“My grampa died two years ago. I didn’t want him to go. I still visit his grave and put a flower on it.”
Cassidy took a few breaths and asked, “Why?”
Jordan blinked. “That’s what you do for dead people. I put one on Buddy’s grave, too.”
“But why?” she persisted.
He never thought very long before saying, “It shows you care, I guess. I’ll never forget my grampa or Buddy. Well, Buddy was just a dog, though.”
“It’s worse when people die, I suppose,” Cassidy said in a quiet voice.
Eyes again on the walls, Jordan ignored the posters that endorsed character, diversity and togetherness. Jordan said, “Yeah. Since people have souls, it’s different.”
“What if people didn’t have souls?”
“They do, though,” Jordan answered. “Buddy was all right, but it wasn’t the same as grampa. He told me things, like fighting in the war against the Japanese. He was a person. I was thinking about going to his grave after school.”
“Why?”
“Why not? I ride there sometimes. It makes me feel better.”
Cassidy appeared listless and asked, “Mind if I come along?”
“That’d be okay. It’s just across the way by Route 66. We can make it on bikes and be home by supper. I can show you the entry way to the old mine as well. It’s right by the highway but no one sees it.”
Cassidy said no more and stared at her tray.
***
Jack Sullivan read invoices on his desk, and saw that scheduling left the weekend open. His thumbs squeezed the pages as if he tried to get something to squirt from the edges. He also saw by the ads sold and page numbers that the over time would be lighter this week.
“What a week,” he said to no one.
He then read an offer from the plant in Macomb to take some of their volume to let them have a weekend off. That plant did oversized work on a thicker grade of paper. The operators on the floor would balk for sure as they hated such replacement work. He couldn’t suppress a grin when he made the calls, locked in the extra paper rolls to run the pressroom this weekend and thus, force the bindery into more overtime.
Positive that one of his employees had defaced his beautiful beige Buick, Jack was only starting to calculate his revenge.
“Let them call in or burn vacation days,” he said, a grin stuck to his face. “Time is mine in the end.”
When noontime approached, he closed the shutters of his office and retrieved what aped a huge class ring from his brief case. Twisting the stone, Jack let the ring open up and reveal the powdery substance inside. He placed this to his right nostril and inhaled fast.
Mind tingling, he peeked through the blinds of his office. He looked across the expanse of the plant, the edge of the pressroom and on into the bindery and smiled.
***
Hawg’s sleep was fitful. He wasn’t used to that. Back in the round barn at home, the world was close and his nights felt restful. Though he seldom saw the sunshine like on this day, it always granted him a feeling of glee. He slid from the stone chamber again. Hawg felt cold and alone. Elias wasn’t there to feed him or tell him stories. The only ones near to him were dead.
As he stretched his body, the shivers from the night before returned to Hawg’s flesh. The feeling from the ruined gilt burned in his mind, but he told himself it was from hunger. Though he ate well in the round barn, and since then, Hawg felt famished all the time. Hand across his stomach, Hawg only understood hunger and that he must quell it. He glanced at his fingers, saw that dry blood crusted on the joints and nails, and remembered his morning meal.
Red eyes on the remains of the two teens, propped up on stones, ogling him with dead eyes, Hawg moved forward. Having fed at their throats and bellies earlier, Hawg started on the fatter one’s right leg. Earlier, Hawg tore through this one’s belly only to see the inner workings of the chubby kid’s waist. Nothing to eat there, he’d progressed on. Though the skinnier one fed him well enough, the fatter youth’s leg looked appealing. Hawg easily tore through the denim covering and sank his teeth in the cold flesh.
As he filled his gut, Hawg felt his body calm down and the day lighten.
CHAPTER FOUR Visitations
Micki awoke in motion. She didn’t know how long she’d been crawling in her sleep, nor where she was at the moment. Again, in her bleary mind so saturated with agony, Micki heard a sound that was familiar, one that probably roused her to action in the first place. Unsure of her motivations, she followed the wail of the train. Micki smiled, recalling childhood trips on the train. This smile made her hurt, too. The trestle that passed the old mine entrance wasn’t far from where Hux and her parked the night before. A mile? Perhaps a bit more? She lived in Miller’s Fork at the parsonage and her sense of space wasn’t as good as the farm boys she’d blow for eight balls.
Tears ran down her bloody face as she recalled how the rural kids and the “town” kids hated each other in many ways. It was immature and silly, but she wasn’t feeling very superior any more as she crawled across the field, sometimes adhering to a waterway path in the high grasses. The main field areas felt rugged as if freshly disked for the spring planting. Cover provided by the waterways felt better to Micki. The weeds and dry reeds made her feel safe as if the monster couldn’t find her again.
Micki thought of the creature. In the middle of the sex, suddenly there was this gigantic thing crushing her. Hux was bigger than an average man, certainly more filled out and stronger than the skinny boys she’d hung out with and relinquished her virginity to. This man, this thing that got on her and in her, was far bigger than Randy Huxtable. Hux sported a small beer gut that often bounced or rested on her stomach as he trashed into Micki’s self. Micki thought the new arrival was just a big man, one with no fat to him, but a great deal of bulk. Her hands had went flat to his chest several times as he thrusted on her. Aside from seeing his red eyes, and the strange metal objects on its face, Micki recalled that his chest was different, as if his pecs were too many to count.
Her insides convulsed and she stopped for a moment. Inside her, the beast was different as well. The organ wasn’t like Hux or any other man. It was sharper, twisted, hit her in ways no man did unless they changed positions many times. Micki thought the thing inside her changed sizes many times, but the memory made her body scream.
A couple of times, she blacked out from the agony in her pelvis. Not knowing how much time passed, Micki awoke and started her task anew, still making her way toward where she thought the train line ran.
The train that ran north and south wasn’t far, she told herself. From where they were, she thought the trestle ran in a more open area, next to old Route 66 and past a cemetery. Surely, someone would be around to see her from the road.
***
At two in the afternoon when Andrew saw he was on the overtime list, he shook his head from side to side with great violence. “Fucking pricks,” was the nicest thing he said. The rest of the crew on dayshift were equally angered as the board numbers hadn’t indicated any OT was in the offing. After a few folks bitched in the office, they were told the workload has shifted and they had to stay.
Gopher leaned over the yellow railing that separated the pressroom from the bindery aisle. “Screw you guys again, Andy?”
“Yup, Gopher, and no kiss, either,” Andrew said, not hiding his distain.
Thumb over his shoulder, Gopher said, “Ol’ man Gamblin said we are down for the weekend already.”
“Peachy,” Andrew muttered, thinking how he was supposed to take Jordan to the premiere of a new movie on Sunday after church. Down the line of paper rolls by the end of the press line, Earl Gamblin shook his head and wore a sheepish look.
“They don’t give a flying fuck about us,” Mary Ann Statler spat, purse clutched to her side like it held gold as several women walked outside to use their cell phones. “Why, back when I started here…”
Perspiring from the heat of the press ovens
, Gopher leaned over closer to Andrew and whispered, “When that bitch started here, we engraved plates for press on stone tablets.”
Andrew was past carping about that. This behavior from management was old news. He thought of making plans for who was to get Jordan later and walked across the bindery floor. He thought of how Gopher smelled of booze. Gopher drank so much, he sweated it out all day, Andrew reasoned and he waved at Minh. The small man kept to the aisle and made a motion to his back pocket. He obviously had Andrew’s money for the gun and bullets, but would pay him later.
“Hey,” Minh shouted. “I hear that Tim Dinsdale never showed up for work today.”
“So?” Andrew shot back, a sour expression on his face.
With a grin, Minh replied, “I hear his wife is going bonkers. He never came home last night.”
“Great. Tell you a secret? My brother told me he’s dead.”
Minh laughed, knowing how Dinsdale had helped boot Andrew from the prep department at work. “You’re joshing me! Dead?” Minh gave no sadness to this news. “I knew that would break your heart. What’s going on in this town?”
Andrew eyed him and asked, “You writing a book?”
Minh mocked a serious look and said, “Kiss my ass, cracker assed cracker, and we’ll call it a love story.”
As he walked away, Andrew glanced up and over his shoulder. Andrew spotted Jack Sullivan up in his office, beaming down over his kingdom.
“Wonder if he has pants on,” Andrew said as Alice passed him by and made no secret of pointing up at the office.
Alice laughed and Andrew saw Jack’s grin fade. He knew full well Sullivan realized the joke aimed at him stung. Still, Andrew couldn’t hide his frustration. Minh followed Andrew’s gaze up to the office and ducked his head, trying to hide from the daggers Jack spat from his eyes.
He borrowed his buddy Don’s phone to call Lynne. She couldn’t pick up and he had to leave a message. Andrew then called her Grandmother who usually picked up Jordan from school when Andrew worked odd hours. He left a message with her, but she’d been visiting a sick lady from church, so she never got the word. Andrew also called the school and told the secretary to tell Jordan not to get on the bus and to wait for his gramma…but she was busy, and in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and forgot to relay the message.
That is why Jordan climbed on the bus at three when school let out, got home to an empty house at 4:15, and took a bike ride for the cemetery with Cassidy soon afterwards.
***
While even the hoist drivers received word of OT for the evening, Hux donned his jacket at four and bid the main dock boss farewell.
Angry hoist driver Brian Miller said to Kenny Snow, who ran the dock, “You going to let that bastard get away with that?”
Kenny was hesitant, but called the bindery office. They never got ahold of Hux as he left, so Kenny pressed the issue to Jack Sullivan’s office. He fired back an angry message that he was in a meeting with other department heads and he’d get back to him.
He never did.
***
Hux felt alive when on his bike, but his ass still ached from the night before. He wondered if he’d ever be able to put that behind him. The troubles at work didn’t concern him. He had other worries and plans for the evening.
When Hux saw the car in the driveway of his small house, his heart sank. The parking sticker for a Chicago locale betrayed its origin. Still, his Harley rumbled on in beside it. He took off his glasses and eyed the men inside.
Both figures were dressed casually in jeans, knit shirts and tennis shoes. One wore a hooded polo shirt from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the other a dark windbreaker. Each man appeared well groomed and had hair sheared short, but their eyes set them off. The man in the driver’s side never blinked. His hollow eyes ran deeper than the pockets on a billiards table. The other man seemed to have eyes half shut, almost stoned in a way, but they opened wider as he spoke to Hux.
“Nick Roberts, Mr. Huxtable. Here to find what was lost.”
“Good for you,” Hux replied, trying not to flinch. He never got off his bike. His skin crawled at the snakish Roberts. Hux thought the guy even looked like a pedophile.
The voice out of Roberts was slithering, cloying as he said, “The signal in Rick’s car is in this community, outside to the south. Would you care to follow us there?”
Hux trembled, needing a fix, but his nerves were on fire enough to carry him on.
“Sure,” he said.
They pulled out of his drive and Hux followed them, having every intention of killing the two freaks from Chicago and dumping them in the stone quarry once they were out of town.
***
Jordan and Cassidy pedaled fast for the first mile on the black top road. Several farmers’ in trucks passed them by, and waved. Since it stayed light longer in the spring, Jordan gauged they’d have plenty of time to make the stop at the cemetery and head back before his parents came home.
“Why wasn’t your dad home?” Cassidy asked Jordan as they went down hill, no longer pumping their legs.
“He must’ve had to stay over at the plant,” Jordan replied, enjoying the glide on his blue bike. “My dad works a lot.”
Cassidy nodded, pulling on the drawstrings of her hooded polo shirt. “My dad, too.”
Since her mother worked evenings at the WAL MART and her dad overslept due to his coming night shift, no one stopped Cassidy as she left with Jordan.
The two exchanged few words on the trip. Jordan decided talking about Genesis was a bad idea. He never wanted to talk about Buddy much after the dog died. Though Cassidy said she hated Genesis, it was one more bad thing for her to experience. Jordan heard his dad and uncles’ talk of letting a woman ‘be’ when they were angry. He tried to let Cassidy ‘be’ even if she was still a girl.
They rested a few times before reaching the passageway under the train tracks. The slots were big enough for them to ride through. Jordan pointed to an area near the southern base of the trestle beams.
“See there where the boards are rotted away and the concrete blocks are gone?”
Cassidy made a sour face. “Coal mine entrance, yeah, I remember.”
“My Grampa used to sit with me here and tell me stories about the old days of Miller’s Fork. Ever been in there?”
Her face turned ashen gray. “No. You?”
“Dad and I checked in there once. He said he used to get in there when he was in high school, but they boarded up the entrance better and bricked it up. It’s fallen apart now, and I slipped in to look around the mouth of the mine. Dad was too big.”
“God, that’d be creepy.”
Jordan shivered a little at the recollection. “It looks like a cave and nothing was there but some rotten railroad ties and metal wheels from carts.”
They climbed off their bikes and pulled them up the shallow ditch beside old Route 66. Cars traveled on it still, but it was vacant at the moment. They passed over it to the entrance of the Galen Memorial Park. Cassidy endeavored to ride her bike, but kept hitting rough spots on 66. Jordan didn’t try and pushed his bike around the black patches on the gray road.
Jordan stopped at the next ditch and grabbed up a few wild flowers with yellow petals.
Cassidy guessed his intent and said, “Weeds from the ditch for your grampa?”
Jordan answered, “He was country. I dunno. Country flowers for a country boy.”
“Anyone live there?” Cassidy asked, pointing to the old house to the north of the cemetery.
“Doubt it. An old couple used to, dad said, but they are in the cemetery now.”
Both rode a little farther, then coasted down the gravel entryway through the open iron gates. Cassidy eyed the concrete pillars that held the gates, but Jordan whizzed on in.
“What is it?”
Cassidy stared back at the trestle and said, “I thought I heard a voice.”
“Probably a rain crow. That’s what gramma calls them. They sound like
a baby crying, holding its nose.”
“That’s weird.”
“It’s true,” Jordan assured her.
***
Micki awoke, up on her knees, reaching out of the tall weeds toward the train trestle. She heard voices, high pitched, but was certain she never imagined them. Desperate, Micki yelled out for deliverance, trying to plead for help.
When she pleaded to God or anything to help her, the words of one of her father’s sermons rebounded in her head.
“ Let me remind all of you, dear hearts, that there is no Mother Earth. A great many environmentalists are out to save the planet, for the Earth is their god. The worship of the Earth is nothing more than the worship of Baal, for which God commanded the strict penalty of death. Their reverence is misguided, misinformed, and brings the judgment of God, not once in a while, but every time!”
She stayed in that position for a few moments before falling back to the prickly grasses. Micki wasn’t about to pray to Baal, but she wished God would hurry up. She tackled the task to store up strength for another shout, but the blackness closed in around her.
A slight bit of terror crept into her mind as her bloody nose caught something on the wind…something ghastly and rotten…
***
Lucas Ellington woke up, went to the bathroom and thought the house strangely quiet. He couldn’t find his daughter. Not worried at first, he made several phone calls. After going outside and finding the garage door open a crack and her bike missing, he grew more afraid.
He received no answer from the White’s next door and decided to call Andrew’s brother. Though Doug would be off duty, the Sheriff didn’t live terribly far away. He was a good egg and would…well, what would he do?
“Calm down, man,” Lucas told himself. However, his body refused to comply. Fear struck him and he couldn’t make it stop. Was he getting old or did the fear make him want to piss again so soon?
***
Jordan said, “Check it out, someone is here.” Cassidy climbed off her bike as she followed Jordan up to a small car parked on the side of a hedge away from the road. The beat up Chevy sat there. It was missing two hubcaps and most of its trim. A pack of smokes lay on the dashboard and a half full bottle of soda was in the divider consol.
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