Black Friday: An Elders Keep Collection Special Edition

by Jeffery X Martin

  ***

  VODKA, GRAHAM THOUGHT. It is delicious.

  The Highlander Lodge was the only hotel in Elders Keep. Graham Strahan sat in the corner of Nine Back, the bar in the lobby of the Highlander. He sat at the end in the shadows, watching the barbacks run back and forth, filling and refilling glasses.

  Graham nodded his head. "Make it two," he said.

  Shelly nodded her head, spun the remote control towards the television and thumbed the volume up. The pretty people on television were in serious mode, discussing the local elections, which were happening that evening. She poured two drinks for Graham (two highball glasses with ice and a double shot of vodka, topped off with sparkling red cream soda) and set them down in front of him.

  "These guys drove all the way up from Knoxville to see you?" Shelly asked.

  "I reckon they interviewed Will, too," Graham said. "He’s the incumbent, after all."

  "Commercial’s over," Shelly said. "You’re up."

  The anchorwoman had a slight overbite, indicating she used to report the weather. She had chosen a light grey ensemble, with a red power scarf designed to make the viewer forget she was a blonde woman who read out loud for a living.

  "For the last thirty years," the newsreader said, "Will Brackins has been the Sheriff of Pullman County. He has always run for office unopposed until this year."

  A picture of Graham appeared on the screen. "Former Knoxville officer Graham Strahan is running against Sheriff Brackins in what some are calling the strangest race in Tennessee. Our own Steven Chavez reports."

  A deep heritageless voice rolled out of the television speakers as the reporter began to talk. "The county has the lowest reported crime rate in the state. The incumbent has known the challenger since he was a child. Neither of them have anything new to add to the platform, nor do the two men vying for the same job refuse to say anything bad about each other. Welcome to Pullman County, where the Sheriff’s race seems more like a friendly bar bet."

  ***

  TO BE HONEST, it hadn’t been much of a race. Will Brackins had already told a few people at the local restaurant, The Meal Worm, that he was looking forward to heading out of the Keep for a bit, maybe head a little further down south. His wife, Sarah, had never seen the ocean. He figured it was time he rectified that and maybe get a little deep-sea fishing in, too. "Not that fishin’s bad here in the Keep," he said, "but y’all won’t be pullin’ any marlins out of the crick behind Banyon’s Farm." His buddies chuckled in assent and went back to picking at their Early Bird Gets the Worm Specials and surreptitiously staring at Delores, their well-stacked waitress.

  Graham Strahan didn’t do a whole lot of stumping for himself. His brother, Travis, who also ran the local video store, created a website filled with pictures of Graham, smiling and wearing a police uniform. A few signs here, a few flyers there. He did a short radio spot which he wrote himself. "Hey, y’all, this is Graham Strahan, and I would appreciate your vote for Sheriff of Pullman County. Come on out and vote this November."

  "Don’t you want to say anything about why you’re running for Sheriff?" the radio station manager asked.

  Graham shrugged. "I reckon people know why I’m running."

  "Humor me," said the radio guy. "Take two."

  Graham positioned himself in front of the microphone again. "Hey, y’all. This is Graham Strahan. I’m running for Sheriff of Pullman County because I would like to be the Sheriff of Pullman County. If you would like me to be Sheriff of Pullman County too, then you should roll on out and vote for me. Make us both happy."

  The radio guy hit the "stop" button on the recorder. "Cut," he said. "You’re a smartass, Mr. Strahan."

  Graham smiled. "I certainly hope I can count on your vote on Election Day, sir."

  "I’m a Libertarian, son," the man responded. "Sheriffs are for the weak."

  ***

  GRAHAM KNOCKED BACK one of his drinks. He hated seeing himself on TV. Hell, he didn’t even like the sound of his own voice.

  Bartender Shelly hunkered down in front of him. "Well," she said. "Ain’t you a TV star now?"

  "Hardly," he replied, feeling a little embarrassed and a little more drunk.

  "It must feel kind of weird having to run against someone you’ve known for so long," Shelly said.

  "I’ve never not known Will Brackins," Graham said. "He knew my dad. He let me off with a warning when he caught me with beer when I was fifteen. Hell, even when I moved to Knoxville, he would always send me an email if I did something that made the news. A big bust or something."

  Shelly subconsciously adjusted her bra straps. "What are you doing after the vote comes in?"

  "Hell, I don’t know," he said. "Either way, I’m going to have a lot to process. Reckon I’ll head down to the Meal Worm. Get some chili fries."

  Shelly raised one eyebrow. "That’s not much of a celebration, Graham," she said. "Surely you can do better than that."

  "Well, there’s no guarantee a celebration will be in order, Miss Shelly," he said.

  She leaned further over the counter. "Then you’re going to need someone to sympathize and commiserate."

  Graham grinned. "A shoulder to cry on?"

  Shelly shrugged. "A shoulder. Maybe some other body part. I don’t know. We’ll figure it out."

  A hand grasped his shoulder from behind and Strahan reacted nervously and quickly, spinning about with his hand raised, back side out, ready to bitch slap somebody.

  "Easy, son," Will Brackins said. "It’s just me."

  Strahan lowered his hand. "Will," he said, embarrassed. "I’m sorry! I… I didn’t expect anyone to… how did you know where I was?"

  Brackins smiled wanly. "This is where I always came on Election Night. I wanted to know the results, I didn’t want to know, and I sure as hell didn’t want anyone hanging around me in the meantime."

  "Nobody ever ran against you though, Will," Strahan said.

  "Didn’t make the butterflies in my stomach go away," Will said. "For all I knew, all the voters were writing in someone else’s name."

  Strahan nodded. "Yeah. That’s exactly it. Hey, let me buy you a drink."

  "It’s all right, son," Brackins said. "We do need to talk, though, just for a few minutes."

  "Are we allowed to see each other before we find out who won, Will?"

  "We’re applying for a job, Graham," Will said. "We ain’t getting married."

  "Thank God for that," Strahan said, finishing off his drink. "Well, I guess we could go into one of the smaller conference rooms or something. Would that be okay?"

  "Sure," Brackins said. "That would be perfect."

  "I’ll be back in a few minutes, Shelly," Graham told the bartender, who nodded in acknowledgement.

  ***

  "HIT THE LIGHTS, Graham," Will said, and his voice echoed slightly in the empty room.

  "Well, as soon as I can find them, I will," Graham replied. He felt along the wall with his fingers. That light switch had to be around the door somewhere.

  "Ah!" he said. "Here it is." Graham pushed the little sideways switch. The lights were on a dimmer, so the room didn’t brighten up so much as it did glow slightly. Graham slid the lever, bringing the lights up.

  "That’s better," Graham said, and he turned around to see Will Brackins’ gun leveled at his face. He instinctively put his hands up.

  "I think you had better have a seat, Graham," Will said.

  Graham walked slowly to one of the banquet tables. "Is it okay if I grab one?" he asked Will, nodding towards the stacks of chairs teetering against the wall.

  Will nodded. "Make it two," he said. "My dogs are barking."

  Graham grabbed the first chair on the stack and put it down behind the table. "You know, Will," he said, as he reached for the second chair, "if you really wanted to keep the job that much, you could have told me. No need for all this."

  Will shook his head. "Ain’t like that," he said sadly. "Ain’t like that at all."

  Graham t
ook a step towards his captor. "Well, why don’t you tell me what it is like? You know you don’t need to hold a damned gun on me, Will Brackins. What the hell is going on?"

  Will kept the gun trained on Graham’s forehead. "You never know," he said. "I’ve got a couple things to tell you. I’ve got a couple things to do. You never know how other people are going to react to the things you say and do."

  "I’m pretty even-keeled, Sheriff."

  Will smiled, weakly, as if he were quietly laughing at a memory. "Go ahead and sit down, Graham. We need to get this over with before the results come in."

  Graham sat down. The metal framed chair wobbled slightly, and he wished vaguely for a matchbook to bring balance to the situation.

  Will sat down on the opposite side of the table. He laid the gun down and rubbed his eyes. "I’m tired, Graham," he croaked. "I’m so very tired. I’m ready to just go to the house and be done with it."

  Graham reached up and put his hand on the butt of Will’s gun. "Before we go on," he said, "do I need to grab this gun up, point it at you and have some kind of dramatic turn of events? Do I yell, ‘A-ha?’?"

  Will looked at Graham, and the bags under his eyes were dark and heavy with thirty years of things he couldn’t forget. Will tried to smile, but couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. "I reckon you could, son, but if you’re a good cop, and I think you’re a good cop, you’ve already figured out I’m not going to shoot you. Are you planning on shooting me, Graham? Is that what a good cop would do?"

  Graham patted the gun for a second, as if it were a lap dog. "I think we’ll leave that right there, just in case one of us needs it."

  Will reached into his jacket. Graham tightened his grip on the gun momentarily, until he saw that Will was bringing out a leather-bound book. It was long, like a ledger book, and had a leather strip at the open end for tying it shut. Graham could smell how old it was immediately, a dark mixture of oil and sweat, blood and incense.

  "What’cha got there, Will?" Graham asked.

  Will cleared his throat. "I’ve been the Sheriff in the Keep for a long time, Graham. But I’ve never been the Law. The Keep has its own laws. Federal laws, state laws, those all apply, of course. Common sense stuff. Don’t speed. Don’t cook meth in a poorly ventilated trailer. But there’s more to it than all that. Here, in this place, there is more."

  "I don’t understand," Graham said.

  Will scooted his chair up closer to the table. He set the old book down next to him and put a protective hand over it.

  "Tell me, Graham," Will said. "Do you not hear the howling and the crackling of the fires every night there’s a full moon? Don’t you ever wonder why we don’t have any of the big chain stores in the Keep, or why you have to drive all the way to Bell Plains to get a fast food cheeseburger?"

  "I guess I never thought about that," Graham said. "Maybe Bell Plains is offering some bigger tax breaks than we are."

  "Fuck the taxes," Will said. "Don’t you get what I’m saying? This town is weird. The ground it sits on has been a place of mystery since before God abandoned it. Everything is slightly off-balance in the Keep. If there’s a hell, Elders Keep is one of the gates to it. Every myth, every superstition, and every tale of boogeymen or shadow people you’ve ever heard, all those creatures, in one form or another, live here. This is the birthplace of nightmares and dying fires."

  Graham laughed. "Are you writing a brochure? Because that was beautiful."

  Will kept going. "You know why this place is named Elders Keep? It’s because your elders keep showing up! They don’t pass on. They don’t fucking leave like they’re supposed to!"

  "Oh, come on, Will! You are frustrating me with your folk tales! Folk tales and bullshit."

  Will stuck his finger in Graham’s face, almost touching the end of his nose. "I hear you saying it," Will said, "but I know you don’t believe it. Your eyes tell me you know exactly what I’m talking about."

  Graham pushed Will’s hand away. "Look. Let me just buy you another one of whatever you were drinking before you got here and we’ll call it a night, huh?"

  "I’m not drunk, goddammit!" Will exclaimed, exasperation creeping into his voice. "You ever go into Parham’s Field at night?"

  Graham shook his head and laughed. "Oh, hell no. Never."

  "Why not?" Will asked.

  Graham shrugged. "Everybody knows you don’t go into Parham’s Field at night."

  "But why, Graham? Give me an answer."

  Graham searched his brain. Had he ever heard a story about the Field? Had his brother ever tried to frighten him late at night with tales of something dreadful in Parham’s Field? Not that he could recall.

  "I don’t rightly know why, Will," Graham admitted. "You just don’t. You don’t do it; everybody knows it and I guess nobody knows why."

  "I know why," Will said, softly. "And someday, you will too."

  ***

  IN A HEATED warehouse on the edge of the Keep, the Election Commission, consisting of three men and two women, were counting votes while the local radio station played some horrible pop song. It was an open format station. You never knew what you were going to get. Country followed psychedelic rock from the 1960’s, and then you might hear some free-form jazz. From Zappa to Zebra, Asia to ABBA and, once in a while, From Autumn to Ashes, WREK was aurally disassociated from itself.

  The polls had closed at seven. Now, at nearly eight o’clock, the counting was getting good. Everyone had calculators and there was an honest to goodness blackboard to calculate final tallies on. The radio extruded "Jackie Blue," by Ozark Mountain Daredevils, while the numbers were crunched.

  Pauline Kinderman was in charge of the Election Commission. She was a gregarious woman, genuinely warm and funny, the kind of woman you wouldn’t consider dating on a long-term basis, but you knew she would be an excellent wife.

  She walked behind the other commission members, all seated in their metal folding chairs, checking and rechecking paper ballots. Pauline would touch their shoulders as she moved behind them. "How are you doing? Everything okay? Any problems? Do you need anything?" Pauline was quite concerned about the physical comfort of her vote counters.

  "Sshhhh," they said. "We’re counting."

  There was nothing Pauline could do but occupy herself with busy work. She dumped out the old pot of coffee and set about making a fresh one. The radio played "Super Baby" by Matthew Sweet and the silent sound of math filled the spaces in between.

  ***

  THE OLD MAN breathed out, breathed in. He opened the old book. "This is about to be yours, son. Every man who has taken it upon himself to enforce the law in Elders Keep has written in this book, kept records of the stranger cases. Things they learned during the course of duty. Secrets. They’ve all left notes for the ones who would come after. I’ve left notes in here for you, just as Sheriff Layne left notes for me. Decades of activity are chronicled in this book."

  Graham reached for it. "Can I see it?"

  But Will pulled it away. "No," he snapped. "I’m not done. Listen to this old man talk."

  Graham raised his hands. "Yes, sir," he said. "Jabber away."

  "I hear myself going on and on," Will said, laughing sadly at himself. "I sound like I’m ranting. It’s fine that you think I’m crazy, son. I sound like the lunatic in an old sci-fi film. Kevin Conway on the highway, screaming, ‘They’re already here!’ I know. I know that’s me."

  Before Graham could respond with something assuaging, Will patted the worn parchment-like pages of the book. "There’s history in here," Will continued. "It’s also a spell book. There’s energy here in the Keep. Sometimes it is used for good. Sometimes it isn’t. You need to know how to work both sides and recognize which is which."

  "Are you talking about magic, Will?" Graham rolled his eyes.

  Will ignored Graham’s question. "You must never show anyone this book. You must guard it with your life. This is more important than upholding the peace. Do you understand?"

&n
bsp; "I understand what you’re saying, sure."

  "This Book of Shadows underlines and supersedes every law on the books. In fact, you can’t enforce the law in this town without consulting this book. Because this place is like no other place. And you won’t be just the Sheriff."

  "What will I be then, Will?" Graham whispered.

  "You’ll be the Protector of the Keep. You’ll be the Magus. The Caretaker. You’ll be the Shaman, the Witch Doctor, the Shapeshifter. You’ll be a Sorceror, Graham. The Doorkeeper and the Door, the Portal and the Guardian. Do you understand?"

  Graham snorted. "No, I don’t. You’re talking lunacy. None of this makes a bit of sense."

  "Remember, that crazy guy in those old sci-fi movies was always right," Will sighed. "How can I make you see?" He looked up and around, as if help would appear from the ceiling or the retractable walls of the banquet room. He raised his eyebrows, then grabbed the book and spun it around so it was facing Graham.

  "Look at the first page of the Book of Shadows," Will said. Graham complied. He bent forward to get a better glimpse at it, and scooted it forward just a bit with his left hand. That’s when Will grabbed him around the wrist, with more strength than one would expect from an older gentleman.

  "What the hell, Will?" Graham asked. "Is this really necessary?"

  "You need to work with me here, Graham," Will said.

  "Look, I’ve been patient as hell, Will, and I do not want to hurt you, but this is bullshit. And it needs to stop."

  "Graham, shut your damned mouth. You wanted the job. You signed on for this." Will flipped Graham’s hand over, palm side up. "Quit being so twitchy."

  Graham continued to struggle. "I want my hand back, Will!"

  With his free hand, Will reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a medium-sized pocket knife.

  That old man is really gonna cut me, Graham thought, and he grabbed the gun from the tabletop with his free hand.