Blood Kin

by Ronald Kelly

  “Sure. Talk to you later.”

  He hung up the phone and sat there a moment longer. Something else had suddenly come to mind. Dud, Joan, and Wendell… all were Cravens. All were blood relatives, first cousins, come to think of it. That was more than a coincidence; he could feel it. There had to be a direct connection between Dud and the disappearances of Wendell, Joan, and the Andrews kids.

  Stan thought about calling Jay and requesting backup, but he was still hesitant about doing so. He knew he had to check it out for himself before he made his suspicions public and got the entire town of Green Hollow riled up.

  It took him twenty minutes to reach Dud’s farm on the western face of Craven’s Mountain. He parked in front of the house and cautiously knocked on the door. When no one answered, he checked the outbuildings and the barn. The buildings were empty except for a swaybacked mule that looked as if it hadn’t been fed in a couple of days. Stan filled its feeding troughs with oats and water from a well pump, then went back out to his car. He saw no sign of the gray Dodge pickup anywhere on the property.

  Stan climbed into his car and considered heading back to town. But he knew he couldn’t leave it at that. If Dud did have something to do with Jamie Bell’s murder and the sudden rash of disappearances, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to stick close to home. No, he’d likely be hiding out somewhere. And Stan had a good idea where that might be.

  He turned onto the dirt road and headed on up the mountain. It took him ten minutes to reach the very top. He drove through a dense grove of pines, then the land seemed to level out. Soon he emerged from the forest and saw the old Craven house standing up ahead. It was close to four o’clock. The sun was beginning to drop a little and the shadows of evening were starting to deepen.

  Stan knew he was on the right track before he even reached the house. He spotted Dud’s gray truck parked beneath the big oak, then Joan’s tan Tempo directly in front. He stopped a hundred feet from the Craven place and parked his car in the tall weeds at the side of the road. He climbed out and started toward the house, keeping close to the thicket that grew heavy at the rear of the weathered structure.

  When he reached the side of the house, he moved to the front and peered around the corner. Still he saw no one, only the car and the truck parked out front. Stan reached inside his jacket to where his service revolver was cradled in the shoulder holster beneath his armpit. He pulled the Smith & Wesson free, then opened the cylinder and checked the loads. There were five rounds with one empty chamber behind the hammer, like he always carried it. He didn’t return the gun to its holster. He kept it fisted in his right hand, held down next to his leg.

  Stan took a deep breath, then stepped out into the open. Slowly, he climbed onto the long porch that ran the length of the old house. Clinging closely to the front wall, he made his way past several shuttered windows. He reached the front door and tried the rusty doorknob. It turned easily in his hand. No one had bothered to lock it.

  He pushed the door inward and stepped back. The door yawned silently, showing only darkness. He wished he’d have brought his flashlight, but it was too late to go back to the car for it. He gripped the revolver in both hands and stepped inside. The house smelled musky and damp. Water spots stained the hardwood floor where the roof had leaked for years.

  Stan made his way across the floor, holding the gun ahead of him. He put his foot down on a loose board and it creaked loudly. Stan grimaced and tried to walk lightly. He headed toward the big room that was located to the left of the staircase.

  When he got there, he found that someone had occupied the room, perhaps even as recently as last night. There were tracks in the thick dust of the floor, mostly adult footprints, but some of them were much smaller; the footprints of children. He saw a kerosene lantern sitting on the mantel over the fireplace. It was unlit, but he could still smell a trace of it inside the family room.

  He was turning toward the stairs when he heard a sound. It came from the upper floor. A soft, muffled sound. As he drew closer to the staircase, he recognized it. It was the sound of crying. The crying of a child.

  Stan’s hands tightened around the butt of the Smith & Wesson, his index finger resting easily against the trigger. He mounted the stairs and took them one riser at a time. His ears were keen, listening for sounds other than that of the crying. He heard nothing else. He continued up the stairs, going slow and easy.

  When he reached the top of the staircase, he paused and listened hard. The crying was more distinct now. It was a young girl. Bessie Craven, he suspected.

  Stan Watts was about to step onto the second floor landing when a noise echoed from downstairs. It was the creak of a heavy footfall against a loose floorboard. He sensed someone standing below him, staring up at his back. But he didn’t turn around. He didn’t move an inch.

  Two clicks came from the ground floor, the metallic sound of twin hammers being cocked. A double-barreled shotgun, more than likely. Then someone spoke. “You stand dead still, Chief. You stand where you are, and don’t you twitch a muscle.”

  Stan recognized the voice at once. It belonged to Dudley Craven.

  “You shouldn’t have come up here snooping around,” the farmer told him.

  “I had to, Dud,” he said not turning around.

  “Yeah,” said Dud with a sigh. “I figured you would, sooner or later. You’re a sharp fella, Chief. You always were.”

  “Can we talk, Dud?” Stan asked him.

  “Wouldn’t do no good,” said the farmer. “Everything’s gone too damned far. And I’m afraid nothing you could say would change it none.”

  Stan knew then that there would be no reasoning with the man. He could tell by the despondent tone of Dud Craven’s voice that he had lost all hope. The chief had only one option open to him, and unfortunately, it was the most dangerous of all. He had no choice but to turn and try to take Dud out. He would aim at his head and keep pulling the trigger until the gun was empty. Maybe, if he was lucky, he would catch the farmer by surprise and he wouldn’t have time to react.

  He took in a deep breath, prayed to God for a steady hand, then whirled. As he brought the revolver down into line, toward the foot of the stairs, he knew he was already too late. A bright flash and a thunderous boom rolled toward him. A split second later, he felt most of his stomach exit through an ugly hole in his lower back. He lost his balance and tumbled down the staircase.

  Stan landed on his back, hard. He stared up, dazed, at dusty rafters draped with cobwebs. He reached to his stomach with one hand, first feeling warm wetness, then a moist, deep crater. He moaned, knowing it was serious. He felt nothing below his rib cage. Most of his spine was gone.

  Then Dud Craven stepped into view. He stood over him for a long moment, his eyes full of regret. “I’m sorry, Chief,” he said. “I truly am.”

  Stan Watts looked into the man’s face and believed him. “Why?” was all he could say. He felt blood bubble out of his mouth and past his lips.

  “You wouldn’t want to know,” said Dud. Then he lowered the shotgun toward the lawman’s face. Smoke curled from one muzzle, while the other remained ominously dark and empty.

  Stan saw that the right hammer was still cocked. But not for much longer. He closed his eyes tightly, feeling incredibly tired. He blacked out a second before Dud delivered the killing shot.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Wendell Craven opened his eyes.

  He looked toward the mouth of the cave. The last glow of daylight had faded, leaving the sky a shade of navy blue. He lay there, letting it grow darker, safer. Then he rose and crawled through the opening.

  The minister stood on the mountainside, feeling the day’s weakness leave him. His strength began to build until that intoxicating sensation of invincibility returned. But still Wendell felt unsure of himself. He had experienced that nagging uncertainty since last night, when he had left the parsonage and fled toward the Smoky Mountains.

  He stared up at the face of the peak, toward t
he place he had been headed for when dawn had crept upon him. He had spotted the little cave in the side of Craven’s Mountain and reached it before the first rays of sunlight broke over the mountaintop. He had made his bed—so to speak—and lain in the far reaches of the cave, making sure no daylight could reach him. Soon, all the strength had drained from him and he had drifted into a dreamless slumber, strangely aware and unaware of his surroundings.

  Now night had returned and so had his faculties. As he made his way up the steep slope of the mountain, he spotted a possum walking along the length of a dead log. That familiar hunger surfaced within him, making him feel the coldness of his body, the deadness of it. Stealthily he circled the animal, then pounced on it. The possum never knew he was even there. He ripped the creature open and brought it to his mouth. He drank deeply, drawing every drop of blood from its twitching body. When he cast it aside, he was aware that the hunger still lingered, not quite satisfied. But a new warmth ran through him. That was some comfort, at least.

  A short while later, Wendell reached his destination. The old church stood on the southern face of Craven’s Mountain. It was weathered and its boarded walls were pocked with dark gaps where dry rot had eroded the wood away. Half of its roof had collapsed from sheer age. Surprisingly enough, most of the stained glass remained in the structure’s peaked windows. In the moonlight, Wendell could see the tinted glass in dark shades of blue, red, and gold. He recalled the Sunday morning sunlight streaming through windows nearly identical to these, casting a prism of colors upon his congregation. It seemed like years ago, rather than days.

  He stood and stared at the church for a while. It had belonged to the one who had stolen his life and made him the way he was. It had been founded by Josiah Craven back in 1873, just as the South was recovering from the tragic aftereffects of the Civil War. Josiah had been married only a few months at the time and his wife, Elizabeth, had been with child. The congregation had started out with only a few simple mountain folk, then gradually built with time. But it had died when Grandpappy had. The people had lost their faith and drifted away, leaving it empty and forgotten.

  Wendell remembered his grandfather telling him the story of the church’s history when he was a small child. Perhaps that was what had led to Wendell’s calling in life. Even as a boy he had fantasized of returning to the church his great-grandfather had built and making it his own, repairing the damage time had done and filling its pews with the righteous once again. But with age came reality, and by the time he finished high school, those dreams had vanished. It was ironic that it would take his own rebirth to renew his faith in those childhood dreams once again.

  He approached the building cautiously. When he reached the door, he opened it and took a single step inside. He felt no apprehension, no terror of the kind he had experienced the night before. The word of God had been preached there so very long ago that its strength had eventually bled away, leaving only an empty shell of a structure, like an abandoned house or barn. Wendell stood there and smiled. He felt as if it had been waiting for him all those years. It felt like home.

  As he strolled the length of the church, the collapsed roof scarcely a foot above his head, Wendell thought to himself. God. He could hardly think the word, let alone speak it out loud. It had taken some time, but he had finally realized that Grandpappy Craven had been right. His allegiance had changed, and not by his own free choice. He had begun to see the truth when he was at the Cheating Heart. His tongue had burned each time he had mentioned the name of the Lord. By the time he had come to Tammy, each holy utterance had become in agony. Still, he had fought against it, telling himself that his faith could conquer all. But the final revelation had come when Tammy had held that picture before him; the picture of the Crucifixion of Christ. At that moment, he had been filled with such loathing and disgust, such soul-rending terror, that he had been unable even to look upon the cross and the one who had died for his sins. All he had wanted to do was put as much distance between it and him as possible. He had experienced the same horror when he had attacked Tammy through the attic window. She had shown him the painting again and he had panicked. He had changed into a dove and fled, flying over Green Hollow and toward the mountains, his self-appointed mission of salvation seeming unimportant compared to his own survival.

  At first, the realization that he was no longer a servant of God was devastating. He felt lost and without purpose, just some sort of horrid fiend who could change form at will and possessed an insatiable thirst for blood. Then he had considered what Grandpappy had told him, about recruiting a following of their own kind—a church of the undead—and it began to make sense to him. He also began to understand what Grandpappy had said about serving a different master than before. Wendell was reluctant in accepting that at first, but he began to realize that the powers he now possessed were not godly powers but ungodly ones. Any being who could assume the form of the serpent had more of Satan in him than anything else.

  Moonlight filtered through holes in the sagging roof, slicing through the darkness like pale beams. Wendell reached the pulpit at the head of the church and stood behind it, placing his hands on its edges like he did when he was in the midst of preaching fire and brimstone. He knew now that he would no longer preach on its hazards, but only of its virtues. He looked out across the rows of empty, broken pews and pictured a congregation of those like himself. All pale and bloodless, eyes glowing like red embers. All undead, yet obedient.

  “You were wrong, Grandpappy,” he said, his voice echoing through the empty building. “It shouldn’t be for kin alone. It should be for anyone, whether they be of the same blood or otherwise. That is where you will fail and I will succeed.”

  Wendell Craven stood at the pulpit for the remainder of that night, praying to a master he would never have dreamt of calling his own. Tonight he would meditate and make his plans. But with the following nightfall, he would go to work. He would begin to gather the lambs of his congregation together.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Caleb Vanleer heard Old Nailhead baying a quarter mile away. The redbone had caught scent. The dog was as silent as a mouse until that first whiff of raccoon drifted into his nostrils. Then he let out a howl and set off on the critter’s trail.

  The mountain man took one last sip of tar-black coffee from a tin cup, then poured the contents of the pot, dregs and all, onto the fire, smothering it. He grabbed his Hawken rifle and possibles bag, slung them over his shoulder, and hightailed it along the northern face of Eagle Point.

  Caleb had been sitting before the fire for a half hour, drinking coffee, as well as a little of his homemade moonshine. His eyes were more accustomed to the light of the flames than to the dark forest that surrounded him, so he slowed down, allowing his vision to adjust. It took a moment, but he finally got his night eyes and picked up his pace. It wouldn’t do to step into a sinkhole and break his damn fool leg, just because he was in too much of a hurry.

  He left a tall stand of birch trees and made his way carefully along a rocky ridge. As he crossed the length of the bluff, he peered off the edge. Dark treetops jutted eighty feet below, and beyond them, lay a thick blanket of mist. That was how the Smokies had gotten their name, from the gray fog that clung to the mountaintops from evening ’til mid-morning the following day.

  As he reached the far end of the ridge and leapt back into the forest, heading up the steep grade toward Nailhead’s urgent howling, Caleb remembered how it had been back in Nam. How the chopper would touch down and they would jump from the bay doors, hitting the ground running. They would hump it through the tall grass, hoping to make it to the cover of the jungle before they got taken out by an explosion or rifle bullet. Sometimes Caleb felt the same exhilaration when he was on a hunt in the wilds of Eagle Point. The only exception was the absence of snipers or mortar fire. It was just him, Old Nailhead, and that coon.

  Caleb jumped over deadfalls and clumps of kudzu that could drag a man down if he got hung up in it. He
breathed in deeply, sucking in the scent of honeysuckle and dewy leaves; the smells of the night. Then he caught something else, something he didn’t expect to smell, at least not yet. It was the coppery scent of fresh blood. Something had died, and not very long ago, either.

  He slowed his pace a bit as the odor grew stronger. Surely Nailhead hadn’t already caught the coon and torn into it. The redbone hound wasn’t trained to hunt that way. He would tree the ringtail and wait for Caleb to show up. Then the mountain man would pick it off a limb with single shot of his big-bore Hawken. No, the scent of blood was much too strong for a little bitty coon. It had come from a larger animal.

  Caleb stopped dead in his tracks when the thicket rustled ahead of him and something broke through the dark greenery, heading straight for him. He swung the rifle to his shoulder and sighted down the long, blued barrel. Caleb cocked the hammer and laid his finger on the trigger, ready to fire. But he didn’t. The animal cut through broad patch of moonlight, revealing a coat of rusty red.

  “Hellfire and hangnails!” cussed Caleb, as Old Nailhead ran up to him. “What in tarnation’s the matter with you, boy? You nearly got a round ball put square betwixt them ugly eyes of yours!”

  The dog jumped up on his legs, whimpering and whining. It was plain to see that the dog was scared. Something had spooked him. Caleb couldn’t believe his eyes. Old Nailhead was a seasoned coon hunter. He had been hunting the mountains for years and had encountered everything from wild boars to mountain lions. And never once had he backed down from one of them. Caleb had even had to drag the dog away a couple of times, to keep him from getting ripped to shreds.

  “What is it, ol’ boy?” he asked. He reached down and ran a hand along the dog’s back. The hound shivered like he had been locked in a freezer for the better part of a day. “What’s got you so blamed skittish?” He looked off toward the darkness beyond the thicket. “Wasn’t a bear, was it? One of them black ’uns from the park, huh? Is that what spooked you?”