by John Hart
“Was I supposed to stop them?”
“No witnesses.” The words were simple but horrible. She spit on the ground near her dead cousin’s face. “The hell are you waiting for, boy? Put ’em in the hole.”
“What?”
“You want cops finding those bodies?” She waved the pistol in the direction of the old church, a half mile away. “Be quick, now.”
Leon was unhappy, but moved from long habit. His mother had died in childbirth and his father when he was only seventeen. Verdine had always been there, his only family. Stooping for the old creature they called Aina, he put her body back in the hole.
“That one, too.”
He hesitated over the remains of Luana Freemantle. He’d known her. He’d been in her home. “This is wrong.”
“Deal with it, boy. We have a long night.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you need to work faster.”
Moving carefully, he placed Luana’s body in the hole, too. He was gentle, and sad.
“Fill it in. Let’s go.”
He did that, too, but felt the weight of her impatience.
“Come on, come on. Faster, goddamn it.”
Sweat soaked through his clothes, and turned dirt on his skin to mud. He watched the shovel. He thought about the gun.
“That’s good enough. Now we find the girl.”
“Cree?”
“She won’t have gone far.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Her mother just died. What comes next takes time.”
Leon didn’t understand that either. Nothing made sense. “You’re going to hurt her?”
“Just leave that to me.”
“You’re going to hurt Johnny, too?”
“You let me worry about him.”
Leon looked out at the night, the tall sky. “How do you expect me to find her?”
“Don’t bullshit me, son. You’ve been tracking since you were eight.”
She was right about the tracking. His father had the skill, and he’d passed it on. The deep woods. The stony ground.
“Cree ran that way. You see the signs?” The old woman pointed, and Leon nodded. “Good boy,” she said. “Now, take me to that bitch-whore little thief, so I can get what’s mine.”
* * *
The girl’s tracks were easy enough to follow, even in the dark with nothing more than lantern light. She’d run hard on damp soil thick with forest litter. It took little time to find the tree where she’d curled. Leon put two fingers where her hip had been, the divots made by an elbow, her shoulder. “She lay here for a good long while. Scared, I guess. Hiding.”
“When did she leave?”
Leon rubbed soil between his fingers, and looked at the pinpricks burning in his grandmother’s eyes. He saw the same hunger, only worse. She leaned above the cane, up on the balls of her feet. “A few minutes, maybe.”
“Find her.”
“So you can kill her, too?”
“Don’t presume, son.”
But Leon did. He straightened and lifted the lantern. The tracks ran north toward the hills. He turned west. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you where you need to go.”
The old woman was too night-blind to know the difference until lights appeared in the distance. They stood ghostly bright, and beneath them were flickers of movement, hints of men and machines and firelight. “That’s the church.”
“Yes.”
“Cree would not have come this close.”
“Just keep walking.”
Leon stayed close beside the old woman. When she stopped moving, he took her arm and held it fast.
“Let me go,” she said.
“You killed those women.”
“It was necessary.”
“You plan to kill Johnny and Cree.”
She dug in her heels, and barked a bitter laugh. “Don’t forget the lawyer.”
“I won’t forget anything about this night, not ever.”
Verdine understood, then, just how serious he was. “Take your hands off me, boy.”
But Leon held her tighter. He pulled her toward the church, and they heard shouting beyond the tree line. Cops had seen their light. They were coming.
“Let me go.”
“It’ll be over soon.”
She cocked the revolver, and pressed the barrel against his ribs.
“You won’t shoot me.”
“That’s ignorance talking. You’ve always been a stupid, ignorant boy.”
“Shoot me, then. I dare you.”
He stopped, and stared down. She looked unflinchingly at his face and, in the darkness, pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. She pulled it again, and Leon took the weapon from her hand. “I told you earlier. I shot this gun twice twenty years ago.”
“You should be dead, goddamn it.”
“Thing is,” he said. “I only had the six bullets.”
* * *
Johnny saw fire from the top of the sleeping tree. He smelled smoke, and found the light far out on that third hill. It wasn’t like the other times, nothing small or barely there. This was a bonfire, an invitation, so Johnny came down from the tree and crossed the valleys and peaks as he’d done before. At the foot of the third hill, he worked through the boulder field and up onto the scree. A great fire burned two thirds of the way up, and Johnny slowed at last, knowing how the scree had almost killed him the last time up. This time, though, the footing cooperated, and so did the hill. None of the trails moved or faded; the fire stayed put. Johnny climbed until he found a ledge that opened into a cave whose ceiling slanted downward beyond the fire. Circling the flames, Johnny saw weaker light deep in the cave. Something moved, and a shadow flickered. “John Merrimon?” No one answered, but the yellow light brightened, and Johnny was unsure what to feel. He knew fear. He knew John Merrimon. “I’m coming down.”
There was a bend ahead, and Johnny was almost on the shimmer before he noticed it. It was a blankness where the cave bent, a void he’d seen before. “John Merrimon?”
A sigh moved the air, and the voice that followed was so tired and thin, it was almost gone. “Do you see me, then?”
“I see a flicker.”
“It’s a trick I’ve learned, the deceiving of another’s mind.” The shimmer broke, and Johnny saw a cascade of images: an old man, a boy, then something horrible and broken and bent. They ran together—one after another—and when they disappeared, only the shimmer remained. “People are endlessly predictable. The play of light. An old love. An older fear. I rarely have to exert myself, which is good, I suppose, all things considered.”
“All things?”
“Time and weariness and age.”
Johnny moved closer, trying to see through the void.
“That’s close enough.”
Johnny stepped again without thinking, and an unseen force gripped him. It lifted him off the ground, hung him in the empty air. He couldn’t move, could barely breathe.
“My house,” he heard. “My rules.”
“Your house, yes.”
“Are you certain you understand?”
“Please…”
The grip eased, and Johnny fell, rubbing his throat. “It is John, though, isn’t it?”
“That name means little to me now.”
“But I know you.”
“You know who I was. There’s a difference.”
The shimmer broke again, and Johnny saw the crooked figure. He was old by every measure. His legs were bowed and thin, his arms twisted. The skin of his face was mottled and gray, but not just from age. It was something deeper and corrupt: the shape of his skull, the swollen places under his skin. Johnny saw nothing of the man he knew from so many dreams.
“Is it truly so bad?” The old man faded, and John Merrimon appeared, as Johnny knew him: a little taller than Johnny, a little broader. He tried to smile, but it failed. “Which vision do you prefer?”
“I’ve never been squeamish.”
“The awareness…”
“And the dreams.”
“Why?”
“Would you love this land as you love it now? Would you have accepted any of this without the benefit of foresight?”
He meant the cave, his existence, his misshapenness. But for Johnny, things were tilting. He thought of Aina in the mud, of John’s fierce rage as he’d ripped the stone from her neck and buried her alive. “You’ve been here all this time?”
Both eyes narrowed, and the voice dropped dangerously. “What are you asking me?”
“I don’t … I just…”
“She’s not yours.”
“What? Who?”
The old man turned a shoulder and looked out sideways, something angry in his gaze. Air moved in the cave, and Johnny felt power build like a storm. Small hairs stood on his arms. The smell was electric.
“It’s just a question,” Johnny said. “I’m just trying, okay, just trying to understand.”
Hiding the fear was impossible. Madness stirred in the old, black eyes; his lips drew back, and Johnny thought of William Boyd, who’d been crushed and twisted and broken. He imagined the old man smiling as it happened. He saw the same brown teeth, the dancing eyes.
“Marion is still my wife,” John said.
“Okay…”
“You think a few dreams compare with that?” He moved closer. “You think that means something?”
“Just settle down, okay.”
But the old man did not settle. The wildness grew in his eyes, and if John Merrimon was still in there, Johnny didn’t see him. He saw jealousy and resentment, a hundred years of madness.
“She’s not yours yet,” John said.
“What?”
“If you touch her, I’ll kill you.”
Johnny wasn’t going to touch a damn thing. Nothing seemed real but the stale air and the stone beneath his feet. The old man was ranting about a ghost, a shadow. Now he was leading Johnny into the earth, down to God knows what. Johnny stooped as the ceiling dropped, and the light dimmed. He watched the twisted legs, the bent back, and the roll of his hips.
At the final turn, the old man stopped and put the dark eyes back on Johnny. Strings of greasy hair fell across his face, and the madness still simmered. “I’m not insane,” he said.
“I believe you.”
“No, you don’t.”
Understanding came the moment they rounded into the chamber. A second fire burned, and in its light Johnny saw …
Marion.
She lay on a bed of pelts and skins, and was utterly unchanged: the shape of her, the lines of her face. Johnny buckled under the flood of unexpected emotion. She was the crossroad of past and present, a flicker of dream; but Johnny remembered a childhood together, the glint in her eyes when she’d said they’d marry one day. She’d worn a blue dress and a flower he’d picked beside the river. He remembered her parents and sister, the ring he’d bought on a trip to Boston. The memories were John’s, but it didn’t matter. Johnny knew her hopes and dreams, the secret smiles and promises, a thousand nights of passion.
She was his, and she was not.
It was too much.
“You see now why I brought you?”
“I can’t do this.”
John shuffled closer to the bed, and smoothed her hair. “Do you not love her?” he asked. “Do you not know her as I do?”
Johnny struggled for words. Her chest rose and fell. A flush was in her cheek. “Why am I here?” he finally asked.
“Because I’m dying.”
“But the stone…”
The old man shook his head. “No man was born to hold Massassi’s soul. I owe you that much truth, at least.”
The old man drew the stone from beneath his shirt, and the last tatters of illusion fell away. He wore clothing made of ragged skins, and was more decayed than even Johnny had suspected. His skin was breaking down, and his eyes were cloudy. He was failing. He was dying as Johnny watched.
“Do you not love her?” he asked again. “Would you not pay any price to keep her safe?”
Johnny looked down on Marion, whose hands were pale at her sides. He thought of his childhood, then of the lives of his parents and grandparents, the march of history. All that time they’d been here, the two of them together.
So many years …
So much loneliness …
“Take the stone.”
Johnny shook his head.
“You must.”
He pushed the stone at Johnny, and even at a distance, Johnny felt the power of it. His fingers tingled; his senses sharpened. He smelled the rot beneath the old man’s skin, the warm flush in Marion’s.
“I’ve watched you,” John said. “I’ve given you.” He pushed the stone closer, and the madness was back in his eyes. “You owe me this.”
But Johnny looked deeper into the old man. The bones were eaten through with cancer, and the power in him was terrible and dark. It filled his veins like poison; it was killing him.
“I wasn’t always like this,” John said. “You’ll have decades before you’re like me, a hundred and fifty good years. You’ll have the land and Marion and all that life. Take the stone. Keep her safe.” Johnny took a step back, and the old man crept forward. “You can’t imagine the power, the things you’ll be able to do. You think you know the Hush now. You know nothing. Take it.”
Johnny shook his head.
“Just touch it.”
“No.”
“I won’t let her die over your weakness.”
“Stay away from me.”
“Your cowardice and intransigence.”
“I said, stay the hell away!”
But Johnny was too slow. The old man lunged forward, unbelievably fast. He held Johnny’s wrist in an iron grip. “She’s more important than either of us.” Johnny fought, but the old man was impossibly strong. He squeezed until Johnny’s hand opened; then he pressed the stone against his palm. “Quiet now,” he said; but that was impossible.
The world was exploding.
Johnny was exploding.
He felt the corruption first, and the old man’s madness; but that was a blip, a fraction of a second. Johnny lived decades in the moment that followed. He felt John’s love for Marion, so powerful and rich, Johnny knew then that his own ideas of love were as pale as the dew. So many years of sacrifice and want and care! Johnny lived them in an instant: a world of wars and change and threat; and all the while, John was here with Marion, keeping her safe and alive, keeping the world out. Johnny knew his thoughts, and drowned in the oceans of his loneliness. He felt the turn of years, and saw the changes through John’s eyes: the first airplane in the sky, the first car beyond the Hush. He saw the people John had killed, and those he’d left alive to spread fear of the swamp. He saw the cabin through John’s eyes, too: the way he came at night to peer down on Johnny’s face and think of Marion, alone. There was affection there, but not love; and hope, though it was forlorn. Johnny felt it all: the fear John had of the old women in the village. One alone, he could manage. But two together might take the stone and his life, and Marion’s, too. John hated the old women for that strength, but his guilt was never far behind. What he had was theirs: the stolen years, Marion’s unfading perfection. That was a swirl of color and heat, but Johnny lived the larger fear, too: the knowledge, early on, that the stone would kill him, in time. The burn of it was in his veins, too, but so was the power.
Dear God …
Johnny had never known such a thing, never dreamed it. He loved the Hush, and so he was the Hush. Not a creature here or there, but all of it, every plant and beating heart, every vibration in the soil. He kn
ew the place Jack stood, and the color of his thoughts. If he focused, he could find Leon and Verdine, and know the color of their thoughts, too: the red of the old woman’s fury, the faint, pale gray of Leon’s sorrow. If Johnny knew a thing, he could touch it. Such was the power of the stone, and the power went beyond mere knowledge. He could be a deceiver, as John had been. He could heal and he could kill.
Are there limits?
He turned his attention to John, feeling the tumors in his bones and liver and lungs, the will it took to hold Johnny as he did, to draw another breath. He was beyond dying; he was all but dead.
Enough …
He heard the word in his mind, and knew it was John’s. The old man was trying to draw back, but Johnny felt the scars of 1853, the wounds of loss and the rage, the desperation as he’d taken the stone. He watched him live angrily and bereft, then find his way, at last, to the land. He loved it as Johnny loved it, and for more than a century, he’d tended the great trees and the creatures he loved most. In this they were the same.
Yes, yes …
He thought Johnny might yet be swayed, and used the last of his will to drive the point home. The Hush would be his in every way. He could nurture it as John had done; protect it in ways he’d never imagined—and not just the Hush.
I was bound to this land as Aina was bound. It can be different with you.
Now it was Johnny’s turn to draw back. The temptation …
You can go anywhere, be anything.
Johnny saw that, too: the far mountains, the great forests.
Care of my wife is the only price.
But that was a lie, and Johnny felt it. The stone was bound to Cree. She was the last and the strongest.
You’ll have to kill her.
“No.”
Johnny tried to pull back, but John’s strength was immense, a dying man’s final abandon.
She will feel Massassi. She will come.
“She’s just a girl.”
She wants what’s mine!
Johnny tore himself away from the visions of anger, greed, and resentment. He stumbled back and almost fell. The bond between them broke, and John Merrimon wept. “She will die if you say no.” He cupped his hands and begged with a tearstained face. “Don’t you understand? Don’t you see?”
“I can’t kill an innocent girl.”