Black Mercy Falls

by Christopher Fulbright

  Static crackled on the line. “Ten-four, sheriff. Will send them out immediately.”

  “They’re on their way,” Perry said, turning back to Lance, who appeared dazed, resting against the Jeep in silence, watching the water. “You sure he isn’t out in the woods somewhere?”

  Lance shook his head. “I’m not sure of anything anymore, sheriff. All I know is, I found the cleaver stuck in the rocks, so he had to’ve been here. It’s nearly noon. He could’ve been up, and gone, for hours.”

  “Where were you all morning?”

  “Sleeping off Uncle Ballard’s bourbon.”

  The sheriff nodded firmly. “Bad time to get drunk.”

  “Apparently.”

  “You look in the woods yet?”

  Lance shook his head again. “Called for him a bunch of times. No response.”

  “And you don’t think he’d wander off to explore or something, you know, like boys do?”

  Lance scowled. “Not likely, especially not after yesterday. He wouldn’t have gone out of earshot. He would’ve stayed near the cabin.”

  Both men stared into the water.

  “I’m gonna have a look around the woods until the team gets here,” Lance said, and went in that direction.

  Perry called after him: “I’ll give you a hand.”

  * * *

  The rescue team arrived. The sheriff met them on the driveway, filled them in, and they repeated the events of the previous day. When he heard the vehicles, Lance came bounding from the woods. Alone.

  The divers plunged into the churning falls. No lights necessary this time. Rescue squad members with two trained dogs searched the forest surrounding the cabin. Hours dragged by until, at last, night swallowed the sun once again.

  Lance sat on the hood of a car, staring into the blackness of the night, listening to the banter of the team members. Every time the sheriff got near, the team would instantly cease their chatter, resuming a professional silence. Lance eyed them suspiciously.

  Sheriff Perry tramped toward him.

  “Anything?” Lance asked.

  “No. Nothing. You got any other ideas where he could’ve got off to?”

  “No. Surely he wouldn’t have left the property. We’ve camped a lot. He knows what to do. And what not to do…I thought.”

  “Getting cold out.”

  “I keep thinking that if he went hiking, he’s hurt, trapped beneath a rock or something. It’s going to get colder tonight.” Lance stared into the woods.

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “Better he be hurt and cold than under that water,” Lance said.

  Perry frowned. “We don’t know anything yet. Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

  “Got any better ideas?” Lance said with trenchant irritation.

  “As a matter of fact, I do. Why don’t you go into town and get a room at the Lakeside Cottages on me. Tell ‘em I sent you. Get some rest. There’s nothing you can do here but take up space. I’ll come get you if we turn up anything.”

  Lance stared into the distance, apparently lost in thought. Quietly, he said, “You know I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Sheriff!” a man shouted from the pool.

  Perry and Lance ran to the rocky edge. A diver was coming toward them, skimming the water. He had something in his arms: a dark, limp shape that floated on the water and looked at first like nothing more than a bundle of rags in the diver’s grasp.

  Lance fell to his knees.

  “Oh…dear God.” Sheriff Perry shook his head in dawning horror and disbelief.

  The diver lifted Jeremy’s pale body onto the rocks and scrambled from the water. He looked at the sheriff and passed the grieving father in silence. The call went out to the other searchers. Static radios announced the end to the search.

  Racked with jerking sobs, Lance threw himself over the cold body of his son. The sheriff put a hand on his shoulder.

  Lance embraced Jeremy. “Why? Why?”

  Perry didn’t reply.

  “If you could find him, why can’t you find Colleen?” Lance rocked the body of his boy, water drenching him, tears wetting his face. “I want you to find my wife!” he shouted, anger in his voice.

  “Lance, you should really—”

  “Don’t tell me what I should do! Don’t tell me god damned anything.”

  Two deputies approached with a vinyl body bag, and stood beside the sheriff.

  “No! No! You can’t have him! You can’t have him!” Lance screamed, holding tighter to Jeremy’s limp body.

  The sheriff took him firmly by the shoulders as the team carefully removed the boy from the father’s arms and laid him in the bag. The meshing teeth of that zipper was the worst noise Lance had ever heard.

  Lance’s body quaked with sobs, but he allowed the sheriff to lead him away from the dispersing crowd of emergency personnel toward the cabin. Expressions akin to fear flitted over the faces of the team members as they averted their eyes from the sobbing father. They went about their business quickly and efficiently, packed up and started their engines.

  Lance’s head twisted around, watching as the SUV drove away with his only child inside, zipped into a black bag, headed for the county morgue.

  9

  Lance was sick again. He was outside, near the corner of the cabin closest to the driveway.

  The only cars left in the driveway were the sheriff’s Jeep and the silver Pathfinder that the Evans family had arrived in—never to leave together again. Lance stumbled against the Pathfinder, retching the remnants of last night’s binge and bacon. His body trembled, knees wobbling. His head pounded. His heart was broken. Every muscle in his body felt sore, every bone ached.

  “Jesus,” Lance said. It was a gasp, a curse. A half sob turned into a snot-nosed laugh. “I had to go and get drunk on top of it.” He laughed at himself, a cruel laughter more punishment than mirth. “Good God, it might as well be my fault.”

  Sheriff Perry stood a good distance away while Lance was sick. He was smoking a cigarette and did so thoughtfully, rolling the smoke over his tongue. When he exhaled he gave Lance a sideways look.

  “What the fuck did Uncle Ballard leave me here? What kind of fucking inheritance is this?” Lance laughed bitterly. They were rhetorical questions, but part of him hoped for an answer from the sheriff.

  The older man looked away. Lance imagined that he saw the sheriff smirk in his direction before glancing back at the waterfalls. For all of their dark beauty, they were a tremendous display of nature’s might. Tons of water fell incessantly. White mist filled the air as cascades roared into the pool, a deadly churning undercurrent sending a tumult of black, sandy waves out to its rocky edge. Sheriff Perry stomped out his cigarette and exhaled the final drag.

  “Both of them gone. All of them,” Lance said. “Uncle Ballard, now Colleen and Jeremy. We never should’ve come. Jesus, and I insisted that we come together.” Lance leaned against the Pathfinder and stared at the man. He wanted to ask the sheriff to leave him alone, but he was too numb to care. Too exhausted to insist.

  When a few minutes of silence had passed between them, Perry said, “I’ve lived in this area for forty years, so you hear stories about everyone, everywhere. I think I mentioned that my father owned this land at one time, and his father before him. There’s been some tragedies here…in the past. But, I’m sure your uncle never meant for any of this to happen, if that’s what you mean.”

  Lance gave the sheriff an intense stare, but finally, as if they could remain open no longer, Lance’s eyes closed; the arm he was using to prop himself against the car gave way. Sheriff Perry tried to catch him as he fell, but he was a step too short. Lance collapsed on the ground.

  The sheriff helped him up, swung Lance’s arm over his shoulder, and got him into the cabin.

  After he’d had some time to recover, Lance again felt the need to be alone but wasn’t sure how to ask the sheriff to go home. He was sure the old guy just wanted to be helpful, but La
nce wasn’t wild about a stranger hanging around right now. It had all happened so fast; Colleen and Jeremy’s deaths still seemed so surreal. Part of him hadn’t accepted the finality of it yet. He was so numb he was afraid he might be in shock. Grief hovered around his outer defenses, ready to come crushing down on him the moment he could feel emotion again.

  “You sure you don’t need to be anywhere?” Lance hoped the man would take the hint and just leave, but from the looks of Perry’s effort to get some coffee brewing, that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Just here right now. You need someone to make sure you don’t run off and do something foolish.”

  “I don’t think I have the energy for anything foolish.”

  “You go on and wash up. It’ll do you good. I’ll make some coffee.” Perry foraged in the cupboard for coffee mugs. It was obvious that the old lawman had no intention of leaving any time soon.

  Not wanting to seem rude, and lacking the energy to dispatch his unwanted guest, Lance went to the bathroom for that shower. It was an old metal stall, with a pull-chain to turn on the flow. He let the water run over his head until it ran cold. Then he stepped out, shaved with a straight razor, and put on a terrycloth robe. The smell of fresh coffee hit him just as he finished brushing his teeth. His stomach leaped at the aroma. He needed some food. He wasn’t hungry, but knew he had to eat.

  The sheriff sat with him, reeking of cigarette smoke, drinking coffee, as Lance threw together a bowl of oatmeal with some nuts. The milk was just past its expiration date, but he drank it anyway.

  “Feeling any better?”

  Lance shrugged, nodded. “I’m a wreck; but I’m clean and not hungry anymore.” He gave a half-hearted smile that made his heart ache. “So that’s something.”

  The sheriff nodded; his face expressionless yielding no betrayal of his thoughts.

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier,” Lance said, “I wasn’t—”

  The older man held up a calloused hand. “Don’t apologize.”

  Lance looked at the old man for a moment, and then cleared his plate from the table, taking it to the sink to rinse it. He found the aspirin again and gulped down two of them.

  Sudden fatigue came over him. He felt like he could sleep a million years, but feared the nightmares. He was plodding along from one moment to the next on autopilot. His rational brain told him that this was the natural beginning of the grieving process: these rollercoaster emotions of his that threatened his sanity, and then left him wishing for an endless sleep. If this were how things would be from now on, it was a poor facsimile of real life. So many normal things were missing—the absence of Colleen’s voice in the next room. He realized he’d been expecting it since he stepped from the shower. Something, anything…a simple “feel better, honey?” or “are you hungry, baby?” He kept expecting to see Jeremy come from the living room, headphones on; the tinny sound of his heavy metal music following him.

  So much had happened. So much had gone so terribly wrong.

  Sheriff Perry got up. “There’s a balcony up top. Mind if I smoke?”

  “No. Go ahead.”

  The old man made his way up the crude stairs. Each footstep elicited the creaking sound of wood and nail. Lance changed into some fresh clothes and went upstairs to join him. He didn’t feel like socializing, but he didn’t want to face the empty cabin, to hear all of the voices in his head. He didn’t want to fall apart just yet. Maybe it was better that Perry had made a nuisance of himself and stuck around.

  The balcony was built on the upper floor of the cabin, opening off the master bedroom. It was a big room for a mountain cabin, maybe sixteen by twenty feet with a desk in the corner supporting a dark computer; papers were piled in a mountain of mail around the monitor. A ceiling fan, turned on low, stirred the air. There was a sloppily made king-sized bed, a television, and bookshelves overflowing with paperbacks. The screen door leading out to the covered balcony stood open.

  Outside on the balcony, they were surrounded by crisp mountain air and the sound of the falls. Three wicker chairs with peeling paint were positioned overlooking the waterfalls, which at this point was the last thing Lance wanted to see. Lance adjusted his seat to face the sheriff. All he saw behind Perry was the forest on the opposite side of the road.

  “When I was a kid,” the sheriff said ruminatively. “My little brother and I used to hike and camp in these woods up and down the range, from Mercy Falls up to Crystola. Back then, my dad owned this land, and he didn’t care if folks came around. It wasn’t fenced off…not even a strand of barbed wire.”

  Lance thought he heard an undercurrent of resentment in Perry’s voice, but figured it was his imagination. Right now, the way he felt, there were enemies to the front and back of him. After all that had happened, he felt even God must be against him right now.

  Perry was still talking. “His father—my granddad—had gotten hold of the property pretty cheap back in the Homesteader days. Dad didn’t care who came and went long as nobody was poaching. Before we’d head off camping, he’d warn us about wandering into dens of mountains lions or bears, and told us straight out to stay away from the Falls. Our teachers at school, and even Russell who made sodas in the drugstore downtown, all told us to stay away from Mercy Falls. No one ever said much about why, which of course, spurred us boys in town to figure it out for ourselves.” The sheriff paused, smiling, remembering. “Well, you know how boys are. Tell one not to do something, and that’s exactly what he’ll go and do. In fact, the summer of my freshman year in high school, two boys in their early teens, climbing rocks above Mercy Falls, supposedly drowned in the pool.”

  Lance rubbed his arms as a chill rippled over him. “You think there’s something more to the story?”

  Perry shrugged. “You never know. Who knows what was going on out here with them kids? In any event, it was a big deal for a town this size. Hell, there weren’t any more than six or seven hundred people ‘round here back then. I got curious about their deaths. My dad had to threaten to lock the place up if I didn’t quit venturing out here to snoop around. I guess police investigation was in my blood even then.”

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” Lance said absently, thinking of Jeremy.

  “Hmm. I found that out the hard way.” The sheriff paused again. This time, he wasn’t smiling as he took a drag off his cigarette. The orange glow of its burning ember made skeletal shadows across his face. He continued: “The following summer, my little brother and I came up here to go fishing. I had a job washing dishes at the only sit-down diner in town and had to be home earlier than Ed. I left my brother sitting on a big rock right over there by the pool.” Perry pointed toward the rocky shore where Colleen had fallen. “I was the last person to see Ed alive. A hunter found his body floating face-up the next morning.”

  Perry stopped, clearing his throat, fidgeted for a second with a faraway look in his eye. “Anyway, the townspeople demanded that it be fenced—the whole property—and then, next thing we knew, Dad put the land up for sale. He never forgave himself for letting us come fish that day.” Perry cleared his throat again. “Your Uncle Ballard bought it at auction, gated the end of the driveway, and put up signs to keep folks out. After that no one heard much about accidents in the Falls. There have been a few disappearances that town gossips like to try to tie to the Falls—mostly a bunch of troublemakers and juvenile delinquents who probably ended up on the wrong side of somebody somewhere else, if you ask me. Anyway, somebody dyin’ in the Falls in recent years seems just about impossible with the lock and key Ballard kept the place under.”

  The sheriff took a deep drag of smoke. “In fact, the town council was pretty pissed at your Uncle Ballard. Damn town’s named after the Falls, but nobody’s allowed on the property. Truth be told, though, more folks approved than disapproved. It just wasn’t safe. Plus, there were other stories…stories that went back longer than we’d been around. This just wasn’t a good area. The old timers, the real old timers, said it was just a
s well nobody came to this part of the valley. There’d always been something…well, unnatural here.”

  “Ahh, the ghost story,” Lance said, remembering the newspaper clipping that had been among Uncle Ballard’s things. “The religious freak.”

  “You’ve heard the tale?”

  “There was a clipping in with Uncle Ballard’s things. A story from an old local newspaper.”

  The sheriff nodded. “Then you know about old Nehemiah Jacob throwin’ his babies over the Falls.”

  “It said he was a polygamist, had a bunch of children that were deformed and he tossed them over, thinking the Falls had some magical powers. That the water would cleanse the devil out of them or something. Take away the evil and send the pureness back to God.”

  “That’s right, he believed that the Falls would cleanse the children’s souls, that they’d been born deformed because demons were in them. And you’re right, he thought the water’d wash the evil away and return their innocent souls to the Lord. In fact, it was Nehemiah who named this place Mercy Falls. For God’s mercy, of course.”

  Lance shook his head in disbelief. God’s mercy, my ass. Where was God’s mercy when Colleen was standing at the edge of that pool? Where was he when Jeremy went wandering out last night to…do what?

  Lance swallowed hard and let his eyes graze the scene below them.

  Why had he gone out there?

  In his mind’s eye, he saw Jeremy in the arms of the rescuer, bobbing on the churning waves. He’d never forget that image as long as he lived.

  The night was cold. The falls roared. A low-lying mist gathered near the loamy ground and reflected the haze of moonlight from above. For several moments, he’d been caught up with the sheriff’s tale, and now, looking around, the surroundings took on greater depth. Now it was the scene of something more. Something evil to be sure, but whether supernatural evil or the simple evil that men do, it was hard to say.