it. Ghosts didn’t make a fool out of you the way men always did.

She slipped away up the stairs. The lamps along the hall threw a warm glow over the woodwork. She entered the dark bedroom and stood by the window, looking over the dark manor grounds. The sky was fading into a deep periwinkle, soon to be smothered by the blackness creeping from the east, the moon rising faint and blue in the east.

She took her flashlight from the nightstand. At least one modern convenience had been allowed, probably on the demands of the manor’s insurance provider. She turned the light on and played it across the walls, half expecting to see a restless spirit, but revealing only a spiderweb crack in the plasterboard.

She sighed. Ghoulie-chasing. That was what Stephen called it.

“Leave me to do the serious investigating,” he’d say. “You can play at ghoulie-chasing.”

A ghost lived in this house. She knew it as surely as she knew that she was dying. And she would chase it to hell if she had to, because she wanted to be right for once in her life. At least, she wanted Stephen to know she had been right. Even if it was only her own ghost she found.

She collected a sweater and put the flashlight in her pocket. A long walk alone with the night would do her good.

CHAPTER 11

Rubbish.

Rubbish and poppycock.

Rubbish, poppycock, and swill.

William Roth ran through the derogatory nouns in his mind as he studied the books that lined the study walls. The books were all hardbacks, many with leather covers and gilded titles. The dust on them was proof of their dullness.

A jolly good put-on for the intelligentsia. Because the books are all poppycock and . . . claptrap. Yes, CERTAINLY claptrap.

Précis of the French Revolution. The Diary of Sir Wendell Swanswight. Talmud. Juris Studis.

They would make rather bully paperweights. The only thing they had going for them was that they fit the shelves perfectly. Roth sipped his scotch-and-water as he worked his way toward the small crowd that had gathered around Jefferson Spence. The great man’s tremulous voice held forth on some didactic opinion or other. Spence went unchallenged by his admirers.

The Arab bird stood across the room, her ever-present camera around her neck. He mentally practiced her name, because it was difficult to fake a British accent while saying it. Zay-ih-nahb. He would have to teach her a few things about photographic codes of conduct. You don’t blunder about like a rhino through the veldt. You stalk, you wait, you seduce your subject with infinite patience and care, you lull, you caress, and then—flick, click, thank you, prick.

But he could get Zainab anytime. She was easy meat waiting to be culled from the herd. She was a crippled gazelle, and Roth was a lion. First he had bigger game to snare.

Wait a minute, bloke. Bad metaphor. You know from your time in Afrikker that a lioness does all the hunting while the lion lies around licking his balls. But the bloody Yanks don’t know that. King of the Jungle, and that bit.

He was thinking in his Manchester accent. He had descended into Liverpudlian in the mid-nineties during that brief Beatles revival, then had gone Yorkshire in the wake of The Full Monty. Fads came and went, and so did his accent. He occasionally slipped in a “righty-right” or “bit of the old what for,” but Americans didn’t notice his errors. The only time he had to be careful was when he met a real Brit.

And a fat bloody chance of that here, he thought, smiling to himself. He had reached the edge of Spence’s circle now.

“And they say there are hermeneutic elements in Look Homeward, Angel,” Spence said, his jowls quivering for emphasis. “I submit to you that Gant is no more than a symbol for the human heart. A flimsy extended metaphor propped up by a billion adjectives. If you sent that to an editor today, she’d say, ‘Wonderful, now can you make it read like Grisham?’”

The eyes of the onlookers brightened with awe. This man was a master, a snake charmer. His ego was as ample as his belly. None dared to dispute his ephemeral pronouncements.

Spence drained half of his martini before continuing. “The worst book of the twentieth century? Perhaps not. That jester’s crown must go to Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. The critics raved about the undercurrent of tension that supposedly wends through the novel. Claptrap. It is nothing but Hemingway-in-a-bottle, quintessential Ernest. Too earnestly Ernest, one might say.”

Spence paused for the requisite laughter. It came.

Roth smiled. Spence was as great a deceiver as Roth himself. And he played the celebrity game just as successfully. Roth was constantly amazed by people’s hunger for idols. Bring on your false gods. The masses needed an opiate, and that bit.

Roth worked his way to Spence’s left, edging between a blue-haired biddie and an old chap with a hunched back. The cute little bird with the nice knockers was at Spence’s side. She hadn’t spoken a word all evening, even during dinner. Roth knew, because he had watched her and Spence at their private table. Roth calculated the chances of working her for a bit of the old in-out. That would be a dandy feather in the cap.

Spence prattled on about the moral instructions encodified in The Great Gatsby. The crowd nodded in approval, and occasionally someone dared to murmur. Roth figured the time was right to make his presence known. “I say, Mr. Spence, didn’t some editor supposedly say, ‘Fitzgerald, get rid of that Gatsby clown and you’ll have yourself a good book’?”

All eyes turned to Roth and then back to Spence. The writer looked at Roth as if measuring the reach of an adversary. Then Spence smiled. “Purely apocryphal. Though it contains the seeds of possibility. Sir William Roth, is it?”

“Yes, a pleasure to meet you, my good man,” Roth said, extending his hand. A tingle of pleasure surged through him as the “little people” oohed and aahed at this meeting of the gods.

Spence polished off his drink and handed the empty glass to his shapely companion. “So what do you think of my analysis of Gatsby?”

“Scintillating. And I agree that Wolfe’s book is absolute poppycock.” Out of the corner of his eye, Roth watched the girl’s shimmering rear as she walked to the bar.

Spence turned away from his admirers and squared off with Roth. The photographer nudged Spence toward the corner of the room. The crowd took its cue and broke into small groups, some stepping onto the porch for smokes, others refilling their drinks.

“What brings you to Korban Manor, Mr. Roth?”

Roth rolled his scotch-and-water between his hands. “Business, sir. Always business with me.”

“The devil, you say. That’s just what the world needs, another four hundred negatives of this place. Or are you hired for a publicity shoot?”

“I’m freelancing.”

“Hmmph. I’m working, too, if you can believe it.”

Roth knew that Spence hadn’t finished a novel in years. He had blustered his way through some opinion pieces and essays, and had penned a scathing introduction to The New Southern Voices Collection that had likely driven some of the anthology’s contributors to tears. The critics had given him up. He was like a beached whale—fun to poke while blood could be drawn, but shunned after becoming a bloated, gassy corpse.

“I would think this place would be rather inspiring for a man of your genius,” Roth said, barely disguising the taunt.

Spence didn’t rise to the bait. He’d probably read too many of his publisher’s press releases, the ones that kept promising a coming masterpiece. “This is the one, Mr. Roth. This is the work that will earn the Nobel Prize for Literature. It’s about time an American brought home that particular piece of hardware. Nothing personal, mind you.”

Roth turned up one palm in submission. His British accent had fooled even Spence, a man who had trained himself to observe human behavior. Spence’s girlfriend brought the writer his drink, put it in his hand, and dutifully returned to his shadow.

Roth smiled at her and then began the laborious task of drawing Spence into his trust.

CHAPTER 12

A ghoulie-chasing fool.

Anna let the yellow beam of the flashlight lead her as if she had no will of her own. She found herself heading up a forest trail, onto one of the narrower worn paths crowded by laurel. The waxy leaves brushed against her face and hands. Crickets and katydids launched their choruses from the obscurity of the dark forest.

You follow and you follow and you never catch up. You reach out and they dance away. You run and they run faster. You look in the dark and see nothing but darkness.

Ghosts played by their own rules. Anna had a hunch that ghosts didn’t need to unravel secrets, didn’t demand explanations. Life’s great mysteries must mean very little to those no longer living. Undoubtedly all spirits received the necessary explanations as a gift to welcome them to the afterlife. But perhaps the dead needed amusement. Eternity surely got tedious after a while.

Anna wasn’t worried about getting lost in the woods, even though Korban Manor’s lighted windows had disappeared from view. After leaving the house, she’d stopped by the barn and found four horses in their stalls. She had massaged their necks and stroked the bristling hairs above their noses.

She was comforted by their warm animal smell. The aroma of straw and manure brought back memories of one of her foster families, who had kept a farm in West Virginia. Anna had grown into a woman that summer. Her first sexual experience was with the handsome but dull boy who came every other day to collect the eggs. She’d also spent hours in the weedy local cemetery, sitting among the crumbling, illegible markers, wondering about the people under the ground and the part of them that might have survived the crush of dirt and decay.

And still she wondered, her curiosity sending her into anthropology at Duke  University and parapsychology at the Rhine Research Center, and now out into the night woods. Roads that never ended, a seeking that never found. The moon and a sprinkle of starlight gave vague shape to the landscape. She followed the ridge to the point where the ground sloped rapidly away. Boulders gleamed like bad teeth in the weak light. Beyond the field of stone was a yawning gap of black valley, dusted silver by an early frost.

The ribs and ripples of the Blue Ridge  Mountains rolled out toward the horizon, the distant twinkle of the town of Black Rock set among them like blue and orange jewels. A jet’s winking red light cut a dotted line in the east. A little flying tin can of humanity, some passengers probably afraid of a crash, some munching stale peanuts, others longing for a cigarette. Most with thoughts of relatives, spouses, and lovers recently visited or waiting at airport terminals ahead.

All with places to go, things to look forward to. People to belong to. Hopes, dreams, futures. Life. She thought of that Shirley Jackson line: “Journeys end in lovers meeting.”

Yeah, right. Journeys end in death, and lovers never meet.

She turned from the lights that were starting to blur in her vision and put aside her self-pity. She had a forest to explore. And she felt a tingle in her gut, an instinct that she had learned to trust even if Stephen couldn’t prove it was real. There were dead among these trees and hills.

She sometimes wondered if the cancer was a progression of that instinct. As if death were her true natural state, and life was only an interruption to be briefly endured. As if, by rights, she belonged to the dead, and that her sense of them grew stronger the closer she got to becoming one of them.

That was morbid thinking. Still, she couldn’t ignore the Jungian symbolism of turning her back on those dim, distant lights of civilization to enter the dark forest alone.

In search of herself.

What if it WERE possible to meet another spirit, touch someone, share the science of souls, to create something that has a life beyond living and dying? Or is such wishing only a more grotesque form of vanity?

She stared at the cone of battery-powered light as it bobbed ahead of her on the trail. The older she got, and the closer to death and the deeper into her search she found herself, the more alone she became. And if there was anything that frightened her, that could frighten someone who had seen ghosts, it was the thought that any soul or consciousness or life force that continued beyond death would do so alone, forever isolated, forever lost.

Anna figured she was about a mile from the manor now. She was beginning to tire. That was one of the things she hated most about her illness. Her strength was slowly draining away, slipping from this life into the next.

She paused and played the flashlight along the ridge ahead of her. Night noises crept from beneath the canopy of hardwoods, the stirring of nocturnal animals and the restless mountain wind. A breath of pine-cleansed air and the cold dampness of the early twilight revived her. The trail had intersected with several larger ones, and she had earlier crossed another wagon road. She followed her instinct, the one that carried her through the night like the moon pulled a restless tide.

The trail widened under a copse of balsams, then opened onto a meadow of thick grass. A shack overlooked the clearing, frail and wobbly on its stilts of stacked rock. A crumbling chimney, gray in the dim starlight, penetrated the slanted tin roof. The glass sheets of the windows were like dark eyes watching for company.

This was what Anna had been sent to find. She waded through the meadow, her pants cuffs soaked by the frosted grains of grass. A large rounded stone was set at the foot of the porch, as pale as the belly of a fish. She stepped on the stone and peered into the dark doorway.

The house wanted her.

Maybe not the house, but whoever had lived and then died here. Something had bound a human soul to this place, an event terrible enough to leave a psychic imprint, much the way light burned through the emulsion on a photographic negative.

The air hummed with inaudible music. The tiny hairs on the back of Anna’s neck stood like magnetized needles. Despite the chill of night, her armpits were sweaty. A preternatural fear coursed through her veins, threatening to override her curiosity.

Something hovered beyond the door, wispy and frail as if unfamiliar with its own substance.

Or perhaps it was only the wind blowing through some chink in the board-and-batten walls.

Anna shined the flashlight on a knothole just above the door handle. A flicker of white shadow filled the hole, and then dissolved.

Anna put her other foot on the stone porch. A form, a face, imprinted itself in the grain of the door.

A small voice skirled in on the wind, soft and hollow as a distant flute: “I’ve been waiting.”

Anna fought the urge to run. Though she believed in ghosts, the sudden strangeness of encountering one always hit her like a dash of ice water. And this one . . . this one talked.

Anna backed away, the flashlight fixed on the door.

“Don’t go,” came the cold and hollow voice. Anna’s muscles froze. She fought with her own body as her heartbeat thundered in her ears. The voice came again, smaller, pleading: “Please.”

It was a child’s voice. Anna’s fear mixed with sympathy, melded into a need to comprehend. Did young ghosts stay young forever?

Anna stepped up onto the porch. The boards creaked under her feet. Something fluttered under the eaves and then  joined the night sky. A bat.

“What do you want?” Anna said, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. Her flashlight beam on the door revealed only wood and rusted hardware.

“Are you her?”

“Her?”

“Help me,” came the plaintive voice again, fading now, almost lost. “Help us.”

Anna lifted the iron catch and pushed the door open, playing the flashlight’s beam into the house.

She glimpsed a tiny figure, a young face outlined by long locks of hair, a few folds of soft fabric flowing beneath the begging eyes. The threads of the vision were unraveling.

“Stay,” Anna said, both a request and a desperate command.

But the shape faded, the ghostly lips parted as if to speak, and then there were only the eyes, floating, floating, becoming wisps of lesser shadow, then nothing. The eyes had burned into Anna’s memory. She would never forget them. The eyes had looked—haunted.

“Hello?” Anna called. The word died in the hollow shell of the shack. She moved the light across the room. A few shelves stood to one side, a rough beam of wood spanning the black opening of the fireplace. A long table marked off what had been the kitchen area. A row of crude, hand-carved figurines stood on the table, their gnarled limbs protruding at grotesque angles.

Anna touched one of the figurines. It was about a foot tall, not lacquered or painted, the wood dark and bone-dry with age. The body was made from a chopped root, the arms and legs shaped from twisted jackvine. The head was a wrinkled piece of fruit, brown like dried apple, the eyes and mouth set in a deformed grin.

They appeared to be folk art, something an early Scots-Irish mountain settler had carved during long winter nights to amuse the children. But the figurines were arrayed on the table like religious relics. One was wrapped in a peeling sheet of birch bark that appeared to emulate a dress. Another wore a garland of dried and dead flowers.

Anna shined the flashlight on the nearest stooped statue. The crude opening of the mouth held a gray, papery substance. Anna scratched at it with her fingernail and it fell to the table. Anna identified the object instantly by its mottled markings and coarse, pebbly grain.

Snakeskin.

Anna moved behind the table, facing in the same direction as the figurines. An old fireplace was directly across the room, its stones blackened by the smoke of ten thousand fires. The heap of ashes gave no evidence of when the fireplace was last used. The corners of the room were thick with cobwebs, which drifted like diaphanous sails against the breeze that leaked through the log walls.

One upper half of the room was covered by a loft. Anna climbed the rickety ladder, but saw only thick dust and the scattering of leaves that marked a rodent’s nest.

She was checking the primitive kitchen when she heard a noise outside. The moonlight at the window was briefly interrupted. Had the ghost returned?

Anna ran outside, holding the flashlight at chest level. A stooped human form crossed the meadow, heading for the thicket of hardwoods behind the shack. A ragged shawl trailed out behind the figure in the night wind that had arisen.

“Wait!” Anna took a step and tripped over a loose piece of planking. She tumbled off the porch and landed on her wrist in the packed dirt. An electric shock of pain raced up her arm. By the time she got to her feet and collected her flashlight, the person or thing had disappeared into the black trees.

Anna followed. When she reached the edge of the forest, she waited and strained her ears. The night made a hundred sounds: the wind moaning through the branches, limbs squeaking, leaves scraping against bark, animals disturbed from sleep, unseen birds chittering. Any hope of hearing footfalls was futile.

It must have been human. Anna sensed no ethereal thread she could follow. She wondered if the person in the shawl had also seen the ghost. Or was it someone who had arranged the primitive figurines in a strange mockery of ritual? Had she really seen the ghost or was she victim of an elaborate trick? Was she so desperate to find proof of the afterlife that her own mind was deceiving her?

Anna rubbed her wrist for a moment. No one, not even Anna herself, had known her destination that night. The ghost had been real, she was certain. The figurines were probably the handiwork of one of the manor’s guests and left behind as a gift or tribute. Or maybe it had been the idle tomfoolery of one of the manor’s workers.

She turned to follow the flashlight back toward Korban Manor, bothered by the strange sensation that she was heading home.

She realized why she had come to Korban Manor. She had been fooled into thinking it had been her choice, that she needed to make contact for her own reasons. Out of all the reputedly haunted places she could have spent her final days, she hadn’t simply picked this mountain estate. She hadn’t dreamed of this place because of some long-forgotten paranormal journal she had once read.

No, she had been summoned.

The snapping of a twig brought her out of her reverie. Something large emerged from the forest shadows. Anna raised the flashlight, ready to use it as a club if necessary. The beam flashed across the looming black shape.

“You!” she said.

Mason held up his hands as if to ward off her anger. “I saw her.”

“The ghost?”

“What ghost? I saw an old woman spying on you, then she took off running through the woods. I tried to follow her, but she must know these old trails pretty well.”

“How dare you follow me? What are you, some kind of slimy pervert stalker?”

“No, I just . . . well, Miss Mamie’s little party was boring me to death, and I couldn’t help being curious after all that talk about ghost stories. When I saw you leave the manor—”

“You arrogant bastard.” She shoved past him and headed down the trail, not caring that she was leaving him in darkness. She only wished that ghosts really were evil, so that one might bite off his stupid oversize head. With any luck, he’d wander off the trail and have to spend the night in the forest, and wake up cold, sore, and miserable. She broke into a run and told herself it was the wind and not anger and embarrassment that filled her eyes with tears.

CHAPTER 13

Miss Mamie took off her pearls and placed them on the dresser among the purple velvet ribbons and bottles of rose water. She looked in the mirror, bringing the lamp closer so she could check her skin. Anyone seeing the faint beginnings of wrinkles around her mouth and the streaks of silver at her temples would think she was fifty years old. Not bad, considering she was going on a hundred and twenty.

Ephram had promised to keep her young. Ephram always kept his promises. He was the perfect gentleman. That was what had first attracted her, why she’d fallen in love with him. His was a complete and perfect possession.

She opened the locket attached to her necklace. Inside the locket was Ephram’s young face in sepia, with its sharp cheeks, a narrow angle of nose, thick beard and sideburns burgeoning over a high stiff collar. Oh, and those dark eyes, those cold, burning eyes that had swept her heart away and caged her soul, that had sparked the tinder of her desire. He’d always had power, even back when he was a mortal.

But now, now . . .

“Now we are ready,” he said from the mirror. “Just as I promised.”

Her heart accelerated and her palms grew moist. She placed a hand on the mirror’s smooth surface. Ephram’s face coalesced in the reflection of the firelight. A row of peeled apples hung drying on a string by the fire, carved into heads, with protruding ears and noses. The eyes and mouths glistened like scars. The faces would take shape as they dried, taking on their own unique features.

“How do you like them?” she asked.

“You’ve chosen well.” Ephram’s voice was low and sibilant.

“They will feed you, given time.” Miss Mamie looked into those seductive eyes. She felt a flush of warmth. Her love had never faltered.

Her dead husband’s eyes flared in a storm of red and gold. “Even now, their dreams give me strength. And the blue moon is coming again.”

“Just like the night you died.”

“Please, my love. You know I don’t favor that word. It sounds so . . . permanent.”

“What about Sylva?” Miss Mamie said, lowering her eyes, anticipating his anger.

“What of her? She’s just an old witch-woman with a sack of feathers, weeds, and old bones. Her power is nothing but the pathetic power of suggestion. But mine”—his voice rose, thunderous, until she was afraid that the guests upstairs might hear—”mine is the power that shapes both sides.”

“So many years.” Miss Mamie ran her hands over the neckline of her lace nightgown. “I don’t know if I can wait much longer.”

“Patience, my heart’s love. These are special. These are true makers. They carve me, they write me, they draw me into life. Their hands give me shape, their minds give me substance. They make me just as you make them. And soon, Margaret—”

Ephram reached up through the mist that swirled inside the mirror and placed his palm against the glass. Miss Mamie put her fingers on the mirror, craving the cruel and arousing electricity of his touch. Her dead husband smiled.

“Soon all those we have sacrificed will find their home, their true eternal life, in me. I will have what any lord and master deserves.”

“What any lord and master deserves,” she repeated in a whisper. Then the mists faded. Ephram collapsed into an ethereal smoke, and the mirror was again clear.

She studied her own face. She was a lucky woman. Her own hopes and dreams were about to be reborn. Soon Ephram could escape the mirror, these walls, this house. Soon she could touch his flesh again.

She went to bed, alone with her lust. Patience, she told herself. Ephram had promised her. And Ephram always kept his promises.

CHAPTER 14

“I need something stronger.”

“You ain’t supposed to come out here in broad daylight, Ransom. What if somebody seen you?”

“I’m scared. I ain’t coming out here in the dark. It’s bad enough when you can see, and it’s getting worse.”

“Was you followed?”

“Not by none of the guests. Miss Mamie told them they ain’t allowed up Beechy Gap. But the others”—Ransom lowered his voice and hunched his head as if afraid that the cabin’s knotty walls were listening—”you know, them—they’s everywheres now.”

Sylva Hartley bent and spat into her fireplace. The liquid hissed and cracked, then evaporated against the flaming logs. She ran the back of her leathery hand against her shriveled mouth. She looked past Ransom, staring down the decades that were as dark as the smoky stones beneath the hearth.

“Lord knows it’s getting worse,” she finally said in agreement. She pulled her frayed shawl up around her neck.

“The last charm worked right fair for a while. Kept them scared off. But now, they just laugh at me when I do my warding.”

Sylva thought Ransom ought to have a little more faith. That was the key: faith. All the charms in the world didn’t amount to a hill of beans if you didn’t believe. Ransom had been raised Christian, and that was all fine and dandy. But when you got right down to it, some things were older and ran deeper than religion.

It was too bad about George Lawson. George was an outsider, not born on the mountain. He didn’t know what he was up against. With the proper charms, he might have dodged Ephram’s little games.

But maybe not. Ransom was right. They were getting stronger. Ephram was getting stronger. And now George was on their side, too. Along with all the other people Ephram had fetched over in the last hundred years.

“You mind flipping them johnny cakes?” she said.

Ransom crossed the floor of the cabin to the little blue steel cookstove. He turned the cakes in the skillet. The smell of scorched cornmeal filled the room.

“They don’t stay invisible no more,” he said, his back to her. “It used to be just Korban, and you only seen him in the Big House once in a while. But the others, they been walkin’.”

“The blue moon in October. A time of magic. Right magic and wrong magic.”

“What are you gonna do?” Ransom’s voice trembled.

She didn’t blame him for being scared. She was scared, too, but she didn’t dare let it show. “First off, I’m going to have me a bite to eat. After that, I guess we’ll just have to see what the cat drug in.”

Ransom handed her a plate made of hammered tin. He had laid a fried piece of side pork beside the johnny cakes. Liquid fat pooled in the bottom of the plate and dripped out a small hole in the metal. Sylva put the plate on one arm of her rocker so the grease wouldn’t stain her clothes.

“It’s the people, ain’t it?” Ransom asked, the firelight glittering in his eyes. “The people staying at the Big House.”

Sylva said nothing, just worked the pig gristle between the stumps of her teeth. There was a generous hunk of meat in the fat. Ransom always made sure she got one of the better slabs whenever they slaughtered and smoked one of the manor’s hogs. She figured she ate almost as well as the fancy guests.

She swallowed the pork and drained a cup of sassafras tea. Finally, she spoke, gazing into the fire, at the yellow and orange and bright blue. “It’s the people. And the girl. The one with the Sight.”

Even though her voice was soft, the words were as thick as thunder in the damp air of the cabin. The whole forest had grown quiet, as if the trees were bending in to listen. She was sure a catbird had been warbling out a happy sunrise song only minutes before.

“First he claimed the dead ones, now he’s going after the live ones,” Ransom said. “They’s got to be some kind of ritual or other you can use against him.”

“You forget. We got to play by the rules. But Ephram Korban, he ain’t beholden to nothing. Not man nor God nor none of my little bags of stoneroot and bear teeth and hawk feathers.”

Ransom touched the pocket of his coveralls.

“But just keep right on believin’,” she said. “The ashes of a prayer are mightier than the highest flames of hell.”

“I’d best be getting back. Got the livestock to tend to. And Miss Mamie’s been watching me awful close.”

“Get on, then.”

“You sure you’ll be okay?”

“Been okay all along, ain’t I? But it’s good to be looking out for each other.”

Ransom nodded. His face was in the shadows beyond the reach of the firelight and she wasn’t able to see his expression. The sun filled the room as he opened the door and went outside. She winced at the intruding light and waited for the sound of the falling wooden latch. Then she turned her gaze back to the fire and forked up another chunk of corn cake.

The fire . . .

Sylva looked down at her withered hands.

If only she had felt pain. The wounds without pain were the slowest in healing.

The tin plate sat empty in her lap. The fire had gone out. She shivered and spat into the ashes. She wasn’t sure which pain was greater—Ephram’s loving or his leaving her.

She had known Ephram would come back. But then, he had never really left. He didn’t die when she had pushed him off the widow’s walk. He just went into the house. Because she’d killed him under the October blue moon.

As he had promised, wood and stone became his flesh, the smoke his breath and the mirrors his eyes, the shadows his restless spirit’s blood. And his heart burned in the fires of forever.

She shivered in the heat of the day and reached for the matches.

CHAPTER 15

The house threw a sunrise shadow across the backyard. Mason was tired, his face scratched from his midnight wanderings. He’d slept poorly, his brain invaded by feverish images of Anna, his mother, Ephram Korban, Lilith, a dozen others whose faces were lost in smoke. He shivered as he walked behind the manor, following the worn path that wound between two outbuildings. He climbed a row of creosote railroad ties that were terraced into the earth as steps leading into the forest.

The door on the smaller building was open. An old man in overalls emerged from the darkness within. Mason waved a greeting. The man rubbed his hands together, his breath coming out in a mist.

“Brrr,” he said, creasing his wrinkled jaws. “Cold as a woman’s heart in there.”

“What is it?” Mason asked. He’d assumed it was a toolshed or something similar. The shed, like its larger counterpart, was constructed of rough-cut logs and chinked with yellowish-red cement. A smell of damp age and cedar spilled from the doorway.

“‘Frigeration,” the man said. When his mouth opened on the “gee” sound, Mason saw that the old man had about enough teeth left to play a quick game of jacks. His overalls threatened to swallow him, his back hunched from years of work. The man cocked his head back toward the door and went into the shed. “Take a look-see.”

Mason followed. Cold air wafted over his face. A mound covered the center of the dirt floor. The old man stooped down and swept at the grainy mound with his hands, revealing streaks of shiny silver.

“Ice,” said the man. “We bury it under sawdust so it will keep through summer. You wouldn’t think it would last that long, would you?”

“I wondered how you kept the food cold without power,” Mason said. “What about the food-safety police, the health inspectors?”

“They’s rules of the world and then they’s rules of Korban Manor. Two different things.”

The old man pointed through the door to a western rise covered by tulip poplars. Wagon tracks crossed the meadow, curving up the slope like twin red snakes. “They’s a little pond up yonder,” he said. “A spring pops out ‘twixt two rocks. The pond’s fenced off from the animals so it stays clean. Come the third or fourth long freeze in January, when the water’s good and hard, we go up and cut out big blocks of it.”

“Sounds like a lot of work. I understand that heavy machinery isn’t allowed on the grounds.”

“Oh, we got machines. A wagon is a machine. So’s a horse, in its way. And, of course, they got us, too.”

Mason went out into the sun, and the man closed the door behind him. His gnarled hand fumbled in the front pocket of his overalls as if he were looking for a cigarette. He pulled out something that looked like a knotted rag with a tip of feather protruding from one end. He waved the rag in the sign of the cross over the front of the icehouse door. The motion was practiced and fluid, appearing natural despite its oddness.

Mason expected the man to comment on the ritual, but the knotted rag was quickly squirreled away. “What’s in the other shed?” Mason asked after a moment.

“That’s the larder. Keep stuff in there that doesn’t need to be so cold, such as squash and cucumbers and corn. A little spring runs through there, gets piped out into the gully yonder.”

Mason looked where the man had pointed and saw a trickle of water meandering through a bed of rich, black mud. Blackberry briars tangled along the creek banks, the scarlet vines bent in autumn’s death. “Do you pick the berries, too?”

“Yep, and the apples. They’s hells of apples around here. You gonna have something apple every meal. Pie, turnovers, stewed, fried apples with cinnamon and just a dash of brandy. We keep up a vegetable garden, too, and—”

“Ransom!”

They both turned at the sound of the shrill voice. Miss Mamie stood on the back porch, leaning over the railing.

“Yes, Miss Mamie,” the man responded. The last bit of starch seemed to have gone out of him, and Mason was sure the old man was going to disappear inside his overalls.

“Now, Ransom, you know you’re not to trouble the guests,” Miss Mamie said in a high, artificially cheerful tone.

“I was just—” Ransom swelled momentarily, then seemed to think better of it. He studied the tips of his worn work boots. The sun lit the silver wires of hair that were combed back over his balding head. “Yes, Miss Mamie.”

The hostess stood triumphantly at the porch rail and turned her attention to Mason. “Did you sleep well, Mr. Jackson?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he lied. He sneaked a glance at Ransom. The man looked as if he’d been beaten with a hickory rod. “Um . . . thanks for setting me up in the master bedroom. It’s very comfortable.”

“Lovely.” She clasped her hands together. Her pearls shifted over her bosom. “Ephram Korban would be so pleased. You know our motto: ‘The splendid isolation of Korban Manor will fire the imagination and kindle the creative spirit.’”

“I read the brochure,” Mason said. “And I’ve already got a few ideas. I might need a little help getting started, though. Is it okay if Ransom helps me collect some good sculpting wood?”

Miss Mamie frowned and her thin eyebrows flattened. Her face wore the same expression that glared from the portraits of Korban. Mason realized he had challenged her authority, if only mildly. He was suddenly sorry he had dragged Ransom into the spotlight of her stare. She folded her arms like a schoolmarm debating the punishment of unruly students.

After a moment, she said, “Of course it’s okay. As long as his chores are finished. Are your chores finished, Ransom?”

Ransom kept his eyes down. “Yes, ma’am. I’m done till dinner. Then I got to curry the horses and see to the produce.”

Miss Mamie smiled and adopted her cheerful voice again. “Lovely. And that sculpture better be perfect, Mr. Jackson. We’re counting on you.”

“I’m kindled and fired up,” Mason said. “By the way, is there a space where I can work without bothering anybody? Sometimes I work late, and there’s no way to beat up wood without making enough noise to wake the dead.”

“There’s a studio space in the basement. I’ll have Lilith show you after lunch.”

“No need to bother her. I’m sure she’ll be busy with the other guests. Why not let Ransom show me?”

A shadow passed across Miss Mamie’s face and her voice grew cold. “Ransom doesn’t go down there.”

Mason peeked at Ransom and saw the corner of the man’s mouth twitch. My God. He’s scared to death of her.

Miss Mamie turned back toward the manor, her heels clattering across the wooden porch. Door chimes jingled as she went inside. Ransom exhaled as if he had been holding his breath for the last few minutes.

“What a wonderful boss,” Mason said when Ransom finally looked him in the eye.

“Careful,” he said out of the side of his mouth. “She’s probably watching from one of the windows.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Just follow me,” he whispered, then said, more loudly, “Toolshed’s right through them trees.”

After they had gone down a side trail far enough that the house was out of sight, Mason asked, “Is she always like that?”

Ransom’s confidence grew as they moved farther from the house. “Oh, she don’t mean nothing. That’s just her way, is all. Everything’s got to be just so. And she got worries of her own.”

“How long have you worked here, Ransom? You don’t mind if I call you Ransom, do you?”

“Respect for elders. I like that, Mr. Jackson.”

“Call me Mason, because I hope we’re going to be friends.”

Ransom looked back down the trail. “Only outside the house, son. Only outside.”

“Got you.”

“Anyways, you was asking how long I’ve been working here, and the answer to that is ‘Always.’ I was born here, in a little cabin just over the orchards. Place called Beechy Gap. Same cabin my grandpaw was born in, and my daddy, too. Cabin’s still standing.”

“They all worked here?”

“Yep. Grandpaw held deed to the north part, way back when Korban started buying up property around here. Grandpaw sold out and got a job thrown in as part of the deal. I guess us Streaters always been tied to the land, one way or another. Family history has it that my great-back-to-however-many-greats-grandpaw Jeremiah Streater was one of the first settlers in this part of the country. Came up with Daniel Boone, they say.”

“Did Boone live here, too?”

“Well, he tried to. Kept a hunting cabin down around the foot of the mountain. But they took his land. They always take your land, see?”

Ransom didn’t sound bitter. He said it as if it were a universal truth, something you could count on no matter what. The sun comes up, the rooster crows, the dew dries, they take your land.

“Toolshed’s over yonder,” Ransom said, heading for a clearing in a stand of poplars. He continued with his storytelling, the rhythm of his words matching the stride of his thin legs.

“Grandpaw went to work right away for Korban, clearing orchard land and cutting the roads. Him and two of my uncles. They leveled with shovels and stumped with iron bars and a team of mules. Korban was crazy about firewood right from the start. Had them saw up the trees with big old cross-saws and pile the logs up beside the road.

“And Korban had a landscape scheme all laid out. People thought he was a little touched in the head, wanting to turn this scrubby old mountain into some kind of king’s spread. But the money was green enough. Korban paid a dollar a day, which was unheard of at the time. He was big in textiles.”

“I’ve worked in textiles myself,” Mason said. “Can’t say I ever got too big in it, though. I mostly just swapped out spindles for minimum wage.”

“No need to be ashamed of honest work.” Ransom paused and looked in the direction of a crow’s call. The smell of moist leaves and forest rot filled Mason’s nostrils. He noticed himself breathing harder than the old man, who was nearly three times his age. Ransom began walking again and continued with his story.

“When they got the road gouged out, they set to work on the bridge. In the old days, the only way to get up here was a trail that wound up the south face of those cliffs. You seen that drop-off driving up here.”

“Yeah. Down to the bottom of the world.” Mason’s stomach fluttered at the remembered majesty and terror of the view. He was embarrassed by his shortness of breath and tried to hide it.

“That trail was how the early pioneers, Boone and Jeremiah and a handful of others, made it up in the first place. They say the Cherokee and Catawba used it before that, communal hunting grounds. The whites brought livestock up here, fighting and pushing the animals along the cliffs. But Korban wanted a bridge. And what Korban wanted, Korban always got.”

“Kind of what I figured.” A thick-planked building stood ahead of them, tucked under the branches of a jack pine. Its shake roof was littered with brown pine needles. Ransom led Mason toward it.

“They was about eight families that owned this piece of mountaintop. Korban bought them all out and put them to work building the house and gathering fieldstones for the foundation. He hired the womenfolk to set out apple seedlings and weed the gardens. Even the kids helped out, at a quarter a day plus keep.”

“Didn’t anybody notice that they were doing the same work, only now they had a master?”

The trail had widened out and wagon ruts led into the heart of the forest from the other side of the clearing. Ransom stepped onto the warped stairs leading into the shed and paused. Mason was glad that the uphill walk had finally tapped the old man’s stamina.

“You ain’t from money, are you?” Ransom asked, raising a white eyebrow.

“Well, not really. Both my parents had to work all week to get by.” Mason didn’t mention that his dad worked only two days a week and drank four and a half. Dad faithfully took off every Sunday morning to give thanks for the evening’s pint. No other prayers ever passed his lips that didn’t reek of bourbon. Except maybe from his hospital bed, when cirrhosis escorted him to the self-destruction he’d spent a lifetime toasting.

“People around here, they fell all over themselves to get Korban’s money. They was scrub poor, these people. The only cash they ever saw was once or twice a year when they loaded some handmade quilts or goods on the back of a mule and took down to Black Rock to trade. So when Korban come in with his offers, nobody blamed them for selling out.”

“I guess I would sell out, too, if I got the chance,” Mason said. He was thinking of Diluvium, his first commissioned piece and the worst thing he’d ever fabricated. Also the most successful.

Ransom fumbled in his overalls pocket and again pulled out the feathery rag ball. He waved it in the strange ritual before lifting the cast-iron latch on the shed door.

“Um—what’s that feather for?” Mason asked.

“Warding off,” Ransom said, as if everybody carried such a charm. He pushed the door open. Before entering, he kicked the doorjamb so hard that his overalls quivered around his bony frame. “Yep, still sturdy.”

Mason wanted to ask what Ransom thought he was warding off, but didn’t know what words to use. He chalked it up as one more of the manor’s oddities. Compared to ghost stories, Korban’s ever-watchful portraits, the jittery maid, and hearth fires burning in the heat of day, what were one old man’s eccentricities? Next to Anna, Ransom was practically a model of sanity and reason.

They went into the small shed, Ransom peering up at the rafters. Light spilled from the two single-paned windows set in the south wall. Workbenches lined the back room, piled high with broken harness and rusting plows, millwork and buckets of cut nails. Worn-handled shovels, picks, and axes leaned near the door. A long cross-saw dangled from wooden pegs, a few of its jagged teeth missing. The corner was a mess of wooden planes, hammers, and block and tackle tangled in yellowed hemp rope. The room smelled of iron and old leather.

Mason began picking out the equipment they might need. If he was lucky, they would find a chunk of walnut or maybe a maple stump. More likely, they would have to hack a piece out of a fallen tree. He was checking the heft of a hatchet when he noticed Ransom studying the dark ceiling again. “Sky’s not about to fall, is it?”

“Never know.”

“What are we, about four thousand feet above sea level? A lot less sky to fall on us up here.”

Ransom didn’t even smile, just scratched at one weathered cheek. Maybe Mason had misjudged the old man. Those sparkling and tireless eyes suggested Ransom was no stranger to humor. But maybe the man had his own reasons for becoming solemn.

“Found what you need?” Ransom asked, waiting near the door.

“Sure. You mind grabbing that maul over to your left? We might need to do some heavy hitting.”

When they were back outside, they stood in the clearing and arranged the tools for easier carrying. Ransom wore an expression that Mason could only call relief.

“What’s the matter?” Mason asked.

“Man’s got a right to be scared, ain’t he?”

What is there to be scared of out here? Do wild predators still stalk these woods? “Scared of what?”

“Miss Mamie said not to tell.” Ransom sounded almost like a child. Mason wondered what kind of hold the woman had over Ransom. The man even said her name with a kind of frightened reverence, his hand moving up his overalls bib toward the pocket that held the rag-ball charm.

“Look, if there’s some kind of danger, you owe it to your guests to warn them. Plus, I thought we were friends.”

Ransom looked off toward the trees at the sun, which was starting its downward slide to the west. “I reckon. Don’t ever let on to Miss Mamie, though.”

“Of course not.”

Ransom exhaled slowly. “We got four gatherings of guests each year. We take a month between each batch to get things fixed up, ‘cause we’re too busy when the guests are here to do repairs. Somebody has to go around and check on all the little outbuildings and cabins, original homesteads that can’t be torn down. Korban set it in his will that everything stay like it was.

“Three of us was keeping up the grounds. We always switched off, one keeping up the livestock, one tending to the flowers and gardens and firewood, and the last playing handyman. Miss Lilith, the maid, and the cook see to the kitchen and the house.”

“I’ve met Lilith. Pretty girl.”

Ransom wobbled his knot of a head. “Not hard on the eyes. Anyways, yesterday, one of the men, George Lawson, was up Beechy Gap checking on the old Easley place. That was another of the original settler families. The last Easley girl worked at the house until she married off down to Charlotte with one of them artists a few years back.

“Well, my friend George, he went into that old Easley shack. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t find no tools or nothing, so I can’t say he was doing carpentry work. But the whole blamed shack fell on him.” Ransom’s jaw clenched. “Died real slow.”

“I’m sorry, Ransom. What did the investigators say?”

“Like I said, they’s rules of the world, and they’s rules of Korban Manor.”

Mason didn’t understand. This place was remote, but an accidental death ought to require some kind of inquiry.

“George was a good man. And he wasn’t stupid. Made it through Vietnam, so he must have had some kind of sense. He just crossed the wrong threshold, is all.” Ransom looked like he was about to add something to that last sentence, then changed his mind.

“Which way’s Beechy Gap?”

Ransom jerked his head toward the north. “Over the ridge yonder.”

“I wouldn’t mind having a look sometime.”

“Nope. Guests ain’t allowed up there.”

“Rough terrain?”

Ransom looked him full in the eyes for the first time since they’d left the toolshed. “Some things just ain’t part of the deal. You’ll find a lot of places are off-limits at Korban Manor.”

Ransom pulled the charm from his pocket and motioned at the shed with it. “Now, about that wood of yours. I got to be getting back soon.”

They gathered the tools and veered off the trail into the forest.

CHAPTER 16

Adam walked along the fence, his head full of the wilderness smells. He felt sure that Manhattan’s pollutants had permanently clogged his sinuses, but maybe the fresh mountain air would add a year back to the six the city had stolen from his life. The near-perfect silence was eerie, and he had almost gone through a physical withdrawal during the night as his sleeping self yearned for those constant sirens, car horns, and burglar alarms. And all this wide-open space was unnatural. No wonder hillbillies were stereotyped as crazed and grizzled outcasts. There was nothing to impose the insanity of civilization upon them, so they had to make up their own rules of order.

Paul was off somewhere shooting video, no doubt wrapped up in the latest project, the world reduced to the narrow scope of his viewfinder. That was for the best. Though solitude was kind of creepy in itself, especially in the sprawling expanse of the manor, he needed a break from Paul’s company. He’d talked briefly with the weird photographer Roth on the porch, and had recognized the same artistic self-absorption that plagued Paul.

Adam saw a man by the barn dressed in worn work clothes. It wasn’t one of the handymen who’d helped unload the van. Probably someone in charge of the stables, or else the tender of the long garden that stretched in stubbled rows in the low valley. The man waved Adam over. Adam stole a glance back at the manor a hundred yards away, then approached the barn.

“Morning, there,” the man said. His hands were tucked deep into the pockets of his loose-fitting jeans. A shovel leaned against the wall beside him.

“Hi,” Adam said.

“You’re one of the guests, I reckon.”

“We just got in yesterday.”

“What do you think of the place so far?”

“It’s . . . different from what I’m used to. But that’s part of the adventure.”

“Yep, the unknown is always scary at first. But once you get used to it, you start to like it.”

Adam looked down at a set of wire-enclosed pens beyond the garden. A grunting sound rolled across the hills.

“Hogs,” the man said. “About time of year to get out the boiling kettle and have us a slaughter.”

Adam’s face must have shown his revulsion.

The man laughed. “Don’t worry, son. You won’t get no blood on your hands. But meat don’t get on the table by itself.”

“I prefer my meat boneless,” Adam said.

“Miss Mamie serves it up however you like. Careful, though, she’s been known to take a shine to the guests. Especially them that’s young and male. I reckon even an old crow like that needs a play-pretty once in a while.”

“Thanks for the warning, but she’s not my type,” he said.

The man leaned forward like a conspirator, his face emerging from the shadows of the barn’s overhang. “Say, can you do me a favor?”

“What’s that?” Adam looked back at the manor again. Smoke rose from its four chimneys, but other than that, it appeared devoid of life. Even the breeze seemed to have died.

“Dig me a hole. I’ll pay you.”

“I don’t want to get you in any trouble. Miss Mamie seems to have this thing about the guests being kept apart from the staff.”

The man licked his lips. “Let me worry about Miss Mamie. But I got a sore arm and I’m a little down in the back. Pain’s hellfire blue this morning.”

“Okay, then,” Adam said. He took the shovel and tested its balance.

The man took his right hand out of his pocket and pointed to the base of a dying gray apple tree that stood alone in a slight clearing. “Right there between the roots,” he said. “About big enough to hold a hatbox.”

The man followed Adam to the spot, and Adam slid the bright blade into the earth, turned the dark soil. In a couple of minutes he’d shaped the hole to the man’s satisfaction.

“That’s fine and dandy,” the man said. “I can handle the rest. Appreciate it.”

“What are you burying?”

“Covering up for old Ransom. He’s no-account, but he’s been around so long he gets away with murder. I got to finish a job for him.”

“Well, have a good morning. I need to get back to my room.”

“Here,” he said, his right hand dipping into his pocket again. “A little something for your trouble.”

“No, really,” Adam said, holding up his hands in protest. The shovel handle had heated up the flesh surrounding his palms, a hint of possible blisters to come.

“You don’t want to hurt my feelings, do you?” the man said. “Us mountaineers can get mighty prideful about such things.”

“Sure, then.”

The man held his fist out, then opened it over Adam’s palm. A small green thing dropped into it.

“Four-leaf clover,” the man said.

Adam smiled. “I’m going to need all the luck I can get.”

Adam started back toward the barn, then turned and said, “I’m Adam, by the way.”

“Lawson,” the man said, now hunched over the hole as if his bad back had undergone a miracle cure. “George Lawson.”

CHAPTER 17

Anna awoke with light slanting through the window, and for a few moments couldn’t remember where she was. Then it all came back: Korban Manor, Mason, the cabin in the woods with its mysterious figurines, the pained spirit of the girl she’d encountered.

Why had the ghost asked for Anna’s help? And who was the person in the shawl who had fled into the forest? Anna shook away the spiderwebs of memory. She hadn’t dreamed last night, unless that whole walk in the woods had taken place solely in her imagination.

“Did you have a good night’s sleep?” Cris asked from her bed across the room.

“I slept like the dead. Haven’t slept that well in years. I guess even a city girl benefits from the peace and quiet.”

Cris, her voice raspy from sleep and hangover, said, “I know what you mean. In Modesto, a siren wakes you up every fifteen minutes. It’s kind of weird, though.”

“What’s weird?” Anna looked at Korban’s portrait, then at the fire that must have been stoked and banked by one of the servants in the night.

“For the first time since I was a little girl, I remembered my dreams.”

“Really?” Anna thought of her own recurrent dream, of her ghostly self on the widow’s walk, holding that forlorn and haunted bouquet.

“Yeah. I was running across the orchard out there. I had these long bedclothes on, billowing out behind me. You know, all that lacy Victorian stuff you see on the covers of Gothic novels? I was running in slow motion, like the wind was pushing me back or something.”

“The old ‘running but never getting there’ dream,” Anna said. “I had them during final exams or sometimes when I submitted a research paper.”

Or like the last time I dreamed about Stephen. When was that, nearly a year ago?

“I wasn’t running away.” Cris’s voice faded a little as she recalled the details of the dream. “I was running to something. Waiting in the shadows, right at the edge of the trees. It was so real. I could feel the dew on my bare feet, the cold air against my face, the warmth—”

Anna raised herself up on her pillow and saw Cris, hair tangled, eyes bleary, but a blush apparent on her cheeks.

“—the warmth down there,” Cris finished, as if startled by the force of the memory. “And I just kept running. I could feel the house behind me, almost like it was watching, like it wanted me to . . . then I was all the way across the meadow. The shadow thing, it moved out from under the trees, it touched me, but I couldn’t see its face. Where it touched my shoulder, the warmth sort of expanded, filling me up . . .”

Cris’s widened eyes stared past the room into the remembered dream. “It was pretty intense,” she whispered.

Anna wasn’t used to people sharing intimate details with her. Being an orphan had taught her to maintain a safe emotional distance. She’d kept secrets even from the few romantic interests in her life, keeping a deep part of herself hidden. Now this woman she’d only met yesterday was sharing a sensual dream. But maybe it was something else. “You found some company. Mason, I’ll bet.”

Cris grinned. “No, I definitely would have remembered if something had happened with him. I wasn’t that drunk.”

Anna forced herself to show interest in Cris’s dream as penance for thinking of Mason. “What do you suppose it means?”

“That I’m a basket case?”

As if dreams had meaning. Dreams were nothing but a mistake of the synapses, a firing off of excess electrical energy much the way sparks jump off a cracked distributor wire in a car. Dreams were random brain waves, no matter what the professors in the Duke behavioral sciences program had taught her.

Basically, dreams were nonsense. Both the sleeping and the waking kind. Especially when they compelled you to visit a big manor tucked high in the Appalachian Mountains, where you searched for your own ghost.

Especially then.

“Maybe it’s just your subconscious reveling in your newfound sense of freedom,” Anna said, scrambling up a solipsism from one of her old psychology classes. “After all, you have all kinds of time, no deadlines, no husband to please. Nothing but yourself and what you want to do. Maybe it’s only natural that this relief should express itself in romantic imagery.”

“Wow. That’s good. I can’t wait to get back home and tell my analyst.”

Anna was going to add something about sexual frustration due to the dream’s Victorian overtones. But that was too cynical and obtuse even for Anna.

“Or maybe it was just a dream,” she said, dreading the coming bout of bloody diarrhea that welcomed her to each new day.

“Probably,” Cris said.

Anna pushed off her quilts and sat up, shivering inside her cotton nightgown. “Dibs on the bathroom.”

“Go ahead. I need to lie here a minute and get my wits together. I’m going to sneak downstairs and score a caffeine fix. Want anything?”

“No, thanks.

When Anna returned to the room, Cris was gathering her sketch pads, a cup of coffee steaming on the nightstand. “I ran into Jefferson Spence. You know, the fat writer. It’s kind of cool to be here with actual famous people.”

Anna shrugged. “We had to study his Seasons of Sleep in American Lit. About put me to sleep, let me tell you.”

“He wrote that one here, at the manor. They say he writes about real people, only he changes the names so he won’t get sued. I wonder if we’ll be in his next book.”

Anna went to her dresser to pick out some clothes. “I’ll be the ghost-hunting flake with the big nose, and you can be—”

“—the bimbo housewife who has wet dreams.”

“Except it wouldn’t be that simple in the book,” Anna said, then sniffed daintily. “You’d be a ‘trembling Venus, clutching and grasping at the sheets, back arched toward the dark ceiling of heaven, the endless roof of forever, the prison of night,’ et cetera and so on.”

Cris laughed so hard that she snorted into her coffee. A knock came at the door. Anna crossed her arms, not sure if the nightgown was revealing or not. She avoided mirrors these days.

Cris apparently had little modesty, having gone downstairs in the yellow slip she still wore. “Enter,” she shouted. “We’re all decent here.”

Miss Mamie came into the room, her hands clasped, a smile on her face that could have been carved in wood. “You ladies sleep well?”

“More or less,” Cris said. “The beds are very comfortable.”

“And you, Miss Galloway? You were out late last night?” Miss Mamie’s eyes reflected the warm flickering light of the fire.

Was Miss Mamie chiding her, or merely making conversation? The hostess knew that Anna was a parapsychologist. Anna hadn’t seen any reason to lie on her retreat application. In fact, she’d learned to take a stubborn pride in her peculiarities.

So she saw no reason to lie now. “I took a walk,” she said. “On that ridge to the east.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” There was no mistaking the challenge in the hostess’s voice.

“No.” Not a lie. She wasn’t sure yet what she was looking for, besides her own ghost.

“Maybe it will come to you, Miss Galloway. Keep your spirits up.” Miss Mamie pursed her lips in a reptilian smile and looked at the portrait of Ephram Korban.

“You’ve got a very strange house,” Cris said.

“The house is his,” Miss Mamie said, with a slight bow toward the portrait. She touched the locket that hung from the strand of pearls that circled her throat. “I just keep the home fires burning.”

She left them to dress and to speculate about the meaning of their hostess’s cryptic manner.

CHAPTER 18

“This way, Mr. Jackson.”

Lilith headed down the narrow stairs. Mason repositioned the twenty-pound chunk of red maple in his arms and followed her. The musty, moist air clung to the skin of Mason’s face. He stared down into the dark basement, making sure each step was solid before fully shifting his weight.

Lilith waited at the bottom of the stairs, holding the lantern at shoulder level. When Mason finally reached the basement floor, he peered into the gloomy and shifting shadows, trying to get a feel for the basement’s layout. Tiny wedges of windows were set high in the walls just above the ground, but only a graying of starlight leaked through. The aroma of dry rot gave way to a deeper, older decay.

He stumbled and his tool satchel banged against his hip. The handle was starting to dig into his skin where the satchel dangled from his shoulder. Lilith led him past a couple of thick wooden beams, a cluster of old furniture, and a small doorway. The lantern’s firelight glinted off rows of dusty wine bottles tucked in the narrow alcove.

“Why is it so hot?” Mason asked. His voice was swallowed by the dead space.

“Central heating,” Lilith said. “Mr. Korban insisted on having his fires.”

Mason wondered if he would be able to work down here for long stretches. Sculpting usually sent the sweat gushing from his pores. The work was as much muscle as it was inspiration. Only the final touches, the thin detailing and polishing, were not so physically demanding that they wore him out.

“Where’s the stove?” he asked.

Lilith pointed into the darkness toward the left end of the basement. “There’s a separate room over there so the workers can keep the fire stoked from the outside. The ductwork runs all through the house.”

She lifted the lantern higher and Mason saw the dull metal sheeting of the ducts.

“Air-circulated heat,” he said. “That was pretty sophisticated for its time, wasn’t it?”

“I’m not a historian, Mr. Jackson. Miss Mamie would be the one to answer such questions.”

Lilith led him into an area that wasn’t exactly a room. It was more like a bit of floor space divided by timber posts and shelving. A rough-finished cabinet flanked the near side of what he guessed was going to be his studio.

“I hope this will do,” she said. “We’ve only had a few sculptors at the manor, but many painters. And one old gentleman who did acid etchings and woodblock prints. We’ve all managed to work just fine down here.”

“Oh, do you paint?”

“I used to.”

He didn’t want to comment on her career change. His own might be coming soon enough. “Maybe a little of that creative spirit soaked into the walls.”

“Maybe so, Mr. Jackson. Maybe more than we know.”

She was an odd one, Mason decided. If she weren’t so frosty, he would risk getting to know her. But he was better off focusing on his work. Besides, he was positive that Miss Mamie wouldn’t approve of the hired help cavorting with the guests, no matter how much the guests cavorted with each other.

A thick table stood in the center of the studio space. Mason set down the bulky maple with a solid thump. He shook the satchel from his arm onto the table as well. It would stay dark down here even during the day. He didn’t mind, though. He worked mostly by touch and instinct, anyway.

“Will that be all?” Again Lilith seemed to be in a hurry to get away from him. Or perhaps it wasn’t him. Maybe she wanted to be away from this dim, claustrophobic place where Mason was going to spend his time.

“So will I have to curse the darkness?” he answered.

“Excuse me?”

He pointed to the lantern. “I assume you’re taking that with you.”

“Oh, I see.” She stepped toward the shelves, and in the lantern light Mason saw a clutter of half-melted candles. “There are matches in that cupboard.”

She waited until Mason lit two of the thick candles. He found an oil lamp on the bottom shelf and rolled up the wick. He had just touched the tip of a candle to the wick when she called, “Good luck,” then she was gone.

As her echoing footsteps receded up the stairs, he muttered to himself, “Jeez, no wonder people make up stories about this place.”

Mason lit an extra candle and spread his tools across the table. He studied the sharpened edges of the blades before turning his attention to the red maple. Then he paced, his mind drifting into that mysterious wellspring from which ideas bubbled forth.

His foot caught on something, causing a muffled crash. He brought the lamp down low to see what he had tripped over. It was a stretched canvas, the back graying with age. He turned it over.

On the canvas was a perfect reproduction of Korban Manor on a stormy night, done in the same thick oils as the other paintings that lined the walls of the house. The manor was drawn to precise scale, seeming such a natural part of the landscape that it looked as if the house had grown out of the soil like a living thing. In the painting was the knothole that Mason had noticed earlier that morning in the siding beneath a second-floor window.

But the photographic realism wasn’t the only quality that made the painting so powerful. The manor was vibrant, as if it were shaking with the force of the fantasized gale. The trees were wild with wind, and black clouds hovered around the manor’s flat roof. Mason gently touched the canvas and a cool electricity surged up his arm. He wondered why such a beautiful work was relegated to the corruptive air of the basement.

He leaned it against the table and brought the lamp closer, careful not to let the heat sear the finish. He scanned every inch of the artwork, softly running his fingers along the furrows made by the brushstrokes. The angles of the gables were geometrically accurate, the shading well proportioned, the range of colors as true as the human eye. Even the bark of the trees had a sophisticated complexion.

He was looking at the top of the house, at the white railing of the widow’s walk, when he spotted the painting’s sole flaw. The artist had inadvertently smudged the colors together. A grayish blotch marred an area on the widow’s walk. The artist could have easily fixed the mistake, but for some reason hadn’t. Still, the painting was far too skilled to remain hidden away in darkness.

Mason didn’t know how long he ended up staring at the painting. It had such mesmerizing power that it seemed to soak him into its maelstrom. Finally, he shook his head, realizing that if he didn’t get started, he would waste the first day of his last chance. He leaned the painting out of the way against a support timber, promising himself that he would ask Miss Mamie about it later.

He had been putting off the start of his own work, the hewing of the bark from the section of maple. He was annoyed to find his mind drifting back to the painting.

“Come on, you bastard,” he chided himself. “This is it. Think of Momma back in Sawyer Creek, shriveling away because she made the sacrifice. Alone in the dark.”

He heard her voice in his head, telling him to hold on to his dreams. He rearranged his tools, laying out his fluter, his gouge, his hatchet, his adze, his mallet, his half-dozen chisels with their different edges and angles. Still no idea came to him. He looked around at the shadows sent leaping by the candlelight.

Someone was in the surrounding darkness, watching.

A faint rustle in the corner. Mason lifted the lamp. A small, dark thing separated itself from the lesser darkness and skittered toward the wine rack.

A mouse. Mason’s toes curled inside his shoes. He’d always hated rodents. When he was young, just before his father had died, the family had lived in a rented mobile home. The trailer park was next to a trash dump, and rats multiplied fruitfully thanks to the wealth of garbage.

One night, he heard scratching sounds inside the couch that he slept upon. He turned on the light and watched with horror as tiny newborn rats spilled from a tear in the couch’s fabric. Equally repulsive was the family’s old gray cat, which swallowed the rats whole, one by one, as they emerged blind into the world. The mother rat must have been sick or something, because the couch stank of her death for weeks afterward. By then, Mason had taken to sleeping in a reclining chair on the other side of the living room.

And another, older memory rose, but he pushed it back into its dark chink of slumber.

This creature in the basement had been only a mouse. Mason could handle that. Mice were timid. Rats were the ones to despise, with their long tails, deliberate manner, and those eyes that shone with a defiant intelligence.

He tried once again to focus on his work. Maybe the mouse had been his Muse. Other artists talked about the spirit moving them, moving inside them. Mason didn’t understand. All he had was stubbornness and anger to drive him.

He addressed the chunk of wood that Ransom had helped him cut from a fallen tree. “Okay, what kind of secrets are you hiding inside you?”

He studied the pattern of the growth rings and caressed the grain of the wood. The dead sap pulsed. A draft of air whistled through the heating ducts.

“What do you want to become?” He picked up his hatchet. The draft turned into low laughter. He felt a hand around his own, a warm pocket of guiding air.

His voice rose. “What in the hell do you want from me?”

Mason sank the metal blade deep into the flesh of the maple. The flat single echo of the blow sounded almost like a sigh of contentment.

CHAPTER 19

Roth was irritated. He had shot three rolls of film, framing the house first in the soft, low-angle morning light and then in harsher, steeper shadows as the sun climbed the eastern sky. He had walked a good distance down the sandy road so he could do a series of approaching perspectives through a telephoto lens, working off a tripod. He achieved a rather nice depth of field, manipulating the f-stop so that the house seemed small against the surrounding forest. Then he did some closer, handheld work to get the opposite effect, to make the manor appear to tower over the trees and hills.

And that was all top-shelf, spot-on and all that, but then he wanted to try something different. He’d wanted to photograph the bridge. The narrow, weather-beaten bridge would make a jolly center spread for a coffee-table picture book, what with all the dramatic cliffs and foggy vistas.

He was positive he wanted to photograph the bridge, but by the time he’d walked under the canopy of trees down the road, the idea didn’t seem all that wonderful. The day was so warm that, even in the shade, his forehead beaded with sweat. A spasm of nausea and dizziness passed over him. Before he came around the final bend where the manor grounds gave way to the plummeting rocks, he’d decided that the bridge would be a bloody waste of good stock.

So he walked back toward Korban Manor. By then a little breeze sprang up, and he felt better as the sweat dried. He snapped more pictures of the house from the exact same locations as before. It was all such a bunch of poppycock.

“I’m going daft, is all,” he muttered under his breath.

“What’s that you said?”

The female voice had come from somewhere to his right. He squinted into the shadow of the trees, hoping he’d maintained his British accent while he’d been muttering. One mustn’t slip.

“I was saying, ‘What a lot of bother,’” he said.

He saw her now, sitting on a stump beside a sycamore. She had a sketch pad in her lap and a charcoal stick clutched between her fingers. Roth eyed her long legs, appreciating that the day was warm enough for her to wear shorts.

“You taking pictures?” she asked.

Pictures. Gawps and ninnies took pictures. Roth framed the vital, captured the essential, immortalized the utterly proper.

Stupid bird. Still, in his experience, the emptier the space upstairs, the tighter the compartment below.

He was getting frustrated with his work anyway. Maybe the time was right to line up an evening’s companion. “Yes, my dear,” he said, raising the camera and pointing it at the woman.

She looked away.

“Don’t be shy, love. Make my camera happy. I won’t even make you say ‘cheese’ or anything of that sort.” He zoomed in on her cleavage without her noticing.

She looked up and smiled, he clicked the shutter, and then he put the camera away. “Say, didn’t I see you at Miss Mamie’s little after-dinner last night?”

“Yeah. I saw you. You’re William Roth, right?”

Roth loved it when they pretended not to be impressed by his celebrity, but she couldn’t hide the small sparkle in her eyes. Maybe he wasn’t a famous movie star, but name recognition definitely came in handy for bedding the birds. “I’m every inch of him,” Roth said. “And to whom do I have the pleasure?”

“Cris Whitfield. Cris without the h.” She held out her hand in greeting, realized it was smudged by the charcoal, and put it back in her lap.

“Charmed.” He arched his neck as if to look at her drawing, but was actually peeking down her halter top. “What are you drawing?”

“The house,” she said, nodding toward it.

“Mind if I’ve a look?”

She shrugged and turned the sketch pad toward him. He took the opportunity to stand over her.

“I’m not very good,” Cris said.

Looked quite good from the little peek I got.

“The house isn’t an easy subject,” he said, reaching for the pad. “I can hardly get a decent framing for it. I can’t imagine how frightfully awful drawing the thing would—”

He’d expected a stick-house drawing, something that the Big Bad Wolf could blow over with a half a breath. But not this...this asylum the woman had sketched. Not coming from this little ponytailed girl who looked like a Malibu beach bunny, who probably studied EST or reiki or whatever New Age pap was all the rage now.

Because the drawing was definitely of the manor, but was of much more than that.

It was all droopy and dark and pessimistic, a cross between Dali and that Spanish artist Goya. They’d found some of Goya’s paintings after he’d died, hidden away in his house because no one could bear to look at them. Roth fought a sudden urge to touch the sketch.

The charcoal was as thick as fur on the paper. The shadows of the portico were sharp and steep, and Roth could almost imagine winged creatures fluttering in that darkness. The windows of the gables were leering eyes, the large front door a ravenous maw. He glanced from the drawing to the house, and for just a second, so short a time that he could convince himself that it was a trick of suggestion, the house looked the way she had drawn it, swaying and throbbing like a live, growling beast.

“Bloody hell, girl,” he finally managed. “Where did that come from?”

She looked shyly down at the tips of her hiking boots. When she shrugged, he only half noticed her jiggling breasts. “I don’t know,” she said. “It just sort of happened.”

Roth shook his head.

“I’ve never done anything that good,” she said. “I mean, I’m not that good at all.”

“Looks ace to me.”

“Not this picture. I know it’s good. But it’s not because of me. It’s because of the house.”

“The house?” Roth thought about how he couldn’t manage to make himself photograph anything but the house. And how he’d felt a little queasy when he’d been walking down the road toward the bridge. At least until he got back within sight of the house.

“It’s like it’s got this . . . energy,” Cris said. “When I was drawing, the charcoal almost seemed to be moving by itself.”

“Like hypnotic suggestion and that rot?” he snorted, then regretted it. Scorn wasn’t the way into a woman’s heart, or any of the other warm parts, either.

Cris’s lip curled. She slapped the sketch pad closed. The haunting, warped drawing still lingered in Roth’s mind.

“Everybody’s a critic,” she said. “Why don’t you just go back to pushing your silly little buttons?”

She stormed past him, kicking up leaves. Roth watched her walk onto the wagon road and toward the house. He shifted the strap that was digging into his neck, then checked the camera that was perched on the tripod.

Blew a go at her, he thought. What do I care about any two-pence line drawing, anyway? Artists are a pack of fools, going on about “meaning” and “creative spirit” and such nonsense. All it comes down to is money, power, and sex, and how to secure more of each.

He peered through his viewfinder at the manor. Cris bounced up the wide steps leading to the porch. As she disappeared through the front door, Roth couldn’t shake the feeling that the house had swallowed her whole.

CHAPTER 20

The forest looked different in the daytime. Its edges were blunter, the branches less menacing, the shadows under the canopy less solid and suffocating. Anna took in the afternoon air, feeling alive, fresh, renewed. Korban Manor and the mountains were bringing back her appetite, making her forget the long darkness that the cancer pushed her toward.

She took a right at the fork in the trail, remembering that Robert Frost poem about the road less traveled, because the right fork was little more than an animal path. But the trail led to an opening on a knoll, a soft rounded skull of earth wearing a cap of grass. In the middle of the opening stood a square section of iron fence, and white and gray gravestones protruded from the dirt within it.

“So this is where you keep your dead,” she said to the sky.

Anna made her way to the fence. She looked around, but the forest was still and silent. This wouldn’t be the first cemetery she’d committed trespass against. She heaved herself over, gripping the wrought floral design and scrollwork of the fence to keep from spearing herself on the sharp-tipped ends.

Two large marble monuments, beautiful though worn with age, dominated the graveyard. The first read Ephram Elijah Korban, 1859-1918. Too Soon Summoned.

The one beside it, slightly less ornate, said simply Margaret. Anna knelt and pressed her palm to the soil above Ephram’s final resting place.

“Anybody home, Miss Galloway?”

Anna looked up. Miss Mamie stood by the fence, somehow having crossed fifty feet of open field without Anna noticing.

“I was just out for a walk, and I got curious.”

“You know what they say about curiosity and the cat. Most of our guests respect fences.”

“Do you mean the guests who walk, or the ones who float?”

Miss Mamie’s giggle echoed off the monuments. “Ah, those ghost stories. I couldn’t resist approving your application, you know. Paranormal researcher. That’s too perfect.”

“It’s just as much an art form as painting and writing. It’s all about seeking, isn’t it?”

“Clever. And just what are you seeking, Anna?”

“I suppose I’ll know it when I find it.”

“One can only hope. Or perhaps you won’t have to search. Perhaps it will find you.”

“Then you don’t mind if I prowl in your graveyard?”

Miss Mamie looked at Korban’s monument. “Make yourself at home.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t be late for dinner, though. And be careful if you’re caught out after dark.” Miss Mamie started to leave, then added, “You’re one of those, aren’t you?”

“One of what?”

“What the mountain people around here call ‘gifted.’ Second Sight. The power to see things other people can’t.”

“I’m not so special.”

“Those ghost stories are so delightful. And good for business, too. What artist who fancies himself living on the edge could possibly pass up an opportunity to come here? If you see anything, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Don’t hope too hard. Not yet, anyway.”

Anna watched the woman cross the grass and enter the forest, then she headed toward the rest of the grave markers that stippled the slope. She explored them, reading the names. Hartley, Streater, Aldridge, McFall. Then the names gave way to simple flagstone markers, in some cases chunks of rough granite propped toward the heavens as a forlorn memento of a long-forgotten life.

Would her own death be so little noted? Would her mark be as insignificant? Did it even matter?

At the edge of the scattered stones where the rear of the fence met the woods, a pale carved tombstone stood in the shade of an old cedar. Anna went to it, read “Rachel Faye Hartley” etched in the marble. An ornate bouquet of flowers was engraved above the name.

“Rachel Faye, Rachel Faye,” Anna said. “Someone must have loved you.”

And though Rachel Faye Hartley was now dust, Anna envied her just a little.

CHAPTER 21

Sylva watched from the forest until Miss Mamie left. Anna looked small and lost in the graveyard, talking to the stones, looking for ghosts among the blades of grass. The girl had the Sight, that much was plain. And something else was plain, that dark aura around her, hanging around her flesh like a rainbow of midnight.

Anna was fixing to die.

Sylva drew her shawl close together, holding it with one knotted hand. The other held her walking stick, which she leaned on to rest for the trip back to Beechy Gap. She didn’t get out much these days, especially now that Korban’s fetches were walking loose. Things were mighty stirred up, and part of that had to do with the coming blue moon.

The other part had to do with that girl in the graveyard, the one who stared a little too long at the grave of Rachel Faye Hartley.

“You’ll be joining her soon enough,” Sylva whispered to the laurel thicket around her. “If Ephram will let you, that is.”

The sun was sinking by the time Anna climbed back over the fence, full of vinegar for such a sick person. Anna didn’t know the old ways, was weak in the power of charms and such. The girl wouldn’t understand the power of the healing roots, bone powder, and special ways of spelling. But maybe the talent was only buried in her, not lost forever. Because blood ran thick, thicker than water. And magic ran through tunnels of the soul, Ephram always said.

But Ephram was a liar.

Both before and after he died.

A screech owl hooted, a sound as lonely as a night winter wind. Sign of death, for one to hoot during daylight. But lately signs of death were everywhere, coming at all hours. Sylva said a spell of safe passage and slipped into the woods, hurrying home as best she could before the sun kissed the edge of the mountains.

CHAPTER 22

“Honey?”

Spence pounded on the typewriter keys, pretending not to hear her.

“Jeff?” Bridget put a hand on his shoulder.

He stopped typing and looked up. “You know not to bother me when I’m working.”

“But you didn’t even come to bed last night.”

He hated the plaintive note in her voice, her eagerness to please. He despised her concern. Mostly, he was annoyed by the distraction.

“I hope the typewriter didn’t keep you awake.” He didn’t really care whether it had or not. He was making progress, chasing the elusive Muse, and that was all that mattered.

“No, it’s not that,” Bridget said. “You just need your rest.”

“There will be plenty of time for rest after I’m dead. But at the moment, I’m feeling particularly and effusively alive. So be a dear and let me continue.”

“But you missed lunch. That’s not like you.”

Spence wondered if that was some kind of barb at his weight. But Bridget never criticized. She hadn’t the imagination to attack with words. Spence was the reigning master of that genre.

“It’s also unlike me to interrupt my work to have a little romantic chat,” he said, then stretched his vowels out in his Ashley Wilkes accent. “Now, why don’t y’all make like Scahlett and get yosef gone with the wind?”

“Don’t be mean, honey. I’m only trying to help. I want you to be happy. And I know you’re only happy when you’re working on something.”

“Then make me ecstatic,” he said. “Leave.”

A small sob caught in Bridget’s throat. Spence ignored it, already turning his attention back to the half-finished page and the thirty other pages stacked beside the Royal. He would do some revision, he knew, but it was excellent work. His best in many years. And he didn’t want it to end.

The door opened and he called to Bridget without looking. “I’ll see you at dinner,” he lied.

The door closed softly. Spence smiled to himself. She didn’t have enough self-esteem to slam the door in anger. She would be apologizing by this evening, thinking the little scene was all her fault.

She was by far the most enjoyable of Spence’s corruptions, out of all the English majors and married professors and young literary agents and assistant editors who thought they’d fallen in love with him. But, in the end, they were nothing, just meaningless stacks of bones, scaffolds to prop him up when the loneliness was unbearable. When he was working and working well, he needed no one’s love but his own.

“And yours, of course,” Spence said to the portrait of Korban, lest his creative benefactor frown.

Spence picked up the manuscript and began reading. The grace of the language, the tight sentence structure, the powerful description were all superb. He’d never been shy about patting himself on the back, but now he had topped even his own lofty literary standards. He would shame them all, from Chaucer to Keats to King.

He didn’t question the origin of the words. That was a mystery best left to those whose livelihood was derived from the scholarly vivisection of the humanities. But he’d never before written with such ease as he had last night and today.

Automatic writing. That’s what it felt like.

What Spence always called, during those few occasions when the ink flowed so freely, “ghostwriting.” As if the paper and typewriter themselves were sucking words out of the air. As if his fingers knew the next word before his brain did. As if he were not even there.

Appropriate to the manuscript, to call it ghostwritten, he thought. It had a Gothic feel, somewhat darker than the southern-flavored literature that had once made him the darling of New York. And then there was the protagonist, the handsome, bearded, and odd man whose name he still hadn’t decided upon. That was strange, to be so far along in the manuscript and not even know the main character’s name.

He caught himself looking, for the tenth time, at the painting of Korban that hung on the wall above the desk. Then he closed his eyes. After a moment, he resumed ghostwriting.

CHAPTER 23

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“A thumping sound.”

Adam strained his ears. Paul was probably just being paranoid. He had slipped outside and smoked a joint after dinner. Paul was two things when he was stoned: paranoid and horny.

“Probably that fat writer banging his chippy in the room below us,” Adam said.

“If it is, they’re the most uncoordinated couple in the history of the human race. Quickest, too.”

“All I care about right now is us,” Adam said, resting his head on Paul’s shoulder. “Thanks for the good time.”

“No, thank you.”

“And I promise not to bring up the subject of adoption for at least a week.”

“You just brought it up.”

Paul. “Forget I said anything.”

Adam pulled the covers up to his chin and curled his body against Paul’s warmth. Adam was afraid he’d have trouble sleeping. The mountaintop estate was too quiet for a city boy, and Adam had never experienced such near-total darkness. He still missed the bright lights, traffic, and aggravation.

“Do you feel like getting out the radio?” he asked.

“Did you bring batteries?”

“Yeah. Figured we might need a little contact with the outside world. The radio’s in my bag.”

“I’d have to crawl over you to get it.”

“I won’t bite.”

“I’m too tired, anyway. ‘Fagged,’ as that phony-assed photographer would say.”

“You just drank too much wine, that’s all. And you know what pot does to you.”

“Tonight was for fun. Tomorrow, I’m going to be working again.”

Adam collected the radio, brought it back to bed, and switched it on. He twisted the dial, switched bands from FM to AM. Nothing but weird static. “I guess radio waves get blocked by the mountains.”

“Or else cool-freaky pop gets censored up here.”

They lay for a moment in the darkness. The house was still and hushed. The embers had grown low in the fireplace, and Adam didn’t feel like fumbling for a match to light the oil lamp on the bedside table.

“I’ve been thinking,” Paul said.

“News flash. Stop the presses.”

Paul elbowed Adam in the ribs. Adam tickled him in return.

“But seriously,” Paul said. “I’m thinking of doing a documentary on this place.”

“This place?”

“Korban Manor. It’s pretty unique, and I could get a lot of scenic footage. Ephram Korban’s history sounds pretty interesting, too. An industrialist with a God complex.”

“A historical documentary?”

“Something like that?”

“What about all the footage you’ve already shot, all those weeks in the Adirondacks and the Alleghenies?”

“I’ll keep it in the can. I can use it anytime.”

“I don’t know, Paul. The grant people might get upset. After all, you signed on for an Appalachian nature documentary.”

“To hell with the grant committees. I do what I want.”

Paul was pulling his Orson Welles bit. Even in the dark, Adam could visualize the famous “Paul pout.”

So what if Paul spent months on footage, and still had weeks of postproduction, editing, and scripting left? Those were only technical details. Paul wanted to be the artist, the posturing auteur, the brash visionary. Stubbornly refusing to sell out.

No matter the cost.

But Adam wasn’t in the mood to argue. Not after the good time they’d just had.

“Why don’t you sleep on it, and we can talk about it in the morning?” Adam stroked one of Paul’s well-developed biceps. Lugging a twenty-pound camera and battery belt through the mountains all summer had really toned him up.

“I mean, this is like an alien world or something,” Paul said. “No electricity, people living like they did a hundred years ago. And the servants, all of them still live here, like serfs around the castle.”

Adam was drifting off despite Paul’s excitement. “Uh-huh,” he mumbled.

He must have fallen asleep, because he was standing on a tower, the wind blowing through his hair, dark trees swaying below him—

No, it wasn’t a tower. He recognized the grounds of the manor. He was on top of the house, on that little flat space marked off by the white railing—now what had the maid called it? Oh, yeah, the widow’s walk—and Adam found himself climbing over the rail and looking down at the stone walkway sixty feet below, and the clouds told him to jump, he felt a hand on his back, pushing, then he was flying, falling, the wind shook him, why—

“Adam! Wake up.” Paul was shaking his shoulder. Paul had sat up in bed, the blankets around his waist. A decent amount of time must have passed, because a little moonlight leaked through the window.

“What is it?” Adam was still groggy from the dream and the after-dinner drinks.

Paul pointed toward the door, his eyes wide and wet in the dimness. “I saw something. A woman, I think. All dressed in white. She was white.”

“This is the southern Appalachians, Paul. Everybody’s white.” Adam shook away the fragments of the nightmare.

“No, it wasn’t like that. She was see-through.”

Adam gave a drowsy snort. “That’s what happens when you smoke Panamanian orange-hair. It’s a wonder you didn’t see the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover in drag.”

“I’m not joking, Adam.”

Adam put a hand on Paul’s chest. His boyfriend’s heart was pounding.

“Get back under the covers,” Adam said. “You must have fallen asleep and had a weird dream. I think I had one myself.”

Paul lay back down, his breathing rapid and shallow. Adam opened his eyes momentarily to see Paul staring at the ceiling. “No drinks or smoke tomorrow, okay?”

There was a stretch of silence, one that only a noise-polluted New Yorker could truly appreciate. Finally Paul said, “I told you I’d be working.”

Adam knew that tone. They’d argued enough for one vacation. Adoption, Paul’s video, his drug use. And now Paul was seeing things. Adam suddenly wondered if their relationship would survive six weeks at Korban Manor.

He turned his back on Paul and burrowed into the pillows.

“She had flowers,” Paul said.

CHAPTER 24

Mason’s hands ached. Sawdust and wood shavings were scattered around his feet. Wood chips had worked their way down the tops of his tennis shoes and dug into the skin around his ankles. He tossed his chisel and mallet on the table and stood back to look at the piece.

He had worked in a fever, not thinking about which grain to follow, which parts to excise, where to cut. He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his flannel shirt. The room had grown warmer. The candles had long since melted away, and the oil was low in the base of the lantern. He must have worked for hours, but the soreness in his limbs was the only evidence of passing time.

Except for the bust before him on the table.

He’d never attempted a bust before. He brought the lantern closer, examining the sculpture with a critical eye. He could find no flaws, no features that were out of proportion. Even the curves of the earlobes were natural and lifelike, the eyebrows etched with a delicate awl. The sculpture was faithful to its subject.

TOO faithful, Mason thought. I’m nowhere near good enough to produce this caliber of work. I’ve had successes along the way. But this . . . Jesus Henry Christ on a crutch, I couldn’t do Korban’s face this well if I’d KNOWN the old geezer.

But it was Korban’s head on the table, the Korban that filled the giant oil paintings upstairs, the same face that hung above the fireplace in Mason’s room. Most amazing of all was that the eyes had power, just as they did in the portraits. That was ridiculous, though. These eyes were maple, dead wood.

Still . . .

It was almost as if the figure had life. As if the true heart of the wood had always been this shape, as if the bust had always existed but had been imprisoned in the tree. The face had been caged, and Mason had merely inserted the key and opened the door.

He shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t have any idea where you came from,” he said to the bust, “but you’re going to make the critics love me.”

The love of the critics meant success, and that meant money. Success meant he’d never have to step foot in another textile mill as long as he lived, he wouldn’t have to blow chunks of gray lint out of his nose at every break, he wouldn’t have to wait for a bell to tell him when to take a leak or buy a Snickers bar or race the other lint-heads to the parking lot at quitting time. Sure, he still had years of carving ahead, but success started with a single big break.

He was already planning a corporate commission, the gravy train for artists. He’d buy Mama a house, get her some advanced text-reading software and an expensive computer, and then find all the other ways to pay her back for the years of handicap and hardship. Best of all, he could make her smile.

Or maybe he was being suckered by the Dream Image, the high that came after completing a work. He still had to treat the wood, do the fine sanding and polishing. A hundred things could still go wrong. Even as dry as the maple had been after years in the forest, the wood could split and crack.

Mason rubbed his shoulder. His clothes were damp from sweat. The weariness that had been building under the surface now crested and crashed like a wave. Even though he was tired, he felt too excited to sleep. He took one last look at the bust of Korban, then covered his work with an old canvas drop cloth he’d found in the corner.

The first red rays of dawn stabbed through the ground-level windows. Mason’s stubble itched. Back in his old life, he’d be on his third cup of coffee by now, waiting on the corner for Junior Furman’s pickup to haul him to work. The start of another day that was like a thousand other days.

Mason traced his way back across the basement, ducking under the low beams and stepping around the stacks of stored furniture. He finally found the stairs and went up to the main floor. The smell of bacon, eggs, and biscuits drifted from the east wing, and kitchenware clanged in some distant room. Mason’s stomach growled. An older couple passed him in the hall, steam rising from their ceramic coffee cups. They nodded a wary greeting. Mason realized he probably looked bleary-eyed and unkempt, like an escaped lunatic who’d broken into the medicine cabinet.

When Mason reached his room, he looked at the painting of Korban again, marveling at how closely his sculpture resembled that stern face. But the face seemed a little less stern this morning. And the eyes had taken on a little more light—

Don’t be bloody DAFT, he chided himself in William Roth’s accent.

Mason took a long, hot shower, then lay in bed as dawn sneaked through the cracks in the curtains. In his mind’s tired eye, he saw Korban’s face, then that dissolved away and he saw Anna. Then his mother, features worn, made even sadder by the pathetic light of hope that somehow still shone in her diseased eyes. Then he pictured Miss Mamie, with her haughty lips. Ransom, clutching his warding charm. Korban, dark pupils holding wretched secrets. Anna, soft and somehow vulnerable, harboring her own secrets.

Korban. His mother. The bust. Anna.

Miss Mamie. Ransom.

KorbanAnnaMissMamieAnnaKorban.

Anna.

He decided he liked Anna’s face best, and thought of her until he slept and dreamed of wood.

CHAPTER 25

Anna woke before the first rooster’s crow broke the black silence. Across the room, Cris rolled over in her sleep. The darkness behind Anna’s closed eyes wasn’t as total as the room’s darkness. Streaks of blue and red flared across the back of her eyelids.

She slipped into her robe and went into the bathroom. The antique plumbing used gravity to flush the toilets, and the water pressure was inconsistent, though the central heating ensured plenty of hot water. She lit a globed lantern before extinguishing her flashlight, then stepped into the shower and turned the taps.

Under the dull drumming of the water, she forgot the pain in her abdomen. She hadn’t dreamed last night, though the questions had swirled around and around as she spun down the drain of sleep.

Where was her ghost? Who was Rachel Faye Hartley? Why was Miss Mamie so curious about Anna’s “gift”? How much time did she have left? What would happen after that time expired?

And the biggie: would anyone even care?

She peeled back the shower curtain and wrapped a towel around her. The room had grown colder, and with the water turned off, the steam hung heavy on her skin. It coated the mirror above the sink, and though she wasn’t in the mood to gauge the darkness of the circles beneath her eyes, she wanted to make sure she could pass for hale and hearty.

She was about to reach up with a corner of the towel to wipe the mirror when the room grew even colder, as if a wind had crept through the crack beneath the door. Her blurred face in the mirror breathed mist.

Then the water collecting on the mirror ran in streaks, and Anna didn’t believe her eyes. Because even somebody who saw ghosts didn’t see things like this.

Letters formed, as if drawn by the tip of an invisible finger, the symbols silver in the soft glow of the lamp: G-O.

Anna saw her own wide eyes reflected in the word, as the second set of letters etched itself against the surface of the mirror: O-U-T.

“Go out?” Anna whispered, now that her mind translated the symbols into words.

Was this a message of some sort? From whom? Go out from where? Did something want her out of the house?

But another word was forming, even as the steam threatened to turn to ice and shivers stretched her skin tight.

F-R-O-S-T just above the rim of the mirror.

Anna fought down a breath, though her lungs were like frozen stones. Then the letters blurred, the cold steam collected and ran down the smooth glass in rivulets, and the words were gone.

“Go out frost,” Anna said.

She toweled quickly and hurried back into the room to stoke the fire.

CHAPTER 26

“It’s going to be beautiful.”

Miss Mamie gazed lovingly at the bust that Mason had carved. The sculptor was gifted. Ephram had chosen well. But Ephram had always chosen well, in love, in life, and now in death.

“Mr. Jackson worked late,” Lilith said, holding the lantern higher so the light caught the angles of Korban’s hewn features. “He won’t be down for a while.”

Miss Mamie ached to fondle Korban’s face, but she didn’t dare risk drawing any of its energy away. That wasn’t for her. That was for Ephram. She would touch him again soon enough. The blue moon was only two nights away.

Lilith went to the corner of the studio space and lifted an oil painting. “This was my favorite,” she said.

“Put that down. You’re done with painting. And so is he. Know your place.”

Lilith returned the painting to the shadows. Lilith was just another servant, another tool that helped build Ephram’s bridge back into this world. But Lilith’s spirit still hung in the air, an echo of the dreams she had created, dreams that fed Ephram and fueled his sleeping soul. She was like the others, too hungry for her own return, too obsessed with her own escape from the tunnel.

She didn’t know that she would never escape.

“You may go now,” Miss Mamie said. “Help see to lunch. I’ll be along shortly.”

Lilith took another forlorn look at the painting.

As if she would ever be as gifted an artist as Ephram.

Oh, Lilith had tried, she’d sacrificed, but she was just starting to learn the basics when she’d drowned in the pond below the barn. Her tunnel of the soul always led back here, to this dark basement where she had once dared to create.

Lilith climbed the stairs and closed the basement door.

They were alone.

“Oh, Ephram,” Miss Mamie said to the bust. “It’s better than I ever dreamed.”

The maple flexed and stretched, the eyes twitched between their wooden lids. Then the lips parted. “Yes. The fit is rather nice.”

She squatted so that she was at eye level with him. She stroked the rough cheek, ran the back of her hand along the engraved beard.

“It’s working,” she whispered. “Just as you said.”

The stiff brow lifted. “It’s going to take a little getting used to. Soon, Margaret, my love, I’ll have arms to hold you again. Hands to paint with, eyes to see the world anew, legs to walk beside you. But the sculptor must work harder. I need to be finished in time.”

“I’ll make him start this evening.” She wondered what those arms would be like, once Mason Jackson finished the life-sized statue. They might be crude and clumsy. But even wearing wooden flesh was better than being trapped in the damp stone, bleak walls, and cold glass of the manor. Ephram could eventually use his magic to soften the wood, tame it, and make it tender.

He was gaining power as the blue moon approached. She could sense it, as if he were a bed of embers on the edge of erupting into hot flame. He was summoning his fetches, those who had died under his spell, those who feared the dark slithery things in the tunnels of their souls. He ate their dreams and fed them fear. And she had helped by carving their poppets, which were hidden away in that old cabin on Beechy Gap, and their souls could never leave the mountain.

“Soon,” Miss Mamie said, the word like an ache, a long promise.

This was the end of decades of waiting, of dark deeds and death, of plotting, stealing, enslaving. Time was nothing to Ephram, but Miss Mamie still clung to the impatience of mortality. Possession worked both ways, its tug equally strong on the living and the dead.

Ephram’s wooden lips pressed together, then stretched into a smile. “It weakens me to leave the walls.”

“You’ll be whole again. Two more nights.”

“And Anna?”

“She’s weak. Dying.”

“Ah. Sweet dreams.”

The bust grimaced, eyes closed, forehead creased in concentration. “Make him finish me,” Ephram said with effort.

“Mr. Jackson has passion,” Miss Mamie said. “He loves you. He worships you. He wants to please you.”

“He worships only the flesh of his work. But no matter. His spirit is mine.”

“We all belong to you. They dream of you.”

“As they should.”

“And after you’ve lured Sylva to the manor—”

“You’re not to mention her name.” The bust’s eyes opened, flickering in bands of orange and red. She cringed, waiting for Ephram to punish her, give her back the years, steal away the gift of youth. She knelt, head bowed, tears streaming down her face.

“Do you know why I’ve never led you through your tunnel of the soul?” Ephram said, voice cold, long dead, and almost weary.

Miss Mamie wiped her eyes and sniffed in hope. “Because you love me?”

That was the only dream worth having, the only dream that would last beyond death. Love absolved them of evil, made the killings and the soul tricks and the torture of dead things all worthy and noble. Love forgave what God could not.

Ephram’s laughter was abrupt and harsh, crowding the stale air of the basement. She looked into his cruel, hot eyes.

“No, no, no,” he said, more comfortable now in the wood, seeping into the angles and grooves and shaved spaces until it was his face. “I spare you because I need you. You’re the one person I know will never betray me.”

Sylva had betrayed him, though Miss Mamie wasn’t going to remind him. His anger at Sylva might become misplaced again, as it so often did. But Miss Mamie might find out the one thing that bothered her, if she asked the right questions.

“I have to know,” she said, breathless, the room stifling. “Do you love me the most?”

The bust sighed. Miss Mamie wondered if a dead man was capable of lying. No, not Ephram. He never lied, and he always kept his promises.

“Margaret, there is only you. Forever. Why do you think I’ve lingered here, chained my soul to this house with you?”

If only she could be certain. But a house of love wasn’t built on a foundation of doubt. “Then why have you kept Sylva alive, too?”

Silence filled the basement, the shadows waiting impatiently at the edge of the lantern’s glow. She had only dared challenge him because she knew, with the blue moon approaching, that Ephram needed her more than ever. And she wanted them to possess each other, mind, body, and spirit. No secrets.

“I kept her old,” Ephram said. “And I’ve never brought her into my heart. There’s only room for you here, on the inside, the dead side. And soon, when I have legs, we will walk both sides, together.”

Miss Mamie blinked back tears. How could she have doubted him?

She couldn’t help herself, she leaned closer, held her face against the wood, scorched her skin against her lover’s searing lips.

Then he was gone, back into the walls where the fire could warm his soul.

CHAPTER 27

Mason woke just in time to miss lunch. His mouth felt as if it had a dirty sock stuck in it. Someone had stoked the fire while he’d slept. He dressed in his other pair of jeans and a plain red flannel shirt. He thought about the sculpture as he brushed his teeth, wondering if he’d really finished it in a single night.

His studied his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Dark wedges haunted the flesh under his eyes. He wasn’t used to keeping odd hours. He usually followed the “slow and steady” theory of work, but he’d never before been swept up in such a creative storm as he had while fashioning the bust. No wonder so many of the so-called true visionaries crashed and burned at an early age.

“Oh yeah, I’m a real visionary, all right,” he said to his bleary reflection. “Double visionary.”

His reflection shimmered a little and he rubbed his eyes. A wave of dizziness struck him and he reached out to balance himself. One hand gripped the sink and the other pressed against the mirror. The glass was warm beneath his palm. For the briefest of moments, Mason saw the bust he’d sculpted instead of his own reflection, then the hallucination passed. Mason frowned and splashed some water on his face. It was bad enough seeing Korban everywhere on canvas, but if the bastard was going to swim nonstop before his eyes, then maybe Mason needed a break. Or a shrink.

The upper floors were quiet. Walking down the stairs, he heard clattering noises rising from what he figured was the kitchen. Maids had carried food through the door to the left of the stairs. He wondered if anybody would mind if he ducked in for a snack.

Mason poked his head through the swiveled door. A plump, dour woman wrestled with a cast-iron skillet at the sink. A froth of soap bubbles clung to one cheek.

“Hey there,” Mason said. “Is it okay if I grab a quick sandwich?”

She glared at him, through him. He looked over his shoulder. When he looked back, she gave a terse nod to a counter by the stove. A loaf of homemade bread sat on a cutting board, three or four white slices stacked to the side.

Most of lunch had been cleared up and put away, but the odor of fried trout still hung in the air. Mason passed a long cookstove with its thick metal grill. There was a door on each side for stoking wood, and a wide door in the middle for a baking oven. A smaller stove stood off near the corner, its pipe running up and making an elbow through the wall. Mason marveled that anyone could cook at all on these primitive appliances, much less create feasts lavish enough for the manor’s pampered guests.

Mason picked up two slices of bread. “Anything to put between these?”

The cook glowered and wiped a butcher knife with her towel. “There, in the icebox,” she said in a thick Bavarian accent, pointing the knife toward what looked like a squat highboy with doors instead of drawers.

Mason opened one of the doors, and cool air wafted over his face. On the metal shelves were some eggs in a basket, a thick wheel of cheese, a pitcher of cream, a boned chunk of cooked ham, and assorted fruits and vegetables. A block of ice sat on the highest shelf, its corners rounded from melting. Water dripped into a catch pan at the bottom of the icebox.

Mason pulled out the cheese and ham and placed them on the counter, then took a small knife from a wooden holder. He cut a couple of slices from each, then stacked them on a piece of bread. He could feel the cook’s eyes on his back.

“Don’t worry, I’ll clean up after myself.” Mason’s smile evoked no change in her hard eyes. He pulled a couple of leaves from a head of iceberg lettuce, added it to the sandwich, topped it with bread, and mashed the whole thing flat.

“That’s how we do it down in Sawyer Creek,” he said, taking a bite.

The cook frowned and returned to the dirty dishes. That’s when Mason saw the painting on the wall above the door. Another portrait of Korban. This one done in deep shadows, those eyes as cold as in all the other paintings. Was there a room in the house that didn’t have that man’s unrelenting scowl?

A coffeepot rested on the small cookstove. Ceramic coffee mugs hung from hooks on a rack near the sink. Mason stepped around the counter and reached for one.

“Pardon me,” he said, as the cook flinched. Mason lost his balance, still groggy from his cheated sleep. He put out his hand to avoid falling into her.

When he touched her shoulder, she gave a screech and dropped a plate. It shattered on the floor. Mason stepped back and looked at his hand.

No. That couldn’t have happened.

The door swiveled open and Miss Mamie entered the room. She wore a bulldog mask of disapproval.

“Sorry, it was my fault,” Mason said. He was about to add that he’d be happy to pay for the broken dish, then remembered that he didn’t have any money.

“Gertrude?” Miss Mamie said. Her eyes seemed to grow even darker as the cook’s face paled. The cook glanced at the portrait of Korban above the sink.

“No, really, it was me,” Mason said. “I was just getting a cup—”

“Guests normally aren’t allowed in the kitchen area, Mr. Jackson, for reasons I’m sure you’ll understand.”

“Uh, sure. I was just leaving.” He collected his sandwich and made for the door.

“Back to work now, Gertrude,” Miss Mamie said. The cook immediately plunged her arms into the soapy dishwater, too afraid to stop long enough to sweep up the shards of broken ceramic.

Miss Mamie held the swivel door open so Mason could pass, then followed him into the hall. “How do you like working in the basement?” she asked, once again cheerful, as if the incident in the kitchen had never happened.

“It’s perfect,” Mason said, continuing down the hall, still uneasy. “It’s private, with enough room so I can swing my elbows around, and the walls and floor are insulated so I don’t have to worry about bothering anybody.”

“Lovely,” she said. “Master Korban would be pleased.”

“Stays a little warm down there, though.”

“Well, we simply must keep the central fire going. We pride ourselves on having hot water available twenty-four hours a day.”

“Sure, I understand. It’s not intolerable or anything. The worst part is that I get all sweaty and stinky, and I wouldn’t want to scare off the other guests.”

“That’s why we have the hot water, Mr. Jackson.”

Mason had reached the door to the basement. He had to go down there and see if he had actually sculpted the bust of Korban or if the night before had been a dream. He wondered if Miss Mamie was going to follow him down.

“Well, I’ll see you at dinner, I reckon,” he said, waiting by the door.

She put a cold hand on his arm. “You’ll be getting some more wood this evening, won’t you? I’ll have Ransom hook up the wagon.”

“Well, I need to finish something first.”

“Oh, I thought you were going to do a life-sized piece.”

Mason searched his memory. Had he mentioned such a thing? A human figure? Had he even thought about it? Maybe his big dream images were getting so oversized that he was babbling about them before he could even get started.

“Yeah, I was thinking of something like that,” he said.

“You’re going to be successful. But you have to have the fire. Master Korban always said hard work is its own reward. You know what they say about idle hands.”

Mason held up the hand that wasn’t holding the sandwich. “Well, I’d better get to work, then.”

Miss Mamie wore a look of anticipation as he reached for the doorknob. Mason didn’t want to show anyone the work until he was sure it was finished.

“And I’ll get up with Ransom about that wood,” he said, slipping through the door. He closed it behind him, stumbling a little in the dark. By the time he’d inched his way down the steps, his eyes had adjusted to the daylight trickling through the small, high windows.

He reached the workbench and lifted the drop cloth. From the table, Korban stared back at him.

No, not Korban. Just a highly detailed replica.

But for just a moment . . .

Easy, guy. You’re just a little short of sleep, is all.

Then Mason looked down at his hand, remembering how it had felt when it had touched the cook. When it had passed through the cook.

Remembering how his hand had sunk into her flesh as if she were made of soggy, store-bought white bread. Remembering how his hand had burned.

Okay, so you’re more than just a little short of sleep. You must have hit yourself in the head with the mallet last night.

Maybe hunger was the culprit. He took another bite of his sandwich.

Yeah, hunger. He’d better fatten up during his stay. There might be lean days ahead.

Unless he kept producing work like this.

The sculpture was solid proof of his ability. Fine, lifelike detail. Each eyelash defined. The lips set in a soft sneer between the thick mustache and beard, ready to part in speaking. Even when he turned away, he felt as if the eyes were following him.

He found an old broom in the corner and swept the wood shavings into a pile near the corner. Then he saw the oil painting where he’d left it leaning against the cabinet. He’d forgotten to ask Miss Mamie about it.

Mason picked up the finished view of the house. He held it high so he could admire the brushstrokes in daylight. Yes, beautiful, if only the artist had fixed that little smudge.

The smudge had grown larger since the night before. The gray area had stretched wide enough to cover two balusters of the railing.

It must have been a flaw in the paint. But Mason had never heard of oil paint deteriorating so rapidly. Though thoroughly dried, the paint was far from ancient.

Or maybe this was all in his imagination.

The incredible expanding stain, Ransom and his charms, Anna and her hints of ghosts, the creepy Lilith, the insubstantial cook. Sure, he could chalk all those odd things up to his imagination. But better to blame that good old standby, the all-time fave.

Stress.

Because this was it, the last hurrah, the whole enchilada, the really big shew, the last grab for the brass ring. The last big dream. Because if he didn’t produce here, it was back to the textile mills, probably for good.

And THAT would make Mama proud, wouldn’t it? After all her sacrifice.

Mason finished his sandwich, even though he’d lost his appetite. This bust couldn’t be his masterpiece. Miss Mamie was right. Bigger was better.

CHAPTER 28

“Did you get any footage this morning?” Adam leaned against the bureau and folded his arms.

Paul put away his camera. “I have to save my batteries. I only have four. That gives me about eight hours of juice. And there’s no way to recharge them out here.”

Adam watched Paul stack the equipment in the closet. His partner had a cute body, he had to admit. But Adam sometimes wondered if their relationship was built on anything besides the physical. Paul liked Times Square, and the place gave Adam the creeps. Paul liked coffeehouses and parties, and Adam liked curling up on the sofa with a good book. When it came right down to it, Paul was late-night MTV and Adam was weekend VH1.

And there was the issue of adoption. Adam was ready to raise a child, to share the wealth of love in his heart. He had plenty of money from his inheritance. Enough to pay the adoption fees and lawyers, enough for the courts to be satisfied that Adam had that most-desired parental quality: that Adam would be able to afford whatever outrageously expensive toy was trendy each Christmas, so the child wouldn’t grow up as a social outcast, snubbed by peers and forever despised by advertisers.

Adam was afraid in some small part of himself that he only wanted a child to tie Paul down. Paul was a bit of a free spirit, and even unknowingly hurt Adam by going on a weeklong cruise with an older man before Adam had mustered the courage to share his feelings. Paul had been faithful since, but Adam wondered if perhaps the right temptation had never arisen. In fact, he thought maybe you couldn’t even call it “faith” until that faith had survived a test.

“What do you want to do tonight?” Paul said. “Go down for drinks?”

“You could have joined me for lunch.”

“Look, we don’t have to spend every damned second together, do we?”

Adam didn’t answer, because something shifted in the mirror, a flicker cast by the fireplace.

“What’s wrong?” Paul said.

Adam rubbed his eyes. “Nothing. I’m just a little messed up, I guess.”

Paul grinned. “Oh yeah. Maybe you saw the woman in white. And you thought I was lying.”

“Too many other weird things are happening. I just saw—”

“Saw what?”

“I don’t know. Just the reflection of the painting. I feel like . . . like everything’s going out of control. I mean, we’re fighting all the time, and I’m supposed to care about your stupid video when you won’t even listen to a word I say. And this place, it’s getting on my nerves.”

“Come on, this is only our third day here.”

“And these problems are supposed to just go away?”

Paul’s face clenched in anger. “I don’t have time for this right now. In fact, I never have time for these pointless arguments. All you want to do is talk in circles.”

“Look, I don’t mind paying for this vacation, but I thought you were going to be working on your project—”

“Oh, here we go with that crap again. You and your money.”

Adam was on the verge of tears. Paul scorned tears and would say Adam was being a silly little girl. And Paul would say it with the smug superiority of someone whose emotions were always in check. Except the emotion of anger.

“Oh, Princess,” Paul said, coming to him, hugging him. “Did someone upset the tea cart? Do you need another forty mattresses so you won’t feel the pea?”

“Go away.” Adam pushed Paul’s arms from around his waist. “You bastard.”

Adam’s vision blurred from rage. This was crazy. He never lost control like this.

“Fine, Princess,” Paul said. “Don’t bother waiting up for me.”

Adam sat on the bed as the door slammed. He wished they’d never come to Korban Manor. He stood and grabbed the bedstead, then started pulling the twin beds apart. When he had them in separate corners of the room, he looked up at the portrait of Korban.

“Paul can have the woman in white, and I’ll have you.”

The fire roared its approval.

CHAPTER 29

The horses were beautiful, sleek, their muscles bunched in grace. No wonder they were Anna’s favorite animals. Once, before the fatalistic oncology report, she had dreamed of owning a stable and boarding horses. But that dream was as fleeting and insubstantial as all the others, whether the dream was of Korban Manor, Stephen, or her own ghost.

She heard an off-key whistle, what sounded like an attempt at “Yankee Doodle,” and turned to see Mason walking down the road toward the barn. He waved and stopped beside her at the fence, then looked across the pasture as if watching a movie projected against the distant mountains.

“So, how’s the ghost-hunting going?” he asked.

She didn’t need this. Stephen was bad enough. At least Stephen believed in ghosts, though his ghosts had energy readings instead of souls. But Mason was just another self-centered loser, probably a blind atheist, cocksure that nothing existed after breath ceased. Atheists were far more proselytizing and smug than any Christian Anna had ever met.

“You know something?” she said. “People like you deserve to be haunted.”

Mason spread his arms in wounded resignation. “What did I say?”

“You don’t have to say it with words. Your eyes say plenty. Your eyes say, ‘What a lovable flake. She’s bound to be impressed by a great artist such as myself, and it’s only a matter of time before she falls into my bed.’”

“You must have me confused with William Roth.”

“Sorry,” she said, knowing she was taking her frustration and anger out on a relatively innocent bystander. But no one was completely innocent. “I’m just a little unraveled at the moment.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Yeah. Like you’d understand.”

“Look, I’ve seen you taking your long walks, sneaking out at night with your flashlight. So you like to be alone. That’s fine. So do I. But if weird things are happening to me, they’re probably happening to you, too. Maybe even worse stuff, because no way in hell would I go out there in the dark.” Mason nodded to the forest that, even with the explosion of autumn’s colors, appeared to harbor fast and sharp shadows.

“What weird things are you talking about? I thought you were a skeptic.”

“Ah. I figured I’d arouse your scientific curiosity, if nothing else. Have you seen George around?”

“George?”

Mason moved closer, lowering his voice as if to deter an invisible eavesdropper. “How long does somebody have to be dead before he becomes a ghost?”

Anna looked at Korban Manor through the trees, at the widow’s walk with its thin white railing, where her dream figure had stood under the moonlight. “Maybe it happens before they’re even dead.”

“Okay. How about this one? Can you be haunted by something inside your own head? Because I’m seeing Ephram Korban every time I close my eyes, I see him in the mirror, I see him in the fireplace, my hands carve his goddamned face even when I tell them to work on something else.”

“I think the shrinks call it ‘obsessive-compulsive disorder.’ But that describes every artist I’ve ever known. And ninety-nine percent of all human males.”

“Hey, we’re not all assholes. And I wish you’d get off your personal vendetta against everybody who has a dream. Some artists are normal people who just happen to make things because we can’t figure out how in the hell to communicate with people.”

“And some of us are normal people who search for proof of the afterlife because this life sucks in so many ways and humans always disappoint us. Ghosts are easier to believe in than most of the people I’ve met.”

“Truce, then. Obviously we’re both crazy as hell. For a minute there, I was afraid we didn’t have anything in common.”

That brought an unfamiliar smile to Anna’s lips. “All right. Let’s start over. I guess you’ve heard all the ghost stories. About how Ephram Korban jumped to his death off the widow’s walk, though the best legends claim that one of the servants pushed him to his death because of the usual reasons.”

“What reasons are those?”

“Unrequited love or requited love. Why else would you want to kill somebody? And, according to gossip and even a few parapsychology articles, Korban’s spirit wanders the land, trying to find a way back into the manor in which he invested so much of his time, money, and energy.”

“You don’t believe it?”

The horses heard a call from the barn and took off at a gallop. “I wish I were that free,” she said. “Maybe I’ll get to be a horse in the next life.”

“The downside is you’d have to die first. Like Ephram Korban.”

“Well, he has a grave site up over that ridge, but a grave’s nothing but a hole in the ground. I haven’t seen his ghost.”

“You really think ghosts are here?”

“I know they’re here. When your life burns up, you leave a little smoke behind. And don’t ask me to prove it, or you’ll remind me of someone I’ve spent the past year forgetting.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Maybe I’ll ask Ransom to let me borrow one of his charm bags. Says they keep restless spirits away.”

“Can’t hurt,” Anna said. “I’m going down to the barn. Care to join me?”

“I’m heading there anyway. Miss Mamie has all but demanded that Ransom help me find a whopping big log to turn into a life-sized statue.”

“Ah, you poor suffering artists. Always having to please the critics.”

“You poor critics, always having to fake that world-class cynicism.”

By the time they reached the barn, Ransom had led the horses under an open shed built onto one wing of the barn. He hooked the cinch under the belly of the big roan, whose ears twitched as if this were a familiar game. Two lanterns blazed inside the barn, dangling from the dusty rafters. Leather straps and gleaming bits of metal hung along one wall, and four saddles were lined on a bench beneath the pieces of harness.

“Well, hello there, young’uns,” Ransom called in greeting. He looked a bit longer at Anna and glanced at the sky with a frown.

“Need any help?” Anna asked.

“Don’t need none, but I sure do like company. You know your way around a horse?”

“One end eats and the other doesn’t,” Mason said.

“And one end might kick you in the crotch, if you send off vibes of stupidity.” Anna rubbed the nose of the chestnut, and in seconds it was nuzzling her neck, blowing softly through its nostrils. If only she were that good with men. Back when she cared about such things, anyway. Or ghosts. It would be a welcome change for them to rush out of the land of the dead with open arms and a smile.

She snapped the reins on the bridle and fed the leather through the steel rings. “These guys are great,” she said to Ransom.

“They sure took a shine to you.”

“I was raised around horses once.”

“Once?” Mason asked.

“A long story, one of many,” she said.

“Watch out, Mason,” Ransom said. “A woman with secrets is generally bad news. Will you folks give me a hand hauling out the wagon?”

They headed for the interior of the barn, Ransom pausing to push the sliding wooden doors farther apart. He was about to step inside when he looked above the barn door and grabbed the rag-ball charm from around his neck. He waved it and closed his eyes, whispering something rhythmical that Anna couldn’t hear.

“Danged if they ain’t changed it again,” Ransom said. He rolled a wooden barrel to the door, climbed on it with trembling legs, then stood and turned the horseshoe that was nailed above the door. He hung it so that the prongs pointed up, toward the sky.

“Does the luck not work the other way?” Anna asked.

“That charm is a heck of a lot older than what you might reckon. It’s come to mean luck to most people, but signs get watered down and weakened ‘cause people forget the truth of them. Same as a four-leaf clover.”

“Sure, they’re magically delicious, like the cereal.”

“Used to be, it gave the person carrying it the power to see ghosts and witches. Back when people believed.”

Anna caught Mason’s look. “So points-down on the horseshoe is bad, right?”

“It’s practically throwing open the door to every kind of dead thing you care to imagine. I like for the dead to stay dead.” He again gave Anna that sad, distant look. “Too bad not everybody around these parts feels the same way.”

Mason helped Ransom down from the barrel. Anna tethered the horses to a locust post and followed the men inside the barn. Horse-drawn vehicles were lined against a side wall. The hay wagon stood nearest the door. Beside it were two sleighs, a surrey with its top folded down, and a fancy carriage with a lantern at each corner. All of the vehicles were restored and maintained in the kind of condition that would send antique dealers scrambling for their checkbooks. The aroma of cottonseed oil and leather fought with the hay dust for dominance of the barn’s air.

A large metal hay rake sat in the far corner, slightly red from rust. There was a single seat for the operator and a coupling in the front to yoke the draft animals. The large steel tines of the rake curled in the air like a claw.

“That’s a wicked-looking machine,” Mason said.

“Yep,” Ransom said, unblocking the wheels of the wagon. “That’s the windrower, that sharp part that looks like an overgrown pitchfork. And you can see the hay-cutter arm. Works by the turn of the wheels. We still do hay the hard way around here.”

“I’ll bet the horses love it,” Anna said.

“Yeah, and they’s smart enough to know they get to eat the hay, come winter.”

“You going to cut any while we’re here?” she asked, thinking how much fun it would be to help. Hard physical labor did wonders for the depressed and self-pitying mind. “Some of those meadows around here are getting pretty high.”

“We had to hold off for a while because the signs were in the heart.”

“The heart?”

“Ain’t a good time for cutting oats or wheat or any reaping crop. It’s a time fit only for the harvest of dead things.”

Mason cleared his throat and spat loudly. “Ugh. Hay dust choking me.” He looked at Anna and said, “Sorry for being crude. That’s the way we do it in Sawyer Creek.”

“In case you ain’t noticed, this ain’t Sawyer Creek,” Ransom said. He motioned them to go to the rear of the wagon and he picked up the tongue. “Throw your shoulders in, now.”

They maneuvered the wagon out the door and under the shed. As Anna and Ransom hitched the team, Mason explored the barn. A few minutes later, he poked his head outside. “Hey, what’s under the trapdoor?”

Ransom stroked the mane on the chestnut mare. “Taters, sweet taters, cabbage, apples, turnips. Root cellar for stuff that don’t need to be kept so cold.”

“Can I look?”

Ransom went to the bench and tugged on a pair of rough leather gloves. “Help yourself.”

Anna followed Mason to the corner of the barn, where the trapdoor was set in the floor between two stacks of hay bales.

“Got doors on the bottom floor, where the barn’s set against the hillside,” Ransom said. “We can haul from the orchards and gardens straight up to here, save a lot of handling. Then there’s a tunnel goes back to the Big House. Ephram Korban had it dug in case a blizzard struck or something. He was always going on about ‘tunnels of the soul,’ for some reason. I expect he was about half-crazy, if some of them legends are true.”

“Or maybe all the legends are true and he was all the way crazy,” Anna said.

Mason knelt and lifted the heavy wooden door. The cellar smelled of sweet must and earth, with a faint scent of rotted fruit. The darkness beneath had a weight, like black oil. A makeshift ladder led down into the seemingly bottomless depths.

“Ain’t much of interest down there,” Ransom said. “Unless you like to sit and talk to the rats.”

“Rats?” Mason let the door fall with a slam, knocking dust loose from the rafters. Anna fought a sneeze.

Ransom grinned, his sparse teeth yellow in the weak lamplight. “Rats as big around as your thigh.”

“I hate rats,” Mason said. “I grew up with them. Sounded like cavalry behind the walls of my bedroom. What I hate the most is those beady eyes, like they’re sizing you up.”

“Don’t worry,” Ransom said. “They get plenty to eat without having to gnaw on the guests.”

“Miss Mamie would probably scold them for having bad manners.”

Anna laughed. Maybe Mason wasn’t so bad. At least he wasn’t afraid to show weakness. Unlike her.

Mason stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. Something fluttered from the rafters and brushed Anna’s face, and she wiped at it as if it were cobwebs.

“Jesus, don’t tell me that was a bat,” Mason said, ducking. “Bats are nothing but rats with wings.”

“That was a bluebird,” Ransom said. “Lucky for you, young lady. If a bluebird flies in your path, it means you’re going to be kissed.”

“Great,” she said. “And I thought I earned my kisses by casting magic spells on unsuspecting men.”

“Believe what you want,” Ransom said. “I reckon you see through the signs better than anybody. Now, I’d best get on with the chores.”

Mason wiped his hands on an old horse blanket hanging from the rafters. “So, Ransom, do you have time to help me find an overgrown log that’s just right for statue-making?”

“Why do you think we hitched up the wagon? Miss Mamie always gets her way with things.”

“So I’m starting to find out.”

“Let’s get on before dark. Might have to go below Beechy Gap where we had a big windfall a few winters back. Want to come along, young lady?”

“No, thanks. I’ve got some chores of my own.”

“I reckon some things got to be done alone,” he said.

Anna wasn’t sure what to make of Ransom. He kept dropping hints, but a deep fear was hidden behind his eyes. Maybe he had secrets of his own. She waited until Mason and Ransom climbed up onto the buckboard seat, then she passed Ransom the reins.

“See you later tonight?” Mason asked her.

Anna felt the half smile on her face, and wasn’t sure which way she wanted the corners of her mouth to point. “We’ll see.”

Ransom flipped the reins and the team headed up the road, where the wide sandy ribbon threaded between the trees into the forest. She slid the barn doors closed, then looked up at the horseshoe.

It was points-down again.

Dead things come in.

She looked at the forest.

Under the fringe of shadowed underbrush, amid the laurel and locust and briars, the woman in white stood, the bouquet held out in challenge. The ghost stared at Anna like a mirror, then turned and drifted among the trees.

“All right, damn you,” Anna said. “I’ll play hide-and-seek with you.”

As she entered the forest, she wondered how you could ever catch up to your own ghost. And why it would hide from you in the first place. Ransom was right about one thing. A woman with secrets generally was bad news.

CHAPTER 30

And the night spread, seeping like warm oil over the hills, expanding, filling the valleys and rising up the gray Appalachian slopes. The night became an ocean, an ink-stained bloodbath. The night became the sky. The night became a mouth that swallowed the night before, all the previous nights, all the nights to come, the night—

Spence rattled on, fingers pounding the slick keys. He was an automaton now. There was no world, no room, no smell of lantern smoke and sweat and sweet Bridget nearby, only the glowing battlefield of the half-empty page. No outer night lurked beyond the window, only the night that came to life through words, the night that swelled and surged through his veins, that pumped darkness through his extremities, that burned in the ebony furnace of his heart.

He was dimly aware of the strand of drool running down one side of his cheek. He grinned, and the drool leaked onto his cotton shirt. The saliva was from another plane, a reality so flat and dull and senseless compared to the magical land unfolding beneath his keystrokes. His wrists ached and his fingers were stiff, eyes watering from strain, but those problems were of the flesh, and this work was of the Word.

The master, the paper, urged him on. Commanded him forward. Trumpeted reveille with a Joshua horn. Ordained him a god, albeit a lesser god.

Because he was a servant to the great god Word, the one true god. Word who giveth and taketh away, Word who gave his only begotten suffix so that Spence shall not perish but have everlasting metaphor, Word who spewed forth from burning bush and graven tablet and mighty cloud. In Word we trust.

A hand dropped on his shoulder, an intrusion from somewhere on that dreary plane of soil and substance. Ah, that must be the Muse, who was also slave to Word, made Word from dust and bit of bone, Muse who offered the fruit, Muse who served as adjective to his improper noun.

“Jeff,” she sang, and lovely was her music. He wanted to weep, but the tears would blur the glorious page. His page. And Spence’s moment of vanity broke the spell, angering the god who was Word.

He stopped typing and glanced around, blinking.

“Come to bed, honey,” Muse said. “You haven’t slept in thirty-six hours.”

A thick ream of manuscript was piled on his desk. His eyes burned and he forced his dry eyelids to close. Muse was drawing him away from the world of Word, down from the soft high temple. Perhaps Muse was no friend after all, but an enemy. “What do you want?”

She was no longer Muse, only Bridget, a Georgia sophomore shivering in a sheer nightgown, her nipples hard from the chill in the air.

“I’m worried about you.” She leaned over him from behind and wrapped her arms around his chest. Spence let the swivel chair sag backward. Now that the spell of Word was broken, anxiety sluiced through his limbs. One corner of his eye twitched.

Bridget kissed him on the neck, just below the line of his newly grown stubble. “You’re working so hard. Why don’t you come to bed?”

“I can’t work if I’m in bed.” His irritability returned now that the letters had stopped flowing.

“I’m lonely for you, honey.”

She had forgiven him for the previous day’s mistreatment. Or had that been last night? A hundred years ago? Time lost all meaning at Korban Manor.

“Dear, dear, dear,” he said, letting each word dangle in the air like a noose. “What is your loneliness compared to the great loss the world would suffer should my work go unfinished?”

“I know it’s important. I’m not like you, though. I need a little companionship now and then.”

“Surely you can turn your not inconsiderable charms toward procuring yourself a bedmate. You can play your illusory games of love elsewhere, with my blessing.”

Bridget pulled her arms from his chest. Spence swiveled the chair so he could admire his latest bauble. Her comely curves undulated beneath the clinging fabric of her gown. A treasure. A pretty, useless thing.

“Jeff, I don’t want anybody else. I love you.”

This distraction was getting interesting. Perhaps Word would forgive him a moment’s idleness. Surely even Ephram Korban played emotional games in his day.

“Love,” he said, and the word flowed as if spoken by Sir Laurence Olivier himself, the liquid of the phonic dripping off Spence’s tongue. A classic oratory was coming on, rising from his bones to his chest, through his lungs and throat, air made wisdom. The only thing that ever changed was the audience.

“Love, the ultimate vanity,” he said. “All love is self-love. Motherly, brotherly, sexual, puppy, religious, sacrificial. All love is masturbation. And so, I give you permission to love yourself, since that seems to be what you require of me.”

“Honey, don’t be so . . . so . . .”

“Obdurate. From the Latin ‘to harden.’ Synonyms: firm, unbending, inflexible. Oh, how I wish that were true. But the mind embraces what the flesh shrinks from in shame.”

“Don’t do that. You know I don’t care about your—about our—problem.”

Spence laughed, his girth wiggling from the sheer ecstasy of his self-love. He reached up and stroked her hair, a romance-novel cliché, silken tassels, spun gold. Her cheeks were pink with hoarded passion, lips slightly parted as she gasped at his touch. Her skin glowed like honey in the firelight.

“Our problem,” he said.

She had crossed the line. This demanded a response.

His hand closed into a fist around her hair. He pulled her head forward, reaching behind him to grab the manuscript. He flung the loose pages at her face, pleased at the slapping sound the paper made against her skin. The pages kited to the floor as she grunted.

“Pick them up,” he said, twisting her hair, forcing her to her knees. She was petite, no match for his great bulk. She sobbed as she fumbled among the papers. He jerked her to her feet, though she had collected only a small sheaf of pages.

“Read,” he said with cold menace.

Her eyes were wide, cheeks wet with tears, lower lip quivering.

“Read,” he said again. Calm now.

Her eyes flicked across the page, shoulders shaken with sobs, breasts swaying miserably against the confines of satin.

“Aloud.” He was once again Jefferson Davis Spence, the legend, the genuine article. No more illusions of Muses and far-off literary gods, no more lofty aspirations, no more symbiosis with the Royal typewriter. Now he could focus on the art of cruelty.

“‘The night spread its f-filth like spies, like flies,’” she said, voice trembling. “‘The n-night walked the night, climbed its own spine like a ladder, the night rattled the bones of its own cage . . .’”

Spence relaxed his grip on her hair, and now stroked her. He closed his eyes, lost in the precious rhythm of his own prose.

“‘. . . the night growled, hissed like a snake, sputtered like a black firework, the night entered itself, laved itself with its own tongue, swallowed its own tail . . .’”

Ah, the Muse was singing again. All she needed was the proper sheet music.

“‘. . . the night tastes of charcoal and ash, the night tastes of licorice, the night tastes of teeth—yes, of cold teeth . . . go out frost . . .’”

Her voice trailed away, but Spence still rocked back and forth in his chair like a babe lulled by its own sonorous babble.

“Jeff?” She took a careful step backward.

“You stopped reading. I didn’t tell you to stop.”

“This stuff is . . . this stuff is . . .”

Spence smiled, his face warm with satisfaction at this small but tender tribute, the peak of self-love. He braced for the paroxysm of bliss, awaiting her ejaculation of praise.

“This is just so awful.” She dropped the section of manuscript to the floor. “You’ve been wasting your talent on this? This . . . maggot mess?”

Spence, anticipating the rush of sweet validation, didn’t register her words at first. But the tone was clear. Even with their Southern flavor, the words were exactly like those of Mrs. Eileen Foxx, his fifth-grade teacher. Foxx in Socks, the kids called her, because they weren’t clever enough to come up with something lewd or connected to bodily functions.

Mrs. Foxx had berated him in front of the whole class because he’d had the temerity to misspell the word “receive.” He stood at the chalkboard, breathing the dust of a thousand mistakes, while the other children howled with laughter, relieved because it wasn’t them this time. And the warm wetness spread beneath his waist, his small bladder voided, and the laughter changed in pitch, rose to the level of schoolhouse legend.

And on that sunny spring afternoon at Fairfield Elementary school, a new grammar rule was formed: I before E except after P.

Born as well that day was Jefferson Spence, the writer. The one who would out-obtuse Faulkner, who would out-macho Hemingway, who would out-wolf Tom Wolfe. And though he couldn’t reach back through the halls of time and grab Mrs. Foxx by the frayed seams of her cardigan sweater and smash those ever-pursed lips, he could act now. He could vent against the critics and the sneerers and the pretty popinjays, all the other Eileen Foxxes of the world who deserved retribution.

He swept his hand hard against the cheek of the faux Muse. She moaned and collapsed back onto the bed, an arm bouncing against the brass bedstead, another arm flopping across her chest. A trickle of blood leaked from her mouth, and one nostril clotted red as well. As the flesh of her cheek warmed from the blow, her eyes stared back at him with all the severity of Eileen Foxx’s.

He turned from her gaze.

Ah, Ephram smiled. Ephram, who had offered support during Seasons of Sleep. Ephram, an ally in a universe of small-minded fifth graders who would never understand.

It wasn’t that he always failed with women, or that his literary output was uneven. It wasn’t a flaw in the equipment. It was them. It had always been them.

They stood between him and the true light, the bright shining path, the burning Word. Who needed mere physical pleasure? What one needed was the shedding of pleasure, the removal of distraction.

One needed to become the Word, a communion reduced to its simplest form.

Spence placed his fingers on the cold keys of the typewriter. The lantern hissed in approval, the fireplace rumbled with hot delight. He looked at Ephram again, and then at the blank page, his greatest ally and his most dreaded enemy.

He scarcely heard the door close behind his back. He pressed his fingers down, seeking the approval of the true god Word. His hands moved of their own accord, as if encased in living gloves.

CHAPTER 31

Anna stumbled through the trees, tired but determined, the ghostly figure always just on the edge of her vision. The moon had risen in synchronicity with sunset, only a small curve sliced from its white roundness. The flashlight was unnecessary in the clearings and stretches of meadow, but the moon couldn’t penetrate the cold shadows beneath the forest canopy.

The ghost woman faded in and out of view, as if fighting to keep her constitution. Anna had called out to her several times, but not even the wind responded. The forest was silent, and even the crickets seemed to be huddling in dread. The air was chilly and dew hung heavy on the maple, laurel, and birch leaves that brushed her face and shoulders. The game of hide-and-seek seemed eternal, as if Anna would forever have to chase this spirit, the two of them bound in a shared purgatory of loneliness.

Anna thought the ghost was leading her to the cabin where she had seen the ghost of the young girl on her first night at the manor. But her dead tour guide turned up the ridge when they reached the meadow below the cabin, heading higher into the steep hills of Beechy Gap. Anna weaved her way among granite boulders that angled from the ground like worn fossils. The trail steepened and narrowed, and the vegetation changed as well, from leafy deciduous to stunted balsam and jack pine.

Anna scooted across a long, flat jut of stone. She was on the highest part of the rocky ridge. The great sea of mountains stretched out toward the horizon. A whisper of wind tried to stir itself, then gave up and settled back to earth.

The trees were thinner here, and her breath plumed from her mouth like the smoke of her soul. The few stars hung in the cold sky, shivering and twinkling. Even the familiar Dog Star and the orange wink of Saturn gave her no comfort. She was alone, except for the translucent woman who hovered above the cold dirt and stone of the ridge. The ghost beckoned her forward with a wave of the haunted bouquet.

Anna’s flashlight played over a mass of fallen posts and splintered boards scattered in a treeless stretch of ground. The ghost woman was among the ruins of the old shack, her ethereal figure penetrated by a dozen ragged pieces of wood. The ghost opened her mouth, trying to form a lost language. Bits of broken glass glinted in the flashlight’s beam.

Anna slid off the rock toward the twisted debris. One thick piece of timber jabbed forlornly at the sky. Anna stepped closer, answering the summons of the ghost. The woman stood waiting, eyes vacant, the bouquet held out in either welcome or apology.

Then the night fell in.

One of the broken timbers lifted from the ground and cut an audible arc in the air as if swung by an invisible giant. The heavy wood slammed into her stomach. The flashlight fell at her feet, its beam sending a thin streak of orange into the underbrush.

Anna doubled over, spears of fire wending through her gut, rusty nails driving into her temples, her teeth biting tin roofing. But it was more than the agony of cancer. This pain was bone-deep and deadly serious. Her right wrist was squeezed in a knife-edged vise.

Anna closed her eyes and collapsed.

No slow-motion countdown would take this pain away. Through the hammering of her pulse, she could hear tremors in the building’s rubble. Wood rot and corruption assaulted her nostrils as she writhed in the muddy fallen leaves.

In the jumble of ruin, she saw a tunnel, a long, dark, cold mouth opening up before her. A stale breeze blew up from the depths of the tunnel, but it had to be her imagination, because the tunnel led down into the earth. Her sweat was slivers of ice on her face, the cold swabbing her bones, and she thought of those words from the bathroom mirror. Go out frost.

Then she heard the voice, a soft mournful wail that stretched over the hills.

Anna opened her eyes with effort, vision blurred by tears of pain. Two forms drifted among the ruins, the ghost woman kneeling, a second ghost swelling and hovering over the first. The other ghost was a man in blue jeans, flannel shirt, and workman’s leather boots, his clothes as translucent as his sick milk of skin. A few shreds of nebulous flesh hung from one sleeve of the shirt. His one hand held the piece of timber that had struck her. He looked down at the ghost woman, his eyes as deep as the cold black tunnel had been.

A radiance shone around the dead man, an aura of malevolent energy. His ectoplasmic face was twisted in rage, the lips peeled back to show jagged teeth. He dropped the timber and put his lone hand around the woman’s throat, and Anna could see the strength in his fingers as they tightened around surreal flesh. Anna’s throat burned in sympathetic pain. The ghost woman screamed soundlessly, struggled for a moment like a wind-driven linen caught in a briar vine, then faded from view, again a corpse, dead a second time, the bouquet falling from her fingers and dissipating into mist.

Anna rolled onto her hands and knees and started to crawl away. The caustic fires still scorched her insides, but now a black surf of fear washed over her, momentarily dousing the raw ache. She glanced back and saw that the man’s aura had grown brighter, as if the spirit murder had fueled some infernal fire. He smiled at her, his tongue slithery as an eel and his eyes spilling forth a darkness that rivaled the black night.

The mouth parted. “That you, Selma?”

At least this ghost remembered language, though its tone was crazed.

“It’s me,” it said. “George. I knew you’d come back. Korban promised me.”

Come back? From HIS side or hers?

“I’m not Selma,” Anna said, trying to rise, but the weight of the night sky was too great.

“I got a present I been saving just for you. We got tunnels of the soul, Selma.”

The ghost held something in his hand, something that dangled like a small kill from a hunter’s belt. Anna thought at first it was the bouquet. Then it wiggled.

It was his other hand, the one that had lost its place at the end of his right arm.

As she struggled in the dirt, the spirit tossed the hand toward her. It landed on its fingers and scrabbled after her like a spider. The ghost’s laughter echoed across the dismal hills. “Hand of glory, Selma.”

Anna turned, tried again to regain her feet, but the pain had made her drunk, awkward, confused.

The severed hand closed around her ankle.

That was impossible. Ghosts had no substance, at least not a substance that could take solid form in the real world.

But this IS the real world. And sometimes, it’s not what you believe, but how MUCH you believe.

She believed in ghosts. They existed. You couldn’t turn faith off and on like water from a spigot.

Too bad.

Because now she had what she’d always wanted.

Physical contact with the dead.

Her ankle was numb, hot ice, liquid fire, ringed by dull razors.

The fingers pressed into her meat. Anna was jerked flat on her stomach. She flailed at the air, grabbing for a nearby pine branch. The hand pulled her backward before she could reach the branch. Toward the rubble. Where he waited.

“Come on, now, Selma. Don’t keep old Georgie-Boy waiting.” The ghost’s voice had changed, deepened.

She dug her fingernails into the ground, clawing at the sharp stones and pine needles. She grunted, realizing for the first time since she’d witnessed the spectral struggle that she was still breathing.

Breath.

That meant she was alive. Not a ghost yet. But if this spirit had the power to murder ghosts, what would it do to the living?

The hand tugged again, sliding her across three feet of damp dirt. Wet leaves worked their way underneath her shirt, chilling her belly.

A strange sound spilled across the ridge, like the scream of a dying mourning dove. Anna looked at the ghost man, his smile stretching and leaking red, orange, yellow, the colors melding into a malchromatic aurora that surrounded him as if he were lit by hellfire.

Anna slid another couple of feet closer to the ruins, desperately kicking at the hand. It was like kicking a rotted fish. She was pulled again and the sharp end of a piece of wood pressed into the back of her leg. The thing was dragging her into the spiked tips of broken timber and the saw teeth of the ripped tin roofing. She was about to be sacrificed at the stake.

But why?

Why would a ghost want to kill her?

“Snakes crawl at night, honey,” it said. “Snakes crawl at night.”

More backward pressure.

The sharp wood against her leg dug into flesh and sent bright sparks of pain shooting up the chimney of her nervous system. A board knocked against her vertebrae, drumming her spine as if it were a xylophone. Broken glass dug into her knee, cutting through the corduroy of her slacks and stinging like acid. The flames in her abdomen expanded into her chest, into her head, sent lava through her limbs. She closed her eyes and saw streaks of light against the back of her eyelids, like popping embers or shooting stars. Behind the streaks was the black tunnel, expanding endlessly outward, and shimmering at the far end was the woman in white.

So this is what it feels like to die.

She had come to Korban Manor to find her ghost, pushed by the prophetic power of her dreams. This was what she wanted. Except she’d never expected it to be so painful. More shards, splinters, and crooked nails worked into her skin as the rubble shifted with her weight.

Silly girl. Guess you were wrong about everything. You thought death would be cold, but it’s hot, hot, and that tunnel is so deep—

The hand on her ankle yanked, insistent, tenacious. Then a hand gripped one shoulder.

And words came from somewhere above her, like the voice of an insane angel: “Go out frost, go out frost, go out frost.”

The pain fell away, and only darkness remained.

CHAPTER 32

Getting the log onto the wagon, then to the manor and down the stairs to the basement, had been a real bitch. Ransom refused to help carry the log through the house, but Miss Mamie had roused some drinkers from the study, enlisting their help. Paul, Adam, William Roth, Zainab, even Lilith. It was a miracle they hadn’t dropped the log on their toes, but at last it stood upright, supported by scrap lumber and wires tied to nails in the joists overhead.

“That had better be some statue, after all this trouble,” Miss Mamie had called from the head of the basement stairs before slamming the door and leaving Mason alone.

No. Not alone.

He lifted the sheet of canvas. The face of Ephram Korban stared at him. Had Mason really carved such smug perfection? But the work wasn’t complete. Now that Korban had a face, he needed legs, arms, hands, an oak heart.

This would be the sculpture that earned Mason Beaufort Jackson a mention in the magazines. Forget The Artist’s Magazine or Art Times. This baby was going to land him in the pages of Newsweek. Mason began writing headlines and article leads in his head, a feature in Sculpture to start with.

MILL TOWN BOY MAKES GOOD

If you heard that an artist was named “Mason Jackson,” you’d automatically assume that he’d adopted a nom de plume.

(Wait a second, nom de plume is only for authors. Okay, call it a pseudonym then. The article writer would work that bit out.)

But there’s nothing put on about this up-and-coming sculptor. Jackson has been called “the Appalachian Michelangelo.” This young Southern artist may have his feet planted in the land of moonshine and ski slopes, but his hands have descended from a more heavenly plane. Jackson’s sculpture series, The Korban Analogies, is opening to wide acclaim at the Museum of Modern Art in Philadelphia and will soon cross the ocean to London and Paris, where critics have already rested the heavy crown of “Genius” on the unprepossessing man’s head.

Jackson’s tour de force is the powerful Korban Emerging (pictured, left), which Jackson calls “a product of semi-divine guidance.” The Rodinesque muscularity and massiveness of the work has impressed even the most jaded critics, but there’s also a singular delicacy to Jackson’s piece.

No less a discerning eye than Winston DeBussey’s has found the work faultless. He calls Mason an “uncanny master” of wood, a medium in which so few top artists dare to work these days.

“It is as if there is no difference between the pulp and human tissue,” raves DeBussey in a rare moment of expansiveness. “Jackson breathes organic life into every swirl of grain. One almost expects to look down and see roots, as if the statue is continually replenishing itself from the juice and salt of earth.”

But Jackson takes the praise in stride, offering little insight into the mind behind the man.

“Each piece is conceptualized through a dream image,” Jackson said, speaking from his farmhouse-cum-studio in Sawyer Creek, a small mill town nestled in the North Carolina foothills. “And I have absolutely nothing to do with that part of the process. My job is to take that fragile gift and somehow not misinterpret it through these clumsy human hands. Because the dream is the important thing, not the dreamer.”

If Mason started talking like that, Junior would elbow him in the ribs and Mama would make him stop watching public television. Such nonsense would earn him some funny looks at the hosiery mill, where he was more at home than in any art museum. He could fool himself into thinking he was good, but fooling others was much harder. If he wanted to fool the entire world, this monstrous piece of oak before him needed to be turned into the most beautiful dream image ever conceived.

First, he’d have to skin the bark.

Then find the man inside.

He lifted the hatchet, looked at the dark spaces in the corners of the basement. He didn’t belong in the mill. This was what he was born for, the reason he’d come to Korban Manor. He’d never felt so alive.

He lifted the hatchet, then thought of Anna’s words, how Ephram Korban’s spirit lived on in these walls. How a soul might be nothing more than the sum of a person’s mortal dreams. How dreams could lie. How dreams could turn to ash.

No. This dream was real.

The hatchet bit into the wood.

CHAPTER 33

The bony hand on Anna’s shoulder tugged her shirt, lifted her. So the ghost man had her now. She was finally going to find out what it was like to be dead. Or maybe she was already a ghost, because the worst of the pain was fading.

Anna tried to stand, but her legs were like damp smoke. She knelt on one bloody knee, feeling for purchase among the broken boards. She opened her eyes to face the dead thing, resigning herself to crawl into the dark tunnel.

But it wasn’t the leering spirit that held her. It was an old woman.

“Ought to watch yourself a mite better,” the woman said.

Her face was wrinkled, the moonlight revealing her swollen veins, her eyebrows as white as ice. But the blue eyes set among those sagging folds of skin were bright, young, intelligent. And Anna recognized the shawl that was draped around the woman’s stooped shoulders.

“You were at the cabin—”

“Hush yourself, child. I seen what you seen, and we both seen way too much. Let’s get away from here, then we can have us a long chat.”

Anna got to her feet, pushing the broken boards away from her legs. The pain was gone, and the ring of fire around her ankle had faded. The moon was higher now, approaching the zenith of its arc.

Anna studied the rubble. It could all have been a dream, except for the tearing of her clothes and skin.

“Come on away from there. George got fetched over, but that don’t mean you got to go yet,” the woman said.

The old woman led Anna from the fallen building. The woman had surprising strength for someone who appeared to be in her eighties. Anna watched her climb over the flat rocks with the agility of a mountain goat, even though she used a thick walking stick to steady herself. Anna looked for her flashlight, but it must have rolled into the thorny underbrush and out of sight. She hurried after the woman.

The old woman paused on a table of rock, looking out over the great expanse of mountains. The sky was woolen gray, but Anna could make out the ripples and swells of earth stretching out to the horizon.

“Korban about snatched you,” the woman said without turning toward Anna. “Thought I’d get a chance to warn you first. But old Ephram’s always been the impatient sort.”

“Ephram Korban, you mean?”

“The master of these here parts. Or, at least, he likes to think so.”

“But you’re talking in present tense. He’s dead.”

“Like that matters much.” She spat off the rock into the tops of the trees below.

“Who was that woman I saw?” Anna’s head was clearing a little. “And the little girl at the cabin?”

The old woman laughed, but it was a broken gargle, heavy with cynicism. “You got the Sight, all right. Knew it when I first laid eyes on you. Now, no more questions till we get away from this place. ‘Cause this place is Korban’s.”

Anna followed the woman off the rock and down the narrow trail, amazed at the way the woman’s hard leather shoes dodged over protruding roots and stones, the walking stick nimbly stabbing at the dirt in search of purchase. They headed off the ridge to the back side of Beechy Gap.

Anna paused to catch her breath, rubbing her abdomen. “One question. What does ‘go out frost’ mean?”

“Old mountain spell. Means ‘dead stay dead.’”

Anna would have to remember that one. She hoped that, unlike what Ransom had said about horseshoes and four-leaf clovers, this little piece of magic hadn’t been worn thin by time.

CHAPTER 34

Adam had spent the long hours of insomnia trying to nab the thoughts that orbited his head like space junk. And most of the thoughts were about asking Miss Mamie if there was a way he could cancel his stay at the manor. He didn’t care about a refund. Paul could remain with his camera and his pouty lips and his arrogance for the rest of the six weeks, as far as Adam was concerned. All Adam needed was a ride out of this place.

They’d had another argument, this one in the study after carrying the log into the basement. Paul was showing off for William Roth, who was hitting on several women at once, and Adam tried to get Paul aside for a chat. Paul had sneered and said, “Why don’t you go to bed, Princess? I know how bored you get talking about anything besides yourself.”

Adam had finally fallen asleep sometime around what felt like midnight, though the moon was so bright that time hadn’t seemed to pass at all. And again he’d had the dream, the dream of the fall from the widow’s walk. But this time he recognized the man who was trying to push him off the top of the house. It was the man he’d imagined seeing in the closet when Paul was putting away his camera. The man in the portrait. Ephram Korban.

And again Korban had Adam leaning over the railing. The hard wood pressed against the small of his back. Even as he was dreaming, he realized that you weren’t supposed to feel pain in your dreams.

But all his senses were working: he could smell the sweet beech trees, hear the aluminum tinkle of the creek, taste the rancid graveyard stench of Korban’s breath, see the stars spinning crazily above as the man pushed him backward over the rail.

“You have no vanity,” Korban said. “I can’t eat your dreams. They’re made of air.”

Adam’s fingers tangled in the man’s beard, desperately gripping the coarse hairs. But as Korban pushed him away, the hairs ripped out at their roots. And just as Adam fell, losing his grip on Korban’s woolen waistcoat, he stared into the man’s eyes.

The eyes flickered from charcoal black to a sizzling amber. Korban’s cold iron hands released their grip on Adam’s upper arms and Adam screamed as he hurtled to the packed ground sixty feet below.

The air whistled like a teakettle in pain.

The great gulf of space yawned overhead, farther and farther away, its softness lost to him even as he grasped for a handle on the stars.

The house’s windows gleamed in streaks, the shutters blurring in his peripheral vision. His blood rushed to his feet. This dream was stranger than any he’d ever had. Because you were supposed to wake up when you fell in your dreams.

But Adam was aware of the impact as his head pounded into the circle of the driveway. He clearly heard the crunching of bone as his spine folded like a paper bird, he gasped as his breath whooshed from his lungs, he bit his tongue in half and the amputated tip squirted from between broken teeth, he tasted his own warm blood, then vomited as his shattered pelvis speared his stomach and kidney.

As his ruined flesh lay sprawled and leaking on the ground, he clearly saw his own eyeballs lying beside his head. The eyeballs glowered at him, their brown irises helpless in the ovate globes of white, the pupils large with shock and fear, no sockets or eyelids to hide their twin disapproval. Even dreaming, he recognized the absurdity of seeing his own eyes. He couldn’t wait to tell Paul about this.

Except you also weren’t supposed to feel pain in a dream, either. And what else could this be but pain, this sheet of red that dropped on him like a hundred sulfuric guillotines? Ribbons of electricity shot through his broken body, his nerves screaming like four alarms at a firehouse. Adam tried to laugh. Wasn’t this funny, experiencing this hellburst of orange that flooded his brain when he was surely dead?

But wait a second. Can you dream that you’re dead?

But how would you know if you were dead . . . this was the kind of thing that would give you a headache if you didn’t know you were dreaming. But Adam had a headache anyway. He knelt to scrape his spilled brains together, scooped them up, and put them back in their broken shell.

As his fingers stirred through the steaming wrinkles of his own cerebrum, he realized that his body was splayed out before him. This was odd, surreal, Daliesque. He expected to awaken at any moment to find himself giggling into his pillow. But he didn’t wake up. He stood, looking at the pool of red that seeped from beneath his body and the sour bile around his head. A splinter of femur protruded from one thigh, angling out from a rip in the gray pajamas. The bone gleamed bright and wet in the pale light. The body’s head was turned away in the direction of the wide stone steps that led into Korban Manor.

But his real head, at least the one that housed his soul, was staring higher, at the black portal of the door.

Shapes spilled out of the maw, white wispy forms like bits of shredded cobweb being swept along by the breeze of a broom.

Some coalesced into more or less human figures, men, women, and small children, their faces blank, their eyes as black as the interior of the foyer. Some of them were in coarse crinolines, or trousers with button-up flies, a few men in overalls and felt hats, the women in bonnets or with their hair pinned up in buns. The young boys were in knickers, mended stockings sagging over square leather shoes, the girls in plain shifts, ribbons in their pigtails. An infant materialized at the feet of one of the women, its ragged diaper mingling with its ragged legs.

Adam stepped backward as they walked toward him. Except they weren’t walking—they were flitting, floating, flying, arms wide, mouths slack with grim purpose. There were about two dozen figures, and he saw Lilith among them, the maid with the flowing dress, but she was as misty as the others. The plump cook, whom he’d seen earlier pouring dishwater off the back porch, was wiping her hands on her apron.

He screamed, but no one could hear you when you were dead.

It was long past time for waking up.

He tried to run, but stood transfixed, frozen, as cold as a December tombstone.

The crowd gathered around the body that lay on the ground, the ghosts—yes, of course they’re ghosts, if I’m going to have a bad dream, I might as well go for broke—the ghosts merged and intertwined, showing no concern for the social constraints of personal space. And Adam, now more fascinated than frightened, also looked down at the object of their attention.

It was he, himself, the person formerly know as Adam Andrews. There was the mole on his cheek, the small white scar above his elbow where he’d fallen off his bicycle at age nine, the awkward bend in the second toe of his kicking foot that he’d severely dislocated playing high school soccer. There was his hand, the nails unevenly trimmed, a few threads of Korban’s beard hair still clutched in the rigid fingers. There was the silver ring with the garnet stone that Paul had given him.

There lay his blood, his flesh, his body.

A low sound filled the lawn, stretching across the hills, a funeral dirge that reminded Adam of recordings of whales he’d heard. It was a bizarre language, sonorous and sad. The syllables of the tuneless sound phased into aural chaos, a thick clotted noise. It was emanating from the manor, as if the foyer were the building’s throat.

The ghosts turned toward the door, solemn as only the dead could be. Adam gulped, looked down at his hands, and saw he was made of the same mist as the others, spun from the same insubstantial threads. He was a ghost. That meant . . .

He was really dead.

He smiled to himself. He closed his dreaming eyes. He’d have to forget being mad at Paul at least long enough to tell him about the dream. He wondered if he was snoring, then remembered that he’d pushed the beds apart, so he couldn’t count on Paul giving him a nudge in the ribs.

And right now, he’d love to be tickled, cuddled awake, to pull Paul’s body close, to feel some human heat.

Because being dead was a chilly business. He must have kicked the quilts off in his sleep.

Yes, of course. Any crazy thing makes sense if you analyze it long enough. And deciding to leave Paul must have stirred up some funny things in the old Jungian jungle.

But why shouldn’t your mind pull a trick or two on you while you’re asleep?

And what could be a better vacation site than this theme park of the deceased? What was that old black-and-white movie? Yeah, Carnival of Souls, dancing with the dead, wake up, and say “It was all a dream.” And old Ephram Korban IS a nightmare-inducing sort.

So why not enjoy it, laugh it up, go along for the ride? You’ll be awake soon enough, back in the real world with real problems. Like how to deal with Paul. For real.

He opened his eyes and found himself still in his nightmare.

The ghosts were bending, lifting the corpse. Amused, Adam joined them. When one of the bloody arms lolled outward, Adam placed it back over the chest cavity. The ghosts hoisted the body toward the door of the house, pale pallbearers in a silent procession. Adam trailed after them as they wafted up the steps. Waiting at the door was his malefactor, Korban.

The man flashed a cold smile of triumph, his eyes like onyx marbles.

“Welcome to your tunnel of the soul, Adam,” Korban said.

For a moment, Adam forgot he was dreaming. Korban held the door wide as the procession entered the darkness. Adam was unable to keep from following.

Korban’s face loomed near, and the man held out a welcoming arm. As Adam drifted into the waiting murk, he realized that it wasn’t the manor that was swallowing him.

The foyer was a tunnel, a tube of frigid stone-glass walls, an ever-widening mouth, all darkness, beyond light and the things that light touched. Adam shivered, colder now than ghost-cold, unwilling to let his id play anymore.

Time to wake up now . . .

Because Korban was changing, his eyes turning from dead, dark orbs into fiery, hateful suns.

Because Korban was glowing with loathsome heat, Korban was reaching out to him, reaching in him, into his chest, into his heart—

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE WAKE UP!

Korban’s fingers squeezed and new pain erupted, a pain beyond human understanding, so intense that even the dreaming dead Adam screamed, and Korban pulled him deeper into the tunnel, and he knew that what was waiting ahead would be the worst thing that any part of his brain could concoct.

He screamed again, screamed and screamed, closed his dream eyes so that he wouldn’t see what was ahead—

But he knew what was ahead, the thing he’d buried so deeply in his mind that he’d forgotten. Though like all true forced forgettings, it had only gained power during the long years of hibernation. And when a buried memory finally claws through its coffin, digs its way through the dirt to the surface, it’s not going to look kindly on the undertaker.

This was a memory that had teeth.

So he screamed again, and the hand in his chest was shaking, shaking him—

“Wake up, Adam.”

He opened his eyes, but he was still seeing the glimmers of his buried memory, the image making him throw his arms out in panic. He struck Paul in the shoulder.

“Hey!”

Paul stood beside Adam’s bed in his underwear. Adam stared at him, unblinking. A faint fuzz of moonlight leaked through the window and the fire threw red light onto the walls.

“You must have been having a hell of a dream,” Paul said.

Adam lay still, rolling his eyes around in their sockets, his chest sore from remembered pain. The quilts were bunched in knots around him. He glanced at the corners of the room, at the closet door, expecting the freshly exhumed memory to play out its image in the nearest available scrap of shadow. He looked at the portrait above the fireplace, watching for Korban’s lips to part and welcome him into the tunnel.

“I mean, you even woke me up with your thrashing around,” Paul said, then added, with the slightest hint of scorn in his voice, “and I was all the way across the room.”

Adam flexed his fingers, reached up, and wiped the sweat from his forehead and upper lip.

He drew in a breath, a sweet living and waking breath, and nothing had ever tasted so fine, not the chocolate cherry sauce on his favorite sundae, not the driest Chardonnay, not a new love’s first kiss.

Paul put his hands on his hips, impatient now. “Did you dream about my woman in white? Or are you still not talking to me?”

Adam opened his mouth, glad to find the tip of his tongue brushing reassuringly against his teeth.

“You were right about one thing,” Adam whispered, the words dry in his throat. “It was one hell of a dream.”

CHAPTER 35

Beautiful.

Spence held up the page so the moonlight from the window would flash fully on the words.

It had been waiting here. All these years. The Muse’s blessing, the sweet inspiration, the sleeping dream of creation. The Gift.

The house had given him another masterpiece.

He leaned back in his chair and laughed. The sound echoed off the wood of the room, rattled the dresser on the mirror, mocked back at him from the wainscoting, curled around the cornice of the fireplace mantel, played off the cold rock hearth, and swirled in the air like stirred dust. Korban’s portrait grinned in the mischief of a secret understanding.

The room was much nicer now that it was empty. There was only Spence and the Royal. Spence and words. And the world beyond the words?

The world itself didn’t matter. What mattered was the interpretation, the human reflection, the shaping of the illusion. The craft. Symbolism.

The words.

Spence’s words.

So what if those latest novels had meandered off course, had failed to sustain themselves, had crept plotless into unresolved graves? The important thing was that Spence had been anointed. The critics loved him. The New York Times Book Review had him on the cover, not once but twice. And the little people, the aspiring writers and the coffee-shop crowd and pathetic English majors, gobbled up his books like bottom-feeding fish. This was before the era of television talk-show best sellers fashioned their follow-the-leader tastes into a drab society of the mutually hip.

Not that the little people mattered, aside from providing the stimulus of mass adoration. Spence didn’t write for them. He didn’t write for the critics, either. They were as blind as Homer had been, puffing themselves up as if they had a hand in the creative process, hogs who couldn’t recognize they were feeding at the same trough they spat in. Even editors were nothing more than intruders, more in love with the product than the act.

Ultimately, Spence’s whole life and career had revolved around the search. There had to be a way to strip away the layers of symbolism, to get right to the heart of the meaning. To reach the truth of things without the distraction of the typewriter’s clacking, without the clumsy fingers that served as the brain’s agents. Surely a more simple clarity existed than the black and white of ink on pulp.

Soon, he would arrive. At that spiritual pinnacle, the moment when all human history, all universal laws, all theologies, every speck of dust and grain of matter and mote of thought could be condensed to its purest form. When all of everything could become the one.

One true Word.

Spence sighed. Until he achieved that godliness, that command of the essence, he had to work through these idiot tools of language. Poe always ranted about “unity of effect,” how every word must contribute to the whole. That paranoid, absinthe-swilling madman was on the right path, but wouldn’t it be much better to find the single word that was the effect?

At least he could love what he wrote, despite its mortal shortcomings. He read the last completed paragraph.

And he, becoming Night, found his limbs, his blood and joy, stretching across the hills. Seeping out beyond the cold dark stone that was his prison, the mountain that was his sepulcher, the house that was his heart. His fingers were now more than mere trees, his eyes more than mirrors, his teeth more than broken wood. He, becoming Night, could spread his inky waters, could lap his tides at far shores, could engulf and drown the surrounding nondarkness that no longer threatened.

The Night walked both sides of dawn, once again bold and dreaming.

Spence laid the page on the desk. He rubbed his eyes. Two days. Had he been writing for two days?

His stomach gurgled. He could use something to eat. Bridget would be waiting at breakfast. Maybe he would even deign to forgive her.

He rolled a blank page into the Royal before leaving the room so it would be waiting when he returned. He looked back at it from the doorway. The white paper glared accusingly at him.

“Don’t worry, the Word will come,” he said to it, to the room, to the house and whatever was waiting in its walls. Then he closed the door.

CHAPTER 36

Sylva crossed the cabin floor and tossed a pinch of salt in the fire to keep the fetches away. Then she put the poultice on Anna’s knee where the cuts were deepest. A little of the gummy mixture dribbled out of the cloth and ran down Anna’s leg.

“That ought to mend you up right nice,” Sylva said.

“What’s in it?” Anna asked.

“The usual. Chimney soot and molasses mixed with a little pine rosin. It’s best to wrap a cut with a cobweb, but ain’t many spiders this high up.”

“Won’t that cause an infection?”

“Nothing’s much cleaner than chimney soot. Made pure by the fire, you see.”

The wound would heal fine. Sylva didn’t think she could mend the other things that were wrong with Anna, the bad cells that burned inside her. And she didn’t think she should, even if she knew what herbs to use. Part of having the power to heal was knowing when to let nature run its course. When to let the dead be dead, and when to let the living move on to other business of the soul.

Anna was marked, as clearly as if her fate had been written by a judge. The shame of it was, she was just getting started in her life, just beginning to grasp her mighty and frightsome gifts. But Sylva knew that the young woman’s illness also made her powers stronger. That’s why it had been so easy for Korban to summon her.

Anna pressed the poultice to her knee and drank from the hand-fashioned clay cup. “Thank you, Miss—”

“Sylva. Sylva Hartley.”

“And thanks for the water. I’ve never tasted water as good as you have here on the mountain.”

Sylva nodded and threw a stick of locust on the fire.

Anna was putting off talking about it. Nobody liked to remember close calls. And Sylva had learned over the many years of waiting that patience was the only thing a body needed to be good at. She had waited a long time for the October blue moon.

“You about got fetched over.”

“Is that what you call it when a ghost murders you?”

“Yeah. Call it bad luck, too.” Sylva stood and fished her hanging kettle from its hook over the fireplace. She poured some of the steaming water into Anna’s cup. Then she crossed to the cupboard and took some leaves out of a ceramic jar. She crumbled a few of the leaves into Anna’s hot water.

“Smells good. Sort of like mint.” Anna breathed in the aroma.

“Yep. Mint with a little wild cherry root mixed in. Might ease up your headache.”

“How did you know?”

“They always give me a headache, when I’m spelling them off. Them fresh dead, they’re easier to see, but they’re harder to beat back down into the grave.”

Anna sipped at the tea and gave Sylva a sideways look. “How come they haven’t fetched you yet?”

Sylva gave a laugh that was more of a liquid hiccup.

“Got my cat bones and my snakeroot and my lizard powder and a whole cupboard full of other roots and herbs and reptile skins. And here’s my special piece of protection.”

Sylva rummaged under her shawl to the place near her heart. She held out her palm to show Anna the small, shriveled white thing that Sylva wouldn’t have traded for a cape of spun gold.

“Rabbit’s foot?” Anna’s dark eyebrows made arrowtips on her forehead.

“Not just any rabbit’s foot. This is the left hind foot of a graveyard rabbit, snared on a winter midnight.”

“Another one of the old signs, like Ransom told me.”

“They mean as much as you want ‘em to. It’s all about how strong you believe.”

Anna set her cup on the rough-hewn table. She shivered despite the nearness of the fire. “What a night. I feel a thousand years old.”

“Old? I expect you wouldn’t believe that I’m a hundred and five myself, give or take a few. Then again, you might, but I hardly believe it myself. I keep up with my health and all, but I suspect it’s got a little to do with Korban. Like he’s stretching my years on out so I don’t up and die a natural death before he’s done with me.”

Anna rested her chin in her hands. The fire reflected in her blue-green eyes.

Them eyes. Lord, she’s Rachel’s spittin’ image.

“What does Korban want?” Anna asked. “I’ve studied ghosts for a long time, but most of them just seem to be trying to escape from here. This world, I mean.”

Sylva stared into the fire along with Anna. The sun was trickling through the east window now, but still the room was dark, as if night was reluctant to leave. “Korban wants it all back. Everything that was ever his, and then some.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Sylva had thought about it many times over the years, but still didn’t know the right answer. “Calling him evil would be too apple-pie easy. Maybe he was evil back when he was alive, but it’s way beyond that now. He liked to own things, shape them up to fit his world. I reckon he still does. Is it evil to want to hold on to everything you ever loved?”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever been loved.”

The words gripped Sylva’s heart. Korban fetched Anna back for a reason. No matter what Rachel tried to do. Maybe nobody ever escaped from here, dead or alive.

“Ephram . . . “ Sylva’s voice fell, uncertain. She was sixteen again, awkward but with a flaming heart, as if both she and the world were young and still full of promise. “I loved Ephram. We all did—the women, I mean. He was mighty handsome in his way, but it wasn’t just looks. There was something about him, some magnetism. Nobody could resist him for long.

”I took a job tending the house, like most other women that lived on the mountain then. The men were busy working to clear the land and keep the place up. Nobody really said anything when people started dying. Somebody’s ax-head would fly off and cleave in their skull, a tree would fall on somebody’s back, they’d find a body in one of the ponds, the skin puffy and their tongue all swollen blue. It was just accidents, in our minds. ‘A run of bad luck,’ we’d say to each other, though we all knew better.”

Sylva squeezed her fists against her chest. She’d never told anybody this next part. She’d kept that all nice and unbothered and lying in the back of her mind like a lizard in a muddy crevice. But this child had way worse things to go through. Sylva’s own suffering was nothing compared to that.

“One night, his fire went out. I was scared to death. That was my one main job, the thing that Ephram made a mention of every time I saw him, which wasn’t that often. But every time you seen him, by God, you’d remember it, and you would play it back in your mind, his face, his hands, his voice, until your heart was aching. At least it was that way with me, and I’m pretty sure it was the same with the other womenfolk.”

Sylva fell silent. Even across the decades, the moment still retained its vividness. She was filled with a warm flood of passion, mixed with that same gut-ripping dread. Her eyes were misty, and she didn’t fight it this time, she just let the tears roll down her cheeks.

“Ephram, he was in the room. Except it was like his life was the fire. He just laid there on the bed, gasping, kind of. And I was so scared, child, you wouldn’t know how scared I was.”

Sylva sniffled. “But then again, maybe you would. I forget you just had your own run-in. And he made me light that fire and say those words I never shoulda said.”

Anna touched Sylva’s knee. The gesture gave her the strength to finish.

“When I finally got the fire lit, Ephram come to me. He took me up in his arms, and I looked into those black eyes, and I would have done anything for that man. And he kissed me and then did everything else he wanted. But the thing was, I wanted it as much as he did. After it was over, he sent me out. Didn’t say a word, just buttoned up his trousers and jabbed at the fire a little, like I was a piece of meat he’d just killed for sport.

“I hardly ever looked at him again, I was so scared. Scared both that he’d want me and that he wouldn’t. But a few weeks later, I missed my time of the month. Lordy mercy, I was really scared then. But there was no other signs, so I went on about my business, hoping and praying. Months passed, it got winter and then spring. Along about summer my belly first started to swell, but just the tiniest bit. That’s when I knew. And I knew it was wrong, as slow as it was going.”

Sylva’s heart was thundering now. All the old anger and wasted love was filling her up, poisoning her again. Anna reached for her hand and squeezed it. That settled Sylva down a little. She had to do this, for both of them.

“Korban liked to get up on top of the house in the dead of night. Up there on the widow’s walk. Folks whispered that he was calling out to the dark things, invisible creatures that slithered and floated around in the cracks of the night. But by then, I knew what he was really doing.

“He was calling up his fetches. Making them do his bad work. Spelling them. And I crept up them stairs one night. The moon was full, a blue moon in October, like what’s coming tomorrow night. I remember the smell of sassafras in the air, and the dew so thick you could feel it on your skin. The little trapdoor that led to the roof was open, so I poked my head through and saw him standing along the rail, looking out over the moonlit nothing.”

The fire popped and exhaled a long hiss. Sylva closed her eyes and finished the story before Korban got up the strength to stop her.

“I eased my way up onto the widow’s walk, and he still had his back to me. When I got my feet steady, I stood up, and Lordy, how the wind was blowing. Like it was the breath of the whole sky let out all at once. I ran toward Ephram, my clothes whipping all out behind me in the breeze. He turned just when I reached him.”

Anna’s mouth was open, her cup between her loose fingers. The fire spat, sending a coal toward Anna. Sylva reached out with her shoe and rubbed the ember into the floor.

That was a sign of being marked for death, sure as any. When the ember shoots at you, you’re done for.

“What happened then?” Anna asked, her eyes wide. As if they were sitting on a front porch somewhere swapping made-up ghost stories. As if this weren’t real.

“I pushed him over, off the rail. And he let me. Didn’t raise a hand to stop me. Just smiled as he went over. You never heard such a scream. The kind of scream a rabbit makes when a horned owl digs its claws into the back of its neck. Except way longer and louder.

“But there was a laugh mixed in, too. That’s when I knew getting rid of Ephram Korban wasn’t going to be so easy.”

Anna nodded. Sylva could see she was thinking about it, sorting it out, trying to make the pieces fit. It felt good to be telling after all these years. Maybe she could die with an unburdened heart when and if her time ever came. “What about your baby?” Anna asked.

Sylva stared into the fire. She was tired, crushed by the weight of more than a century of haunts. Keeping tabs on them all these years wasn’t easy, especially when they had her outnumbered. She hoped her conjure bags and her faith and her spells would be enough. There were a lot of poppets in that little cabin, a passel of dead folks.

“Sun’s coming up,” she said. “Ought to be safe enough now. You and me need to go for a walk.”

CHAPTER 37

Bloody birds.

William Roth hoped to catch a red-tailed hawk in flight, or at least something colorful like a blue jay or cardinal. Nature’s way was to give color to the male of the species, while the female was designed to blend into the background. If only the human birds would behave that way, follow the order of things. Cris and that tight little wonder called Zainab were as elusive as any of these Appalachian avians. The only winged things about were ravens, black and ugly and watching from the trees as if waiting for a funeral.

Roth looked through his lens at the cusp of sunrise. The southern Appalachian mountains reminded him of Scotland’s, rounded and rich. He would take a few rolls of scenic stuff, that was always fodder for travel magazines and the like. If he wasn’t going to have any luck with the ladies, might as well carry the old lunch bucket.

He stepped out of the trees where the wooden bridge spanned the great valley of granite and scrub vegetation. Far below ran a silver stream, tumbling between boulders on its way to the ocean. Korban knew how to live, all right. Set up a mansion at the top of the world, have a house full of young serving girls, play artist, and enjoy the high life. Who’d blame the bloke for not wanting to let such pleasures go? If Roth were Korban, he’d certainly become a ghost and hang about.

Roth chuckled. Ghosts and that rot. He’d seen photos that people claimed depicted spirits. Roth could achieve the same trick by fuzzing a negative or playing with the light in the darkroom. Give him an hour and he could crank out a hundred different double and triple exposures, and he didn’t need a digital file or computer to do it. He could put Elvis on the moon, he could have Ephram Korban drifting over the manor, he could stick Cris Whitfield’s head on Marilyn Monroe’s nude body.

Now, that was a project that might be worth pursuing. Or maybe Spence’s chippie, whom he’d seen before dawn, walking the halls with a blank look in her eyes. Had a lovely blue bruise on her face, Spence must have played a bit rough in the sack. Maybe Roth could hide in their bathroom, get a firelit shot of the old bastard giving her what for. Blackmail him or sell it to the tabloids, either way a tidy bundle.

He walked out onto the bridge, switched to a longer lens, and advanced the film. The air stirred around him, that mountain wind that could cut right through a bloke’s bones. But it wasn’t just the wind. The ravens had swooped from the forest and lit on the rails of the bridge. Dozens of them. Staring at Roth with those beady black eyes. Waiting.

“Bloody hell,” he said.

“Hell is only in the mind, Mr. Roth.”

He turned, and Lilith stood in the middle of the bridge. How in blazes? Where had she come from?

“I hope you’re not thinking of leaving us.”

“Um. I was just getting this vista.” He held up the camera. “The views around here are perfectly lovely.”

He gave her a closer look. That black dress clung to her in a rather dramatic fashion. She was a bit pale, reminded him of those girls from North England, the ones from factory towns where the smog and rain cut down on the sunbathing. Still, she was young and she had curves. If serving girls were good enough for Korban, why not Sir William Bloody Bollocks-Swinging Roth?

“Lots of lovely views around,” he said. He smiled. Younger girls liked his smile. Or pretended to, which amounted to the same.

“Yes. I used to paint them. Before I went to work for Ephram Korban.”

“Work for Korban? He died a long time ago, and you’re just a pip.”

She gave her own smile, a fleeting, mysterious thing. Coy bird, that one.

“Say,” he said, gently stroking his lens. “Mind if I get the most lovely view I’ve found since I got here?”

“Be our guest, Mr. Roth.”

He lifted the camera and aimed it at her, zoomed onto her breasts, focusing on one nipple. Bras weren’t part of the uniform, apparently. Likely not panties, either. This girl was definitely quick to serve.

He took a couple of pictures of her face, framed up nice with that hair and eyes as dark as the ravens, skin fresh as rocks in the rain, lips quick and clever with a smile. When he’d devoted enough attention to thoroughly flatter her, he said, “You ever get any time off? I wouldn’t mind getting to know you a bit better. Take some pictures in a more secluded environment.”

“That can be arranged, Mr. Roth.”

“Call me William, love.”

She imitated his imitation accent. “Okay, William Love.”

Had a sense of humor, too. She’d be a joy to tumble. Roth moved toward her, wanting to get close enough for her to marvel at the sparkle in his smoky eyes. Something crawled across his face and he brushed it away.

God save the bloody queen, it was a spider.

He stepped back and saw the web spun between him and Lilith, stretching across the bridge like golden wire, the dew catching the sunrise. He detested spiders. From the African veldt to the Arctic tundra, the little buggers jumped at you with their sharp pincers. He’d read somewhere that, no matter where you stood on the globe, there’d be a spider within six feet of you, and he believed it.

He looked down at the rough planks of the bridge. The yellow-striped bastard was making for a crack, its legs scrabbling, its arachnid brain no doubt having a laugh at Roth’s expense. Roth brought a boot down on the spider, grinding it into the grain of the wood, sending its soul to spider hell, where hopefully God fed them nothing but DDT.

“Sorry, love,” he said to Lilith. “Hope that didn’t upset you.”

The smile flitted across the thin lips, fast as insects. “You didn’t kill it. You delivered it.”

“What’s that?”

“Living things never die, they just move on through deeper tunnels of the soul.”

“Er, righty right.”

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, Miss Mamie will be wondering where I’ve gotten off to. I can’t stay away from the house for long.”

She walked past him, and he took a whiff of her fragrance. He liked that sort of thing, collected their scents the way some blokes collected phone numbers or underwear. This one smelled a bit like earth, ripe and lush. Fertile and moist. He could dig it, all right.

She stopped at the end of the bridge. “I’ll see you later, then.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the life of me,” he said, and watched her delightful small arse shake as she walked up the sandy road leading to the manor. When she disappeared through the trees, he turned his attention back to the view. The ridges had lost their glow now that the sun was rising. He’d best pack away.

The ravens watched as he returned his lens to its case. Bloody birds had no fear. He thought about waving them on, sending them scattering over the valley. Oh, bother that. The day was looking up, with fair and tender Lilith on the agenda.

He was about to head back for the manor and breakfast when he saw the web again. Still spread out in those fine and sinister patterns, shipshape. Lilith had walked right through it. And still it hung there, whole and perfect, waiting to snatch things from the air.

This place was going to drive him daft if he wasn’t careful.

CHAPTER 38

Mason hewed the flesh of the oak, excited by the tannic smell of the wood. He worked with his hatchet, scraping it around as if skinning an animal. The log was braced with a couple of old chestnut boards, a pain in the rump to work around, but art was never easy. With the wires adding support, the oak waited for his touch like a masochistic and naked lover in a torture chamber.

The reddish strips of peeled bark were piled around his feet, and he stumbled in them as he felt along the wood’s smooth surface. Here would be the arms, one knee here, a strong spread of shoulder there. This knot could become the ball of one loose fist.

He hadn’t lied to Miss Mamie. The statue would be worth the trouble. Nothing great was ever created without a little risk. Suffer for art, that was the ticket to the top. Sacrifice everything and everyone, especially yourself.

Mason drove the hatchet sideways, into the area that would be the neck. He drew back and struck again and again, the outline of the form burned into his mind, his hands sure of their work. He chopped until his right shoulder and biceps ached, removing the sections of dead wood that blocked the emergence of the true shape. The flames at the end of the candles bobbed as the air stirred with his blows and breath.

When he could no longer lift his arm, Mason stood back and pushed away the wood scraps with his shoe. He moved across the studio space and studied the log from different angles. The height of the shoulders, the angle of the elbow, the distance between the feet, all had to be perfectly measured. As he was taking a step back to get another view, he knocked over the oil painting that he’d leaned against the cupboard.

He knelt and picked it up. Again he was struck by its singular beauty. How would he feel if his own work never left the basement, if it stayed forever in the shadows, never to be appreciated and admired? His work would be better than this, but the painter had talent. The soft brushstrokes and colors, the off-white of the manor, the splendor of the night forest, the turbulent storm clouds as fresh as wet reality.

He looked closer, at the top of the house. The smudge along the widow’s walk was brighter now and had spread several inches across the canvas. Mason peered into the mist and blinked. There were angles and shapes in the smudge. He brought the lantern from the table and tilted it toward the painting.

Mason traced a finger over one of the shapes. The shape was a deeper gray-white than the smudge, suggesting a human shape. More forms hovered beyond it, behind the thick pale line that portrayed the rail of the widow’s walk. People?

People would be out of place in the painting. The house was the subject, so dominating an image in itself that to besmirch it with humanity would be a cruel insult. Had somebody else made the same observation as Mason, and tried to blot out those shapes on the roof? Or did the artist realize the mistake upon completion, and sought to correct it before the oils had dried?

Miss Mamie would know, or maybe Lilith, who’d shown an interest in the painting. Perhaps he’d be allowed to take it to his room and hang it beside that portrait of Korban. A master and his domain.

He leaned the painting back against the cupboard. His own work was more important. That was the artist’s first tenet. Creative duty first, everything else second.

Besides, Mama was watching.

His wood called to him in the language of the unborn. He answered, with chisel and claw, tooth and hatchet, sharp blade and hungry soul.

CHAPTER 39

Adam found Miss Mamie after breakfast. She sat in a wicker chair in the study with her hands folded in her lap. She was dressed in forest green today, her décolleté gown showing the pale expanse of her upper bosom. She had foregone her pearl necklace in favor of a black silk choker.

She lifted her hands, revealing some small pieces of wood spread across a cloth. She had a knife in one hand, bits of wood clinging to the blade. As Adam watched, she sliced a length of thick vine and began wrapping it around what looked like the torso of a doll. The doll’s head looked like a knob of dark, shriveled fruit, the features stretched and distorted from the act of drying.

The Abramovs were at the far end of the study, away from the fireplace and the sunlight that poured through the high windows. They were playing a minuet in andante that was reminiscent of Mozart. Their cello and violin trilled in counterpoint, then shifted into a descending harmony. The rich notes vibrated against Adam’s skin.

He sat on the sofa across from Miss Mamie and bowed his head in respectful silence. He watched the musicians’ fingers glide over the strings. The duo increased their tempo, then went into the recapitulation, toying with the melody before finally sustaining the tonic and fifth notes as a finale. Adam joined Miss Mamie in applause.

“Bravo,” she said. “How extraordinarily lovely. Ephram Korban would be pleased.”

As the Abramovs started a new piece, Adam leaned over to Miss Mamie. “How are you today?”

“Just fine, Mr. Andrews. How do you like my little hobby? An old Appalachian craft, passed down by Ephram himself. They say when you whittle a poppet, you’re building a house for a lost soul.”

“Looks tough on the hands.”

“But they make lovely gifts. What do you think of this one?”

She held up the gnarled figurine, the twisted limbs of vine making the poor thing look crippled. It was hideous, the eyes crude, one larger than the other.

“That’s wonderful. I don’t think Daniel Boone could have done any better.”

“Are you enjoying your stay so far?”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that. I’ve decided to cut my visit short. I have, um, pressing business to take care of.”

Miss Mamie’s brow darkened and she pursed her lips. She dropped the little wooden figure and it clattered off the hearth, the shriveled head rolling away. “Oh dear, what a great fall,” she said, so softly that Adam barely heard her.

Adam held up a hand. “I’m not looking for my money back. My roommate, Paul, will be staying on.”

Miss Mamie looked out the window. A cloud must have passed over the sun, because the room grew darker. The Abramov melody shifted into a minor key and began twisting in agitato.

“Nobody can leave,” she said.

“I know the van doesn’t come back up for another couple of weeks. I was wondering if you could possibly make other arrangements.”

“You don’t understand. Nobody can leave. Especially you.”

Mrs. Abramov’s face clenched as she increased the tempo of her chaotic melody. There was little of the beauty that the couple had been squeezing out of the instruments only minutes before. Now the notes were more like tortured wails than music.

Adam looked out the window. “Can’t one of the handymen take me down on horseback? I saw two of the guests out riding the other day.”

“It’s not time yet,” Miss Mamie said, finally looking away from the window. Her eyes glittered with what Adam took to be anger. “The party is tonight. A lovely affair, up on the widow’s walk under the full moon. It’s something of a hallowed tradition at Korban Manor.”

“I can pay extra for the trouble. I know what a bother this is.”

Miss Mamie glowered and touched the locket that dangled unfashionably from her choker. “He—he doesn’t want you to go.”

“Paul?”

Miss Mamie seemed to recover just a little. “Black Rock is a half day’s journey by horse. And you belong here.”

The string music increased in intensity, fragmenting into chromatic chaos.

“I’ll walk, then.”

The music stopped abruptly, a diminished fifth quivering in the air, embarrassed at its isolation.

“No one leaves,” she said.

Adam followed her gaze to the portrait of Korban above the fireplace, that same face that had whispered dream words to Adam about tunnels of the soul. Adam shivered. The house itself brooded, as if the walls were weary of darkness. The air was heavy, and even the blazing fire added nothing to the room’s cheer. Adam moved to the hearth and rubbed his hands, trying to drive the remnants of the nightmare from his mind.

He looked down at the broken figurine. A scrap of fabric was tucked into a splintered crease in the torso. Gray cotton, like his pajamas.

“Play on,” Miss Mamie said to the Abramovs.

CHAPTER 40

Roth found Spence on the smoking porch, sitting in a hand-carved rocker whose legs seemed to bow outward from the stress.

“How goes the Shakespeare bit?” Roth asked.

The writer already had a drink, scotch, judging from its amber appearance. It was scarcely ten o’clock. Spence was certainly living up to his reputation. Roth had half suspected the writer had affected an alcoholic’s indulgence that was as phony as his legendary womanizing or Roth’s own accent.

“The best ever, as always,” Spence said, face pale and eyes nearly pink from lack of sleep.

“You’d like to feed it to the critics with a shovel, wouldn’t you, mate? I mean, they’ve been bloody hard on you these last few years.”

Spence let out a wet sigh, his chins flexing like a grubworm. “There’s only one critic I want to nail. My first one.”

Roth sat in a swinging seat that was woven from thin reeds. He placed his camera case on the floor. If he worked it around right, a dissipated Spence would make a great addition to Roth’s gallery of deceased celebrities. Because Spence was clearly running headlong toward some invisible cliff edge.

“Your old mum, I bet,” Roth said. “They can be rather overbearing.”

“My mother was a saint. The critic to whom I’ve alluded is long dead. But I have hopes that a merciful God will bring me face-to-face with her in the afterlife.”

Roth grinned. “Yeah, what use is heaven if you can’t have a go at all your old enemies?”

Spence took a long swallow of scotch. “You’re boring me, Mr. Roth. I loathe boredom.”

“Listen here, mate, I had this idea—”

“Let me guess. You have a book you want me to write and we’ll split the money after I do all the work.”

“Not quite that bald. I was thinking about a coffee-table book on Korban. I’ll take the photographs, dig up some old archival stuff, convert some of these portraits to digital files. All you have to do is put your name on the cover and type a few pages as a foreword.”

“My name isn’t what it used be.”

“The project’s a natural. Some eccentric bloke builds himself a rural empire, then dies by mysterious means. We can even play on the ghost angle. I’ve no qualms about inserting some transparent orbs or fairy dust on the film.”

“Speaking of fairies,” Spence said. Through the porch screen, they could see a young man carrying a video camera toward the forest.

“His friend let him go off alone like that? Seemed the jealous and clingy sort.” Roth had occasionally been driven to experiment when no birds were available for plucking. Males were a bit too rough around the edges for his taste, but they offered an element of danger that no woman could match. Still, if Spence were that prim about such matters, best to play it straight. He made no comment.

“Ephram Korban would have despised such depraved moral weakness,” Spence said.

“You talk as if you knew him.”

“No, but I understand him. I can feel him. This house was his in more than mere ownership.”

“Ah, you believe that ghost tripe?”

“I’ve felt the spirit move me.”

Roth wondered how many drinks the man had downed with breakfast. “Then why not a book? We can do it as a tribute if you’d rather.”

Spence lifted himself with effort. “I’d sooner write a trashy thriller, something with vampires and a Martian pope and a government conspiracy. And an unlikely love interest. One must have a love interest to make the pot boil.”

“Think about it.”

“Excuse me, I have work to do. Real work.” Spence carried his empty glass toward the study, no doubt for a refill.

Roth sat in the shade of the porch. Spence, dead in the bathtub, his fat, white gut displayed in a two-page tabloid spread. Moby dicked. That would be a picture worth a thousand words. And multiple thousands of dollars.

How to make that overtaxed heart explode? A ménage à trois with Bridget and Lilith? Or put Paul and Adam on him. With his homophobia, Spence likely had some serious bones in the closet.

Roth smiled. There was an easier way, one that wouldn’t involve the complicity of outsiders.

If Spence were so bloody in love with his work, what would happen if the work went into the fireplace? Best of all, he could blame it all on a ghost. Who could ever prove otherwise?

CHAPTER 41

The wind played through the trees that surrounded the graveyard, a lonely music for a dead resting place high on the edge of the world. Sylva leaned on her walking stick, watching from the fence, too brittle to risk climbing over. The old woman had knelt in the grass, searched the ground for a minute, then picked something and passed it through the fence to Anna. It was a four-leaf clover.

“Lucky charm?” Anna asked.

“Better than luck. Lets you see the dead.”

“I already do.”

“Only when they want. This here gives you the power over them.” Sylva nodded toward the grave of Rachel Faye Hartley. “That’s the one you’ll be wanting to summon.”

“Summon?”

“Come in fire, dead come back. Say it. Third time’s a charm.”

“I can’t do that.”

“It’s in your blood. You just got to believe.”

Anna stared at the cold stone, the flowers chiseled by some delicate hand, a bouquet that never wilted. She believed in ghosts, and so she saw them. And since she’d arrived at Korban Manor, she’d seen them more clearly than ever before. Maybe it was always a question of faith. Part of the belief might originate from the dead spirit, and a ghost had to dream itself back toward the living world.

Perhaps Anna and the ghost had to meet halfway in a union of sad and enslaved souls, and if she only had to recite an old mountain folk spell, that wasn’t so much to ask. The ghost, in this case the person who had lived by the name of Rachel Faye Hartley, had to put forth the real effort. After all, it would be Rachel who wrenched herself from the dark peace of eternal slumber to rise and return to a world perhaps best forgotten. A world that held only the promise of pain and loneliness.

Anna looked down at the clover. Could she believe in magic? With cancer eating her flesh, she had to put all her faith in the permanent existence of the soul, or else she might as well leap from the top of Korban Manor herself. Without faith, what was the point?

She closed her eyes and said the words: “Come in fire, come in fire, come in fire.”

A chill caressed her, a soft immortal coldness. When she opened her eyes, the woman in white stood before her, the bouquet in her diaphanous hands. It was as if Anna were looking into a trick mirror, because she recognized herself in that pale and transparent face.

“Anna,” the woman said, in that same whispered tone that had haunted Anna’s dreams, had called to her from the trail, had led her into the woods where George Lawson’s spirit seized her in its severed hand.

“You,” Anna said. “You’re the one who summoned me here. It wasn’t Ephram Korban at all.”

“You grew up beautiful, just like I always figured.” The words were like splashes of ice water.

“What are you talking about?”

“I hated to send you away. I thought it was the only way to save you from him. But I didn’t know.”

“Send me away?” Anna looked at Sylva, who pulled her shawl more tightly about her bony shoulders. Sylva nodded her knot of skull bone, her face tired, wrinkles deepening, as if she’d aged fifty years since arriving at the graveyard. Anna looked at the ghost of Rachel, back to Sylva, and again at the ghost. Their eyes had that same shape, the dark arch of brow, the same hint of mystery. Just like Anna’s.

Just like Anna’s.

“You’re her.” The realization sliced through Anna with the slow sureness of a glacier, more implacable than cancer, an impossible truth that was all the more horrible because the impossible had become ordinary.

Anna’s blood froze in her veins, as hard as the frost that still sparkled beneath the patches of tombstone shadows.

“It’s all my fault,” Rachel said. “That’s my sorrow, that’s what haunts me in my tunnel of the soul. The fear that Ephram uses to control me.”

“Ephram Korban. What do I care about him?” Anna’s tears ran down her cheeks like the tracing of lifeless fingers.

The ghostly lips parted, and Rachel’s form glimmered under the sunrise. “It was hard on me to lose you, harder even than dying. Harder even than being dead. Because being dead is just like being alive, only worse.”

“Hard on you,” Anna said. “Every night, in every new foster home, every time some stranger tucked me in, I prayed to God that you’d have to suffer. Even though I never knew you, I hated you. Because I never got to belong.”

“I suffered, too.”

“I hated you for not being there, for never existing. And now I find you, and you still don’t exist.”

“You don’t understand, Anna. We need you.”

“Need, need, need. What about me? I had needs, too.” Anna flung the clover to the grave grass, the sobs shaking her. “Go away. I don’t believe in you.”

“Anna,” Sylva said. “She may be dead, but she’s blood.”

“You can keep your blood. I’m done with it all.” Anna moved between the stones, vision blurred by tears, scarcely aware of her feet, wanting only to be away, back in the world of ordinary pain, ordinary loneliness.

Rachel’s voice reached across the grass, weaker, as if leaking from inside the mouth of an endless tunnel. “He haunts us, Anna. We’re dead and he still haunts us.”

Anna didn’t even slow down. She had come here to find her own ghost. Now she had, and it was worse than she ever could have imagined. Her ghost didn’t provide solace and the comfort of life beyond life. Her ghost brought the promise of eternal loneliness, proof that she would never belong, no matter which side of the grave claimed her.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Sylva shouted after her, the words swept by the October wind. “It’s way worse to lose a daughter. I ought to know. ‘Cause I lost Rachel.”

Anna stopped near the shadow of Ephram Korban’s monument. She turned, and her turning seemed as slow as the spinning of the earth, trickles of angry sorrow cold on her cheeks, flesh already numb to this new impossible truth.

Ephram Korban and Sylva.

Then Rachel.

And Anna.

Korban’s name hovered before her in a watery haze, as if the chiseled letters on the monument gave weight to Sylva’s words. Blood. Ephram Korban’s blood ran through her, as tainted as that ancestral side which cursed her with the Sight, all bound up in this ridge of ancient Appalachian soil, a sorry dirt that couldn’t even hold down its corpses.

Sylva called once more, but Anna wasn’t listening. She climbed over the fence, her heart on fire with a single wish.

Dead stay dead.

Dead stay dead forever.

CHAPTER 42

Mason wiped the sweat from his forehead. He had removed his shirt, but still the room was too warm. Oak chips stuck to his chest and arms. His shoulders had passed the point of aching. The pain had transformed into a dull, constant drumming somewhere in the back of his mind.

His sculpting instructor at Adderly, Dennis Graves, had told him that the key to art was stamina. Mason’s first assignment had been to carve the letters of the word “stamina” into a block of white pine. That clumsy effort now rested across Mama’s dead television set. He’d given it to her like a kindergartner who’d brought home a finger painting. That was back before her blindness, though after her eyesight failed she often held it in her lap and ran her fingers over the letters.

Someday he was going to do another word just for her: “dreams.”

He would fashion it in bronze or copper, something durable. Maybe even granite. Except then the word would be too heavy. Maybe it would be too heavy even in balsa wood. Or air.

Mason had finished with the hatchet and adze. The rough form was fleshed out. The sky had grown darker in the basement’s small, high windows. He didn’t know if that meant rain or that dusk was coming. He’d long ago lost track of time.

Mason worked with his broad chisel and mallet, shaving off sections of the oak. The grain was cooperative, as if in a hurry to become its true shape. The statue was revealing itself too fast, and there was no way that he should be this far along already. It was almost as if the wood was pumping energy back through his tools into his hands.

Sure, Mase. Whatever you think. Artistic license.

And look here, the shoulders are squared, one of Korban’s arms will be across his stomach, the other hand behind his back. An aristocratic pose. A man who knows what he’s all about.

The dead space of the basement swallowed the sounds of metal on metal and metal into wood.

Come out, Korban. I know you’re in there, somewhere inside this godforsaken hunk of oak. SING to me, you beautiful old bastard. Rise up and walk.

Mason squinted as a spray of sawdust skipped back toward his face. He drove the chisel’s blade into a space beside the statue’s left arm. Stamina. Dreams.

He’d have to send Dennis Graves another word.

Spirit.

You had to have spirit, or you were lost. The material had to have spirit. You couldn’t squeeze soul out of a stone. It had to already exist, to have existed forever, waiting there for the artist to release it.

The breath of spirit wind blew from the four corners. That’s where dream-images came from. They weren’t really new ideas or visions. They were things that already were, that just had to be revealed to human minds.

Okay. Okay. Now you’re losing it, lint-head.

Artistic pretension is expected, and all that gibberish might come in handy after you get “discovered.” But right now, the reality is that you’re working yourself into a lather and you can’t make yourself stop. You should have taken a break to eat and rest.

But YOU CAN’T MAKE YOURSELF STOP.

Mason frowned and rammed the chisel off the flank of hip. He didn’t think it was a good sign when people started having philosophical debates with themselves. He was supposed to be in a creative trance. He wanted it, searched for it, prayed to the gods of impossible dreams.

He looked at the bust of Korban, and it seemed to smile at him from the table. The wooden lips parted: “So why can’t you stop?”

I can stop anytime I want to.

“Certainly. I believe you, Mr. Jackson.”

Look, you can’t just turn creativity off and on at will. You’ve got to roll with it while you’ve got the wheels. You’ve got to take the Muse’s hand when she wants to dance.

“Fine. No arguments. But let’s just see you stop.”

Okay. But I want you to know that my shoulders and arms and finger muscles are going to scream in pain because they’re wound tighter than a spool of factory thread. Besides, I’m doing this for Mama, not me.

The bust said, “Excuses, excuses.”

I’ll show you. Here we go . . . .

Mason flailed at the chisel. Two inches of dark red wood peeled away from the section that would be Korban’s left kneecap. He repositioned the blade and drew back the mallet for another blow.

The bust laughed, a sound like the shuffle of rodents. “You’re not stopping.”

Okay, already. Get off my case. I just had to get USED to the idea.

Mason curled another strip of oak away, then looked down at his tools scattered around the floor among the shavings.

See? I can take my eyes off it if I want to. Just as an experiment, I’m going to think about something besides Ephram Korban’s statue. Take, for instance, the lovely Anna Galloway . . . .

Mason paused, a drop of sweat hanging at the tip of his nose.

“Ah, so it’s fair Anna that makes your heart sing,” the bust said. “You can have her, you know. Once you finish. I promise. And I always keep my promises.”

Mason clenched his teeth and gave the hammer an extra-hard swing. He could stop anytime he wanted. He just didn’t want to think about her right now. Didn’t want to think, didn’t want to think, didn’t want to think—

“I say, who were you talking to?”

Mason spun, hammer in hand, raising it as if to ward off an attacker. William Roth stepped back, his gray eyes startled wide. He almost dropped the canisters of liquid in his arms.

“Easy, mate.”

Mason lowered the hammer. The spell was broken. “Sorry. I was just getting carried away there for a minute.”

“Looks longer than a ruddy minute to me. Have you been working on that thing nonstop?”

Mason nodded. The pain in the back of his shoulder blades sent its first red twinges to his brain. He rubbed his right biceps.

Roth looked past Mason at the statue. “Good Lord, how did you get so much done already? You must be working like a pack of beavers.”

Mason looked at the statue and tried to see it as Roth did. All the limbs were clearly suggested in the mass of wood, and it was distinguishable as a human form. The head was a featureless block but in close proportion to the rest of the body. The legs rose up from the base with a vibrancy and strength.

“It’s coming along,” Mason said. “I promised Miss Mamie it would be lovely.”

“What’s the rush? You’re going to bust a blooming artery if you keep at it like that.”

“Say, can I ask you something?”

“As long as you put down the hammer.”

Mason laid the hammer on the worktable beside the bust. “Take a look at this painting.”

Roth set his canisters on the table, and Mason lifted the canvas to the light of the nearest lantern.

Roth pursed his lips in approval. “Quite a piece of work.”

“What do you see in that smudge there, at the top of the house? Along the railing of the widow’s walk.”

Roth bent close and peered at the shapes. “Looks like people to me. Wonder who messed it up.”

“Would you believe me if I told you those people weren’t there two days ago?”

Roth looked at Mason and then back at the painting. “I’d say you’re ass over teakettle from overwork.”

“Well, maybe it’s something to do with the chemicals in the paint. It just bugs me, that’s all. As an artist myself, I know how it feels to come up short of perfection.”

Roth gave his barking laugh. “Don’t kid yourself with all that ‘artist’ rot. It’s all about jack, selling out for whatever you can get.”

Mason rubbed his chin and felt the scratch of stubble. He had been neglecting his hygiene. He could smell his own underarms. To Roth, the studio must have stunk like the laundry room at a gym. Mason knelt and retrieved his shirt, shook the wood chips free, and put it on. He glanced at the statue and felt guilty for thinking of abandoning it.

“What are you doing down here?” he asked Roth, before his mind could fixate on Korban again.

“Going to develop some negatives. Miss Mamie said I could use the wine cellar. Dark enough down here, don’t you think?”

“And warm, too. They must be keeping the main furnace going full tilt. It’s on the other side of the wall there. I hear them stoking it every three or four hours.”

“This Korban bloke must not have been much of a save-the-trees sort.”

Mason looked at the statue again. “Maybe in some crazy way, he is the trees.”

“Get some sun, Mason. You’re starting to go a bit dodgy.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Loosen up, have some fun.” Roth grinned, flashing his vulpine teeth. “Have a go at that quirky bird Anna. She’s your style.”

“No, thanks. I have enough worries. I’d better get some food in me so I can finish this thing.”

From the stairs, Mason took a last look back at the statue that would be Ephram Korban. It was going to be wonderful. Dennis Graves would eat his mallet in jealousy. This creation was shaping up to be a god.

CHAPTER 43

Spence wept.

The beauty, the elegance of the prose, was sweeping over him like the black tide in his novel. He could feel it approaching. With every sentence, every preposition, every punctuation mark, he was nearing the Word.

The keys sang as they slapped against the carriage, the ringing bell of the return heralded the coming glory. Spence could barely see the page through the blur of his tears, even with the sun pouring through the window, but he didn’t need to see. The ghostwriter was compelling his fingers, sending them flying over the keyboard, the words no longer even remotely his own.

Spence wondered if that made any difference. The word author was derived from authority. He had always prided himself on his control and mastery of language, of juggling the alphabet, tricking verbs, nailing down nouns. But this was the uninhibited writing, the deeper language, the cracks between sound and thought. Communication that got to the heart of the truth.

He was dimly aware of Bridget on the bed. He would go to her later, when darkness came. New strength surged in his flesh, his blood was rejuvenated, his power to perform restored. The gift and blessing of the Word. The act of sacrifice always gave power back to the one making the sacrifice.

The room was cold, even with the fire leaping up the chimney as if yearning for the freedom of the sky. His fingers were like winter sticks, but still they rattled the keys, the music of ice cubes in a glass. Ephram Korban watched Spence from the portrait, the most encouraging of editors, his dark eyes suggesting plot twists.

Bridget could wait, impatient and aching in the warm bed. For now, there was only the page. The final page.

Spence sighed. The ending was always like a small death.

Those bittersweet words, “The End.”

Maybe End was the One True Word.

The only word that had ever mattered.

CHAPTER 44

The manor welcomed Anna back, with its dark wainscoting and high ceiling and the fire roaring in the foyer hearth. And Korban, benevolent old Ephram, Grandfather Ephram, smiled kindly down from his vigilant perch above the mantel.

Maybe she did belong here. As much as anywhere. She belonged nowhere else, after all. And Korban Manor was the end of the world, the kind of place where Anna deserved to pass her final days, walking these windswept ridges in the hard heart of the Appalachian winter. If she died here, her spirit would answer its true calling, her ghost would drift above the manor just as she’d seen so many times in her dreams.

And was that so bad?

As long as Rachel Faye Hartley stayed in the graveyard or haunted the trails of Beechy Gap, never crossing this threshold of stone and wood, then Anna could be as content as any dead and restless thing. To gaze from the widow’s walk, a widow without a husband to mourn, nor even a mother for that matter, and wait for whatever came after the passing of forever. Could such an afterlife possibly be worse than her actual life, which she had drifted through without any positive effect, never knowing the full and mysterious power of love?

No. Death could never be worse than this life, the one that cancer had invaded, where she had been abandoned, where she had walked a million sad miles alone.

“Anna?”

God. Not him, not now. She wiped quickly at her eyes, pretending they had been stung by the smoke that came down the chimney as the wind turned. “Hi, Mason.”

“I’m glad I found you. I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

“As long as it’s not personal.”

“Hey, are you okay? You look a little shook up.”

“Like I’ve seen a ghost?” Anna managed a bitter laugh.

“Well, that’s sort of what I wanted to ask you about. Because there’s a painting of Korban Manor down in the basement—”

Anna moved closer to the inviting warmth of the foyer’s fireplace, rubbing her hands together. The action was designed to put distance between her and Mason, but he hovered uncomfortably near. He checked the hallways, then spoke, his voice lower.

“The painting has a smudge on the rooftop,” he said. “And the way the paint’s breaking down, it looks like the artist may have hidden some figures on an earlier layer of paint, sort of like a subliminal image. Because the smudge is starting to look like people.”

“Don’t artists sometimes recycle their canvases? Maybe the painter covered over a mistake or a rough draft.”

“Well, that’s what I thought, too. But now I can see their faces.”

Anna looked up at Korban’s portrait, wondered how many times that face had lived in a painter’s fevered mind, how many hours her long-dead relative had sat in stiff repose as an adored subject. Even Cris had talked about how the manor and Korban’s face kept creeping into her mind until all her fingers wanted to do was record him in charcoal, ink, and Conte crayon. And Mason had told Anna about the bust of Korban, how the dead man’s image haunted his sleep and drove him into obsessive bouts of work.

“Let me guess,” Anna said. “One of the faces is Ephram Korban’s. Because you see him every time you close your eyes.”

“One of them is Ephram Korban.” He glanced sideways at the portrait, as if not quite trusting it enough to turn his back to it. “But that’s not so strange, considering that nobody seems to do anything creative around here without invoking the old bastard in some way or another.”

“He looks sort of charming, doesn’t he?”

“As charming as a nest of snakes, maybe.”

“Korban gets painted a lot around here. Big deal. What else is strange about the painting?”

“One of the other faces. I mean, the oil paint is dry, and from the dust on the frame, it might be a year old, or might be twenty. Maybe more. And you told me you’d never been here before.”

“I never lie, unless I have a good reason.” Except to myself. I’ve been lying to myself since before I learned to speak.

“Then, since you’re a ghost hunter, you might be interested to know that your face is in the painting.”

The fire spat an ember onto the hearth, toward Anna. Mason crushed it out with his foot.

“Show me,” Anna said.

CHAPTER 45

William Roth pulled the negatives from the glass jar with practiced movements. He’d unwound hundreds of rolls of film, but this was the first time he’d done it in a wine cellar. A red light would have been handy, but this was no harder than developing in a tent in Sudan or a shack in the Amazon basin. He’d mixed the chemicals by the light of a lantern, doused the flame, done his business, and rinsed thoroughly.

All that remained was to let the film dry. The basement air was still, which might help keep the heavy dust off the emulsion. Dust hung everywhere about this place, what with the ashes of constant fires drifting about. And that fellow Mason with all his sawdust and grit.

Roth felt along the surface of the workbench, found the matches and the warm globe of the lantern, then stroked the match to life and touched it to the wick. He’d rigged a piece of twine across the small room, and now attached the six rolls of film to it using clothespins borrowed from the maid. After hanging the last strip, adding an extra clothespin at the bottom to take the curl out of the celluloid, he brought the lantern closer for a look at his work.

Ah, there were those shots from the bridge, and even colorless, and with black, white, and shades of gray reversed, he could tell the photos would add to the legend that was Roth. He scanned down the squares of images, coming to those of the bridge and Lilith.

“Bloody hell?” He brought the lantern closer, even though he risked warping the celluloid with the heat.

There spanned the length of bridge, where it disappeared into the trees leading back to Black Rock and civilization. Those creepy ravens were perfectly plain in reverse image along the bridge rails, and the frosted spiderweb hung in the pictures like a dark piece of lace. But Lilith didn’t appear in any of them.

Roth wiped his eyes. Maybe he’d advanced the film too far, taken the shots of her after he’d reached the end of the roll. That was the sort of thing amateurs did, gawps and ninnies, not masters. When was the last time Roth had made a mistake?

“Bloody goddamned hell,” he whispered, his accent a blend of Manchester and lower-class Cleveland. Maybe it was time for a drink, a comfy fireside, and a bit of rest. The fringe benefits of fame and fake charisma might prove to be fleeting if he kept on like this. Especially since Spence was proving to be a stone wall. If Roth’s luck didn’t improve soon, he might start blaming the curse of Korban or some such.

He lifted the lantern high, the dusty bottoms of the bottles surrounding him like ancient eyes. He pulled a bottle from the rack that lined one wall. The dark glass bore a plain label, corked right here at the estate. In ink, someone had handwritten “1909.” Probably a decent year. Decent enough to blot out that memory of the bridge, at any rate. And maybe decent enough to warm the heart and part the legs of the fair and tender Lilith.

Roth tucked the bottle under his arm and left the basement, his photographs consigned to the darkness.

CHAPTER 46

“She won’t let me leave,” Adam said.

“Damn.” Paul took another draw off his joint. The sweet smell of marijuana drifted across the back porch. “Too bad, Princess.”

Paul’s third joint of the day. Rational conversation would be impossible. But then, hadn’t it always been? There wasn’t much left to discuss, anyway.

Adam stood against the rail, staring out at the mountains. Paul sat in one of the mule-eared rockers, not bothering to move his chair closer to Adam’s. The noise of the piano leaked from the study, drowning out the morning song of birds. Someone laughed drunkenly inside the house, no doubt another suffering artist who had self-inflicted misery to drive away.

Adam didn’t even have that pathetic excuse for his nightmares. Because he’d gone to bed cold sober, and his mind was far too clear, preserving every detail of his death and subsequent resurrection.

“You know something?” Paul’s face looked sinister as he sucked in a lungful of smoke. He held it in, then exhaled toward Adam with an exaggerated flourish. “Maybe if you’d loosen up, you could get a little more joy out of life. Do you always have to be so damned serious about everything?”

Uptight Manhattan boy. That was Adam, all right. Worried about mutual funds when most people were worried about scoring the night’s lover, deciding which band was the flavor of the month, or choosing a brand-name clothes designer. But at least Adam wasn’t selfish. That was why making the relationship work was so important to him. That was why he wanted to adopt a child.

He wanted to share what he had to offer, to give himself away. He wanted a home in somebody’s heart. Only, he now feared it wouldn’t be Paul’s.

“Let it out,” Adam said. “Go ahead and destroy me. That’s all you’ve done since we got here, anyway. Might as well finish the job.”

Paul giggled. “The martyr. Nails in your palms and a spear in your side. Poor boy. You’ve given me an idea for my next video. The Noble Suffering of Adam Andrews. Filmed in whine-a-vision.”

Asshole. Asshole.

Adam clenched a fist, the anger merging with the fear, creating a hot mix that burned his gut. But losing control would be letting Paul have the final victory. Adam always lost with grace. And he’d had lots of practice.

He forced his voice to remain calm and quiet. “Look, since I’m stuck here for five more weeks, we may as well be civil to each other. That way, maybe we can look back at this one day and pretend it wasn’t all bad.”

The rocker squeaked as Paul stood up, and the ember of the joint stub arced into the damp grass beside the porch. Paul walked over to Adam, leaned forward until his face was so close that Adam could smell the marijuana and liquor on his breath.

“Now you’re talking,” Paul said. “Since we’re stuck with each other, we might as well enjoy it.”

Adam tried to slide away from the contact, but Paul hugged him, his breath hot on Adam’s neck.

“Paul, I don’t think—”

“Shh. You get all hot and bothered over Ephram Korban, talking about him in your sleep, but I’m probably a little more available.”

“I can’t, knowing you don’t care about me. Now stop it, Miss Mamie might see us.”

Paul stepped back, looked into Adam’s eyes. Smiled. His damned hair was tousled, boyish, he was dead cute and knew it.

Suddenly his face changed, contorted, and Ephram Korban, that twisted, cruel face from Adam’s nightmare, leered at him like a Halloween mask.

And the dream came back in all its brilliance and realism, Korban leaning him over the railing of the widow’s walk, only kissing him this time, breath hot and foul, tongue like an insistent snake, mouth stealing the breath from his lungs. Then, drained and empty, Korban sucking him into the long tunnel toward the thing that Adam knew was waiting around the bend. The thing he feared most.

For Adam, there would be nothing. In Adam’s part of the tunnel, after he passed through the row of ghosts, he would step into the pitch of his childhood nightmare. The one of suffocation, no sight, no sound, no touch besides the texture of the darkness pressing down around him. No taste besides the bland, airless nothing.

No feeling besides the fear that came with isolation. And the dread of knowing that the bubble was complete, intact, unchanging. Eternal loneliness.

Was that why he was so desperate to adopt? To make someone need him? To make it so the child couldn’t leave, at least for many years? Years that the awful colorless texture would be kept away.

He blinked and it was Paul that stood before him, not Ephram Korban. The piano notes were like needles of ice driven by the wind.

Only a flashback. How old were you when you first had that dream of suffocation? Three? Two? Even before you knew about words?

And this house has brought it back, the dream come sniffing around your heels like a strange black dog that follows you home. That neither comes close enough to be petted nor gets left far enough behind to be forgotten.

Adam didn’t know what the dream meant, and he wasn’t interested in a shrink’s opinion, either. He only knew that he didn’t want to be alone. Even if it meant surrendering, losing, grabbing and hanging on in desperation. He wrapped his arms around Paul, clung to him as if sinking in quicksand.

The death dream. Ephram Korban. The ghosts. All part of it. The house would take him in its jaws and then swallow him into its black stomach. Swallow him alone, unless he took someone with him into that airless silence.

“I care about you,” Paul whispered in his ear. “Can’t you tell?”

Paul cared about the flesh, the meat. But that was okay. That’s all they were, anyway. They had no spirit. Two souls could never mingle as one, not even in dreams.

Adam let out a sharp breath. He hated the feelings that flooded his body, the passion that betrayed him. But love and hate were basically the same thing, and both were better than feeling nothing. Anything was better than the suffocation of solitude that waited in his tunnel of the soul. He pulled Paul closer.

“I have an idea,” Paul said. “Let’s go up on the roof. Up the little stairs. Fool around up there where you had your dream. And I promise not to push you off.”

“That’s what they all say,” Adam said. “And the next thing you know, you’re looking down at your own ghost.”

“Trust me.” Paul took his hand, led him inside.

As they entered the house, Adam realized that people never gave away their hearts, however willing or desperate or lonely they were. Hearts always had to be taken. By force or trickery. Love was murder, the infliction of death by cardiac theft, and the alternative was even worse.

Korban’s painted eyes looked down at them, glimmering with cold empathy, wise to the futility of human dreams.

CHAPTER 47

Anna held the lantern higher. The air in the basement smelled of wood and decay, the shadows creeping from the corners like solid things. Mason’s statue skulked in the flicker of flame, the raw features suggesting an obscene strength. The bust of Korban was even more unsettling, because the face had grown comfortable in the polished grain. It had been fashioned with all the love God might have summoned in crafting Adam and Eve.

“What does it mean?” Mason asked.

“I think it means you’re obsessed.”

“I’m talking about the painting.”

“You did all of this since yesterday?”

“Hey, the critics will love me, Mama will be proud, I’m the Mountain Michelangelo, the unsung hero of sculpture, blah, blah, blah. But look at this damned painting.”

Anna looked. There, on the widow’s walk, a host of figures stood in white relief against the dark background. Foremost was the woman Anna had seen in her dreams, the woman in the long flowing gown, a bouquet in her hands. The woman’s mouth was open, caught in a scream or a whisper, the eyes imploring, pleading for deliverance from the grasping shapes behind her.

“That’s you,” Mason said.

“No. I thought it was, at first.”

“You’ve seen this painting before?”

“In my dreams. For the past year, ever since I found out—since I decided to come to Korban Manor.”

“If it’s not you, then who is it?”

“You won’t believe this.”

Mason waved his arm to indicate his work. “I’ve turned into a genius practically overnight, every time I close my eyes Korban is right there telling me to get back to work, you and Ransom and half the guests are convinced that this house is haunted, and this picture has painted itself while nobody was watching. Now tell me what else I wouldn’t believe.”

“Okay, then. Promise not to laugh.”

“I’ve not been in a laughing mood since I got here. I’m a serious artist, didn’t you know that?”

“Oh yes. You’ve got ‘suffering’ written all over your face. It’s your shield against the world. That’s your excuse for keeping people away. You’re as wooden as your goddamned statue.”

Mason’s eyes flashed anger, and for a moment Anna saw Stephen, his mask of barely suppressed rage at Anna’s acceptance of approaching death, his calculation of what her loss would mean, his scorn when he’d learned she was going off to a “haunted” house that had never registered anomalous empirical data.

Mason grabbed her arm, squeezed hard enough to hurt. “Listen to me. When I was six years old, my mother bought me a package of modeling clay. It was like magic, digging my fingers in that stuff, twisting it and shaping it however I liked. For the first time in my life, I could control something.

“I made my mother a dinosaur, copying it from a picture in a book. I even put a row of little bony plates up its spine and spikes on its tail, two long horns and eyes that looked like they could stare down a T. Rex. Mama loved it. For the first time ever, I’d done something that really made her proud.”

Mason squeezed harder, and Anna feared that he’d lost his mind, was going to snap her arm as if it were one of his whittling sticks. He talked faster, face red, eyes dark and faraway. “And my dad came in, saw the dinosaur, knocked it on the floor, and stomped it flat. Called me a goddamned useless daydreamer, a lazybones sack of crap. I can still see that imprint on the floor, the tread of his boot in the clay. Made me feel real special, all right.

“And you’re special because you see things that don’t exist. Well, let me tell you something, Little Miss Strange. This isn’t one of your campfire tales. This is happening, this is real.” He pulled her closer to the painting. “You can see it.”

She twisted away, retreated with the lantern. The motion of the light made the shadows shift, gave the illusion that the statue had altered its position among the boards and wires that supported it. She gazed into the small flame of the lantern, where the orange gave way to blue and then to yellow. Maybe if she burned out her retinas, she’d never have to see another ghost in the short time she had left to live. Blinded to Second Sight or any sight.

“That’s not me,” she said, commanding her tears to evaporate. “It’s my mother.”

“Your mother?”

“She’s here. She’s dead. She’s one of them now. And they can have her, for all I care.”

“One of who? Wait a minute. You’re losing me.”

“Join the club. I’ve lost everybody else along the way.”

She slammed the lantern onto Mason’s worktable hard enough to rattle the glass. The shadows jumped as the flame bobbed, then the darkness began its slow crawl toward Anna. “Here. You’re going to need this, because it gets awfully dark when your head’s up your ass.”

She headed for the stairs, welcoming the cool air that drifted over her skin like fingers of fog. The pain came again, in gentle prods, reminders of the sand that poured through the narrow hourglass gap between present and past. Soon the sand would run out and darkness would claim her. Soon, but not nearly soon enough.

On each wooden step, she stomped out her ritual countdown.

Ten, round and thin.

Nine, loop and droop.

Eight, a double gate.

“Anna. Wait.”

Seven, sharp and even.

Six, an arc and trick.

“I’m sorry.”

She was sorry, too.

Five, a broken wing.

Four, a north fork.

“I’m scared.”

Join the club.

Three, a skeleton key.

Two, an empty hook.

One, a dividing line.

“Help me.”

Zero.

Nothing.

She opened the door and went down the hall, into the arteries of the house, aware of its patient and held breath, its warm and welcoming heart. Acceptance brought peace. This was the first and last place she had ever belonged. Sylva Hartley was right. She had come home.

CHAPTER 48

She had come home. Sylva ground the dried bloodroot, pulse working her veins like a snowmelt busting through rocks at the tail end of winter. Only a handful of hours until sundown, and then the rising of the blue moon. Sylva had prayed for this night for nigh on a hundred years, and the ashes of a prayer were stronger than the hottest fires of hell.

The spirits shifted in the dirt, turned in their tunnels, restless, disturbed by Ephram Korban’s rising power. She knew Ephram better than anybody, better than even Margaret did, or “Miss Mamie,” as she’d taken to being called. Many was the night Ephram’s voice haunted the wind of Beechy Gap, whispering to Sylva, sending her scuttling for the charms. And he was fetching up a storm now, had already called over George Lawson and one of them new guests, with more soon to follow. By the next sunrise, Korban would have them all. Even Anna. Especially Anna.

Sylva clutched the clay jar of catbone, sprinkled some on the hearth. Her hand ached from gripping the stone, but the powders had to be fine as grave dust. She crushed the mixture again, worked the dry herbs, trembling. The fire spat, which she took as a good omen.

Would her faith be enough? She had the spells down, all her life had been dress rehearsal for this one magic night. Mighty long had she walked these hills, collecting roots and legends, crossing over to commune with the dead, even when the dead just wanted to be left alone. The spell hung on her cracked lips like a fevered drool.

When the time was right, she’d say it. Frost and fire. Ephram Korban was frost and fire. Dead and alive. Both exactly the same, when you got right to the heart of it all.

She pulled a small cedar box from a chink in the log wall. The scrap of cloth was gray with age, stained with the soul juice of the one who had worn it. Sylva brought it to her lips, whispered, “Go out frost,” kissed it, and placed it amid the pile of powder.

She ground the stone against the cloth, the threads fraying, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, frost to fire.

CHAPTER 49

Roth licked his lips. This was the good part. The bird had fallen for his line of poppycock. Swallowed it as if it were a worm. Which gave him an idea about what he would get Lilith to do when they got to her room.

She had led him through a small door in the pantry, a door he hadn’t noticed before, a place of drafts and shadows that seemed spot-on for the common class. Come to think of it, the servants were ever-present, as if they never needed to sleep. He’d seen one of the maids tending the fire in the sitting room at three in the morning, and the hired hands were in at all hours with their loads of firewood.

Roth followed Lilith down a narrow set of stairs. This was a separate section of the basement, walled off from the part where Mason worked and where Roth had developed his negatives. When the door swung shut above them, they were in pitch darkness. Neither had a lantern, and the inability to see excited Roth, made his skin tingle in anticipation. Or maybe it was the chilly dead air, the sense of enclosure, that caused his heart to pump faster.

She’d been easy and eager, all right. Most women acted like the old in-out in the middle of the day was an affront to the gods. Lilith didn’t even need to finish her first glass of filched wine before she was leaning on Roth, giving him that special happy smile, looking into those smoky gray eyes that no woman in her right mind could resist.

He reached in front of him, keeping one hand on the wall so he wouldn’t lose his balance. He touched Lilith’s hair. He slid his hand down to where her shoulder should be, but she managed to stay a few steps ahead of him. She hadn’t spoken since he’d made his suggestion, only smiled in submission and tilted her head to her secret door. She was one for games, she was.

Roth stepped off the creaking wood onto a hard, flat area. Then he heard a match strike a few feet away, and a tuft of flame erupted. Lilith’s face was in the circle of light, but that was impossible, because she was beside him. Her black dress made her body invisible, and for a moment her face and hands appeared to be floating unattached in the air. He let go of her hair, or whatever he was touching, and jumped back as she lit a candle.

“We should have a fire,” she whispered, her voice husky. Roth looked down at his hand and saw that it was covered with cobwebs. He yelped and wiped his hand on his pants.

She giggled. “Did that scare you, Mr. Roth?”

“I hate spiders, remember? Ever since I was nine and got one in me mouth when I was crawling around under the porch. Had nightmares for a week after.”

“Poor boy. You’re safe with me.”

“I hope not too safe, eh? I live for danger, and you’re looking pretty bleeding dangerous, love.”

As the candle caught and flared, he could make out the dim corners of the room, wondering if spiders lurked in the shadows. Six feet from anywhere, they said. As long as they stayed six feet away. He noticed an alcove that had another candle in it. How had she lit that one? He thought maybe the room led into another, but then saw Lilith’s back and his own face. A mirror, as large as the bed beneath it, reflecting the room. Kinky bird.

He licked his lips and ran his tongue over his teeth. The room was small and the walls were stone masonry, so thick that no sound would escape. Maybe she liked to get in full voice while having a go. That was fine with Roth.

The room was empty of furniture besides the bed, and that bothered Roth for a moment. There were no blankets on the mattress, only an old linen sheet that looked like it could use a wash. The place was as dismal as a monk’s cell. But he forgot all that when Lilith placed the candle on the hearth and sat on the bed, looking up at him with wanton eyes.

Black eyes. Deeper than a Newcastle coal shaft. He didn’t see the things he wanted to see. He liked his birds to have a little fear, or at least a little performance anxiety. Made them try harder to please.

But he wasn’t going to get particular. One was the same as another, when all was said and done. And her skin looked creamy enough. He would have thought she might blush a little, but she only smiled again, and something about the smile bothered him.

“You won’t get in trouble, will you? Having it on with the guests?” he asked, more to break the suffocating silence than because he cared.

“Miss Mamie says guest satisfaction is the key to repeat business,” she said, and again that devilish smile was on her lips. For a moment, Roth felt like the seduced instead of the seducer. But that was ridiculous. It was his fame, his charm, his aura of power that had swayed her. His name on a thousand glossy photo credits.

His heart pounded harder and he moved across the room to the bed. She lay back on the sheet, spreading her arms, opening herself to him.

“Am I as pretty as a picture, Mr. Roth?”

He gulped. Maybe it was all that wine he’d tossed back, but he was getting aroused too fast. He felt like an idiot schoolboy looking at a girlie mag. He didn’t like to lose control. No bird could play with his emotions that easily.

Her breasts had flattened out beneath the neckline of her dress, and she raised her knees so that her legs were spread. Her dress slid along her thighs, and Roth couldn’t tear his gaze away from the shadowy space between her hips. He’d never been this turned on.

Or maybe it was the house, the odd tingle he’d felt in the back of his head since he’d arrived. The tingle seemed to grow more intense and spread through his limbs. Fire, that’s what it was. A mild flush of warmth expanding into a glow.

He knelt, wanting to touch her. He’d have to take it slow, or he’d become an animal. He didn’t want to just have a slam, he wanted to go nice and easy. He liked that. He liked to hear them beg to be finished off.

But now he was afraid he was slipping, that the power and control had shifted, that she was the one calling the shots. His hands trembled as he reached for her, and he was suddenly angry with himself. He never trembled. He’d taken photos of charging rhinos from thirty feet, with a handheld camera, and they’d come out as clear and focused as an eye chart.

So he did what he always did when he wanted to prolong or deny his passion: he thought about his work. The batch of negatives he’d developed that afternoon. Something about them bothered him, but he couldn’t remember at the moment. Definitely the wine had gotten him. And his anger at Spence had clouded his thoughts, too. Well, only one way to drive out the devil.

He put his hands on her bare lower thighs. Her skin was tepid, the same temperature as the room. Odd, but he’d warm her up soon enough. Nothing like a bit of friction for that. But not yet.

Roth climbed onto the bed, thought about removing his pants, then decided to wait. Lilith’s hands were on his shoulders, around his neck, pulling his face to hers. What the hell, no use making her suffer any longer. For some reason, her lack of body heat excited him further. Maybe it was this blooming crypt of a room that chilled her. He took it as a personal challenge to stoke her fires.

His lips pressed against hers, her tongue uncertain in her mouth. For a bird with such a fast come-on, she was acting like she’d never kissed before. He hesitated, because something was wrong with the inside of her mouth.

Roth pressed himself down on top of Lilith, her body molding to his even through the dress. Her breasts compressed under him and he liked the feeling. But he was careful not to like it too much. Nice and easy was the ticket, even though his blood pounded hard through his flesh. What was it about the inside of her mouth?

It was just like the rest of her, a little too cool. What was the temperature under the ground, a constant fifty-six degrees or something? But surely her mouth should be hot, and not quite so dry. It was almost like shoving his tongue into a coat pocket. He hoped she wasn’t this dry everywhere else.

Lilith moaned into his mouth. Didn’t she have any juice?

She writhed under him, so he forgot about the awkwardness of her tongue. He reached out for the shoulder of her dress. He started to pull it lower, to expose more of her flesh to the candlelight.

“Yes,” she gasped.

“Yes,” came another voice.

Bloody hell?

Probably just an echo off the stone walls. A trick of the acoustics.

But the dead air of the room gobbled sound and swallowed it whole instead of bouncing it back and forth.

Roth caught a flicker of movement that distracted him from the blood rushing below his waist. Then he remembered the mirror and looked up at it. Maybe watching him and the lovely lass beneath him would rekindle his arousal.

In the mirror his face grew larger, as if he were watching himself through a fast-zooming lens. And why was that so wrong?

It was only a split second, but plenty of time for him to notice that the mirror was falling onto the bed, onto them, as if in slow motion. And that sheet of glass must weigh a hundred pounds—if it broke—

If it broke, he would be badly cut.

Badly.

But he couldn’t move, Lilith had her limbs locked around him, and bloody hell, she was strong, he grunted as he tried to fight her off, but she had too many arms, too many, scratching and clutching at him, and he saw her reflection in the mirror and she wasn’t Lilith, she was a black spider, squat and thick, pincers twitching near his lips, searching for a soul kiss.

Black widow, his mind screamed at him, she always eats her mate.

Looking up, he hardly recognized his reflection, eyes large, his mouth a black tunnel, the stems of Lilith’s eight arms clasping him, the barbs of her forelimbs in his flesh.

But before the pain could spin its web, the mirror was upon him, and as the glass shattered, it wasn’t his face in the mirror, it was Korban’s.

Then the silver shards sliced into his flesh and Lilith loosed her venom and he was in the long dark tunnel and Ephram Korban smiled at him, holding up a spoon that squirmed with the frantic scrabbling of spiders.

“Time for a spot of tea, Mr. Roth,” Korban said.

CHAPTER 50

“How is our statue coming along?” Miss Mamie hoped her impatience was buried deep, just as all her emotions were, except when under the naked gaze of Ephram.

“It’s going to be lovely,” Mason said, standing in the doorway of his room, eyes puffy, hair disheveled. “You want to come in?”

She and Ephram had spent many precious nights here, hours that seemed even sweeter with the distant years. But the room disturbed her because it always bore the stink and taint of Sylva, as if the walls still harbored the memory of Ephram’s sin. She could forgive, all right. All women could forgive, that was how love worked, but she would never forget. Even if Ephram let her live to be a thousand.

Mason held open the door, and she peered past him to the fireplace, the dew drying on the windowsill, the smiling face of Ephram on the wall.

“I only have a moment,” she said. “I’m busy preparing for the party.”

“Party?”

“The blue moon party. It’s something of a tradition at Korban Manor. Your presence is required.”

“Sure. I guess I could spare the time.”

“Not too much time, I hope. I know you’re dedicated to your work.”

“That reminds me. Do you know anything about that painting of the manor in the basement?”

Rage filled Miss Mamie, burned her, scorched her like her dead husband’s love. She no longer cared if Mason saw the flames in her eyes. He couldn’t escape anyway. He was as trapped here as she was.

She forced a smile, the good hostess. “Master Korban, I’m afraid. He once fancied himself a painter.”

The anger opened a dark tunnel in her heart, the conduit through which Ephram kept his hold over her. An icy wind blew from the mouth of the tunnel, freezing her chest. Ephram’s threat and Ephram’s promise. He needed her fear as much as he needed the emotions of the others. She only wished her love was all he required. But love by itself was never enough.

“He was gifted.” Mason must not have noticed her torment. She was good at hiding it, after all these decades.

“One of his greatest sorrows was that he never finished it,” she said. “There’s something melancholy about an artist’s final work, even when the artist’s talents are ordinary and mortal. One always hopes to make an impression that will live on after death.”

“Our vanity,” Mason said. “And I reckon it’s what drives us crazy. Because we know we’ll never achieve perfection.”

“Perfection.” Miss Mamie didn’t need the painting before her in order to remember. She could close her eyes and see the house, the lighted windows, the low clouds, the widow’s walk. She could taste the breeze that had blown from the northwest, crisp from its journey over Canadian tundra. String music quivered in the air, smoke poured from the chimneys as it rose into the round eye of the moon. And Ephram called them up, fetched his spirit slaves, and sent them after Rachel Faye Hartley.

Ephram didn’t like his own family keeping secrets from him. Rachel had fled, leapt to her death from the widow’s walk. Rachel had taken her secrets to the grave, but carried them back from the grave as well.

The hurt rose inside Miss Mamie, consumed her in a blaze of hatred. Ephram and Sylva were bound by blood. His illicit family would always hold the biggest place in his everlasting heart, no matter what sacrifices Miss Mamie made. No matter how deep her devotion. And that painting, the one Ephram called his work in progress, was an eternal reminder.

She turned away, into the hall, the portrait of Ephram close enough to touch. “That painting should have been burned long ago,” she said.

“Anna said her mother was in the painting.”

“Forget Anna. You’re to think only of your statue.”

“Anna says she’s never been here before. How could Korban have known? He’s in the painting, too. And somebody who looks like you.”

“Illusions,” Miss Mamie said. “Never trust an artist, because dreams lie and visions are temporary.”

“Can I trust anybody?”

“Trust your heart, Mr. Jackson. That’s the only thing worth believing in.”

“My heart is getting pulled in three different directions.”

She studied the young man’s face. He was a lot like Ephram in some ways, stubborn and proud, afraid of weakness and failure. But Ephram had taken matters into his own hands, determined to leave none of his work unfinished. Obsessed with controlling his world. “I guess you’ll just have to tear your heart into enough pieces to go around. As long as the biggest piece goes into your statue.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll make you proud. I’ll make them all proud.”

“I’m sure you will. See you tonight. Don’t be late.”

The door closed. Miss Mamie touched the locket that hung around her neck. When Ephram wore flesh again, he would prove that love never died. Sylva, Rachel, Anna, Lilith, and all the others would be forgotten, would be the embers of memories, fading, dying, and at last, lost to darkness. While Miss Mamie and Ephram burned on, together forever.

CHAPTER 51

Anna sat on her bed, huddled in a blanket. The room had grown cold during the afternoon, the temperature falling as the fire burned low. She found herself staring at Ephram Korban’s portrait, searching his face for genetic features that had been passed down to her. Korban, Rachel, Sylva. And somewhere in there, a faceless father, who’d slipped her off the mountain, abandoned her with only a first name, and died rather than return to the mountains. By his own hand and noose, according to Sylva.

She had drifted for so long, rootless and unconnected, and now she belonged to too many people. Her bloodline was too crooked, the generations skewed by whatever magic slowed the ravages of time here at the manor. Because if Sylva was a hundred and five, and Anna was twenty-six, then Rachel had died less than three decades ago. Or maybe when you died, you were ageless, and the years no longer counted.

There was a knock and Cris entered. “Hi, girl, what’s up?”

“Just brooding.”

“Hey, that’s no way to spend an artists’ retreat. Leave that to the idiots who think it’s okay to starve for art. Or to pigheaded photographers.”

“Ah, what’s the point?”

“That’s exactly the point. If it doesn’t matter, if it’s all a solo wet dream, then why not enjoy yourself?”

“Maybe you’re right. I’m taking things a bit too seriously.”

“That’s the spirit.” Cris slipped into the bathroom, paused at the door. “Excuse me. Time of the month. Full moon tonight.”

“So I hear.”

“And a big party on the roof. Miss Mamie says it’s not to be missed. If Mason’s there, maybe you’ll get lucky.” Cris winked, then closed the bathroom door. Anna pulled the blanket more tightly about her shoulders.

When Cris came out, she rummaged in her dresser for a sweater. “Hey, did you mess with my sketch pad?”

“I haven’t been here today.”

Cris held it up. Scrawled across a large sheet of paper, in slashing strokes of red crayon, were the words Go out frost, come in fire.

“Maybe it was one of the servants,” Anna said. “A reminder note to put more wood on the fire.”

“It’s getting cold, all right. October in the mountains. If it wasn’t for the falling leaves, I think I’d rather have Rio. See you tonight.” Cris waved and left, tying her hair back in a ponytail as she went.

Anna watched the grain of the door as it swirled and bent inward. A shape superimposed itself against the dark oak panels. A pale hand, holding a bouquet, the woman with desperate eyes. And that one whispered word, “Anna.”

Resting in peace was apparently not allowed for either the dead or the living.

CHAPTER 52

Mason wished he’d brought a lantern, since the afternoon had grown suddenly dark, heavy clouds sweeping from the northwest like smoke from a distant prairie fire. At least he was out of the house, having dodged the questioning gaze of Miss Mamie. He didn’t want to go down into the basement, at least not until his head cleared. Anna was right, he’d become obsessed, and it was far more than just the pursuit of praise that drove him.

He headed down the road toward the barn. It was about time for Ransom to feed and put up the horses. Maybe Anna had gone to help him. Like Mason, she probably preferred the company of the old mountain man to that of the rowdy revelers in the manor. And she was nuts about the horses.

If he saw her, then he could apologize, talk plainly. Maybe try to understand her. She knew more than she let on, and unlike the other guests, she recognized that something seriously weird was going on at Korban Manor. And the two of them had something else in common.

Because, though she tried her best to hide it, a suffering ran deep inside her, turbulent waters beneath the calm surface. Or maybe he just liked looking into her cyan eyes and his imagination had done the rest. His imagination had always been his blessing and his curse, both his exit door from a lifetime in Sawyer Hosiery and the demon that rode his back in every waking moment and most of his sleeping ones.

He followed the fence line, stopping once to glance back at the house. There were several lighted windows, but much of its facade was dark and featureless. A few high piano notes tinkled in the breeze. He looked up at the roof, at the flat space above the gabled windows where the rail marked off the widow’s walk. A few people moved about beyond the white railing, probably the servants setting up for the party. Mason compared the real thing to the painting in the basement.

No contest. The real thing was much creepier. He didn’t buy Anna’s lie about never having been to the manor, though Korban must have painted the picture decades before her birth. Mason had memorized her face well enough to know it was plainly Anna walking in that painted haze, complete with the bouquet and lace dress.

Miss Mamie didn’t like that painting, either. She’d acted almost afraid of it, despite her obvious adoration of Korban. He shook his head. Why was she so adamant about his finishing the statue? She seemed even more anxious to get it done than Mason himself, as if she had her own critics to please.

He put his hands in his pockets. The forest seemed closer and darker, as if it had picked up and moved while no one was looking. An owl hooted from a stand of trees to his right. He walked a little faster.

Imagination.

Right, Mase. Big dream image. Korban on the brain.

The dream was a crock, a smelly pile of whatever it was that he’d just stepped in. The barn lay ahead, a faint square of lantern light leaking from the open door. Mason hurried toward it. He looked above the door and saw that the horseshoe was points-down on the wall. He couldn’t remember if that was the good position or the ghosts-walk-on-in position. He almost wished he had a rag-ball charm to wave.

Mason stepped inside, his sneakers muted by the hay scattered across the planks. He didn’t see Ransom or Anna. The smell of the leather harness and the sweet sorghum odor of the horse feed drifted across the air. The opposite door leading to the meadow was closed off. He swallowed and was about to call out when he heard Ransom’s voice among the wagons: “Get away, George. You ain’t got no call to be here.”

The shadows of the surrey and wagons were high on the walls, and the staves and wheel spokes and the tines of the hay rake cast flickering black lines on the wooden walls. Ransom spoke again, and this time Mason located him, crouched behind one of the wagons.

“Got me a charm bag, George. You’re supposed to leave me alone.” The handyman’s eyes were wide, staring across the buckled gray floor.

Wasn’t George the name of the man who’d been killed in that accident? Had Ransom’s belief in ghosts and folk magic finally driven him off the deep end?

Then Mason saw George.

And George looked dead, with his hollowed-out eyes sunk into the wispy substance of his impossible shape, the stump of one forearm held aloft. George looked so dead that Mason could see through him. And George was smiling, as if being dead was the best thing that ever happened to him.

“Been sent to fetch you, Ransom, old buddy.” The words seemed to come from every corner of the room, rattling a few crisp leaves that had blown in during winters past. A chill ran up Mason’s spine, his scalp tingled, he felt as if he was going to pass out.

Because this was no dream image.

He couldn’t blame his imagination for this.

“Get on back, damn you,” Ransom said, his voice shaky. He kept his eyes fixed on the George-thing and didn’t notice Mason. George took a step forward.

Except that wasn’t a STEP, was it, Mason? Because George didn’t move a muscle, just floated forward like a windy scarecrow on a wire.

Cold air radiated off the George-thing, chilling the cramped space of the barn. Mason wasn’t ready to call it a ghost. Because when he told Anna he’d believe it when he saw it, it turned out that he had lied. He still didn’t believe it.

And he didn’t believe what was dangling from the George-thing’s lone hand. The missing hand, its milky fingers flexing as if eager to get a good grip around somebody’s throat.

“Come on, Ransom,” the cemetery voice said. “It only hurts for a second. And it’s not so bad inside, once you get used to the snakes.”

“Why, George? I ain’t never done a thing to you.” Ransom’s eyes were wide with terror. “You was a good, God-fearing man. What you gone and got yourself into?”

Laughter shook the tin roofing. Mason’s heart did a somersault.

“Got myself into the tunnel, old buddy. ‘Cause I just had to know. Now let me fetch you on inside. Korban don’t like to be kept waiting.”

There was a rusty creak, and the hay rake rolled forward. Ransom’s eyes shifted from side to side, looking for an escape. He saw Mason.

“The charm ain’t working, Mason. How come the charm ain’t working?”

George turned in Mason’s direction, again without moving any of its withered, fibrous extremities. “Plenty of room inside, young fellow. The tunnel ain’t got no end.”

Ransom ducked between the wagon and the surrey, and Mason turned to run. Too late. The barn door screed across its track and slammed shut.

Mason fled along the inside of the wall, making sure he kept plenty of distance between him and the ghost—you just called it a GHOST, Mason. And that’s not a good sign—until he got beside the surrey. He dropped to his knees, his bones clattering against the floorboards. He crawled to Ransom’s side. “What the hell is that thing, Ransom?”

Ransom peered between the spokes of the wagon wheel. Mason could smell the man’s fear, salt and copper and greenbrier.

“What I been warning you about, son. He’s one of them now. Korban’s bunch.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts.”

Ransom’s rag-ball charm was clenched inside his fist. “That don’t matter none, when the ghosts believe in you.”

The shape floated forward, arms raised, the ragged end of its amputation fluttering with the motion. Mason found himself staring at the stump, wondering why a ghost shouldn’t be all in one piece.

Ghost—you called it a ghost again, Mason.

The hay rake creaked, rolling out of its corner toward the pair.

“Go away,” the old man said in a high, broken voice. “I got warding powers.”

“Come out and play, Ransom,” said the George-thing. “Gets lonely inside, with just the snakes for company. We can set a spell and talk over old times. And Korban’s got chores for us all.”

Ransom held up the charm bag. “See here? Got my lizard powder, yarrow, snakeroot, Saint John’s wort. You’re supposed to go away.”

George laughed again, and thunder rattled in the eaves of the barn. Horses whinnied in the neighboring stalls.

“Don’t believe ever little thing they tell you,” George said. “Them’s just a bunch of old widows’ tales. ‘Cause it ain’t what you believe, is it, Ransom?”

“It’s how much,” Ransom said, defeated, looking down at the little scrap of cotton that held the herbs and powder. The cloth was tied with a piece of frayed blue ribbon. White dust trickled from the opening.

Suddenly Ransom stood and threw the bag at George. “Ashes of a prayer, George!”

Mason was frozen by his own fear and a strange fascination as the bag came untied and the contents spread out in a cloud of green and gray dust. The material wafted over the ghost, mingled in its vapor, caught a stir of wind from the crack beneath the door, and swirled around the shape.

George shimmered, faded briefly, fizzled like a candle about to burn the last of its wax—

Jiminy H. Christ, it’s working.  IT’S WORK—

The cloud of herbs settled to the floor, and George wiped at its eyes.

“Now you boys have gone and made me mad,” the ghost said, its voice flat and cold, seeping from the corners of the room like a fog. “I tried to do it nice, Ransom. Just you and me, taking us a nice long walk into the tunnel like old friends. But you tried to spell me.”

George shook its see-through head. The motion made a breeze that chilled Mason to the bone. Ransom ducked behind the wagon wheel and tensed beside him. The ghost fluttered forward, steadily, now only twenty feet away, twelve, ten. A rusty metallic rattle filled the barn.

George held up the amputated hand. “They took my hammering hand, Ransom. He took it.”

The ghost sounded almost wistful, as if debating whether to follow the orders of an absent overseer. But then the deep caves of the eyes grew bright, flickered in bronze and gold and blazing orange, and the face twisted into something that was barely recognizable as having once been human. It was shrunken, wizened, a shriveled rind with pockmarks for eyes. The voice came again, but it wasn’t just George’s voice, it was the combined voice of dozens, a congregation, a chorus of lost souls. Come inside, Ransom. We’re waiting for you.

The horses kicked their stall doors. A calf bawled from the meadow outside. The surrey and the wagons rocked back and forth. The lantern quivered on the floor, and shadows climbed the walls like giant insects.

The calf bawled again, then once more, the sound somehow standing out in the cacophony.

“Calf bawled three times,” Ransom whispered. “Sure sign of death.”

Mason crouched beside him, wanting to ask Ransom what in the hell was happening. But his tongue felt like a piece of harness against the roof of his mouth. He didn’t think he could work it to form words. Ransom looked at George, then at the closed door. The door was much farther.

Mason reached out to touch Ransom’s sleeve, but came up with nothing. Ransom made a run for it. The ghost didn’t move as Ransom’s boots drummed across the plank floor. Mason wondered if he should make a run for it, too. Ransom moved fast, arms waving wildly.

He’s going to make it!

Ransom was about six feet from the door when the hay rake pounced—POUNCED, Mason thought, like a cat—with a groan of stressed steel and wood, the rusty tines of the windrower sweeping down and forward. Ransom turned and faced the old farm machine as if to beg for mercy.

His eyes met Mason’s, and Mason knew he would never forget that look, even if he got lucky and escaped George and managed to live to be a hundred and one. Ransom’s face blanched, blood rushed from his skin as if trying to hide deep in his organs where the hay rake couldn’t reach. Ransom’s eyes were wet marbles of fear. The leathery skin of his jaws stretched tight as he opened his mouth to scream or pray or mutter an ancient mountain spell.

Then the windrower swept forward, skewering Ransom and pushing him backward. His body slammed against the door, two dozen giant nails being hammered into wood. Ransom gurgled and a red mist spewed from his mouth. And the eyes were gazing down whatever tunnel death had cast him into.

The wagon and surrey stopped shaking, the walls settled back into place, and a sudden silence jarred the air. The old man’s body sagged on the tines like a raw chuck steak at the end of a fork. Mason forced himself to look away from the viscera and carnage. The lantern threw off a burst of light, as if the flames were fed by Ransom’s soul-wind leaving his body.

George floated toward Mason, who took a step backward.

“You’re not here,” Mason said. He put up his hands, palms open. “I don’t believe in you, so you don’t exist.”

The ghost stopped and looked down at its own silken flesh. After a stretch of skipped heartbeats, it looked at Mason and grinned.

“I lied. It ain’t what we believe that matters,” it said softly, sifting forward another three feet. “It’s what Korban believes.”

The hand reached out, the hand in the hand, in a manly welcome. Marble cold and grave-dirt dead.

Mason turned, ran, waiting for the pounce of the hay rake or the grip of the ghost hand. He tripped over a gap in the floorboards and fell. He looked back at his feet. The root cellar.

He wriggled backward and flipped the trapdoor open, then scrambled through headfirst. He grabbed the first rung of the ladder and pulled himself into the damp darkness of the cellar. If potions and prayers didn’t work, then a trapdoor wouldn’t stop a ghost. But his muscles took over where his rational mind had shut down.

He was halfway inside when the trapdoor slammed down on his back. Stripes of silver pain streaked up his spinal column. Then he felt something on the cloth of his pants. A light tapping, walking.

Fingers.

He kicked and flailed his legs, grabbed the second rung, and heaved himself into the darkness. He was weightless for a moment, his stomach lurching from vertigo. Then he was falling, a drop into forever that was too fast for screaming. The door slammed into place overhead as he landed in the root cellar. The air was knocked from his lungs, but that didn’t matter because he wasn’t sure he’d breathed since he’d entered the barn.

The cellar was completely dark except for a few splinters of light that leaked through gaps in the flooring above. He experimentally moved his arms and something tumbled to the ground. He reached out and squeezed the thing under his hand, then felt it. He had landed in a sweet potato bin.

Mason rolled to his feet, then ducked behind the bin. He tried to remember what Ransom had said about another door at one end of the cellar, and a tunnel leading back to the house. George might already be down here. How well could ghosts see in the dark?

Boots, marching feet, fell loud and heavy above him, and he realized it was his pulse pounding in his ears. He opened his mouth so he could listen better. The upstairs was quiet. Mason smelled the earth and the sweet apples. He tried to get a sense of the cellar’s layout, to figure out where the exit was, but he’d lost his sense of direction in the dark.

He could find the ladder again, but a trapdoor worked both ways. What would be waiting for him if he went back up? The hay rake, its tines dripping red? George, ready to give him a hand up? How about Ransom, full of holes, now one of them, whatever they were supposed to be?

He thought of Anna, her quiet self-confidence, her hidden inner strength disguised as aloofness. She claimed to understand ghosts, and hadn’t ridiculed Ransom’s folk beliefs. She wouldn’t freak if she saw a ghost. She would know what to do, if only he could reach her. But what can anybody who’s alive really know about ghosts?

His racing thoughts were broken by a soft noise. At first he thought it was the creaking of the hay rake flexing its metal claw up in the barn. But the noise wasn’t grating and metallic.

It was a rustle of fingers on cloth.

The hand.

He kicked and flailed, and more sweet potatoes tumbled to the cool dirt.

The noises came again, from all sides, from too many sources to be five ghostly digits.

Then he recognized the sound, one he’d grown familiar with while living by the Sawyer Creek landfill.

It wasn’t a creaking, it was a squeaking.

Rats.

CHAPTER 53

“Go away,” Anna said to the ghost that had stepped from the wall, that now stood before her in evanescent splendor.

Rachel drifted closer, the forlorn bouquet held out in apology or sorrow. “I never wanted to hurt you, Anna.”

“Then why did you summon me back here? Why didn’t you just let me die dumb and happy, with nobody to hate?”

“We need you, Anna. I need you.”

“Need, need, need. Do you ever think I might have needed somebody, all those nights when I cried myself to sleep? And now you expect me to feel sorry for you just because you’re dead?”

“It’s not just me, Anna. He’s trapped all of us here.”

Did the dead have a choice about where their souls were bound to the real world? Did the doorway open on a particular place for each person, or did ghosts wander their favorite haunting grounds because they wished themselves into existence? Those were the kinds of questions the hard-line parapsychologists never asked. They were too busy trying to validate their own existence to feel any empathy for those spirits condemned to an eternity of wandering.

But Anna wasn’t strong on empathy herself at the moment. “And if you were free, where would you go?”

Rachel looked out the window, at the mountains that stretched to the horizon. “Away,” she said.

“And Korban has bound your soul here? Why would he do that?”

“He wants everything he ever had, and more. He wants to be served and worshipped. He has unfulfilled dreams. But I think it’s love that keeps him here. Maybe, behind it all, he’s afraid of being alone.”

“Something else that runs in the family,” Anna said. “Well, I don’t mind being alone, not anymore. Because I found what I thought I’d always wanted, and now I see I never wanted it at all.”

“We have tunnels of the soul, Anna. Where we face the things that haunted our lives and dreams. In my tunnel, I’m unable to save you, and I watch as Ephram twists your power until it serves him. Our family had the Sight, Sylva and me, but it’s stronger in you. Because you can see the ghosts even without using charms and spells.”

“Maybe the spells will help me,” Anna said. “Isn’t there one that makes the dead stay dead? ‘Go out frost,’ is that it?”

“Don’t say it, Anna. Because soon you’ll get fetched over, too, and Ephram will be too strong for any of us to stop.”

Anna rose from the bed. “Go out frost.”

Rachel dissolved a little, the bouquet wilting to transparent threads in her hand, her eyes full of ghostly sadness. “You’re our only hope. It’s Sylva.”

“Go out frost.”

Rachel faded against the door. “Sylva,” she whispered.

“Go out frost. Third time’s a charm.”

Rachel disappeared. Anna looked up at Ephram Korban’s portrait. “You can have her, for all I care.”

Anna put on her jacket, collected her flashlight, and went for a walk, wanting to be as far away from Rachel as possible. If Rachel was going to hang out at Korban Manor, then Anna would take a stroll to Beechy Gap.

Rachel had said Sylva knew some sort of secret. Maybe Sylva knew a spell that would keep all ghosts away. Anna had dedicated a big part of her life to chasing ghosts. Now that they were everywhere, she never wanted to see another as long as she lived. Or even after that.

CHAPTER 54

Mason kicked himself backward, pressing against the moist clay bank. Another sweet potato tumbled to the ground. At least he hoped it was a sweet potato. More squeaks pierced the darkness, a sour chorus rising around him.

He would rather face the ghost of George Lawson, stray hand and bloody hay rake and all, than what was down here in the dark. He thought about making a dash for the ladder, but he was disoriented. He was just as likely to run into the apple barrels or trip over one of the pallets that were scattered across the dirt floor. And falling would bring his face down to their level.

To his left came a clicking, a gnawing, a noise like teeth against tinfoil. Maybe five feet away, it was hard to tell in the blackness. The room was like a coffin, with no stir of air, no edge or end that made any difference to the one trapped inside. He huddled in a ball, looking up at the cracks in the boards, at the yellow lines of light that were his only comfort. He smelled his own sweat and fear and wondered if the salt would bring the rats closer.

Leaves whisked across the floor upstairs, then the barn door slid open with a rusty groan. That was followed by a dull thump, and Mason pictured Ransom’s body hitting the planks, limbs lolling uselessly. Then the lantern went out above, and Mason closed his eyes against a black as deep as any he had ever seen.

No. There had been a worse darkness.

Funny how things come back to you. Maybe this was one of those tunnels of the soul. A memory so long buried that the meat had rotted off its bones, that the skeleton had started its slow turn to dust, that the existence of it could no longer be proven. But always that spark remained, that hidden ember, just waiting for a breath of wind to bring the corpse back to full life, to resurrect the memory in all its awful glory.

Funny how that happened.

This was it, the memory. Only this couldn’t be real. Or was the first time the one that was shadowy? It didn’t matter. Because they were the same, past and present entwined in the same heart-stopping fear.

The squeaking.

The rats, tumbling in the dark like sweet potatoes or a child’s toys. How many?

One was too many. How many squeaks? Mason held his breath so he could listen. Ten. Fifteen. Forty.

Mama was out of town. Somebody had died, that’s all Mason knew, because he’d never seen Mama cry so much. And Mason sensed a change in her when Mama gave him all those extra hugs and kisses, held him in her lap for hours. Then she was gone.

And Daddy, Daddy with his bottles, was all Mason knew after that. He lay in the crib, his blankets wet, too scared to wail. If he cried out, maybe Momma would come. But if she didn’t, Daddy might. Daddy would only get mad, yell, and break something.

So Mason didn’t say anything. Time passed or else it didn’t. There was no sun in the window, only the light that Daddy turned on and off. Daddy slept on the floor one time, and Mason looked through the wooden bars of his crib, saw him with his bottle tipped over, the brown liquid pouring out across the floor.

Daddy woke up, rubbed his eyes, yelled, looked in at Mason, left him wet again. Daddy turned out the light, and as the door closed, Mason remembered the vanishing wedge of brightness, how scared he was as it got smaller and smaller, then the door banged shut and the dark was big, thick, everything.

Time passed or else it didn’t, Mason’s tiny heart pumping, pounding, screaming. Crying would do no good. Mama wasn’t here. And his cries might bring them. He closed his eyes, opened them. One black was the same color as the other.

Squatting in the root cellar, Mason closed his eyes, opened them, trying to blink away the memory. He covered his face with his hands. He remembered reading somewhere that rats always went for the soft parts first, the eyes and tongue and genitals. He didn’t have enough hands.

This was the memory, the first time. The skittering in the dark. The scratching against the wall. The ticking of claws across wood. The squeak of pleasure at the discovery. So dark in the room that he couldn’t see their shiny eyes when he finally forced himself to look.

Mason heard them, though, even with the wet blankets pulled tightly over his head. Soft whispers of tiny tongues against liquid. Daddy’s bottle. The spilled stuff had brought them. Would it be enough to fill them? Would they go away?

Please, please, go away.

The squeaking sounded now like laughter, like a moist, slobbery snickering. Go away? Of course they wouldn’t go away, this was the dark and they owned the dark. They crept toward the crib, the hush of their tails dragging behind. No, no, NO.

This was now and not the memory, he wasn’t a small child, and he wasn’t afraid of rats anymore. And because the root cellar was darker than the world outside, he might be able to see the outline of the door. All he had to do was open his eyes.

Mama’s voice came to him, and he couldn’t swear whether the words were spoken or merely imagined: It’s ALWAYS the memory, Mason. Big Dream Image. Don’t ever let go of your dreams. They’re the only thing you got in this world.

And something quick and wet and warm flicked at his face, just under his left eye, it may have been only the corner of a blanket shifting, yes, of course, that’s what it was, rats don’t eat little boys, that’s not tiny feet pressing against your legs, it’s only your imagination, and you always had a good imagination, didn’t you?

And you lived long enough to learn that the darkness doesn’t spread out forever, that rats don’t own everything, just your dreams, AND DREAMS ARE THE ONLY THING YOU GOT IN THIS WORLD.

And Mama came home finally and opened the door and turned on the light and held you, but it was too late, days too late, years too late, the rats had eaten you, eaten your eyes, now it’s dark all the time and they own the dark and Momma can’t open the door because they ate her eyes, too, and she’s sitting in her rat’s-nest chair back in Sawyer Creek and—

“Looks like you’re in a right smart pickle.”

The voice, from nowhere and everywhere, seemed part of the dark. And darkness had to have different colors, because the deep black tunnel opened like a throat before his closed eyes. Standing at the edge of the tunnel was Ransom Streater, dripping wounds and all, a perfect row of punctures across the chest of his overalls, one buckle bent. Ransom with his grinning possum mouth and old freckled bald head and dead, dead, dead eyes.

“Korban fetched me up to your bad place,” Ransom said. “You ought to see mine. I got it worse than you do, believe me. But Korban says if I’m a good helper, then I get out of my bad place for a little bit. All I gots to do is walk you out.”

“Where am I?”

“Why, in the heart, that’s where. ‘Cepting Korban wants to send you back. Says you got chores to do.”

“What chores?” Mason forced his eyes wide, even though the rats were hungry and eyes were soft and juicy. But the image didn’t change, Ransom stood shimmering before him, the tunnel stretched out black and deep and cold, only now there was a light at the end, precious light, beautiful light, a ratless light, Mama was opening the door.

Mason stood, heard the rats slither back into their unseen holes. He said the only thing he could think of to say: “You’re dead.”

“And it ain’t no cakewalk, let me tell you.” Ransom touched his wounds, his eyebrows lifting as he fingered a hole in his ribs. “At least you got a choice.”

Mason stepped closer, the light beckoned. He took one glance backward in the darkness, heard the noise of whiskers and claws and wet, sharp teeth. He shivered. Korban would keep this place waiting for him.

But the best thing to do was put your fears behind you, as least for as long as possible. Deny their existence. Bury them.

“Where does the tunnel go, Ransom?”

“Why, to the end. Where else would it go?”

Mason swallowed. He remembered Ransom, the old, living Ransom, had said the tunnel led back to the manor’s basement. He thought about running for the ladder, but he heard a squeak and a whisper of tongue. Then, Mama’s voice, unmistakable, poured from the dark throat of the tunnel. “Dreams is all we got, Mason. Now get in here and make Mama proud.”

And it wasn’t only Mama’s voice, here in the damp, dark dirt of Korban’s estate, that bothered him. It was the suggestion of squeakiness in her words, as if they had spilled from between large, curved rodent teeth.

Mason followed Ransom into the black tunnel, blinked as the light grew unbearably bright, then softened. A lantern was burning on the table. Mason was in the studio, his unfinished statue waiting before him.

“Tunnels of the soul, Mason,” Mama said. “I’ll be watching.”

Mason turned just in time to see the long hideous gray rope of tail disappear into the dark tunnel. Ransom stood by the shadows of the basement. “We all got chores. My batch is waiting back in the tunnel. Yours is on this side, for now.”

Mason knelt, trembling, and selected a fluter. He took up his hatchet and approached the statue, studied the rough oak form. Ephram Korban was in there somewhere, just as he inhabited everything. At the heart of it all.

Mama lied. She’d said dreams were all we had in this world. But we have nightmares, too. And memories.

And sometimes you can’t tell the difference.

Mason attacked the wood as if his life depended on it.

CHAPTER 55

Sylva opened the door just before Anna reached the cabin. “Been expecting you.”

Anna moved past her without waiting for an invitation. Sylva looked at the folded cloth on the mantel, the one that held her spelling charm. Every trick in the book, and a few she’d only heard whispered around long-ago campfires, were ground up and sprinkled inside the cloth, and words had been said over the concoction that few lips would dare speak. But this wasn’t a time for the scared or the faint of heart.

“Warm your bones,” Sylva said, motioning to an old cane chair by the fire. “Tonight’s one of them that lets you know winter’s right around the corner.”

“You didn’t tell me everything,” Anna said, going to the hearth but kneeling instead of sitting.

“They’s such a thing as knowing too much. Bad enough you got the Sight. But if you don’t mind your step, you’re going to end up too soon on the wrong side of dead.”

“But why does my mo—no, not my mother, I mean Rachel Hartley—think I’m some kind of savior for the haunted? Why did she summon me here? If Korban’s already got them, what can I do about it? Just because I can see ghosts doesn’t mean I have any special powers.”

“Remember what I told you about power. It ain’t what you believe that matters, it’s how much.” Sylva kept her eyes fixed on the leaping flames, wouldn’t let her gaze slide over to the folded cloth, no matter how hard they itched for a look.

“I don’t owe Rachel anything,” Anna said. “You said blood runs thicker than water. But that’s not all that makes people belong to each other.”

“Child, I know how it hurts. I’ve hated myself for my weakness, my sin with Korban. I tried a hundred times to tell myself that he caused it, he spelled me and made it happen. But it’s always easy to lie to yourself, ain’t it? It’s easy to just push it down into the dark where you hope nobody will see the truth of it, least of all yourself.”

Oh yeah, woman, you know the truth of it, don’t you? Ephram let you kill him under the blue moon so his spirit could go into the house. But you never knew that Ephram would take up collecting, would fetch over everybody that died on his grounds. And you surely to goodness never knew he’d keep Miss Mamie young, turn love into poison like that.

“Your sin was a long time ago,” Anna said. “You ought to be able to forgive yourself after all these years.”

“I was always afraid to let loose and love him,” Sylva said. “You don’t know the times I wanted that night to happen again, at the same time I was knotted up inside with the frights. Maybe it was all Ephram’s doing, one of his tricks. But it’s a scary and wondrous thing when your heart gets plumb stole away. And it’s scary and wondrous to burn with hate over something, too.”

“But Rachel—”

“I loved her, same as she loves you. I reckon as much as Ephram loved me.”

“You said Miss Mamie was keeping him alive. That, and the spirits of those he’s trapped at the manor. The ones he uses for fuel, some sort of soul siphon, feeding on their pain and dreams.”

“What do you reckon Ephram burns for?” Sylva bent and took up the poker, stabbed at the back log until sparks spat up the chimney. “The dead is just like the living. They want things they can’t have. Ephram’s got unfinished dreams, a big appetite. That’s why you’re here.”

Sylva felt the trembling in her old limbs, the rough coursing of her blood through narrowed veins. She had been old far too long. She had too many regrets, had been played for the worst kind of fool. If only she could close her eyes and rest in peace. But Ephram Korban wouldn’t allow it.

Sylva was bound here come hell or high water, and Rachel had found out way too late that what belonged to Ephram always came back. Rachel’s dying here was Anna’s only chance. Because Ephram would find out where Anna was, that gift of the Sight would shine like a ghost beacon in a night sky.

“And my father?” Anna said. “Do you have any pictures of him?”

“Folks don’t keep pictures around here, especially of them that want to stay dead. You ever heard of poppet magic? Where they steal your face and then steal your soul? You’re the only one that can free them from Ephram.”

“What do I care?” Anna said. “The dead will still be dead, and I’ll still have nothing. At least if I die at the manor, I’ll have a warm place to haunt.”

Sylva let the tears come. That was a mighty fine weapon to have around. Anna fell for it, came close, hugged her.

“Rachel gave up her life so you could get away,” Sylva whispered into Anna’s ear. “If Ephram takes Rachel now, you’ll lose her forever. And them that’s bound to the house, not all of them are touched by sin. Like that girl ghost, Becky, you saw on your first night here. Tree fell on her, right out of the blue. That child never hurt a fly. If anybody’s spirit deserves to be set free, it’s hers.”

Anna clenched her fists. “What am I supposed to do? I’m just one person. I’m weak, I’m dying, my soul’s not in such hot shape in the first place. How in the hell am I supposed to believe?”

“You gotta follow your heart, Anna.” Sylva went to the window. “Sun’s about to set. You know what that means.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. The blue moon.”

Sylva crossed the room, stooped slowly, silently cursing Ephram for knotting up her bones and wrinkling her skin. She put a hand on Anna’s shoulder, let a tear gather in her eye, then said, “You just follow your heart. That’s what believing is all about.”

Sylva gave her another hug, and this time Anna returned it, held on with a desperation that might have been born of a lifelong loneliness. Sylva finally let go and stepped back. “You’d best get back to the house, now. Miss Mamie’s waiting.”

Anna went out into the darkening forest. The wind was sharp, cold enough that the early dew was already turning hard. This was a night of frost, Sylva thought. A night for the dead.

She closed the cabin door and went to the mantel, caressed the folded cloth, and offered up ashes of prayers for its contents.

CHAPTER 56

“You gentlemen are early,” Miss Mamie said.

“Just enjoying the view,” Paul said, feet propped on the rail, a glass of the house wine in his hand.

“A lovely sunset,” she said.

Adam looked out at the edge of the world, the ridges capped with molten gold, the slopes rippling with alternating folds of color and shadow. The wind carried the promise of change, the air ripe with the last bittersweet odors of autumn. Maybe that was why he’d been so morose the last couple of days. Winter always felt like death to him, a gray wasteland to be endured, much like the nightmare from his childhood. And he’d blamed Paul for it, that seasonal shift that brought unease deep inside him.

“Aren’t you glad you stayed, Mr. Andrews?” Miss Mamie said to him.

Adam and Paul exchanged glances. “Yes,” Adam said. “I tend to get a little melodramatic at times. Right, Paul?”

“Sure, my little poppet.” He patted Adam’s hand, what Miss Mamie might take as a sign of moral support instead of a romantic gesture. “We’re having the time of our lives.”

Paul turned to Miss Mamie. “Is it okay if I bring my video camera up? This scenery is to die for.”

Miss Mamie smiled. “Why not? I think tonight will be quite memorable, and well worth preserving.”

Lilith came by, refilled Paul’s glass, offered wine to Adam, who held up his hand in polite refusal. “No, thanks. I’m driving.”

Miss Mamie’s laughter carried on the wind. “Oh, you’re a funny one. No wonder Ephram is so fond of you.”

“Speaking of whom, I’m surprised there are no portraits of him on the widow’s walk,” Paul said.

“This was one of his favorite haunts, back when he was alive. He loved nothing better than a good party, especially under the full moon.”

The Abramovs were seated against the railing near the impromptu bar, tuning their instruments. The drop in temperature affected the wood, and they had to constantly adjust the tension of the strings. As they ran through several series of scales, the shifting pitch gave the music a discordant, atonal quality.

“The Abramovs have promised an original duet,” Miss Mamie said. “Written just for the occasion. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have preparations to attend to.”

After she left, Adam leaned forward in his chair and gripped the widow’s walk railing, daring himself to look over the side to the small slanting roof above the portico, and to the hard arc of driveway sixty feet below. To the spot where he had died. He swallowed and closed his eyes, leaned back in the chair.

“What’s the matter, Princess?” Paul asked. “You’ve gone pale.”

“Shouldn’t have had that second glass of wine.”

“How am I ever going to turn you into a party girl if you can’t hold your liquor better than that? The night is young.”

“Yeah, but I feel a hundred years old.”

Paul patted Adam’s knee. “You stay here and rest your ancient bones, then. I’m going to get my camera.”

“And probably sneak a few hits off a joint?”

Paul gave that irresistible, mischievous grin. “Makes me creative. And all the rest.”

“Save some for me.”

“You haven’t changed a bit, no matter what they say.” Paul looked around, leaned forward, and kissed Adam on the cheek. “Like the lady said, it’s going to be a night to remember.”

Adam watched as Paul crossed the widow’s walk and slipped through the trapdoor. Lilith and the dough-faced cook were setting up a buffet table. The Abramovs had returned their instruments to their cases and now stood near the railing, talking to the Arabian woman, Zainab. Smoke drifted from the four chimneys, rising above the trees that surrounded the manor.

Adam hunched into his chair, shivering. He wouldn’t mind a fire right now. Fall was dying and winter was coming on. Cold and gray and suffocating. Too bad this night couldn’t last forever.

CHAPTER 57

Sweat poured from Mason like blood from a shotgun wound, his muscles screaming as he ran the fluter under the slope that would be one of Korban’s cheeks. He rammed his gouge down across the wooden shoulders with his left hand. He had never carved with both hands at the same time before, but anything was possible now. The wood seemed to peel away as if shucking itself. They were in a hurry, both he and his statue.

The voice came from the bust again, the voice that had been urging him onward, driving Mason into a frenzy of chiseling and chopping and planing. It had scared him at first, but now the voice was just that of another instructor, albeit the most demanding one Mason had ever worked under.

This was the most demanding of critics.

The tunnel was waiting if he failed.

The dark crib and the rats and his mama with the squeaky voice and long gray tail.

“More off the shoulder, you fool,” said the bust.

Mason looked at the bust, at Korban, his creation, his first masterpiece. The lantern on the table threw the left side of the bust into shadow.

The wooden lips moved again. “Hurry. They’re waiting.”

“Who?” Mason’s syllable was a whisper. The air of the basement was charged with an eerie static. The hairs on the backs of his hands tingled. Flames roared up the central chimney on the other side of the stone wall.

“Get on with it, sculptor.”

“I need to rest.”

“You’ll have plenty of time to rest later.”

Mason laid his tools on the table, wiped his brow, sagged to the concrete floor in exhaustion. Then he saw Korban’s painting of the manor, the one someone must have altered while Mason wasn’t around. Because the figures were clearly visible, dabbed in thick strokes of oil. The woman with the bouquet had moved into the foreground, beyond the railing, and her position had changed, her arms spread, eyes wide. She was falling.

And Mason didn’t care what Anna said, all that nonsense about the woman being Anna’s mother, because that was Anna’s face and those were Anna’s eyes and the woman wore that mysterious half smile that no other woman in the world could pull off.

“Ah,” the bust said. “So it’s the woman you want, after all. Precious Anna.”

“What about her?” Mason was far past the point of doubting his sanity. Some artists claimed their work spoke to them, so maybe hearing Korban’s voice wasn’t unusual. But the dividing line, the step from mere genius into certifiable tortured soul, occurred when you started talking back to the object in question.

“You can have her, once you finish me. I’ve already promised you fame. And I always keep my promises.”

Mason’s response was to take his bull point from the table. He lifted his mallet, bent his elbow to test its weight. He thought about spinning and driving the thick iron point between Korban’s eyes. A blow from the mallet would split the bust in half. But how could you kill something that was already dead?

The statue quivered before him, the rough-hewn limbs flexing. Grain split along one forearm, and the block of head tilted, a small knothole parting in the place where Mason had planned to carve the mouth.

“Finish me,” moaned the knothole.

Mason dropped his hammer and stepped back, sweat and sawdust and fear stinging his eyes. The wooden arms reached for him, flecks of curled oak falling from the blunt hands. Mason stumbled against the table, knocking over the bust. He looked down and saw the eyes looking up at him. It was the same cold glare as in Korban’s portrait upstairs. Too perfectly the same.

“What about Anna?” Mason said.

“I promise you two will be together. We’ll all be one big happy family.”

That made sense, as much sense as Mama watching from the tunnel, and probably a drunken and mean-eyed version of Dad as well. Just like old times, with rats in the walls and darkness all around and Dad passed out on the floor. So if he could drag Anna in there with him, the darkness might be a little more bearable. Korban always kept his promises. How could you not trust those wise and wonderful eyes?

Mason picked up the hatchet. The critics had spoken. More off the left. Finish it. Make it perfect. Big dream image brought to life. Create.

Wood.

Flesh.

Heart.

Dream.

CHAPTER 58

Anna felt as if she were back in one of her dreams, those that had filled her nights in the past year. As she had so many times before, in that lost land of sleep, she approached the manor from the forest. The house’s hulking form rose between the trees that surrounded it like guardian beasts. The windows were eyes, glaring and cold even with the light of a dozen fires behind them. The chimneys spouted a breath of ephemeral transition, matter into energy, substance into heat. The front door whispered a soft welcome, the darkness inside promising peace.

But this waking dream had features beyond all those previous ones, as if a seventh sense had been added to her other six. The grass was thick under her shoes and glittering frost clung to the skin of the earth. The sky was bright on both the eastern and western horizons, painted with lavender and maroon by some large and ragged brush. The wind had settled like a sigh, and autumn’s surrender hung in the cool air. The manor waited. Ephram Korban waited.

Is this where I belong? Am I really coming home?

Sylva said that Anna was fuel. That Korban would consume her, use her, leave her soul as ashes.

What did it matter? Let her love and hate and anger and pride flow out into the house. Into Ephram Korban. No one else wanted it.

She laughed, giddy as she crossed the porch, the raw static energy of the house flowing over her body, warming her, making her feel wonderful. Coming home. Home is where the heart is.

Miss Mamie was waiting. She opened the door and stepped aside, sweeping her arm out in welcome. “Ephram said you’d come.”

Anna felt drunk. Even her pain was ebbing, the fires of cancer dying down inside her. She would offer everything. Korban could have her pain, her loneliness, her feeling of never having belonged. Bon appétit.

Yes, she had come home. This place had opened her soul, had allowed her to see ghosts. Given her what she wanted. She could die happy here.

“You’re looking lovely this evening, Anna,” Miss Mamie said to her. The words sounded as if they had come from far away. The fire roared and crackled at the end of the foyer. Anna looked at the portrait of Korban above the fireplace. Grandfather. With eyes so bright and loving.

How could she have resisted getting the family back together? Let the circle be unbroken. Did it matter if some were alive and some were dead? When you came right down to it, was there any difference?

One, a dividing line.

Then zero. Nothing. All the same.

Anna looked at the house with new eyes. The columns, the corners, the carving in the hearth, the reddish-brown lower paneling, the polished oak floors. She didn’t blame Korban for never wanting to leave this beautiful place. She didn’t want to leave it now, either.

“You’re just in time for the party,” Miss Mamie said. “Up on the widow’s walk.”

Fuel.

Painting.

Something about the painting. Her standing here by the fire. Mason.

“What is it, dear?” Miss Mamie put a cool hand to Anna’s cheek. “You’re not feeling ill, are you?”

“Where’s Mason?”

“The sculptor? He’s busy right now, but he’ll be joining us. As soon as he’s finished.”

Anna let herself be led to the stairs. Something about the walls bothered her, something she knew she should remember. But they were ascending now, Miss Mamie leading the way. They reached the second-floor landing and Anna looked down the hall toward her room. The astral lamps along the wall seemed to brighten and then dim, as if fed by a slow, even breathing.

They reached the third floor. Anna hadn’t been to this part of the manor before, though threads of some dim ancestral memory tugged at her. The walls were covered with boxcar siding, cheap interlocking pine. No paintings hung here. There were doors that must have led to other bedrooms, and gabled windows at each end of the floor. A conductor’s lantern on a handmade table near the stair rail was the only light.

The lantern.

Mason had one like it in the basement.

Where was Mason? She tried to picture his face, but it was lost in the mist inside her head, along with everything else. The walls throbbed, swelled, and contracted. The house was moving in rhythm with her breathing. She began to get dizzy, then Miss Mamie leaned her against a small ladder.

Anna looked up, as if through the eye of the world, at the clouds that caught the blue silver of the rising moon. The widow’s walk. The top of the end of the world. Where her own ghost waited.

She forced her arms and legs to climb. It was time to meet herself.

CHAPTER 59

Spence had found the Word.

He sensed—no, knew—it would be waiting at the end of this final paragraph.

Truth comes in unlikely packages. The One True God comes in the oddest of shapes. All gifts are weighty. Each gift demands its equal value in sacrifice.

The shifting and bulging walls of the house had distracted him at first. Just another evil, another thing to steal his attention, to turn him from the road to glory. Bridget gasped and screamed as they took form, as the misty shapes fell from the ceiling and rose from the oak flooring, as they drifted cold and hollow through the room.

Spence impatiently brushed them away. The True Shining Path beckoned him, and all else was superfluous poppycock and bombast, literistic excess. The True Path led to the next sentence that caused the next word to press itself into the wood pulp, as metal hammered ink into paper into existence.

The night was ready, breath borrowed and held prisoner, lungs of ebony and earth, feet of granite, arms sweeping seasons of sleep from the eyes of the sightless. October screamed, a carpet of frost, a turn of brown wind, the end of something. Time turned backwards, cold to hot, hard water. Go out frost and come in...

He tilted forward in his chair, not caring if the chilled air sapped his strength. He needn’t waste his flesh on Bridget. He had a better intercourse here, himself and the True Word. White shadows moved across the room in silence, the fire paused in consuming, his fingers itched.

Come in . . . what?

The Word hung there, teasing, waiting, drawing him body and soul onward, hovering ever out of reach.

“I say, chap, what are you waiting for?”

Spence thought at first the line had come from his own mind, a bit of clipped dialogue that was trying to force its way into the narrative. The fire roared, yet a frigid breeze skirled across the back of his neck. His fingers rested on the desk.

The voice came again, no Muse, no Bridget, no Korban. “Get on with it, man. It’s not the bleeding end of the world yet.”

Spence turned, glared at the photographer who stood in the corner of the room, face obscured by shadows. “Damn you, why didn’t you knock? I can’t abide interruptions when I’m working.”

Roth’s accent flattened, became nasally and Midwestern. “We got tunnels of the soul, Jeff. And guess what’s inside yours?”

“You’re mad,” Spence said. “Come out where I can see you.”

The photographer waved a quick hand toward the portrait of Korban. “He said you can have a typewriter, but all the keys will be stuck.”

Spence tried to rise, anger throbbing through him and sending a bright flash of pain across his left temple.

Roth laughed, his voice changed pitch, accelerated into that shrill and strident voice from Spence’s past. The voice of Miss Eileen Foxx. “I before E except after PEEEE,” she said, Roth’s body shaking with her gleeful laughter.

“F-f-foxx in socks?” Spence said, confused, his chest split with pain. A warmth spread around his groin, an unfamiliar wetness that was almost pleasant.

Roth moved back into the shadows and was gone. Eileen Foxx’s last admonishment hung in the air like a threat: “You’d better make the grade, Jefferson, or I’ll be waiting. Yessirree, you’ll be staying after school with me.”

Spence stared into the fire until the dampness between his legs grew cold, then he faced the typewriter again, the words on the page almost like symbols etched by people from some lost civilization. They no longer had meaning, but he knew he wasn’t finished. He needed that word.

The class would laugh at him if he didn’t find the word.

CHAPTER 60

Mason lifted the bull point again, the mallet in his slick right hand. The pile of wood shavings was ankle-deep around him, the statue hewn into a recognizable shape. The head needed a lot of work, but the arms and legs were there, the torso as strong and ugly as a stump. This was a hideous masterpiece, a raw stroke of genius, a creative vision that no eyes should ever see.

Eyes.

The thing needed eyes, so that it might see. And once it could see, then what?

“You’re not working, sculptor,” the bust said.

“I’m thinking,” Mason said.

“You’ll think when I tell you. Now finish.”

Finish. And he could have it all, fame, fortune, Mama’s approval. And the girl. Oh, don’t forget the girl.

He looked at the painting again. The painted Anna had changed position, was definitely falling, and her arms were now spread wide, the bouquet slipping from her fingers, the half smile shifted to a dark, round tunnel of a scream.

Anna. Something about Anna that he should remember, if only he could think about anything besides the statue.

The whispers spilled from the corner of the basement, and he was afraid the tunnel had opened again, that Mama would come out and sniff at him with her pointy rodent nose, show her sharp teeth, wriggle her whiskers, and tell him about the power of dreams.

But the whisper stirred again, and the voice was Anna’s: “Mason.”

The voice was coming from the painting.

“Don’t listen to her, sculptor,” the bust said. “I need you. Give me my eyes. And my mouth. I’m hungry.”

Anna spoke again from the painting. “He’s burning you up, Mason. He’s burning us all.”

“Work,” the bust commanded.

“Burning our dreams,” Anna said. “The closer I get to being dead, the more I understand.”

Being dead? Anna?

He had to find her. Something was wrong. Something was wrong with him. He looked at his blistered hands, the tools, the things that had shaped these monstrosities before him. Where had these graven idols come from? Not from his own imagination, that was certain.

“Dream me to life,” the bust commanded. “Don’t stop now.”

Dream Korban.

No.

He wanted his own dreams. Good or bad, whether or not they ever brought him fame. Whether or not they made Mama proud.

He wanted his own dreams. Not Korban’s.

Mason raised the bull point, pressed it into the hulking chest of the statue, swept his arm back, and smashed the mallet into the steel. The bust screamed. Mason flung the hammer at the bust, knocking it to the floor.

“Sculptorrrrr,” Korban roared, voice like a thousand wildfires eating the air in the room, shaking the timbers of the house.

The statue quivered, its limbs moved with a groan of splinters, and it tore free from the nails that held it to the support boards. The wooden hands reached up and fumbled with the wires. The legs had been divided at the bottom, but the feet were not refined, mere dark clumps of oak covered in bark. The heavy feet scraped across the floor.

Moving toward him.

Mason kicked the table, tumbling the lantern over. The flame extinguished as the globe shattered. They were in darkness.

Both he and Korban.

Except Korban was used to darkness, Korban fed on darkness, Korban was darkness.

Mason groped in front of his face and headed toward where he thought the stairs were. He tripped over something metallic, then he fell into the arms of the animated statue, his bones knocking on wood—

No, it was only an old four-poster bed frame. But he was confused now, all directions the same, and he heard the twitching and squeaking behind him. Rodent noises.

No, no, no, not the crib.

And on the tail of that thought came another, equally frightful one. He had longed to create a lasting work of art. And he had done it. This was his undying success.

The statue’s limbs snapped as it searched for its maker, the sound like dry bones breaking. Korban was stretching, trying on his new body in the darkness. His wonderful but clumsy body, crafted by Mason’s loving touch.

“I’m blind,” came Korban’s muffled voice, as if he were chewing on sawdust. “You haven’t finished my eyes.”

Mason’s fingers brushed one of the support beams. He ducked behind it and knelt in the dark. He tried to slow his breathing, but he couldn’t. His pounding heart was going to give him away. The heavy wooden feet shuffled in his direction.

If he’s blind, he’s deaf, too. Unless part of him is still in the bust. Then maybe he can SMELL you.

Mason shuddered at the image of a rat leaning back on its haunches, whiskers quivering and nose wrinkling as it sniffed the air in search of sustenance. Korban was a rat, a rodent king, coming to get him. The thick tail slid across the cold concrete floor. Mason pressed against his eyelids until the pain drove the image away in a burst of bright green.

“Come here, sculptor,” Korban said, and the voice was clearer now, more strident. Had Korban moved from the statue back into the bust?

The clumsy wooden feet shuffled closer, then moved away.

Where are the stairs?

“Don’t betray me,” Korban said. The voice filled the room, but the echoes were swallowed by the dead air.

The statue must have found the bust and lifted it off the floor. Which one did Korban inhabit? Or was he in both at the same time? If he could fill an entire house, then surely bouncing around between a couple of pieces of dead wood was no trick at all.

Two heavy steps forward. The rasping was either Korban’s labored, unnatural breathing or warm air drifting through the ductwork overhead.

“We need each other,” Korban whispered.

Fame, fortune, and the girl. And all Mason had to do was what he already lived and longed to do, what was in his blood, what he was born for and would risk death for.

To create.

To dream into life.

He was made to make.

He could make Korban, and Korban could make him. What was it Anna had said? It was not what you believed, it was how much. He believed in his art.

Mason was tempted to reach out and touch it, caress the sleek muscle and wooden skin.

This would be his lasting work. It would be simple, really. Just transpose the features he had carved on the bust onto the statue. Bring Korban to full and final life.

He heard a clicking, a soft sound that might have been a chuckle. Or a rat’s sigh.

“Finish me,” Korban whispered.

Surrender would be so easy. Surrender to the dream. Why bother running from the deepest desires of his heart, the calling of the fire in his soul?

Anna’s voice came from the darkness, from the corner where the painting stood. “He’ll eat your dreams, Mason.”

Mason scrambled for the stairs, stumbled upward, the basement alive with the angry creak of wood and the slither of things unseen, the cold tunnel of darkness licking at his heels and threatening to swallow him forever.

CHAPTER 61

Sylva stood before the front door. She hadn’t been in the house for many years. Not since the night of Rachel’s death. A shiver swept over her, brought on by more than just the October chill. This was like entering a church, holy ground, a place where souls walked free.

She pressed the charm that was secreted inside her blouse, held it against the warmth of her heart. She was scared, but she had faith. The moon was rising, throwing cold light over the mountain as if a new sort of day were breaking. Maybe it was. A day of endless night, when things got reborn, when dark promises were kept and broken. When spells carried the weight of prayers.

Sylva pushed open the door without knocking. Ephram knew she was here, all right. No need to sneak around. And the others, they moved about in the walls, stirred in the basement, shifted among the cracks in the hearthstones.

Ephram’s portrait nearly took the last of her breath away. She’d seen that face in a thousand dreams, half of them nightmares, the other half the kind that made you ashamed when you woke up.

“Look at me,” she whispered.

Ephram stared at her with dark, painted eyes.

“I’m old,” she said. “I spelled myself alive all these years. Sticking around, waiting for this blue moon of yours. Well, I’m here now, and I ain’t sure what you plan to do about it.”

The portrait fell from the wall, the heavy frame splintering, the canvas folding. When a picture fell, it was a sure sign that the subject was meant to die. But when a picture of a dead person fell . . .

The flames rushed out of the chimney, fingers of fire reaching toward Sylva, reminding her of that night on Korban’s bedroom floor, the night he planted the seed of Rachel deep inside her. A night of cold burning.

And this was another night of forbidden heat, a night of frost and fire. She headed for the stairs, leaving Ephram’s face lying on the wooden floor by the warmth of the house’s heart. They were waiting up there on the widow’s walk, under the rising moon. Anna and Miss Mamie and Lilith. Ephram would join them soon enough, and Sylva wouldn’t miss this for the world. For more than the world, or any world beyond this one.

She squeezed the charm until her fingers ached, her heart pumping faith as she climbed the stairs.

CHAPTER 62

Mason fell into the lamplight of the hallway as if it were healing water. He slammed the basement door shut behind him, slid the metal bolt into its seat. Why was there a lock on the outside? What had been kept in the basement that required locks?

Now that he was out of the suffocating basement, his head cleared a little. And the thoughts that came were almost as frightening as the creative trance that had been consuming him from the inside out.  He leaned against the door, heart pounding.

Smooth move, Mase. In case you forgot, this guy’s been dead for eighty years and you think a DOOR’S going to stop him?

But Korban had been clumsy and stiff when shifting into the statue. That’s why the ghost or spirit or whatever moved into man-made objects. Because Korban needed that energy, that made-ness, before he could claim something as a vessel.

Then maybe he’ll slip into the DOOR, sawdust-for-brains. It’s not like he has to follow the rules or anything.

Maybe so. Mason slammed his fist against the door in frustration. The door thundered in response as wooden hands chopped from the other side. Mason looked down the hall.

“Help,” he shouted. Surely someone would hear the hammering on the door and come see what was wrong. There was movement down the hall. The pantry door swung open.

“Thank God,” Mason said, stepping away from the basement door. One of its wooden panels splintered and cracked from the pounding. “There’s a—um—”

Mason was still searching for words when he realized they would be unnecessary. The cook came out of the kitchen, a cleaver in her chubby hand. He could see the utensil’s raised wooden handle. All the way up to its gleaming tip. He was looking through the woman’s hand.

She was made of the same milky substance as Ransom and George.

Which meant—

Mason looked to his right. The hall ended in a small closet door. He’d have to go past—or through—the cook to get to either the front or rear doors of the house. And he had a feeling that he needed to get out fast, because the walls were buzzing with that same strange static he’d felt in the basement.

The basement door splintered, gave way, and the golden-red oak of Korban’s hands stabbed through. The cook, suddenly solid, blocked the hall with her ethereal girth. Her lip was curled as if she’d just taken a whiff of rancid buttermilk. The cleaver danced in the air before her, its metal blade reflecting the flames from the lamps.

Mason backed away from her, though there was nowhere to run. Korban reached through the gash in the door, clubbing Mason with one crude stub of fist. A spark-filled darkness flooded his skull, and he fell to the floor. When he blinked himself awake, blood leaking down his scalp, he saw swirls in the grain of the wainscoting.

The wall was moving, or else his head was swimming. No, it wasn’t the wall. It was something inside the wall.

A face took shape and emerged from the wood. The face split in a grin as it stepped into the hall. The ghost of George Lawson waved its spare hand and drifted toward Mason.

Korban shattered the latch and the basement door swung open. Mason forced himself to stand and ran toward the cook, hoping she was as soft as she looked. He ducked low and dived toward her knees, the way he’d been taught in peewee football back in Sawyer Creek. His bones jarred as he plowed into her chilly flesh, and he heard something pop in his shoulder.

Ghosts weren’t supposed to be solid. But then, ghosts weren’t supposed to be at all. The cleaver whistled through the air and he looked up just in time to see the cook’s face, dead and unchanged. She could just as easily have been chopping carrots for a stew.

He tried to roll to his left, but the cleaver glanced off his upper biceps. He let out an agonized breath, and drops of blood were flung across his face as she raised the cleaver for another blow. He crawled like a crippled spider across the floor, skittering past her, Korban’s massive feet thundering down the hall.

Mason leaped for the stairs, grabbing the rail to pull himself forward. His heart throbbed, sending fresh rushes of blood from his wound as he careened up the steps. The blood reassured him in an odd way, a reminder that he was still alive. In a world where dreams made nightmares, blood was welcome, and pain meant that he could still feel.

Mason reached the second-floor landing and peered down the hall to the master bedroom. William Roth stood in the shadows beside Spence’s closed door.

“Run,” Mason yelled, fumbling to close the torn gap in his arm. “The ghosts—Korban—”

Then all speech was lost as Roth stepped into the light of the astral lamps. The photographer’s face hung in rags, a crisscross of fresh scars making a gridwork of his smile. His eye sockets were blank, like empty lenses.

The photographer held out a pale fist as Mason tried to shape his vocal cords into a scream.

“Hiyer, mate,” the Roth-ghost said, the words mumbled and muffled. The sliced lips opened again, and wet spindly things fell from the dead man’s mouth and began crawling down his ripped shirt. Spiders.

Both ends of the hall darkened. A harsh wind extinguished the lamps on the walls. It was the long dark tunnel, rushing at him from two directions, that would lead Mason back to the rats.

Ransom’s voice crept from the walls. “We got tunnels of the soul, Mason.”

The statue clambered up the stairs, awkward as a drunken mannequin. Mason peeked over the banister and saw the bust cradled in the statue’s arm like an infant carried by its mother.

The bust’s maple lips parted, and a cry echoed off the woodwork, as if the entire house joined voice with Korban: “Finish MEEEEEE.”

Mason fled up the stairs. The third floor was dark. Only a milky spill of moonlight through the windows prevented Mason from running full speed into a wall. He tried to suck breath into his lungs, but the black air was like a solid thing, a suffocating thickness. Mason heard voices and looked up, saw the square of lesser darkness.

The trapdoor to the widow’s walk.

Where Anna’s ghost had screamed from the painting.

CHAPTER 63

The swollen moon rose, cutting through the tree branches. The forest glittered with frost, and Anna’s breath hung silver before her. Miss Mamie led her to the railing, and Anna looked out across the land that would be her home. She belonged to this house, to this mountain, to Ephram Korban.

“You’re beautiful,” Miss Mamie said, lifting her lantern to Anna’s face. “I can see why Ephram wants you so badly. For that, and for your gift.”

The Abramovs sat in their chairs, drew their instruments to their bodies like the meat of lovers. Paul perched his video camera on a tripod, Adam watching him. Cris and Zainab chatted near the bar, Lilith laughing and filling their glasses. Other guests stood in a cluster by the far railing, talking in low, excited voices.

“You know why you’re here, don’t you, Anna?” Miss Mamie said.

“Because I belong here.” The words were someone else’s.

“So do I,” Sylva said, and Miss Mamie turned, faced the old woman.

“No,” Miss Mamie said, cheeks burning with rage. “This is Ephram’s night. He told me you’d never be back, that he had used you up.”

“Ephram needs me more than he needs you.”

“I kept him alive, and he kept me young. Look at you, you pathetic sack of skin and bones. And you thought he could ever love such as you.”

“Love’s like a door that swings both ways. And so’s death. Frost and fire. But you wouldn’t know that, would you? You don’t know a thing about magic, or spells, or faith, or any of the things that kept Ephram’s spirit here all these years.”

“You’re just a crazy old witch-woman, muttering over dust and herbs. I’m the one he needs. I know how to make the poppets.”

“Well, he’ll be along shortly, and you can just ask him for yourself. Now, what do we do about dear little Anna?”

“Anna?”

Anna lifted her head at the mention of her name, the night like water, the world in slow motion.

The Abramovs began a solemn duet, bows sliding across the strings with melancholy softness, the notes vibrating on the wind. This was Anna’s house. She wasn’t Anna Galloway, had never been. That life was a dream, the lethal cancer a bell that had sounded her home, death just a slow transition that carried her back to herself.

She was Anna Korban.

And she would walk these walls forever.

The cold of the world became the coldness inside her, the frozen heart of forever, as she stepped to that dividing line.

“What about her?” Sylva said.

“Oh, Anna dies,” Miss Mamie said. “For the last time.”

CHAPTER 64

Mason scrambled through the trapdoor and up into the cold night.

The presence of the great space around him, and the depth below, made his head swim and his stomach lurch. The sea of night and the distant rolling waves of the mountains took the strength from his legs, as if they were boneless. He forced himself not to think about the ground far below on all sides. A pathetic fear of heights paled in comparison to all the new fears he’d discovered.

Mason blinked the blood from his eyes and took in the unreal scenery of the widow’s walk. Anna was by the rail, between Miss Mamie and an old woman in a filthy dress and shawl. They seemed to be arguing over Anna, who looked drugged or sleepy, swaying in the strange light cast by the moon. Mason’s sweat cooled in the autumn air, and he touched the gash in his shoulder. The pain yanked him alert, and he ran to Anna.

“The painting,” he said. “You were calling to me.”

“Who are you?” Anna said.

“Where’s the statue?” Miss Mamie asked him. “You didn’t leave it down there alone, did you?”

He looked behind him, at the trapdoor. “We’ve got to get out of here, Anna.”

Mason took her arm, and the coldness of her skin flooded through him like an electric shock. He looked into her eyes and saw a blackness inside that never ended. Tunnels. Her eyes were tunnels of the soul, leading down to death or opening from a deeper darkness inside her.

Before he could shake her, ask her what was wrong, the statue stuck its rough-hewn head through the opening. Shrieks erupted from some of the guests as the statue rose awkwardly onto the widow’s walk, its heavy limbs clattering, Mason’s chisel still in its chest, the bust tucked under its thick wooden arm. The Abramovs stopped in mid-arpeggio. A wineglass shattered. Miss Mamie gasped and rushed toward the brutish form. “Ephram!”

As the statue stood on unsteady legs, the cradled bust stared at Mason with hot anger in its eyes. Miss Mamie threw her arms around the wooden torso.

The old woman reached inside her shawl and pulled out a layer of cloth. She unfolded it and approached the statue with slow steps. “I brung you what you wanted, Ephram.”

Mason looked from the old woman to Anna. They both had those same haunted cyan eyes, and Mason realized why they seemed so familiar. Because they were the eyes that he’d lovingly carved into the bust of Ephram Korban.

He reached for Anna again, to pull her toward the trapdoor, unable to think of anything besides making a run for it. Three flights of stairs, the house alive with ghosts. Korban would never let them leave. But they had to try.

Before Mason could order his legs to move, the ghost appeared near the railing, the spitting image of Anna. She held a bouquet before her. Just like the woman in the painting.

“Mother,” Anna said.

CHAPTER 65

This wasn’t the way Miss Mamie had imagined this night, the way she had wished it during all those thousands of lonely hours, when she had only Ephram’s face in the mirror, his spirit in the hearth, his words coming from the portrait.

This night was supposed to be perfect, a union of two souls, all else forgotten. Ephram and his beloved Margaret, together again, joined in simultaneous life and death. With dreams to fill.

Yet there was the old hag Sylva, who had tempted poor Ephram so long ago. And now Rachel was here. Rachel, who was never supposed to be in the house. That was the reason she and Korban’s servants had chased her, made her leap to her death. Ephram said those who betrayed him could never be free, but those who served would be allowed to die a second and final time. That’s why Miss Mamie had carved the apple-head dolls, the little poppets that housed the enslaved souls.

“The sculptor didn’t finish,” Miss Mamie said to the statue.

The bust answered. “He will.”

Sylva knelt before the statue, unfolded the cloth, held up the collection of powders in both her wrinkled hands. “Ashes of a prayer, Ephram. I did just like you told me.”

Miss Mamie clung to the statue, her beloved Ephram, who was wearing flesh after all those years of being reduced to smoke and shadow. “What’s she talking about, Ephram?”

The statue swept its oaken arm, shoving Miss Mamie to the floor of the widow’s walk. She rose to her hands and knees, her dress torn, the beautiful gown she’d been saving for the blue moon. For their second honeymoon.

“Ephram?” she said.

“He don’t need you,” Sylva said.

Miss Mamie crawled toward Ephram, hugged his chipped legs. “Ephram. You love me.”

The statue kicked her away. “Spell me, Sylva.”

“Give me her years first,” Sylva said. “Make me young again. Like you promised.”

“Spell me.”

“You said you always keep your promises.” Sylva held up the cloth full of folk potions.

“What’s she talking about, Ephram?” Miss Mamie said. Suddenly she felt cold, as if a glacier had cut through her heart. She looked at her hands. Wrinkled flesh rose on her skin, deep creases carved themselves into her flesh, tiny rivers of age running dark in the moonlight. She touched her face, the skin drawing tight across her skull even as it sagged under her chin.

Oh God, she was growing old.

“You promised me, Ephram,” she said. “Together forever.”

The statue and bust joined in laughter. The guests ran for the trapdoor, but Lilith closed it and stood on it. “Nobody ever leaves Korban Manor,” she said, grinning like a skeleton.

CHAPTER 66

Anna stepped toward Rachel, moving as if under dark water. “What are you doing here?”

“I tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“About Sylva?”

“She’s always loved Korban. That’s why she killed me, to please him. That’s why she learned folk magic, the spells and potions that kept his spirit alive until she could finally bring him all the way back.”

“This is all a crazy, screwed-up dream,” Mason said.

Anna flashed him a half smile. Couldn’t he see the obvious? Everything was so much easier when you were dead. Because the dead no longer have to dream.

CHAPTER 67

“I’m seeing it, but I don’t believe it,” Paul said, head tilted into the viewfinder of his video camera. “This is great stuff. Romero on acid, John Carpenter on a budget.”

Adam yanked on his arm. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Shockumentary. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

“Damn you, Paul, this is like my dream. Don’t you see? Everybody’s dead.”

Paul looked up from the camera, gave his boyish grin. “Not all of us, Princess. Just you.”

“Don’t be like that,” he said.

“You’re either working for the man on this side, or you serve him on the other side. You can be dead if you want, but me, I’d rather be the next Alfred Hitchcock, just like Korban promised me.”

“I’m not dead, you stupid bastard.”

Paul laughed. “Whatever.”

Adam looked at the hand that gripped Paul’s sleeve.

The fingers passed through the cloth, clutched on nothingness. He put a hand to his chest. When had his heart stopped beating?

Sweet Jesus, have mercy, when did my heart stop beating?

Paul pointed over the railing, to the hard patch of driveway below the porch. Adam couldn’t help looking.

There was a shape down below, prone, twisted, torn. Six feet long, dressed in gray pajamas that were dark with liquid. The shape was deathly still.

And alone.

Utterly alone.

CHAPTER 68

Spence placed a quivering finger on the Royal. The ghosts had drifted past, their nebulous flesh throwing a chill around the room. Roth was gone, Bridget away somewhere.

Spence pressed a key.

F.

The One True Word, undressing itself, shucking its golden skin, opening its warm flesh to him. An invitation to enter.

The stir of ghosts ruffled the pages of his manuscript as the white shapes filtered into the ceiling. His greatest work ever. The greatest work ever. They could drag him back to Eileen Foxx’s class, but this time he would have something to show them, to shut their slack little mouths and amaze their dull and cruel eyes. He had proof of his superiority.

His gut ached, sweat pooled under his armpits, his scalp tingled. The electric tension of the ghosts made the hairs on the back of his hands stand up. He pressed another key, and i slapped into place beside the f.

He thought the One True Word would be something rare and noble, something with seven syllables that only literary giants and dictionary-makers knew. Funny that the word was common, elemental. But Spence’s opinions held no weight here.

He was only the instrument, the sword and scepter, the pen, the flint and steel. The Word was the beginning and end of things.

Go out frost and come in fi...

He slammed home the r, weeping at the finishing of his work, already feeling the old emptiness, already bracing himself to need Bridget again. Someone to save him from himself.

He looked up at Ephram Korban, at the kind face, the encouraging eyes, the generous lips that had given him every wondrous word of this magnificent manuscript.

“Thank you, sir,” Spence said.

The ghosts were gone now. No distractions. No excuses. Just himself and Word and Korban. As he watched, the portrait faded to black, like the dying of an old tube television set.

He searched the keyboard, blind from tears, and put his clumsy, unworthy finger in the beautiful cup of the key.

CHAPTER 69

Sylva felt the energy rush through her veins, the weariness falling away, the sweet juice of youth washing over her like a brisk waterfall. She tilted her head back and laughed. Let Miss Mamie fade to dust. Ephram loved only one, the one who had made the sacrifices. The one who had faith. The one who had crumbled the bloodied burial gown of her own daughter, who had crushed owl bones and raven feathers and stoneroot and a dozen other special substances.

The one who gave Ransom bad charms. The one who built Ephram’s bridge back to this world on the ashes of a thousand prayers. The one who had said the spells, who had sent magic on the winds and summoned Anna, hooked her in the deepest meat of her heart and reeled her in, tricked her blind so that her death could complete the circle.

Oh, Sylva had the faith, all right, and she wanted all the fruits of faith.

She wanted Ephram back.

She rose, sixteen again, eager to give her restored virginity back to the man who had stolen her soul, who had lit an everlasting flame in her heart. She tossed a pinch of the special dust toward the statue, imagining those big arms loving her, those crude lips hot on her skin, those eyes burning into hers forever.

“Say it,” the statue said.

She whispered, trembling, “Go out frost, come in fire.”

CHAPTER 70

At Sylva’s words, the four threads of smoke from the chimneys insinuated themselves, thickened into a great gray fog. The smoke sent its frayed fingers toward Anna, wending between Mason, Sylva, and the statue that housed part of the soul of Ephram Korban. The bust, which contained the rest of Ephram’s invisible and eternal self, smiled at Anna with perverse affection.

Mason swatted at the smoke with both hands, but it slipped past him and the moonlit gray fingers crawled over Anna like cold earthworms. They found the soft part of her throat and became solid, squeezing in a gentle pressure that was almost erotic. She reached up to pull them away and relaxed under their insistent caresses.

Her lungs burned from lack of air and an icy dizziness rushed up her spine to the base of her skull. She tried to speak, Mason had her by the shoulders and was shaking her, she was dimly aware of movement on the widow’s walk, but the gray tide was seeping in from the edges of her vision, pushed by a great black wave of nothing.

She didn’t know when the change occurred. The line had been thinner than she’d ever imagined. For the briefest of moments, she was on both sides, alive and dead at once, but the moment passed and she crossed over. She’d finally found herself, her true self. She’d become the ghost she’d always wanted to be.

The pain inside was gone. In its place was an unsettling hollowness, an empty ache. Loneliness. She was dead and she still didn’t belong.

And death was just like life, because the world was the same: Sylva whispering something to the statue, Miss Mamie kneeling and wailing, her hands cupped over her face as if trying to hold her flesh in place, Lilith drifting under the moonlight, the Abramovs slumped with vacant eyes, now playing a funereal tune, Mason crouched before her, yelling at her, raving about a talking painting and Korban in the wood and dreams come to life and all sorts of nonsense. Couldn’t he see that none of that mattered?

Death and life, all the same now.

Rachel hovered before her, holding out the bouquet. “I’m sorry, Anna. I failed you.”

Anna reached for the bouquet. Her body collapsed.

“Anna!” Mason jumped toward her, tried to catch her and slow her fall, but the body she’d abandoned slumped beyond his reach. She heard her flesh slam against the wooden planks of the widow’s walk, but her spirit kept falling. Through the house, through this place of dark emptiness that would be her home.

Death wasn’t a release. Death, at least in Ephram Korban’s version, was just another prison, this one full of the same suffering that shadowed the living. Only here, there was no escape, no hope, and still nobody to belong to.

“Anna.” Rachel’s voice, a moaning graveyard wind, a desperate fetching.

And still Anna fell.

CHAPTER 71

Mason held Anna in his arms. Her face was pale, eyes glazed and protruding. He put his cheek to her mouth. No breath.

No breath.

Anger and fear rose in him, tears stinging his eyes. He looked up at the obscene, bloated moon. She was dead. And it was his fault. He’d failed her.

He gently laid her down, wiped the blood from his face, and turned to the statue. The old woman that Korban had called Sylva had changed, was now young, her face twisted in a sick rapture. Mason rose to his feet, though the long drop beyond the railing made his head swim, the sense of being on the top of the world caused his guts to clench in dread.

“Go out frost, come in fire,” Sylva repeated, her skin vibrant and healthy in the moonlight. Hadn’t Anna said something about frost and fire?

God, why couldn’t he remember?

And did it even matter?

Because his statue, his creation, his big goddamned dream image, stood there on the widow’s walk like a monstrous wooden idol, born of vanity and faith and love. Yes, love. Because Mason loved his work.

“You’ll finish me, won’t you, sculptor?” The bust spoke calmly, cradled in the thick arms of the statue. “You love me. Everyone loves me.”

“You promised me Anna,” Mason said.

“Oh, her. She’s nothing. A necessary evil. And you’ll learn that flesh is fleeting, but the spirit is for eternity. Isn’t that right, my dear Sylva?”

“When you give somebody your heart, you owe them,” the woman said. And though she now had a beauty that rivaled Anna’s, the shadows around her eyes were older than the Appalachians, dark and cold and full of terrible secrets.

“Then pay your debt,” Ephram said. “Finish the spell.”

“Third time’s a charm,” she said. “But, first, they’s one more promise you got to keep.”

“Promise? What promise?” The statue raised its face to the moon, and the grain of the maple sparkled like a hundred diamonds. Frost. It had settled on the wood.

Frost and fire.

Mason wasn’t sure of the connection between those two words. But he understood fire. Miss Mamie’s lantern glowed near the railing, where she’d set it down upon Korban’s arrival. Mason wondered if he could reach it before Korban decided it was time to start hurling bodies from the top of his house.

CHAPTER 72

“Anna,” Rachel called again.

Anna opened her eyes to darkness.

The darkness wasn’t absolute. She blinked.

“Where am I?” she asked, her voice passing as if over a hundred tongues.

“In the basement.”

“The house?”

“We all live here,” said someone else, and a hand was in hers, small and cold.

“You,” Anna said, “the girl ghost from the cabin, the one Sylva called Becky.”

“You came to help us.” And the girl smiled.

“I can’t help you,” Anna said. And now she saw Rachel, ethereal and shimmering against the curtain of darkness.

“I had to wait for you to die, Anna,” Rachel said. “You have the gift, even stronger than mine. Korban killed me because he knew I was stronger than Sylva. But not like you. When you were alive, you had the Sight. Second Sight. But you had to die to get Third Sight.”

“Third Sight?”

“The power to look from the dead back to the living. The power to join us together. To hold our dreams, the way Ephram never could, because he wanted them for himself. He wanted our fear and hate. But he forgot about faith. Because we believe in you, Anna.”

“Believe. So says the world’s greatest liar.” She wished she could laugh, but in this bleak, gray land of nothingness, such a sound couldn’t exist.

“Believe,” Rachel said. “Become the vessel. Hold our dreams, our real dreams. Let our dreams go into you, so we can finally die.”

“You want to die?”

“More than anything,” the girl said.

“Help us,” came another voice from the gray smoke of this new dead world.

“Free us from Korban,” said another, and then another. How many souls had Korban trapped here over the years? How many of Sylva’s potions and spells had spun their sick binding magic?

“Follow your heart,” Rachel said.

“My heart. It only leads me to hell.”

“It belongs to the living.”

“No. I belong here.”

“Sylva lied, not me.”

“I don’t trust any of you. Why should I believe you?”

“Listen. I’m not your mother.”

“Not my mother?”

“Ephram’s power is that he lets you see what you want to see. He gives you what you wish for. Why do you think you can finally see the dead?”

Anna didn’t think it was possible to descend into a chill deeper than death, but the revelation made her soul spin. She had been a fool. How could you ever find your own ghost?

“Sylva used you,” Rachel said. “She used me, too. We’re just pieces of driftwood to throw on her sacrificial fire.”

“I hated you,” Anna said. “When Sylva told me you were my mother, I thought I’d finally found somebody to blame. Now it’s just me. I’m just as lost as ever.”

“I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you, but Ephram controls me, too. All I want is to have never been born.”

“That goes for me, too,” Anna said.

“You’re not alone, Anna. Something’s happened. The binding spell has broken.”

“The dolls,” Adam said.

“Adam?” Anna said. Her soul eyes couldn’t see him in the gloom. “Are you dead?”

“They say I am, so I must be.”

“What about the dolls?” Rachel said.

“Miss Mamie made them,” Adam said. “Carved, with little apple heads. I saw mine, only I didn’t know what it was. I think she carved one for everybody who died.”

“She’s dead,” Anna said. “I guess she never carved her own doll.”

“Then she can’t bind us anymore,” Rachel said. “We’re free.”

“Not free,” Anna said. “Not until Ephram’s been killed for the final time.”

“Save us,” Becky said.

“Get us out of here,” Adam said.

“You’re the one,” Rachel said. “You were fetched here for a reason.”

Other voices came from the surrounding darkness, pleading, encouraging. Anna felt their energy flow around her, a current of heat that stirred her dead heart.

“Third Sight, Anna,” Rachel said. “I’m not your mother, but I would be proud if I were. Because you’re strong. Even stronger than Ephram.”

“I don’t know,” Anna said. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Say it. What Sylva taught you. Only backward.”

“Frost and fire?”

“Yes. And believe it. Living stay alive, dead go back.”

Living. Maybe living wasn’t so bad, even with its pain, sorrow, and failure. But at least life offered hope, second chances, choices. Was that the pain that rose inside her soul now? The pain of hope, the yearning for forgotten flesh, the regret of things left undone and words left unsaid?

She thought of Mason on the widow’s walk, facing the wooden monster he had made, a monster that would haunt this mountain the way no ghost ever could. Haunt it like a god, with anger and power and arrogance, as if all things living and dead belonged to it.

“Go out fire, come in frost,” Rachel said. “Say it.”

Anna opened her dead and dreaming mouth. Dozens of voices joined hers, Becky’s, Adam’s, Rachel’s, all blended into a chorus, a chant of hope, an ache for the final freedom. “Go out fire, come in frost. Go out fire, come in frost. Go out fire, come in frost.”

One, a dividing line.

Two, an empty hook.

Three, a skeleton key.

Third time’s a charm, opening the door.

To a room of hope. A house of faith.

A home for the soul of Anna Galloway.

She was Anna. She was alive.

She opened her eyes, saw the blanched circle of the moon, felt the October chill on her skin, tasted the smoke that skirled from the chimneys, smelled the decay of windblown leaves, heard the hollow distant roar of Ephram Korban’s heart. She put a hand to her own heart. Beating. In rhythm with his. And with the spirits she carried inside her, the combined hopes and dreams of the unhappy dead.

Fuel.

Ephram wanted fuel, she would give him fuel.

She rose, and though her body still lay prone on the widow’s walk, she didn’t need flesh for this task. All she needed was faith of the spirit. Because she’d finally found something to belong to, something that offered more than just an endless darkness, something larger than herself.

Her house was full, and Korban’s was a house divided.

Caught between frost and fire.

CHAPTER 73

Miss Mamie rose from her clatter of bones and husk of corpse.

Where was her flesh, the beauty that Ephram had given her? She wanted a mirror, because mirrors never lied. And neither did Ephram. Because Ephram loved her. He’d killed her for a reason, surely.

Maybe their love was meant for the other side, not the mortal side. That’s the only thing that made sense. She still had eyes, she could see the mortal world, and could taste all the strange wonder of death, and death was the same as life, only better.

She would go to Ephram now, on his terms, the way he had made her.

But why was Sylva still alive? And young again, and beautiful?

Ephram could explain everything. After all, they had forever.

She went to him, though her spirit seemed stitched to the night sky, heavy and thick, and she fought to step from the fabric of darkness.

A dull aura shimmered around the rough cut of the statue’s shoulders. Ephram hoisted the polished maple bust aloft as if it were a trophy, showing himself the world, showing the world to the man who owned both sides of it.

“Make her go away,” Sylva said to him. “Then I’ll finish the spell.”

“Sylva,” Ephram said, the statue and bust speaking in unison. “I’ve given you everything.”

“I want more than everything. It ain’t enough that I get your heart. I want her out of your heart for good.”

“You’re the only one I ever loved.”

“Yeah, but that’s the same thing you said to her. Except you lied to one of us.”

Miss Mamie fought the gravity that pulled her toward darkness. Tunnels of the soul, Ephram said we all have tunnels of the soul. What’s in mine, Ephram? What do I fear more than all the world?

Sylva stared with wide loving eyes at the handsome hunk of oak. Her spells had brought out a misty horde, collecting around the statue like worshippers at the feet of a resurrected prophet:

Ransom, confused and sad, fingers fumbling for a charm that had no power.

George Lawson, offering his ragged hand in tribute.

The Abramovs, their instruments forgotten, the music playing on without them.

Lilith, fading in and out like a half-finished painting.

William Roth, dribbling spiders from his empty eyes.

The bust smiled at the night sky. “Good-bye, Margaret.”

Miss Mamie moved her hand to the locket. But it was gone. It lay among her empty gown and the dust of her desiccated body. And she realized she was already in her tunnel. Because this was her greatest fear, and she must watch as her love spun unwanted down a dark drain, her sacrifice refused, a century of promises adding up to nothing.

She felt her soul scatter on the wind, to be carried off the mountain and away, where Ephram would be always out of reach.

CHAPTER 74

No way.

No way in hell.

But Mason couldn’t deny it. Anna’s body had stirred beside him. Her eyelashes quivered. Her chest rose slightly beneath the splotch of Mason’s blood on her blouse. Anna’s breath cooled the sweat on Mason’s palm. She was back.

And even in his fright and bewilderment, a surge of pleasure rushed through his bloodstream, a joy like none he had ever known. This was all a crazy dream, had to be, but dreams were everything now.

Mason looked at the lovely red wood of the statue he’d made, at the spirits gathered around it, at the maple bust that demanded Sylva finish her spell.

Anna’s eyes opened, and her irises were no longer cyan. They were red, yellow, orange, glittering in the colors of fire.

And she rose, except her body stayed on the planks. She stood. A ghost. But still her body breathed.

She was on both sides at the same time, dead and alive.

“She—she ain’t supposed to come back,” Sylva whimpered, drawing into her old woman’s hunch despite her youth. “You killed her like you did Rachel.”

“I need her,” Korban said. “She’s part of the house. Now finish the spell. I kept my promise. Margaret is gone.”

Anna’s living lips parted in that glorious half smile, spilled words in a chorus of dead voices. “It’s the fire, Mason.”

He touched her cheek, and it was blazing with human heat. “Do you trust me?” he whispered, the kind of thing he would say in a dream. Nothing to lose.

Maybe this was the true art, the creation that gave back, the work that made itself. This was the biggest dream image of them all.

“Maybe,” Anna said. “The fire.”

“Maybe” was enough to risk everything. Mason knew what he had to do, what he should have done long ago. He eased toward the lantern, seeing Anna’s eyes in its intoxicating flame.

CHAPTER 75

Oh Lordy, something ain’t right.

Sylva tossed the charm dust onto Ephram, pressed Rachel’s burial gown to her heart.

Anna wasn’t supposed to be back at all. She was supposed to be dead and haunting the house, serving Ephram, working as his blood and juice and power. But there she lay, breathing and blinking and whispering to the sculptor.

And Anna’s eyes weren’t right. Too many people looked through them, and every one was madder than a weasel in a hatbox.

She would make him get rid of Anna, too, just like Miss Mamie. And Rachel. Get rid of them all. Only her and Ephram.

She itched to try out this new body. A century of waiting was plenty long enough. She’d spent ten thousand charms on this man and it was time for a little payback.

The beautiful bust opened its mouth. It would be awkward kissing that thing, making love to this statue that didn’t even have all its parts yet, but they always said that love would find a way. And she had forever to learn how. Forever to tame him and teach him the value of her spells and conjures and charms. Forever to be needed.

She opened her mouth to call in the fire a final time.

“Go out frost and come in—”

CHAPTER 76

Anna knew this was the moment, a time of eternal crossing. Of burnt offerings. A time for ghosts to die.

“Here comes your damn fire,” Mason shouted above the mad music and rattling leaves. He grabbed the hurricane lantern, the flesh of his hand sizzling. He sprang at Ephram, screamed at the sky, and raised the lantern over his head, then swept it down toward the statue.

Anna led the leap out of her body, her spirit a conduit for the trapped dreams and lost hope of all haunted souls.

Fuel.

The lantern smashed against the statue, the thick oil soaking into the oak, orange and red and blue ropes of fire spreading across Korban’s ungainly form. A blaze of yellow raced up one arm, igniting the dark maple of the bust. Twin screams splintered the night as the fire roared to full life, whipped by the frenzied wind.

Anna’s chest emptied as the tortured ghosts of the manor routed through her, flew across the boards of the widow’s walk, and swarmed into their hated master. Their fuel boosted the fire tenfold, twentyfold, and the statue stumbled and waltzed in blind agony. The bust dropped to the floor, the lips peeled back in endless pain. Mason kicked the flaming bust toward the statue, back into the hellish pillar of fire.

Anna scrambled backward, void of all spirits but her own, the conflagration too dazzling to watch even with Second or Third Sight. Acrid smoke belched from the manor’s four chimneys, and rich red sparks cut tracers in the air.

The house swayed, its siding buckling and popping, the eaves snapping like dry bones. The gables themselves moaned in the anguish of collapse. Vines of smoke spilled from the manor’s doors and windows, curling up the columns and darkening the sky.

Korban spun in the darkness, in a St. Vitus dance of overdue death, Sylva kneeling at his feet, the dead and alive scrambling to escape the fire that raged on both sides of the dividing line.

CHAPTER 77

A wall of flame stretched across the widow’s walk, cutting off escape through the trapdoor. Mason squinted against the smoke, the nerves of his scorched hand screaming in alternating ribbons of red and yellow pain, his head and arm aching from their wounds. Mason stumbled to the railing and looked down at the dizzying darkness.

A hand touched him and he turned, ready to surrender, to let Ephram Korban pull him into the manor’s endless nightmare.

It was Anna.

“The trees,” Anna said. “I think we can reach them.”

“I can’t,” he said, throat dry. “Heights.”

“We all have to face our fears sooner or later. And you just burned your masterpiece. What else do you have to lose?”

“You.”

“Okay, then. Come on, because I’m selfish as hell, too. And I don’t want to survive this thing alone.”

She climbed over the rail at the point farthest from the surging blaze. A poplar swayed in the fire’s backdraft, its branches rattling against the railing. Glass shattered below, flames shooting out the windows and spewing from the screaming mouths of the chimneys. The entire house groaned and crackled in the throes of destruction.

“Ephram Korban,” Anna said. “He’s dying with the house.”

She gripped the branches and pulled herself over, then reached back for Mason. “Hurry.”

He took her hand, closed his eyes, then swung out and wrapped a leg around a thick branch. His stomach fluttered, feeling the space beneath him, the long, yawning gap between his body and the ground—

Don’t think, Mason.

She came back from the dead, and you’re worried about a little thing like falling.

But it wasn’t the falling he was afraid of, it was the landing. The dying. Because he’d seen the hollow and vacant eyes of those who had stared down those black tunnels. He’d take blindness over any of the those deeply hidden horrors, those secrets of his soul that were stashed far away from the light.

He scrambled along the branch, her hand gripping his bloody shirt, and by the time they reached the thick trunk of the tree, he was gripping her in return.

CHAPTER 78

The walls were collapsing. It was the end. Spence stared at the paper, at the Word.

F-i-r-e

Flames crawled along the cracks in the baseboard, smoke erupted from the fireplace. The window shattered outward, and flames gushed from under the closet door like colored water.

A shrill voice pierced through the crackling of the fire: “Get out, Jeff.”

The Muse? He looked up from the typewriter, confused. The work was beautiful. Out of place in this malefic chaos, this destruction, this Dantean inferno. But the Word—the word couldn’t harm its maker, could it?

He had been wrong. The Word had lied.

Korban had lied.

The writer was the master. The language was the slave.

The room was filled with smoke now. Bridget, shouting from the hall, ducked out of sight. Spence sat forward with a squeak of chair springs. He tried to scoop up his manuscript, but hungry flames rippled up the back of the desk.

He stood, eyes bleary, fingers numb. Smoke filled his mouth and throat. He started toward the door. He couldn’t leave his manuscript. He turned with effort, dazed from lack of oxygen. The pages had burst into a bright bonfire, the sentences now vapor, the Word lost in the heat of its own blinding glorious lie.

Spence blundered against the door frame, a tug of regret in his chest. He hadn’t pressed the period, the final key. He hadn’t finished the manuscript. He started back into the room, but the ceiling was falling, the house collapsing, the typewriter lost in a tide of yellow and red.

The fire sucked oxygen through the window, and the hot breeze sent a sheet of paper out the doorway. Spence grabbed it, held it to his chest.

Weeping, he staggered down the hall, coughing and spitting.

CHAPTER 79

“—fire,” Sylva whispered, finishing the spell, though it was far too late.

All the years of waiting, of sacrifice, of deception, wasted now. The years that Ephram had given her back, the ones stolen from Margaret, were fading, retreating into the past. By rights, they should have been hers. Ephram should have been hers.

Her wooden lover writhed and twitched on the charred husk of the widow’s walk. Behind the wall of flames, he had somehow lost a little of his majesty. But he still had that power, that magnetism that had driven her to sacrifice everything for him. He was dying again, the third and final time, and he needed her. She felt it as keenly as she felt her hair shrinking from the heat, as she felt the moisture of her skin evaporating.

“Sylvaaaaah,” he roared, or it might have been the hungry tongues of the flames.

She crawled toward him, into the fire. Unlike the first time with Ephram, this time the fire burned her both body and soul.

As the blaze stole her breath, as her eyes dried in their sockets, as her brain boiled, she realized that possession worked both ways. When you gave somebody your heart, they owed you. And you owed them in return.

Both ways.

Frost and fire.

And pain, a deep freeze of burning agony. The thing called love. A suicidal, murdering thing.

CHAPTER 80

Anna lowered herself, weaving through the branches. Mason was close behind, working his way down with frantic care. The heat from the house flowed over her, bits of wood and ash flying past on the wind of the firestorm. The sensation reminded her that she was alive, that the death she had welcomed was now something she was struggling to avoid. Maybe being alive meant nothing more than fighting to stay that way.

Maybe.

Or maybe Rachel was right. You have to live for something bigger than yourself, belong to something that matters. Then you earn your rest.

“Hang on, Mason, we’re almost there.”

“Good. Because I think the house is falling.”

They finally reached the ground, Mason stumbling, weak from his wounds. She supported him, leading him across the lawn away from the manor. The heat had melted the frost, and the grass was damp, steam rising. When they reached safety, she and Mason collapsed on the ground, ridding their lungs of smoke, watching Korban’s funeral pyre as it stretched its fingers toward the moon.

The giant skeletal framework of the house was outlined in black, and Anna saw Korban’s face in the flames, a hundred times life-sized, trapped in his own black tunnel, the one where his dreams died, where his servants abandoned him, where his heart turned to ash. Where he owned nothing and no one and his work went forever unfinished.

The great gables folded, the rails tumbled over the side. The Ionic columns snapped and the portico thundered down. The windows wept fire, the walls tucked themselves into each other, the piano works made a brassy clamor as they tumbled into the basement. Glass shattered and flames sputtered, smoke funneled from the top of the house like the mouth of hell at the end of the world.

“Look,” Anna said, pointing across the frost-coated lawn to the edge of the forest. Matchstick figures moved among the shadows.

“Some of them got out,” Mason said. “They are alive, aren’t they?”

“Sure.” She realized her Second Sight had been blinded, somehow it had perished along with the ghost of herself she had given to Ephram Korban.

Good riddance.

Horses galloped across the meadow, whinnying in fright. Then the night was torn apart by a soul-searing shriek that echoed across the mountains. The ground shook, trees bent backward, and the barn collapsed. The fences also fell, gleaming like wet bones in the moonlight.

“He’s taking it all with him,” Anna said.

“Does that mean he’s . . .?”

“Dead? Do we even know what that means anymore?”

He put his arm around her, and she relaxed against him, grateful for his warmth. “I think it’s all a dream. But dreams aren’t such a big deal. I like being awake better.”

“So do I.”

They sat in the grass, watching the fire dwindle, and waited for dawn.

CHAPTER 81

“The bridge is gone,” Cris said. “There’s nothing left but some timbers braced against the edge of the cliff.”

“I’m not surprised,” Anna said. “Korban took everything that belonged to him. A control freak to the end.”

The morning sun had lifted over the ridges, melting the remainder of the frost, and the mist rose off the ground like lost spirits, joining the last threads of smoke from the smoldering house. Anna and Mason sat on bales of hay, along with Zainab and Paul. Anna had tethered the two Morgans to a nearby locust. The other horses and the cattle had wandered into the orchard, no longer fenced off from the sweet autumn grass. Pigs played at the edge of the little pond at the foot of the slope, and wrens sang like the world was new.

Anna checked on Mason again. He held his hand in the watering barrel, where a pipe supplied cold spring water from the hills. He had a second-degree burn. There would probably be scars, but the wounds would heal eventually.

EVERYTHING heals eventually, Anna thought. Even if you don’t have the power of charms and spells and herbs. Or the power over life and death.

Paul tore a strip off the waist of his shirt, dipped it in the water, and wrapped Mason’s cut arm. “Used to be a Boy Scout,” he said.

“Eagle?” Mason grunted.

“No. One of the lesser birds. Buzzard, maybe.”

“Sorry about your friend.”

“Yeah. I’ll deal with it after I quit lying to myself. After I figure out what happened.”

“We all have our guilt to deal with,” Mason said. “And we learn from our mistakes.”

“I sure as hell wish I had salvaged my videotapes, though. I could have been rich and famous. Who will ever believe it now?”

“You don’t want any evidence,” Mason said. “And if you look at what you have to pay for success, it’s not such a hot deal.”

“Is he in shock?” Anna asked Paul.

Paul looked into Mason’s eyes, then felt his pulse. “No. Maybe on the edge, but—”

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” Mason said.

“Shock’s not a bad way to go,” Anna said. “A dying soldier’s best friend.”

“Where in the world did that come from?”

“I don’t know. Just popped into my head.”

Paul stood up and rubbed at his eyes. “I guess we’re all suffering from disorientation. Or maybe mass hysteria. Because my camera didn’t lie.”

“All of it had to go,” Anna said. “Because it all belonged to Ephram Korban.”

“Then how will we ever prove it was real?”

“I don’t think we want to prove it,” Mason said.

“I wonder if they saw the smoke from down in the valley,” Cris said.

“Probably not,” Anna said. “There would have been sirens or a Forest Service helicopter by now.”

It was strange to be reminded that another world existed off this mountaintop, a world of sanity and order, where the dead stayed in the ground for the most part and people drifted through ordinary lives. Anna stood, heading for the wreckage of the barn. “Good thing the fire department didn’t get here in time to put it out, huh? I don’t think any part of Ephram should remain.”

“What are we going to tell them?” Mason said. “I mean, what really happened here?”

“I’ve got a theory. But a theory’s worth about as much as a match in hell. There’s supposed to be some old trails that go down the side of the mountain. I’m going to find one and ride down to the river and follow it until it meets a road.”

“Need some company?” Mason asked.

“Not the kind that gets woozy from heights. Plus you need time to heal.”

“I’ll go with you,” Zainab said.

Anna shook her head. “No. They need you here. And I’ve had a lot of experience with horses. It’ll be faster if I go alone.”

Paul nodded. “The writer’s having trouble breathing. Ate a little too much smoke. Good luck, Anna.”

Paul, Cris, and Zainab headed up the road, where Spence and Bridget gathered near the house’s foundation like ghosts who felt an obligation to haunt. But there were no more ghosts at Korban Manor. They had all moved on, to wherever their destination had been before Miss Mamie copied them as crude little dolls and Korban hijacked their midnight flight to eternity.

Korban Manor was nothing but ash and charcoal and a sprinkle of embers. And Korban was nothing, just a burned memory, a flash in the cosmic pan. A dream that was already half-forgotten, one that faded by the minute, and Anna was sure his magnificent marble grave marker was only a handful of dust, those words Too Soon Summoned crumbled like the lie they were.

Just before sunrise, she’d hiked to Beechy Gap and visited the site of the cabin where she’d seen the strange little carved figures. The cabin was gone, a small pile of ash marking its passage. The figures must have exited, too, wended toward the heavens in smoke and fire. Free at last.

Anna sorted through the fallen barn timbers for a saddle and bridle. She lifted a shattered board and saw Ransom’s blank face, a trickle of crusted blood at one corner of his mouth. The scrap of cloth from his charm was clenched in one rigid hand. She covered him before Mason noticed.

The dead deserved her respect. Death wasn’t romantic or glamorous. She was through worrying about their motives, their hopes, their endless dreams. Her fascination had faded. She had no desire to ever see another ghost, especially her own.

Even Rachel’s, though the two of them had shared an intimate bond that ran far deeper than mere mother and child.

Maybe this was how Anna was destined to belong. Those were her people, her connection, kindred spirits, however briefly. In an odd way, maybe they lingered inside her, invisible, in her blood, in the tainted, cancerous cells that corrupted her organs and pushed her inevitably toward the final darkness. She was as much a ghost as she was a mortal. A stranger in two strange lands.

But they all were. Every organic thing that had ever caught the spark of life. The dying begins with the birth.

So what?

Did she really expect that, by becoming a ghost, she would understand what being a ghost meant? She’d been alive for twenty-six years and had come no closer to the meaning of life in all that time. Why should death be any less of a mystery to those experiencing it?

As for today, the air was fresh and the pain inside was somewhere down around six, an arc and trick, or maybe a five, a broken wing. A hell of a long way from zero. She could live for those who had gone before, and those yet to come. Weeks or months, it was all a precious and fleeting gift.

Anna saw a flash of dull silver in the broken lumber, moved some timbers, and found a bridle, then a saddle and blanket. She pulled them from the rubble. Mason watched with interest as she harnessed one of the Morgans.

Some of the smoke that had collected in her lungs had started to rise. She cleared her throat and spat loudly. “Is that how they do it in Sawyer Creek?”

Mason smiled at her. It wasn’t such a bad smile, though it was surrounded by a face gray from smoke, ash, and weariness. She carried the blanket to him and covered him up.

“Better keep you warm, just in case,” she said.

“Go out frost?”

“That’s not funny.”

“I know.”

CHAPTER 82

Spence grabbed at a piece of black ash as it wafted to the ground.

No. It wasn’t the Word.

He grabbed another, then another.

The Word would endure. Mere fire couldn’t destroy it. He coughed. The ashes had stuck to his tears, making his cheeks feel thick and clotted. He coughed again, his stomach quivering.

“Why don’t you come away from there? That smoke’s no good for you.”

He turned. The Muse?

No. Bridget, Ms. Georgia Peach, the latest corruption.

“You stupid blowhard,” Bridget said. “Be glad that stuff got burned. Maybe someday you can write a real story, something that’s not possum vomit.”

Real? How dare she criticize—

“And you can leave me out of it.” She walked away, then turned and stood with her hands on her hips. “I don’t know what I ever saw in you. But I can sure see you now.”

“Don’t leave.”

“I believe you said this was always your favorite part. The End. Well, it sounds good to me, too.”

Spence watched her go. She didn’t matter. She was just another prop, another character sketch. One of the little people. He stood under the snowfall of gray and black, waiting for the Word to come from on high.

Maybe if he could remember the story, bring it back to life, it would lead him again to the Word.

Something about the night? He touched the crumpled page he’d tucked inside his jacket. Maybe later, after years had passed, he would be able to read it. And maybe it would contain some hint of the night’s long spell.

But the night was leaving, retreating over the far steel-blue hills, going on to other writers, other vessels. It would spread its loving cloak on another part of the world, shower its gifts elsewhere, whisper its secret sentences. And Spence was again alone, with nothing but himself and words.

The ashes rained on.

CHAPTER 83

Mason tried to curl the fingers of his scorched right hand. A strip of electric pain jolted up his arm, pausing only briefly at the cut in his shoulder to gather momentum before reaching his brain. He bit his tongue to keep from crying out.

Maybe this was what suffering was all about. The art of sacrifice. It wasn’t about enduring starvation, struggling for recognition, fighting the fear of failure. Maybe it was about finishing, letting go. And realizing that the dreams you bring to life sometimes have no place in the world, and are best left as dreams.

The toughest critics weren’t in New York or Paris. They weren’t in the art schools. They didn’t wear berets and sport tiny mustaches and drink espresso. Sometimes they lived in your mirror.

“How are you holding up?” Anna asked, tightening the cinch around the horse’s girth. She had strong hands.

“Well, I don’t think I’ll be doing much sculpting for a while.” Mason thought of his tools, buried somewhere under the heap of ashes and bones in the basement. He had no desire to see them again.

Anna nodded at him and adjusted the saddle, then stroked the horse’s ears. The Morgan snorted with pleasure.

He had to ask. “What was it like . . . you know?”

“To be dead?” Anna’s cyan eyes fixed on a faraway point somewhere beyond the range of sight.

“Uh-huh.”

“Somebody who loves me said it’s the same as being alive, only worse.”

Mason looked up at the thin pillar of smoke. The wind was carrying it away, and he caught the odor of apples. Now that the sun was out, the sky was a shade of winter-born blue.

December would come with its soft snows, then the nights would get shorter and spring would arrive. Grass would grow over the ruins, locust and blackberry vines would spring up from the burned-out spot. The granite would sleep under its skin of dirt. The sun would rise and fall, the seasons would turn, the clock’s restless hands would spin in only one direction.

Forward.

“What are you going to do later?” Mason asked.

“I don’t know. I think I’m cured of metaphysics, though. Let the dead rest. They’ve earned it.” She put a foot in the stirrup and swung astride the horse. It was a natural fit. “What about you?”

“Depends. As soon as I get back to Sawyer Creek, I’m going to tell Mama that dreams aren’t the only thing we got in this world.”

“Really. What else have we got?”

“Pain.”

“Dreams and pain. Well, that’s a lovely mix. Maybe you can add ‘faith’ to that list.”

The kind of mix that maybe love was made of. Mason wondered if one day he might find out. He looked down at the ground and saw a bit of color amid a pile of loose hay. He kicked at the hay, and then saw the flowers. A bouquet of bluets, flame azalea, daisies, baby’s breath, painted trillium. Spring mountain flowers, fresh-cut and sweet, the stems wrapped in clean lace. He carried them to Anna. “Somebody must have left these for you.”

She took the bouquet and held it to her nose, eyes moist. “Dead stay dead,” she whispered. “And rest in peace.”

Anna tucked the bouquet into the bridle, eased back on the reins, and the Morgan raised its head.

“See you soon, Mason. Take care of yourself.”

She twitched the reins and the horse started down the dirt road.

“Hey, Anna,” he yelled after her. “Did you mean what you said up on the widow’s walk?”

She didn’t stop, but turned in the saddle and looked back. She shouted over the steady clop of the horse’s hooves: “About trusting you? Maybe.”

Anna gave him a half smile and left him to wonder which half of it she meant.

THE END

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###

ABOUT SCOTT NICHOLSON:

I believe we build valuable ideas together, some of them inside a book, and some outside a book. I am honored that you shared my ideas and brought them to life in your imagination. I invite you to write a brief review or tell your friends about these ideas we have shared and the places we have gone.

I’m author of more than 30 books, including Liquid Fear, Chronic Fear, The Harvest, Disintegration, and As I Die Lying. I collaborated with bestselling author J.R. Rain on Cursed, The Vampire Club, Bad Blood, and Ghost College. I’ve also written the children’s books If I Were Your Monster, Too Many Witches, Ida Claire, and Duncan the Punkin, and created the graphic novels Dirt and Grave Conditions. Connect with me on Facebook, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Twitter, my blog, or my website. I am really an organic gardener, but don’t tell anyone, because they think I am a writer.

Feel free to drop me a line anytime at hauntedcomputer@yahoo.com, or visit my Author Central page at Amazon to ask a question or see my other books. Thanks for sharing your valuable time with me.

Other Books By Scott Nicholson

Return to Table of Contents

Try these other thrillers because they are good:

DISINTEGRATION

By Scott Nicholson

Careful what you wish for.

When a mysterious fire destroys his home and kills his young daughter, Jacob Wells is pulled into a downward spiral that draws him ever closer to the past he thought was dead and buried.

Now his twin brother Joshua is back in town, seeking to settle old scores and claim his half of the Wells birthright. Jacob’s wife Renee is struggling with her own guilt, because the couple lost an infant daughter several years before.

As Jacob and Joshua return to the twisted roles they adopted at the hands of cruel, demanding parents, they wage a war of pride, wealth, and passion. They share the poisonous love of a woman who would gladly ruin them both: Carlita, a provocative and manipulative Hispanic whose immigrant family helped build the Wells fortune.

If only Jacob can figure out which of them to blame. But the lines of identity are blurred, because Joshua and Jacob share much more than blood. And the childhood games have become deadly serious.

Learn more about the psychological thriller Disintegration or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

THE SKULL RING

By Scott Nicholson

Julia Stone will remember, even if it kills her.

With the help of a therapist, Julia is piecing together childhood memories of the night her father vanished. When Julia finds a silver ring that bears the name "Judas Stone," the past comes creeping back. Someone is leaving strange messages inside her house, even though the door is locked. The local handyman offers help, but he has his own shadowy past. And the cop who investigated her father's disappearance has followed her to the small mountain town of Elkwood.

Now Julia has a head full of memories, but she doesn't know which are real. Julia's therapist is playing games. The handyman is trying to save her, in more ways than one. And a sinister cult is closing in, claiming ownership of Julia's body and soul . . . .

Learn more about The Skull Ring and False Recovered Memory Syndrome or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

Do you like movies? View the screenplay adaptation at Amazon US or Amazon UK

AS I DIE LYING

By Scott Nicholson

Richard Coldiron’s first and last novel follows his metafictional journey through a troubled childhood, where he meets his invisible friend, his other invisible friend...and then some who aren’t so friendly.

There’s Mister Milktoast, the protective punster; Little Hitler, who leers from the shadows; Loverboy, the lusty bastard; and Bookworm, who is thoughtful, introspective, and determined to solve the riddle of Richard’s disintegration into either madness or genius, and of course only makes things worse.

Richard keeps his cool despite the voices in his head, but he’s about to get a new tenant: the Insider, a malevolent soul-hopping spirit that may or may not be born from Richard’s nightmares and demands a co-writing credit and a little bit of foot-kissing dark worship.

Now Richard doesn’t know which voice to trust. The book’s been rejected 117 times. The people he loves keep turning up dead. And here comes the woman of his dreams.

Learn more about As I Die Lying and the six people in Richard Coldiron’s head or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

LIQUID FEAR

By Scott Nicholson

When Roland Doyle wakes up with a dead woman in his motel room, the only clue is a mysterious vial of pills bearing the label “Take one every 4 hrs or else.”

Ten years before, six people were involved in a secret pharmaceutical trial that left one of them murdered and five unable to remember what happened. Now the experiment is continuing, as Dr. Sebastian Briggs wants to finish his research into fear response and post-traumatic stress disorder. He’s backed by a major drug company and an ambitious U.S. Senator, but he also has a personal stake in the outcome.

Only by taking the mysterious pills can the survivors stave off the creeping phobias and madness that threaten to consume them. But the pills have an unexpected side effect—the survivors start remembering the terrible acts they perpetrated a decade ago. They are lured back to the Monkey House, the remote facility where the original trials took place, and Briggs has prepared it for their arrival.

Now they are trapped, they each have only one pill left, and cracks are forming in their civilized veneer.

After the pills are gone, there’s only one option. “Or else.”

Read about it at Haunted Computer or view it at Amazon US or Amazon UK

CHRONIC FEAR

By Scott Nicholson

Chronic Fear is the second installment of the chilling Fear series, which began with the harrowing Liquid Fear. The story picks up one year after the notorious Monkey House trials, from which the tiny handful of survivors have scattered in the wind. For while the unwitting human guinea pigs are still alive, the experimental drugs to which they were subjected continue to wreak havoc on their emotional stability. World-renowned neurobiologist Dr. Alexis Morgan knows first-hand the horrors of the sadistic experiment: her husband, Mark, was one its victims. As a result, he is plagued by unpredictable bouts of rage and paranoia. Dr. Morgan’s research into the drug leads her to suspect presidential candidate and U. S. Senator Daniel Burchfield of plotting to gain control of the drug for his own purposes, a power play that is sure to result in countless casualties unless she and three Monkey House survivors can outwit the shadowy figures behind the conspiracy—if they don’t lose their own sanity first.

Read the first chapter at Haunted Computer or view it at Amazon US or Amazon UK

OCTOBER GIRLS

By Scott Nicholson

Five days until Halloween and all hell is about to break loose.

And it’s all Crystal’s fault.

Momma warned her not to consort with the dead and tried to teach her the magic spells that would close the portal to the afterlife. But Crystal doesn’t want to be a trailer-trash witch like Momma. Her best friend Bone is only too happy to escape the afterlife and help Crystal break the rules. Bone died too young, and she’ll do whatever it takes to remain among the living.

Then a young movie maker comes to Parson’s Ford, and he has a very special project in mind: a horror movie starring a real ghost. The movie is rolling, the creatures are stirring, and the brainwashed teenagers are ready to welcome a new star from the other side of the grave.

Crystal and Bone must overcome drama queens, coffin cuties, and mangled magic if they want to remain best friends forever—but at this rate, forever may not last much longer.

Learn more about the paranormal romance series October Girls or view it for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK

CURSED

By J.R. Rain and Scott Nicholson

Albert Shipway is an ordinary guy, an insurance negotiator who likes booze and women and never having to say he’s sorry.

And he thinks this is just another day, another lunch, another order of kung pao chicken. Little does he know that he’s about to meet a little old lady who knows his greatest fear. A little old lady who knows what’s hiding in his heart.

In just a matter of minutes, Albert’s life turns upside down and he enters a world where magic and evil lurk beneath the fabric of Southern California. And all his choices have brewed a perfect storm of broken hearts, broken promises, shattered families, and a couple of tiny problems. Namely, killer mice and a baby.

Albert Shipway is finally getting a chance to right some wrongs. That is, if it's not too late.

Learn more about the urban fantasy Cursed or view it for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK

GHOST COLLEGE

By Scott Nicholson & J.R. Rain

First in a new series featuring paranormal investigators Ellen and Monty Drew. Ellen claims to possess a sixth sense but Monty, a former P.I., only believes what he can see. She views their work as a sacred mission while Monty just wants a happy wife and a paycheck.

Then the Drews are summoned to a Southern California bible college after workers report hearing mysterious voices at night. When they encounter the unhappy ghost of a young girl, Monty's skepticism is shaken, but he resolves to help his wife free the trapped spirit. Their search uncovers the Latin phrase "Non omnis moriar"—not all of me shall die—and they learn more about the site’s history as a Catholic school destroyed by an earthquake. But a mysterious presence has plans of its own for the young ghost, and Monty and Ellen must go head to head with a Dark Master that’s had more than a century of practice in demonic deeds.

Learn more about Ghost College at Haunted Computer or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK.

THE VAMPIRE CLUB #1: First Bite

By J.R. Rain & Scott Nicholson

A group of college students pursue their passion for vampires, but when they discover the real thing, one of them must make the ultimate sacrifice in order to preserve the undead kind. A new vampire series by the author of the Samantha Moon series and the Liquid Fear series.

View it at Amazon US or Amazon UK and look for the next book Second Sips!

BAD BLOOD

By J.R. Rain, Scott Nicholson, and H.T. Night

People call him Spider. And people come to him when they have a problem. So when teenager Parker Cole approaches Spider at night school, he figures she's just another problem waiting to happen. But then she tells him about her father, who runs a cult called Cloudland based at the foot of mystical Mount Shasta, California. And then she tells Spider about her best friend, who is now dead, her body completely drained of blood. Spider wonders if the death is the work of a fellow vampire...or if he's now the target of a sinister game designed to lure him to Cloudland, where darker mysteries await.

View Bad Blood for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK

THE HARVEST

By Scott Nicholson

It falls from the heavens and crashes to earth in the remote southern Appalachian Mountains.

The alien roots creep into the forest, drawn by the intoxicating cellular activity of the humus and loam. The creature feeds on the surrounding organisms, exploring, assimilating, and altering the life forms it encounters. Plants wilt from the contact, trees wither, animals become deformed monstrosities, and people become something both more and less than human.

A telepathic psychology professor, a moonshine-swilling dirt farmer, a wealthy developer, and a bitter recluse team up to take on the otherwordly force that is infecting their town. The author’s preferred edition of the 2003 paperback release The Harvest.

Learn more about the science fiction thriller The Harvest or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

CRIME BEAT

A novella by Scott Nicholson

Crime doesn't pay...but neither does journalism. When John Moretz takes a job as a reporter in the Appalachian town of Sycamore Shade, a crime spree erupts and circulation increases. Then the first murder victim is found, and soon a serial killer is grabbing headlines. Moretz comes under suspicion, but he stays one step ahead of the police, his fellow reporters, and seemingly even the killer.

Learn about Crime Beat or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK

FLOWERS

By Scott Nicholson

Features the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Award grand-prize winner "The Vampire Shortstop" and other tales of fantasy, such as "When You Wear These Shoes" and "In the Heart of November." Includes the Makers series where children control the elements, as well as more tales of magic, romance, and the paranormal.

Learn more about Flowers and the award-winning "The Vampire Shortstop" or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

ASHES

By Scott Nicholson

A collection of supernatural and paranormal stories by award-winning author Scott Nicholson, including "Homecoming," "The Night is an Ally" and "Last Writes." From the author of THE RED CHURCH, THE SKULL RING, and the story collections FLOWERS and THE FIRST, these stories visit haunted islands, disturbed families, and a lighthouse occupied by Edgar Allan Poe. Exclusive introduction by Jonathan Maberry, author of THE DRAGON FACTORY and GHOST ROAD BLUES, as well as an afterword.

Learn more about the supernatural stories in Ashes or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

THE FIRST

By Scott Nicholson

A collection of dark fantasy and futuristic stories from award-winning author Scott Nicholson. Dystopia, cyberpunk, and science fiction imbue these stories that visit undiscovered countries and distant times. Includes two bonus essays and Nicholson's first-ever published story, in addition to the four-story Aeropagan cycle.

Learn more about the fantasy and science fiction stories in The First or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

ZOMBIE BITS

By Scott Nicholson

A collection of zombie stories, from the zombie point-of-view to the shoot-‘em-up survival brand of apocalyptic horror. Proof that even zombies have a heart…Based on the comic book currently in development by Scott Nicholson and Derlis Santacruz. With a bonus story by Jack Kilborn, a comic script, and Jonathan Maberry’s "Zombie Apocalypse Survival Scorecard."

Learn more about Zombie Bits and see zombie art or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

CURTAINS

By Scott Nicholson

A collection of crime and mystery tales from the vaults of Scott Nicholson. Includes "How to Build Your Own Coffin" and Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror selection "Dog Person," as well as the psychological thrillers "Letters and Lies," "Sewing Circle," and more stories that appeared in magazines such as Crimewave, Cemetery Dance, and Blue Murder. Includes and afterword and a bonus story from bestselling authors J.A. Konrath and Simon Wood.

Learn more about Curtains: Mystery Stories or view it for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK

GATEWAY DRUG

By Scott Nicholson

After the first hit, there's no turning back. Ten tales of horror and suspense from a bestselling author. A man learns fast cars and fast women don't mix, even when they're dead. A young boy discovers the terrible power of love. A rock musician will do anything for stardom. Bonus contributions from Tim Lebbon and Shane Jiraiya Cummings, as well as the afterword "One Sick Puppy."

Learn about Gateway Drug or view it at Amazon US or Amazon UK

HEAD CASES

By Scott Nicholson

Nine stories of psychological suspense and paranoid horror, featuring the first-ever appearance of "Fear Goggles." Collected from the pages of Crimewave, The Psycho Ward, Cemetery Dance, and more, find out what happens when a writer thinks Stephen King is stealing his ideas. Bonus stories by William Meikle and John Everson.

Learn more about Head Cases for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK

MISSING PIECES

By Scott Nicholson

Ten stories of suspense, fantasy, and the supernatural, including “The Beaulahville Gsporl; Jubilee,” “Floating Cathedral Song,” and “Constitution,” as well as three stories making their original appearance. View it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK.

THESE THINGS HAPPENED

By Scott Nicholson

It's been a strange life. It's been my life. Features stories, poems, and essays on relationships, romance, writing, and taking oneself far too seriously. Plus some humor. You may laugh, you may cry, you may decide you want to be a writer, too. You may hate me after if it's over. That's okay. You wouldn't be the first. Learn about These Things Happened. Or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK

IF I WERE YOUR MONSTER

Children's book by Scott Nicholson, art by Lee Davis

Creatures of the night teach a lesson of bravery in this full-color, illustrated bedtime story for all ages. Let vampires, ghosts, scarecrows, and mummies protect your little one from the bullies and mean people of the world. 24 screens or pages. View it at Haunted Computer or at Amazon US or Amazon UK

TOO MANY WITCHES

Children’s book by Scott Nicholson, art by Lee Davis

When Moanica Moonsweep plans a Halloween party, she needs the perfect potion of stinky stew. But when she asks her friends for advice, she ends up with one big mess and lots of hurt feelings. 28 full-color screens or pages. See it at Haunted Computer or for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK

DUNCAN THE PUNKIN

Children's book by Scott Nicholson, art by Sergio Castro

A momma pumpkin must teach her young pumpkin all about the dangers of Halloween, while a mysterious creature known as Skeerdy-Cat-Crow watches over the pumpkin patch. 30 full-color pages or screens. See it at Haunted Computer or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK

IDA CLAIRE

By Scott Nicholson, art by Lee Davis

Little Ida is a handful of feisty fun for her harried dad, bursting with imagination and play while Dad tries to keep up. Features 32 full-color screens. View it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK.

TROUBLED (UK)

By Scott Nicholson

When twelve-year-old Freeman Mills arrives at Wendover, a group home for troubled children, it’s a chance for a fresh start. But second chances aren’t easy for Freeman, the victim of painful childhood experiments that gave him the ability to read other people’s minds.

Little does Freeman know that his transfer was made at the request of Dr. Richard Kracowski, whose research into the brain’s electrical properties is revealing new powers of the human mind. Freeman simply wants to survive, take his medicine for manic depression, and deceive his counsellors into believing he is happy. When he meets the anorexic Vicky, who may also be telepathic, he’s afraid some of his darkest secrets will be uncovered. But when the other children develop their own clairvoyant abilities, and insane spirits begin haunting the halls of Wendover, he can’t safely hide inside his own head anymore.

The author’s preferred edition of the 2005 U.S. paperback release The Home, in development as a feature film.

Learn more about the paranormal thriller Troubled or view it at Amazon UK

SOLOM (UK)

By Scott Nicholson

Katy Logan wasn’t quite sure why she left her finance career in the big city to marry religion professor Gordon Smith and move to the tiny Appalachian community of Solom.

Maybe she just wanted to get her 12-year-old daughter Jett away from the drugs and bad influences. Maybe she wanted to escape from the memories of her first husband. Or perhaps she was enchanted by the promise of an idyllic life on the farm that has been in Gordon’s family for 150 years.

But the residents of Solom know all about the man in the black hat. The Reverend Harmon Smith has come back more than century after his last missionary trip, and he has unfinished business. But first Katy and Jett must be brought into the family, and the farm must be prepared to welcome him home. Gordon has been denying his heritage, but now it’s time to choose sides. Does he protect the ones he loves, or surrender to the ancestral urge for revenge?

Author's preferred edition of the 2006 U.S. paperback The Farm.

Learn more about the supernatural thriller Solom or view it at Amazon UK

THE GORGE (UK)

By Scott Nicholson

An experimental rafting expedition, an FBI manhunt for a delusional killer, and the worst storm in decades collide in the remote mountain wilderness...and then THEY come out.

Bowie Whitlock and a team of celebrity athletes is commissioned to test two experimental rafts in the rugged Unegama Wilderness Gorge in the remote Appalachian Mountains, considered the most dangerous whitewater rapids in the eastern United States. The expedition is tense from the start as jealousy, romance, and money are riding on the mission's success.

FBI agent Jim Castle and his partner are in the gorge looking for Ace Goodall, a deranged abortion clinic bomber. Ace, accompanied by a fragile young woman, is having visions that guide his murderous behaviour. The race is on as dark storm clouds gather, the river is swollen, and Ace hijacks the rafting expedition to make his escape. But the bloodthirsty creatures swooping down from the high cliffs have been too long without prey.

Ace has one more bomb. God is talking to him. It's raining again, and his young companion is pregnant.

And killing isn't what it used to be, because the dead no longer stay dead.

Author's preferred edition of the 2007 paperback They Hunger.

Learn more about The Gorge or view it at Amazon UK

OMNIBUS EDITIONS

You can also save with the omnibus editions

Ethereal Messenger at Amazon US or Amazon UK (contains The Red  Church, Drummer Boy, and Speed Dating With The Dead)

Mystery Dance (contains Disintegration, Crime Beat, and The Skull Ring, and bonus stories and essays) at Amazon US or Amazon UK

Three Ghost Stories, at Amazon US or Amazon UK (featuring Drummer Boy by Scott Nicholson, The Body Departed by J.R. Rain, and Cades Cove by Aiden James)

Horror Movies: Three Screenplays (The Gorge, Creative Spirit, and The Skull Ring screenplays) at Amazon US or Amazon UK

Skeleton Tango (Cursed! and Ghost College with J.R. Rain) at Amazon US or Amazon UK

Mad Stacks: Short Stories Box Set (Contains Gateway Drug, Head Cases, and Missing Pieces)

Bad Stacks: Short Stories Box Set (Contains Ashes, American Horror, and Curtains)

Odd Stacks: Short Stories Box Set (Contains The First, Flowers, and Zombie Bits)

Are you a writer? Please check out Write Good or Die and The Indie Journey: Secrets to Writing Success

Contact me at hauntedcomputer@yahoo.com because I’d love to know what you think—and if you are in any way dissatisfied with this product, please give me a chance to make it right. Let me know about any misspellings and formatting issues, since books in the digital age are living documents.

Thanks to Dellaster Design, David H. Burton, and Neal Hock at Hock’s Editing Services.

Scott

hauntedcomputer@yahoo.com

www.hauntedcomputer.com

Scott

hauntedcomputer@yahoo.com

www.hauntedcomputer.com

Return to Table of Contents

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VIEW KINDLE BOOKS BY SCOTT NICHOLSON

Novels

Creative Spirit

Disintegration

The Red Church

Speed Dating with the Dead

The Skull Ring

Drummer Boy

The Harvest

As I Die Lying

Burial to Follow

Liquid Fear

Chronic Fear

Cursed (with J.R. Rain)

Bad Blood (with J.R. Rain & H.T. Night)

Ghost College (with J.R. Rain)

The Vampire Club (with J.R. Rain)

October Girls

Crime Beat

The Dead Love Longer

Story Collections

Curtains

Flowers

Ashes

The First

Zombie Bits

Head Cases

Gateway Drug

Missing Pieces

These Things Happened

Children’s Books

If I Were Your Monster (with Lee Davis)

Too Many Witches (with Lee Davis)

Ida Claire (with Lee Davis)

Duncan the Punkin (with Sergio Castro)

Screenplays

The Skull Ring: The Screenplay

Creative Spirit: The Screenplay

The Gorge: The Screenplay

Writing

Write Good or Die

The Indie Journey: Secrets to Writing Success

BOX SETS

Ethereal Messenger

Mystery Dance

Horror Movies: Three Screenplays

Three Ghost Stories (with Aiden James and J.R. Rain)

Ghost Box: Six Supernatural Novels

Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 1

Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 2

Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 3

Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 4

Mad Stacks: Short Stories Box Set

Bad Stacks: Short Stories Box Set

Odd Stacks: Short Stories Box Set

Return to Table of Contents

VIEW U.K. KINDLE BOOKS BY SCOTT NICHOLSON:

Novels

Creative Spirit

Troubled

Solom

The Gorge

Disintegration

The Red Church

Speed Dating with the Dead

The Skull Ring

Drummer Boy

The Harvest

As I Die Lying

Burial to Follow

Cursed (with J.R. Rain)

Ghost College (with J.R. Rain)

The Vampire Club (with J.R. Rain)

Bad Blood (with J.R. Rain & H.T. Night)

October Girls

Crime Beat

The Dead Love Longer

Liquid Fear

Chronic Fear

Collections

Curtains

Flowers

Ashes

The First

Zombie Bits

Head Cases

Gateway Drug

Missing Pieces

These Things Happened

Children’s Books

If I Were Your Monster (with Lee Davis)

Duncan the Punkin (with Sergio Castro)

Too Many Witches (with Lee Davis)

Ida Claire (with Lee Davis)

Writing

Write Good or Die

The Indie Journey: Secrets to Writing Success

Screenplays

The Skull Ring: The Screenplay

Creative Spirit: The Screenplay

The Gorge: The Screenplay

Omnibus editions

Ethereal Messenger

Mystery Dance

Horror Movies: Three Screenplays

Three Ghost Stories

Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 1

Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 2

Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 3

Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 4

Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 5

Mad Stacks: Short Stories Box Set

Bad Stacks: Short Stories Box Set

Odd Stacks: Short Stories Box Set

Return to Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Title Page

The Red Church

Drummer Boy

Burial to Follow

Speed Dating with the Dead

The Dead Love Longer

Creative Spirit

About the author

Other Scott Nicholson books

Scott’s Amazon US links

Scott’s Amazon UK links