The Revenant: A Horror in Dodsville

by Brian L. Blank

  Getting Randy down from the mow was no easy task. I was of no use with my broken left arm, so the chore rested solely upon Sly's shoulders. Yet, Sly did manage; though barely. He held onto Randy around his waist with one hand while grabbing onto a board with the other. Randy hopped from one board down to the next on his good leg, howling out each time he landed. I stood silently below, shining the flashlight up at them so they could see where they were standing.

  After they finally reached the ground floor of the barn, Sly and I each grabbed onto one of Randy's arms and walked him outside. He hopped on his good leg between us.

  Not one of us said anything as we reached the driveway and walked next to the house on our way to the car. The night was still hot and humid. A heavy layer of hay dust stuck to the sweat on every stretch of bare skin. Frogs croaked in a nearby swamp as if nothing was wrong in the world. Randy began to lose consciousness as his head rolled on his neck.

  He stopped hopping suddenly with his attention focused up at the house, and his eyes grew wide with terror. "No," he said, barely audible. His body tensed for a second, then went almost completely limp.

  I looked up to see what had frightened him. On the second floor of Wickerman’s, a window was open and a man leaned out of it into the moonlit night. There was no doubt in my mind who it was. I not only recognized his picture from the newspapers, I remembered him from my youth. Reed Price, my old childhood friend--the man who had supposedly drowned a month ago and was now buried in the cemetery on the other side of town--shook his head at me, as if I had done something to disappoint him. I only saw him for a second. He pulled back inside and slammed the broken window shut. Some of the glass fell out and dropped innocently at our feet.

  Sly was the first to react as he let go of Randy and sprinted to the broken window nearest to us. While I stood limply in shock from what I had witnessed, Sly knocked out the loose glass around the bottom of the sash, lifted himself up, and slipped into the house. When it finally hit me what he was up to, I pursed my lips to tell him to come back, but I was too late. He pulled the gun out of his pants and disappeared into the darkness of the interior.

  Randy started uttering unintelligibly next to me and tried to hop away from the house. Letting him fall into a patch of weeds, I backed away a few feet to get a better perspective of the upstairs. Randy grabbed his knees and moaned softly to himself. Nothing in the house moved, and I began to worry.

  "Sly!" I yelled. "Are you all right?" I saw a light moving around in the room where Reed had been, and Sly showed up at that same window. He held the gun in one hand and the flashlight in his other.

  He knocked away some more of the broken glass with the butt of the pistol. Then he stuck out his head. "Guard the exits downstairs," he said. "We have to get our hands on that motherfucker." He pulled back inside. The light disappeared from the room and reappeared a second later in the room next to it. Sly was doing a thorough search of the upstairs.

  I pulled back a little more, so I had a view of three sides of the house. But I saw no one exit through any of the windows or doors. Until Sly did. About ten minutes after he first entered the house, he crawled back out through the same window. He turned off his flashlight and stuck it into his back pocket. He kept the gun in his right hand.

  "See anyone?" he said, breathing hard.

  I shook my head, though more to shake out the cobwebs than to answer his question.

  "Damn!" He shoved the gun back into the front of his pants. "I thought for sure we had him. He must have gotten out a window on the other side of the house." Then, after a brief pause: "Whoever it was."

  "That was Reed," I said, matter-of-factly. "And you know it was."

  Randy nodded vigorously in agreement from the ground in front of us.

  "It was too dark." Sly spoke without looking at me. "No telling who it was."

  I shook my head in disbelief. "No, Sly," I said. "The moonlight out here was plenty bright enough for us to get a good look at his face. It was Reed. And don't you go on denying it, either."

  "Reed is dead," he replied, with strange vacancy. "Explain that."

  I had asked that same question of Old Charlie at Rosey’s Bar just last week. Randy grabbed onto my pants legs and pulled himself up. In the moonlight I could see that his knee was bleeding profusely again. He leaned into my face, staring at me with the vacuous expression of a severely retarded man.

  "We'd better get him to a hospital before he dies on us," I said.

  Sly agreed and we walked him back to the car and drove back into Dodsville.

  Detective Pierce had more than his share of questions for Sly and me when he arrived at the hospital. Sly handed him his pistol right away, told him it was registered, and that I had used it in self-defense. That last was a lie, of course. I had shot Randy while he begged me not to.

  I fully expected Pierce to come down hard on me, but he didn't. After the treatment I received from him in the past, I was a bit shocked at first. When I realized finally that he now had a suspect under custody and the heat was finally off him, I almost laughed. Once again he had the wrong person. Of course, Randy did harm my grandmother, but I was beginning to believe him about the rest. Maybe Reed's drowning was an accident like he claimed. And maybe even he didn't have anything to do with Tabitha's death. Still Pierce was no closer to catching the one behind the town's nightmare than when he first began.

  Pierce dug his notebook out his jacket pocket, flipped it open, and licked the end of his pen. "Self-defense, huh?" He scribbled a few notes down. "What kind of weapon did he have that made you think your life in was in danger?"

  "A knife," I replied, thinking quickly. "It's still up in the hay mow.” I saw the one Sly brought slip between the cracks of a couple of bales after I shot Randy. “And, as you saw, I only shot to wound him. Not to kill."

  Pierce nodded, and then that shit-eating grin formed on his face. As if he knew I was lying. Yet, he handed out no accusations. "Did he say anything?" He looked up briefly from his notebook. "Anything that might explain what's going on in this town?"

  I shook my head. "Even claims he didn't plant the bomb in my car."

  "You believe that?"

  I was about to say no, but didn't. I shrugged instead. "Don't know," I replied. "Could have been the same person who's pillaging the rest of Dodsville."

  Pierce's eyebrows shot up. "Then you don't think Beliwitz is the one?"

  "I doubt it. But, then, what do I know?"

  He snapped his notebook shut, told us both to stay in town for a while longer, and went off to talk with Randy. I knew Randy would deny the self-defense ploy I had claimed, but I also knew Pierce would believe my story. At least on paper, he would. He had a full-blown suspect now. A real live body. And he sure as hell wasn't about to kiss it goodbye on a technicality.

  Sly and I ran into Marie, my night nurse from when I was held up here, on our way out of the hospital.

  "You'd better hope you come in soon and talk with Aleina," she said after asking how I've been and chewing me out for leaving without warning anyone of my plans. "She was pretty hurt, and I don't know if she's over it yet."

  I promised her I would stop in soon, when I had my arm checked out. She kissed me on the cheek, and Sly and I headed for home.

  Julie stood in the doorway as we got out of the car, not saying a word to us, but allowing her eyes to do her scolding for a bit. She was pissed. But she was also glad to see us. We both smiled as we walked past her and sat down in the living room. She followed, stood in front of us after we were comfortably seated, and folded her arms across her stomach. "Well?" she asked. "I'm waiting."

  Much to my relief, Sly answered for us. "Don't start in on us, Julie," he said. "We're really not up to it at this moment."

  "Did I just hear you say that you weren't up to it right now? I wake up in the middle of the goddamn night and find that the two of you left for a little adventure--without bothering to even leave me a note, I might add--and you have the balls to sit the
re and say you're not up to it."

  "We caught Randy," I said, but my head was still filled with cobwebs, and it sounded like someone else in the room was doing the talking. I couldn't shake the image of Reed leaning out of the second story window at Wickerman's. If Reed was still alive, then maybe Melissa . . .

  "You what?" Julie's expression turned from one of anger to one of shock.

  Sly told her the story, from the point when I had first spotted Randy in the forest after the funeral up to us carrying him down the hay mow. He stopped at that point and looked over at me in indecision.

  Julie turned to me also. "There's more," she said, not asking but expecting.

  "We saw someone," I said, after realizing Sly wasn't going to tell her. I felt she had the right to know what was going on--even if I really didn't.

  She sat on the couch next to me and grabbed my good hand. "Who?" Her eyes held a look of expectation--of good news forthcoming even.

  "It was dark," Sly said from across the room. "But it did look a lot like Reed."

  Julie stood and walked to the front picture window. "And was it?" she asked, looking at my image in the glass.

  I was sure it was Reed, even in my dull state of my mind. Yet, with the passing of time since it all happened, my mind was beginning to tell me that logically it couldn't have been. "It was dark," I replied.

  Julie turned around to face me. "Was it Reed?" she asked again.

  I nodded.

  Sly only checked out his shoelaces.

  Julie didn't say anything more for a few minutes. She remained standing by the picture window, staring blankly out at the night. Then she sighed, long and hard, and sat back on the couch next to me. "Tabitha said she saw him at the mansion that night." She paused. "So what are we going to do now?"

  Sly and I looked at each other, but neither of us had a response. I shrugged.

  "And what about Melissa?" Julie asked. "You going to give up on her just like that?"

  Reed's got her, I wanted to say. But I remained quiet. Reed was dead; he had to be. Whoever was terrorizing this town was the one who had her. Still, who was that in the second story window at Wickerman's tonight?

  "There's too many questions," Sly replied after a while. "And I, for one, say it's high time we find out a few of the answers. Melissa is out there somewhere, only waiting for us to come and bring her back."

  "Like how do we even begin going about that?" I asked.

  Sly looked at me blankly for a minute without replying, as if deep in thought over my question, and turned to Julie. "What kind of grave did your dad buy for Reed?" he asked.

  Julie shrugged. "Why?"

  "Because we are going to dig up his grave and find out once and for all if he's really in it or not." He kicked off his shoes and threw them into a corner. "Or," he continued, "if someone else is buried there. This may not answer all the questions we have nagging at us right this minute, but the one of Reed's whereabouts is foremost in my mind. We need to know if he's really dead, or if he's somehow still alive."

  "Let's do it," I blurted out. Julie had pursed her lips to complain, and I wanted to head her off.

  "But what's the point?" she said, cutting me off before I could say anymore. "We all saw Reed in his coffin, and we all saw him buried." I could see an expression of real pain behind her eyes as she spoke. Yet, with everything that had happened to her lately, she was holding up fairly well.

  "What if the person buried in that coffin is just someone made up to look like Reed?" I asked. "And Reed is out there enjoying the fact that everyone thinks he dead. I know that doesn't sound like anything Reed would do, and I have no idea what his motive would be, but we'll find out soon enough. As soon as we dig up his grave and open his coffin." I held Julie's hand. "It's the only way."

  "But it'll upset Father," she said. I could see tears welling up in her eyes.

  "He'll never have to know," Sly replied.

  "But what about . . ." She didn't finish her sentence as she put her hands over her face and began to cry.

  Sly walked over to her and put his arm around her. "I know this is hard for you to accept," he said. "But like Stephen said, it's is our only way of knowing for sure. You don't have to help if you're not up to it. But Stephen and I are--"

  "No!" Julie cut him off. "If we're going to do this I want to be there. He's my brother."

  "And with my broken arm still hampering our efforts," I added, "we're going to need you." I flexed the wrist of my damaged arm. I no longer felt any pain, or even any itching. Doctor Werner had said I would need to wear a cast for six to eight weeks. That meant one more minimum. "Sly's going to need someone to help him shovel, or it'll take him the entire evening."

  "Plus,” Sly said, “I'll need you to help me lift the plate over his coffin. That is, if your father bought the non-sealing kind."

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "There are two kinds of tops you can buy in this town," Sly replied. "The cheaper one only rests loosely over the hole, but the expensive kind would mean we'd need a jackhammer to break through it."

  "Is there any way we can find out before we dig?"

  "No," Julie said. "I'm not going to ask Dad. He'll know for sure that we're up to something, and he would never go along with this."

  "Then we find out tomorrow night," Sly said.

  "So soon?" Julie began to look doubtful again.

  "No use in wasting any more time, is there?"

  "I guess not."

  "Then it's set," I said, standing. "Tomorrow night?"

  Sly stood, also. It was almost three o'clock, and all of us were beginning to become too tired to think. "Tomorrow night," he said, after a yawn. "But right now I say we all go to bed." He turned to me. "And we stay there until morning."

  "Don't worry," I said. "I'm not going anywhere."

  As I lay in bed fifteen minutes later, I couldn't get to sleep. The night was still hot, and I lay on top of my covers, staring out the open window next to the bed. A slight breeze entered every once in a while, blowing the drapes in for a second before releasing them. I imagined I could hear Melissa calling out my name at times.

  I rolled over and thought about what all had transpired during the last few hours. I had been so hopeful that I would find Melissa. Now I realized I was no closer than before. Randy didn't have her; that I almost was certain about. Whoever that person was in Wickerman's window had her, I thought now. Maybe, even, he was responsible for everything. But what if that actually was Reed we saw, and he was really alive? And what if Melissa found out he was alive, too? Maybe she had even gone to him on her own accord. And why not?

  After all, she was in love with him. Not me.

  * * *

  I awoke the following morning a little before nine o'clock, and found Sly and Julie already up and gone. Julie left a note on the kitchen table saying they should be back around eleven, but no word on what they were up to without me. I felt that Sly was coming apart at the seams a little, and it was beginning to worry me. I noticed again how he no longer shined with that confident ambience he possessed when I first met him.

  But there was not anything I could do about that now, so I scrambled some eggs and had breakfast. There was nothing in the morning paper about our capture of Randy last night. Though, the news services probably hadn't received the information until too late for the morning edition. There wasn't even any news about Dodsville at all. This was the first time I could remember that something hadn't been written about a Dodsville plight. The evil in this town was just beginning; I felt that for a fact. I also doubted the capture of Randy Beliwitz would even put a dent in it.

  After finishing breakfast and washing my dishes, I wrote my own note for Julie and Sly and headed for the hospital. I really wanted to speak with Beliwitz. He would be able to answer a few of the questions we had. Sly would have wanted to come with me, but Julie most likely would have stopped us both. Sly's car was in the driveway, and I found his keys on top of the refrigerator. Sly wouldn't m
ind, I rationalized as I opened the driver's door and started it. After all, I did leave a note this time.

  A police officer sat on a wooden chair in front of Randy's room and was adamant about not letting me pass. He told me that no unauthorized persons were allowed--no exceptions. He didn't seem impressed when I told him I was the one who put Beliwitz in there, either.

  I met Detective Pierce as I walked back down the hallway. He didn't seem in good spirits. Holding his right hand out in front of him, he stopped me as I tried to squeeze by.

  "Well," he said, after sighing. "You're in the clear. We found your alleged knife in the hay between a couple of bales, just like you said."

  "You're kidding?" I said, before I could stop myself. I knew they wouldn’t find Randy’s prints on the knife, only Sly’s, and mine--but maybe they wouldn’t check.

  Pierce only shook his head in disgust. "Yep, it was right there in that pit where you obviously shot him. There was blood all over the place." He scratched his forehead. "But tell me the truth, O'Neal. Just between you and me, did Beliwitz really threaten your life?"

  "Of course," I lied. "Why else do think I shot off his knee cap?”

  "Oh, I don't know. Maybe because you suspected him of knowing where a particular loved one was stashed, and he wouldn't tell you."

  "Do you have anything on Beliwitz?" I asked, glad to change the subject. "I mean, other than the charges about my grandmother."

  "Nothing that would hold up in court," he replied. He put his hand on my shoulder. "But we're working on it." He smiled that shit-eating grin of his, and left.

  I watched him until he turned the corner to Randy's room.

  "Well, here you are."

  Aleina had snuck up behind me. Now she stood with her arms folded in front of her, giving me a mock expression of anger.

  "I was just on my way to see you," I said, lying again. "When do you think I can shake this cast of mine and go back to leading a normal life?"

  She hugged me for a second first, before answering. "Doc Werner told you six weeks at least, didn't he? What's that leave you? One?"

  "I hope so," I replied.