A Minister's Ghost: A Fever Devilin Mystery

by Phillip DePoy

  He nodded. Even chuckled.

  “But I interrupted your story.” I turned the windshield whippers on high. “You were saying Frannie was with child.”

  “She was in big trouble,” he continued. “Her father demanded her to confess. She says, ‘Yes, sir, I am, but let me explain.’ She was ready to tell him that she was married. But her father was so mad he wouldn’t let her finish the sentence. He just said, ‘Who was it, by God! Tell me this minute or I’ll beat you raw.’ And she said, ‘It was Hiram Frazier, Daddy, but let me explain.’ She was trying to bring up the fact that our little baby was legal, you understand. But her father was so mad that he charged out of his house right then and there, grabbed up his hunting knife, and came to kill me.”

  “Jesus,” I said before I thought better of it.

  “Don’t blaspheme,” Hiram warned me casually, and went right on with his story. “So, anyway, her daddy ran off down the holler like a madman, with Frannie chasing after him yelling, ‘Daddy, no, don’t kill him!’ But her father was filled with fire and it clogged up his ears. He’d never seen me, but he knew where our family lived. He went storming up to the Frazier household, didn’t even knock on the door. My mom and dad weren’t home. I was in the kitchen studying the schoolbooks. When I saw Frannie’s father coming at me with a knife, I figured the old man had found out about the marriage and was mad about that. I lit off out the back door and into the woods. All the while, little Frannie was yelling, ‘Wait, Daddy, wait!’ Finally, by the side of Pistol Creek, body of water for which our town is named, the old man caught up with me and he was going to kill me sure. He spun me around so as not to stab me in the back, but just then, as he’s about to stick me in the heart with his knife, he finally got a good look at my face. For the longest while—seemed like a year to me—the old man just stood there frozen, staring at me, knife held up high over my head.”

  “What was he doing?” I was lost in the story.

  “Well, Frannie had the same question,” Frazier went on, clearly enjoying the telling. “About that time she caught up with us, all out of breath on account of she’s so close to having a baby, and she says, ‘Daddy, what are you doing?’ Well, the old man drops his knife, kind of stunned like, and turns around to Frannie. ‘Lordy, girl,’ he says to her, ‘I have never in my life seen a boy this good-looking. He’s too handsome to stick with a knife. I want to kill him, but I just can’t!’”

  I couldn’t help laughing.

  “And Frannie’s sobbing by this time,” Frazier went on, grinning. “‘You didn’t let me tell you that everything’s all right because we got married last year and he’s about to graduate from school and he’s going to be a minister and it’ll all be fine as long as you don’t go putting a knife in him.’”

  Hiram Frazier laughed so hard he began to cough. I was amazed at how the laughter changed his face. For a moment, he seemed like most other men.

  “And her father was so happy,” he managed between bouts of rasping his throat, “that he gave us money to buy a little house.”

  “Well, it’s a great story,” I concluded.

  “I had happy times.” Frazier sobered a little. “I have not always been as you see me now.”

  “You’re still a preacher. You still do your work.”

  “How do you know I’m still a preacher?”

  “You told me a moment ago, about your sermon in South Carolina.”

  “Two girls in a pumpkin,” he whispered.

  “Yes,” I heard myself say. “That image may have been prophetic.”

  I had no idea why I would say such a thing.

  “Wouldn’t be surprised.” He closed his eyes. “When God wants to punish you, first He drives you mad. And you believe me when I say there’s no greater madness than the gift of sight.”

  “You see things in your mind that later come true.” I took him seriously.

  “What do you think I saw in my vision?” he said, his voice hollow.

  “Two girls in an orange Volkswagen were hit by a train a few nights ago here in this town,” I said quickly, “or in the town outside of which I picked you up, I mean. You see how your images do sort of predict—”

  “The gift of sight came to me when Frannie died,” Hiram interrupted, absolutely emotionless. “It’s a pestilence. I don’t care to speak of it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want sympathy,” he said softly. “I want a ride to the next town, and a contribution to my work if you can spare it.”

  “Have we met before?” I shot him a glance. “Your story sounds familiar.”

  “I meet so many people in my work.”

  “Speaking of your work, what was your congregation like, the one who heard you talk about the girls in the pumpkin?”

  “Bums,” he said instantly, “hoboes, drunkards, miscreants; wandering hulks: the cast out. The unhuddled masses yearning to breathe foul. America had a beautiful dream. I preach to the ones who were shaken awake, thrown from their beds, shunned by the dreamers. I teach them, tell them about their worth.”

  “It’s good work, if I correctly understand what you’re doing.”

  “You don’t know.” His voice returned to the sediment from which it had risen. He reverted to his previous mien, all lucidity dropping away. “I teach them about their contribution to this world: they are the dark part, the horror that balances light. They are God’s counterweight. There is much work yet to be done in the world of Night. God saw the darkness and said let there be light, but He wasn’t satisfied with that, so he divided the light from the darkness so that all people would know both. In the contrasting of opposites we see the world. How do we know good? By holding it up to evil. How do we know right? By seeing wrong, and recoiling. I am the envoy of darkness, the champion of the counterbalance. I bring back the deep Black to a world sick with pale eyes. I refresh the night with continual gifts, and then I bare my back to God’s scourge. I am His favored punishment. I am the omega of God’s lash, the final resting place of His whip. After me there will be no other. After me there will be a sufficiency of darkness upon the land, because my words are mighty, my message is cut from obsidian. This is my sermon, the final Revelation, and it is the Ending of the Light!”

  His hands were shaking and his voice had risen to a deafening pitch in the cab of my truck.

  “Yes, I understand your theory,” I broke in, matching his volume. “But I disagree with it.”

  “Good!” he stormed back. “That only proves my point. You go ahead and be a creature of light. I’m your dark twin. I’m the shadow you never see. I’m the leaden stone that allows you to shine like gold. You owe me a debt, brother driver. And I want it now.”

  He turned my way, menacing and hot.

  “What?” I tried to look at him and keep my eye on the road.

  “Pay!” his voice stabbed.

  Without warning his hand lashed out and I flinched, certain he would hit me. I shot a glance his way and saw the silver glint of a knife in his other hand.

  I panicked. The truck swerved, and tires skidded across the wet blacktop. He was shuddered away from me, and the truck complained wildly. Thank God no one was coming at us from the opposite direction. We would have been killed. After a moment I was able to right the truck and slow down.

  His hand was still out, palm up. His eyes were rimmed in coal red, burning into mine. He hadn’t even noticed that we’d nearly crashed.

  I pulled over to the side of the road, caught my breath.

  “Pay!” he insisted.

  I saw the vacant look in his eyes. He was not Hiram Frazier, he was the wandering creature, bereft of most of his humanity.

  “Take back your hand,” I told him evenly, “or I’ll break every one of those fingers. It shouldn’t be hard. Your bones are brittle.”

  “My bones are hollow,” he snarled.

  “All the easier for me to break,” I returned, louder.

  He sighed, pulled his hand back.

  “I
need a place to stay tonight,” he said, his voice turned to pathos.

  “You’ve mistaken my willingness to pick up a hitchhiker for a weakness you think you can exploit.” I kept my voice firm, but lessened the threatening tone. “Your entire religious philosophy seems to be easily summed up by the cliché ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’ It probably seems like the devil’s pretzel logic to most of the rubes you speak to, but I’ve seen masters of that kind of magic. I’m not your audience.”

  “Your parents were carnival people,” he muttered slowly. “Mostly carny folk use that word rube in a case such as this.”

  “They were.” No point explaining any more than that to him.

  “Okay.” He sighed. “Then here’s the whole story: I need a drink. Take me to a place where I can get one, give me ten dollars.”

  “I’ll set you out right here,” I countered, “and then call the police to tell them where I left you. Happens the sheriff’s a friend of mine.”

  “Don’t do that.” He shook his head.

  “You’re getting out of this truck now.” I stared him down.

  He considered his options, weighed my change of tone, and decided on the better part of valor. He took the door handle and opened his door. The rain had abated slightly. Only then did I see that he was not holding a knife in his right hand at all, though I had no idea what it was: only a flash of silver, then gone.

  Confused, I started to speak, but he went first.

  “You’ll regret this,” he said calmly as he slid out of the seat. “I’ll remember you.”

  “No, you won’t,” I corrected. “You don’t even remember where you were two nights ago.”

  “North Carolina!” he bellowed suddenly, rage burning his face. “Preaching!”

  “Not really,” I told him curtly, shifting into first. “I saw you two nights ago in my hometown.”

  I pulled the truck forward, the passenger-side door almost closed.

  “I’ve never been to Georgia,” he yelled as I pulled back onto the road.

  I shifted into second, kept my eye on the road, and reached across the seat to shut the door completely. As I did, the stench of the man, still clinging to the seat, momentarily overwhelmed me.

  I sat back behind the wheel, picked up speed, and rolled down my window. The rain splattered in, washed my face, a cold baptism.

  I finally gave a glance to my rearview mirror. Hiram Frazier was nowhere to be found.

  Clearly I’d seen a ghost. Theories concerning ghosts existed in abundance in the study of folklore, and I ran through most of them in my mind on the drive back to my cabin.

  The primary thought has always been that revenants are spirits who cannot leave the earth because of unfinished business: murder victims looking for their killers, lovers separated too soon, wronged souls seeking retribution.

  My own usual explanation for the supposed presence of ghosts was that they were merely a memory strong enough in the observer’s mind as to manifest a physical form. Of course, my theory offered nothing in the way of explanation for Hiram Frazier.

  By the time I finished reviewing these ghostly concepts in my mind, I had arrived home and the air had turned chillier.

  I wanted hot espresso and apple pie.

  My cabin was dull-cold. I hadn’t bothered to turn on the heat, and it would take hours to really warm the house.

  Instead I dashed upstairs for a glorious hot shower and a blessed change of clothing. Forty minutes later I was in my kitchen dressed in new black jeans, a black mock turtleneck, and my stockinged feet. I loaded the espresso machine with oily black coffee beans and stood silently while the symphony of machine noises clicked and hummed.

  I even had one slice of apple tart left in my refrigerator from one of Lucinda’s previous, extraordinary masterpieces. I set the oven at 350 to warm it.

  There were many secrets to the dessert’s success, including a crust that vanished on the tongue, and tree-fresh apples seared in butter and Calvados. I had watched her make the same dish perhaps a dozen times, but when I tried to duplicate the recipe in the sanctity of my own kitchen, the result was a sad excuse for anything culinary, so I was glad to have a leftover of the genuine article.

  I set the last precious slice of tart on a square of aluminum foil, placed it in the oven, and set the timer. The espresso machine had done its work, and I sipped a demitasse staring out the window at wet leaves. I felt comforted for the first time in several days.

  I had a sudden impulse, a lonely one, to call my friend Dr. Andrews in Atlanta. I thought I might convince him to help with the depressing work I had to do. He always lifted my spirits. I hadn’t heard from him in a few weeks, so a call was in order no matter what the circumstances. But given that my greatest friend and ally on Blue Mountain, Sheriff Skidmore Needle, was absolutely disinterested in continuing our friendship, Andrews seemed essential to my well-being.

  I turned down the oven, reached for the phone, and dialed.

  He answered on the eleventh ring.

  “Andrews,” he mumbled.

  “Devilin,” I countered.

  “Dev!” His voice sprang into high gear. “This is a startling coincidence. I was going to call you tonight. You’ll never guess what great luck I’ve had. The Globe, the Globe Theatre in London—”

  “I knew which Globe you meant,” I interrupted.

  “They’ve asked me to direct their next production of The Winter’s Tale.” He could barely contain himself.

  “That’s fantastic. When do you go?”

  “Tomorrow!” He nearly leapt through the phone. “I’m leaving tomorrow. They only called this morning. I mean, I’m taking over for someone who dropped out, obviously, but I’m directing at the Globe!”

  “No one deserves it more.”

  “Shut up,” he said, dismissing the compliment immediately. “I was going to call you because you have to come with me. I’ve already seen to the extra ticket. You just have to drive down to Atlanta tonight, leave your truck at my place, and fly to London with me tomorrow.

  “I can’t,” I stammered.

  “You don’t understand,” he rushed in. “I’m not paying for your ticket. They are. The Globe. I told them you were my musical consultant, that you were a folklore expert and you had picked the perfect traditional English tunes from the period for the production. You can do that, can’t you?”

  “I could,” I tried to tell him.

  “It’s settled then,” he took off. “You’re working. Isn’t it amazing?”

  I stared at the dial on the telephone. I was a single breath away from asking him when our flight was when the buzzer on the oven’s timer went off. I glared at the oven for interrupting my vision of London. Then I smelled the apple pie and thought of the cook. In the next second I realized I wasn’t going anywhere but over to Lucinda’s house that night.

  “Dev?” Andrews prodded. “Are you still there?”

  “Sorry.” I blew out a long breath. “Sorry, Winton. I can’t go.”

  Obviously taken aback by my uncharacteristic use of his first name, Andrews fell silent.

  “Something’s happened here,” I went on. “Lucinda’s nieces have both been killed. They were hit by a train. She needs my help. In fact, that was why I was calling you. I wanted you to come up tonight and help me with my investigation.”

  “Investigation?” he said softly.

  “Some people seem to believe they were murdered.”

  Silence again held sway.

  “Dev,” Andrews stuttered, “I mean, I can’t pass up—”

  “No, no, no,” I interrupted quickly. “I don’t intend for you to pass up this opportunity. But I’m needed here for the moment, so I can’t leave for London tomorrow.”

  “I’m sorry, Fever.” His voice was gentle.

  “Look,” I said, bucking up, “there’s every possibility that the entire matter will be set to rest in a few days. If that’s the case, does your invitation still hold?”

  “Of cour
se,” he shot back immediately. “I won’t even be cozied in for a week or so. I’ll send you all the information tonight, the place where we’re staying, the background on the play. The ticket you can change anytime. Incidentally, you have read the play?”

  “I have. But it’s been a while. There are songs?”

  “Six, actually, sung by Autolycus. And later there’s a dance of twelve satyrs.”

  “For which you will also need music,” I guessed.

  “Read it, refresh your memory,” he instructed, “and pick fifteen or twenty good melodies.”

  “That many?”

  “Choices.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Dev? Is there any chance you’ll actually do this? Come to England this fall, I mean?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know.”

  “Okay.” He didn’t bother to hide his disappointment. “Still, look at the songs, see what you think. I’d better nip off. Packing.”

  “Of course.” I hesitated. “Have a good flight.”

  “Exactly,” he mumbled, unsure how to get off the phone.

  “I’m proud of you, Andrews. You’ll do this splendidly.”

  “Thanks, Dev,” he answered huskily.

  “All right,” I sighed. “Good-bye, then.”

  “All right.”

  We hung up. That was that.

  I reached for the oven, quite depressed.

  In a skull-splitting flash of recollection, like an instant migraine, I suddenly thought of a line from one of the songs in A Winter’s Tale, perhaps prompted by Andrews’s asking for my help on his project at the Globe. Lawn as white as driven snow / Cypress black as e’er was crow. I realized I knew it because I’d used it many times in one of my university lectures concerning how the concept of Taoist opposites (yin and yang, black and white) can be used as a tool for interpreting traditional American songs. The Appalachian variant from Lonesome Dove was an example: The Crow is black you know my love / Although she may turn white.