And once again, radio silence was the rule of thumb regarding all violent crimes. Fred’s voice sounded like an echo in the back of his head, a snarky comment about the cell phones that was both amusing and bittersweet. Carl closed his eyes for a second and saw Nichole’s face, eyes half-closed, mouth open in a laughing smile. Instead of letting the memories crush him, he threw them into the slow burning pit of rage that he was cultivating.
He wanted that rage right now. He was going into the Hollow again, and he was going looking for Frank. He’d find him too, or he’d find a few others to discuss matters with.
It didn’t take all that long to reach Chez Blackbourne. By the time he’d pulled his truck to a complete stop, Merle was outside and staring at him with a carefully neutral expression. That was good. The wrong look of smug would have probably resulted in Merle getting a large portion of his ass kicked.
Carl stepped from the truck and rested his hand on the holster of his Glock. He made sure that Merle saw the motion, and he looked around the surroundings. Sure enough, there were several members of the clan around him, most of them making sure they gave him a very wide berth. That was, again, for the best.
“Heard about your people, Carl. You have my condolences.”
“Damndest thing, Merle. The man I had incarcerated said his name was Frank Blackbourne.” He paused to show the appropriate height. “Stood about yay tall, weighed in at a little less than my truck.”
“Had a brother named Frank, but he died a long time back.”
Carl nodded. “Saw a picture of you and him from back when you were in high school.” Merle didn’t quite jump out of his skin, but his face got a bit twitchy. “I also took the liberty of visiting his gravesite.” He looked Merle hard in the face. “Know any reason that anyone would want to dig up your brother’s grave or impersonate him?”
That did it. Merle lost his poker face completely for all of half a second. He looked worried. Very worried.
“Can’t say as I know of anyone who’d do either of those things, Sheriff.”
Carl nodded his head and then looked hard at the skinny bastard who was trying to sneak in closer to him. “You need to not be coming any closer to me or my truck right now, Lucas. You’ll find I’m a touch jumpy just at this moment. Be a damned shame if I was to mistake you for somebody being hostile and maybe put a dozen or so holes in you. Don’t you think?”
Lucas backed away, nodding his head. The boy wasn’t very bright, but he was smart enough to take the warning. The look Merle shot at the man said it wasn’t an idea he was much condoning right then.
Carl looked back at the patriarch of the clan. “I’m not saying you’ve seen your dead brother or anyone else who might be impersonating him. Last thing I’d want to do is accuse you of anything improperly, Merle.” Merle nodded his head. “But if you were to see someone who looked suspiciously like your older brother, you might want to let him know that I found the hole in the ground where his Meemaw is buried. Found that trinket he was looking for, too.”
“Trinket?” Oh, that perked up Merle’s ears.
“Longish chain, got a few charms on it. Some of them are for luck. Some of them are for who knows what. Seemed to be the only thing Frank could talk about.” There it was, the look. He didn’t know exactly what the look meant in this case, but Carl saw it. Merle knew of the charm bracelet or necklace or whatever the hell it was. “You let Frank know I know where to find it. He turns himself in, I might be willing to hand it to him.” He looked hard at Merle. “Of course, I could probably also be persuaded to hand it over to anyone who caught and turned in the murdering fuck that killed two of my people. Whoever it is that looks like your dead brother.”
Merle stared at him for a long second with an expression that clearly stated he was fairly sure Carl had grown an extra nose or two. Considering the stories he was hearing about what Wade had been up to, there was a real chance that the pot was calling the kettle black. There could only be so many groups of inbred assholes who were running around with mutated kinfolk and overgrown zombies in the bloodline. At this point Carl was perfectly willing to look toward Merle as the source for a lot of his grief.
Merle didn’t respond verbally. Instead he simply nodded his head.
The man knew things. Carl was sure of it. This was not, however, the right time for giving him shit about that fact. He’d made his point, so he climbed back into his truck and slid the shotgun back over to the passenger’s seat. There were enough members of the family around that he didn’t much feel like playing without a few extras.
He left the clan residence behind and started up the long, winding path back to the real world, the sane world. Somewhere out there something calling itself Frank was looking for something he had. He really, really hoped the bastard came knocking soon.
The call came in while he was still driving. Another bar fight. Another bar. He wasn’t much of a drinker, and if anyone had asked him why, he’d have pointed to the number of bar fights he had to break up in an average week. Bar fights didn’t even begin to qualify as violent crimes in his estimation, the call came in over the radio. He radioed back that he’d handle the matter.
The bar was only a legitimate business in the vaguest sense, and it was run by one of the Blackbournes. That was reason enough for Carl.
By the time he arrived the fight had moved outside. They almost always did when it came to The Pit. The Pit was a barbeque place that boasted it had the best ribs in the county. It was just at the edge of Crawford’s Hollow and most of the people who ate there were the sort who had given the idea of graduating high school consideration and then decided against it.
Two men were on the ground and doing their best to beat each other to death which, fortunately, wasn’t very good. They might have started off with a serious need to do bodily harm, but they’d been reduced to holding each other in a clench and panting as they tried to outlast each other. One of them was in a suit. The other looked like he probably lived in Crawford’s Hollow. And standing a few feet away from them was Jolene Blackbourne. There was as fairly sizable crowd, especially for a weekday, but she stood out.
Rather than get himself into a situation with the two men, or even try to arrest them—currently the local lock up was in desperate need of repairs and was still considered an active crime scene—Carl cranked up the lights and sirens as he parked. The crowd started dispersing instantly and after a few seconds the two morons who were in the middle of a long, drawn out fight caught on to the fact that there could be trouble.
Neither of them were local. Frankly, they were more paperwork than he felt like putting up with. He looked at the one with the business suit—it had probably been a suit once, now it was more like a very expensive dust rag coat and matching slacks and pointed. “Get the hell out of here before I decide to book your stupid ass.” The man was looking a little stressed and about ready to puke from physical exhaustion. Just the same he nodded his head and staggered toward a car that he’d likely be paying off for the rest of his life. Stupid men made stupid choices. The stranger was a perfect example.
The other man stood still and panted for a moment, then stumbled to the side of the building and lost his lunch.
Carl looked away and saw Jolene staring at him. She had one eye squinted half shut against the early afternoon glare, and she was nibbling at her lower lip as she contemplated him. Insane that a girl that age could exude so much raw sex appeal. On the other hand, her mother still made him light headed. Maybe it was pheromones. He didn’t know and at the present time he didn’t much care.
“Heard about your people, Sheriff Carl. I’m real sorry.”
“You want to show me how sorry you are? Stay away from bars until you’re of age, okay?”
She opened her eyes extra wide and put on her best innocent pout. He could see where that sort of look had caused a few fights from time to time. “I’m just here for the food, Sheriff. Honest. I’m supposed to pick up an order for my momma.”
&n
bsp; Siobhan. With everything that was going on, she should have been the last thing on his mind.Instead the mention of her was enough to distract.
“So. Pick up your food and get home.” He looked at her for a long moment. “And if you see that cousin of yours, or anyone who looks like him give me a call, will you?”
She smiled. “You gonna give me your phone number, Sheriff?” Oh yes, he could understand the cause of many fights.
“I’m in the book.” He kept his voice calm and his face expressionless. “I’m gonna give you the same message. You see the big boy, you tell him I have his little charm bracelet. I don’t hear from him soon, I’m going to melt it down.”
Her smile grew bigger and she took in a deep breath. And in that moment he understood that she was another one. She knew more than she was saying. He couldn’t push it right now. He couldn’t press her, because there were too many witnesses. The crowd had broken apart, but the people were still there. “I’ll tell him. If I see him.”
Carl nodded his head again.
The Blackbournes were all over this, and it was starting to annoy the hell out of him. Merle, Siobhan, Jolene, and Frank Blackbourne. Each and every one of them was a part of this entire thing. He just didn’t know how they were involved yet.
But he had a few ideas on how to find out.
All he had to do was avoid getting himself killed until he could implement them.
“I mean it, Jolene. You see him, you tell him.” He paused for a moment and then looked hard into her eyes. “You know what else you can tell him? Tell him if I need to, I’ll have his Meemaw dug up so I can see what else was buried with her.”
She practically danced where she was standing. The notion of passing on that sort of news excited the girl. She was flawed. The whole fucking clan was flawed.
“I can’t keep momma waiting, Sheriff Carl.” She chewed her lower lip again. “But you know, there’s more than enough if you wanted to join us. For lunch. Or whatever.”
He shook his head. “Got things to do, but thanks anyway.”
Jolene looked at him and grinned. “You’re blushing.”
He didn’t answer that. Instead he climbed back in the truck and headed for the office and told himself that he had work to do and that he wasn’t running from a very awkward situation.
Craziness. The whole lot of them were mental cases.
He just hoped it wasn’t spreading.
* * *
“Okay,” said Griffin, “I’ll bite. What or where does the gate the symbols mention lead to?”
Decamp said, “I’m not trying to be deliberately cryptic. The answer to your question is rather hard to explain and I doubt you’ll believe me in any case.”
“Maybe a week ago I wouldn’t have, but I’ve had something of a world view shift in the last couple of days.”
Decamp nodded. “All right. I know that Charon is familiar with the theory of alternate dimensions, and I assume you’ve heard of the concept, Griffin.”
“Yeah, I read a lot for a thug.”
“Touché. Well, you can think of the place the symbols speak of as another dimension in time and space. It has been called many things over time, from chaos to the outer dark, but it’s probably easier to think of it as the other side. That’s what some of the people who have studied it over the years have termed it.”
“The other side of what?”
“Of everything we are. The other side is inimical to life as we understand it.” He paused for a moment. “Perhaps I was wrong earlier. In some ways, perhaps it is hell.”
“Then why would anyone want to open a path to that place?” said Charon.
“No one sane would,” said Decamp. “Sane or human.”
Griffin said, “But those things that attacked me weren’t human. At least not entirely.”
“Ah, now you touch upon an important point, my friend. Your attackers weren’t human but they seemed at least partly human, yes?”
“Yes, most had some humanoid characteristics. Some were closer than others.”
“And that brings us back to the symbols. I have to ask you, where did you find them? I’ve a good idea, but I need to know.”
Griffin had already decided to trust this man. He seemed to carry an aura of calm, though Griffin sensed there was something else behind the dignified exterior. A reserve of strength or determination, perhaps. Griffin said, “The symbols were carved into the torso of a friend of mine who was further mutilated, then killed.”
Decamp ran a hand across his bearded jaw. “I’m sorry about your friend, Griffin. Tell me, did he have spikes driven through his eyes?”
Griffin felt his jaw muscles tighten. “Yes, but how did you know that?”
“It’s part of the ceremony. The way to open the path to the other side. It’s an ancient ritual. No one knows how ancient. Perhaps older than humanity.”
“Older than humanity? How can that be? I mean who would be having ceremonies on earth if there weren’t any people?”
Decamp said, “There are those who believe that human beings weren’t the first inhabitants of this world. But we’ll come back to that. What matters now is the ceremony. The sacrifice is bound, on an altar, if possible, though sometimes not, then the spikes are driven through the eyes and sometimes the genitals. Then the words of power are carved into the flesh.”
Griffin tried not to think about those things being done to Jerry. This wasn’t a theory for him. An old friend had died in darkness and agony, alone and afraid. “And what does this do?”
“What the words say. It opens the gate, though usually only a little. Enough to allow some power to seep through from the other side to this world.”
Charon said, “What can the power be used for? I mean, why do they want it?”
Decamp shrugged. “There we move into the realm of conjecture, as Sherlock Holmes would say. From historical accounts of these rituals the power could be used to summon demons, or rather inhabitants of the other side. Or it could be channeled by beings in our world and used to create malignant things. I believe that the creatures who attacked you were such things, either created or warped by the power from the other side.”
“Could it bring the dead back to life?” Griffin said, suddenly thinking of Frank Blackbourne.
“It might reanimate a body I think, but it would be horribly changed, filled with the power of the other side. Not a true resurrection. Why do you ask?”
“We’ll come back to that. Keep talking.”
Charon said, “You mentioned that a single sacrifice would only open the way a little. The second part of the message is ‘that we may bestride thy path’. Does that mean that more sacrifices would allow someone or some thing to actually cross from one world to another?”
“Yes and no,” said Decamp. “From what I understand, and please remember that none of this is established fact, the effect of the sacrifices isn’t cumulative. In other words the gate doesn’t remain open and grow wider after each sacrifice. Things revert to their normal state after a while.”
“Yes,” Charon said, “But if you performed many sacrifices at once, would the gate open wider?”
“I think it likely. I believe the accounts of the summoning of ‘daemons’ spoke of mass sacrifices. I haven’t read of these things in a long while. I thought this particular business over some time ago, until you sent me those symbols.”
“But you’re obviously familiar with it,” Griffin said.
“Any long time student of the occult would be. No offense, Charon, but you are very young.”
“So everyone keeps telling me,” she said, shooting a glance at Griffin.
“And you’ve dealt with it before,” said Griffin.
“Only in passing. And...”
“We’ll come back to that,” Charon finished.
“Exactly,” said Decamp. “It’s the here and now that worries me at the moment, especially after you told me about your warning.”
“Huh?” said Griffin. “Why’s th
at?”
“Because a warning means that someone doesn’t want you to find out about something.”
“Well, yeah. I told my friend Carl pretty much the same thing.”
Decamp said, “It’s the timing that worries me. When Charon asked what the ceremonies could do I said usually they could summon a small amount of power. And I said usually because most of the time the natural order of our world protects itself from these sorts of contacts with other worlds. The very laws which govern our universe make it difficult for anything from outside to get inside.”
“Usually,” said Griffin.
“Usually. But there are times when it becomes easier to pierce the veil, so to speak.”
Charon’s eyes widened. “Oh my god. Halloween. It’s almost Halloween.”
“Precisely,” said Decamp. “Halloween. Samhain. Summers end. A point of power in all the ancient religions from the Druids to the Native Americans. This much weirdness this close to All Hallows Eve means that something is afoot and you seem to have stumbled upon whatever it is.”
Griffin said. “Yeah, but if they bothered warning us off, it means whoever is behind this thinks that whatever they’re doing can still be stopped. Otherwise, why bother warning us?”
“An excellent point,” said Decamp. “However first you have to find out who’s behind it and just what they’re up to, and you don’t have a lot of time.”
“Decamp,” Griffin said. “Worst case, what do you think could happen? I get the idea you have at least an inkling of what these killers want.”
“If they’re stepping up sacrifices this close to Halloween, it most likely means they’re looking to tear the veil asunder. To open the gate permanently so that they can enter the other side and so that the beings from the other side can return here.”
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