The Deadsong

by Brandon Hardy

  Dylan and Garrett stayed outside on the deck overlooking the creek, sharing a half pack of menthols they had found under the bleachers. Gina lingered through the house with her arm locked around her heroic knight, ever so popular now with the star quarterback she wanted all to herself.

  Of course Duke was there with his cheerleading nymphet, finishing off his fourth can of beer. Gina could tell he was still pouting over his rejection, but that was all right, let him sweat some more. She had Jared now, and if that pussy-slaying goon wanted to start something with her or Dylan, Jared would surely defend them if it came down to it.

  There was a utility room off the back porch where the coach’s son, Ethan, was nailing Lindsey Stevens on the washing machine while Brock Wilcox was out back by the woodshed nibbling on some blonde he’d met while pumping gas at Avery’s. Most of the team were down in the basement watching a heated game of eight ball between Randall Yates and Corey Green until the game was over and Duke and Jared took their cues.

  “You think you’re gonna wipe me out, dontcha?” Duke said.

  Jared smiled, but there was no humor in it. “Rack em.”

  6

  When Dylan finished off the last cigarette, Garrett scooted closer to him. “So tell me about this guy your mom’s seeing.”

  “Nothing to say really,” Dylan said. “He looks like a corpse wearing a suit. The guy gives me the willies. Gina thinks he wants something from Mom.”

  “Besides the obvious?” Garrett said, nudging his shoulder.

  “Eww! I don’t even want to think about that. Nah, I don’t know what it is, but Gina’s told me some pretty crazy stuff. Normally I’d say she’s just trying to freak me out, but I actually believe her.”

  Garrett popped open another beer. “Like what?”

  Dylan really didn’t like talking about it, but he thought, what the hell, Garrett’s a good buddy who’d keep it to himself, so he told him everything.

  “Wow,” Garrett said. “That’s a trip, Stark. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but some of what you said is no secret.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My parents and I use to go to Sand Mountain. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “That was a long time ago. I was little, but I still remember stuff. One time, me and the other kids taped pictures of the devil on the bottoms of our shoes. We ran around the church ‘stompin on Satan’ as Margaret Oates called it. My parents quit going once they were asked to put up these symbols all over the county. I think Shitty Smitty ended up doing it. Markings were written on junk and stuck on buildings and put up in trees. Stupid stuff. Motley said it was for protection from the snakes.”

  Dylan realized that’s what he’d seen up in the pines: that glyph drawn on the red kite.

  “For protection, huh? I’d say they don’t work,” Dylan said.

  “I’ll tell you some other things, but you can’t tell anyone. Not even Gina.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because some bad shit could float our way, if you catch my drift. I think your sister’s in trouble, Stark.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, the shakers say the reason for the snakes killing those kids every year is not coincidence. They say it really is the Keeper of Serpents, but you’ve heard about all that I’m sure. A guy who can communicate with snakes with his mind, directs them to kill kids born under a contract with the devil.”

  “Just a bunch of bull, I think.” But Dylan didn’t really believe that.

  “Me too, but I’m just telling you what I know.”

  “Go on.”

  “It started a long, long time ago when the devil came to a man somewhere in England or Scotland or somewhere like that. He cursed this guy with an ability that would be passed on to his first born son, then his first son, and so on. His bloodline would have the responsibility of…how do I put this…repossessing souls, the way the bank comes and takes your car back if you don’t pay your note.”

  “Christ, Garrett.” Dylan got to his feet.

  “I’m just saying that’s what they say is happening around here.” Garrett said, shrugging, and after the words came out of his mouth, he realized it could be true. Those damned shakers weren’t just babbling a bunch of bullshit; they knew all along. “When’s Gina’s birthday?”

  “What?”

  “When is your sister’s birthday? She’ll turn eighteen, won’t she?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know man, it’s––”

  Two days from now.

  “Soon, right?”

  “Yeah, so? All right, your telling me that this Keeper guy is after my sister. Gina hasn’t done anything wrong, though.”

  Garrett looked at him solemnly through the dark hair hanging over his eyes. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not because of something she did. It’s your mom, good buddy. She’s the one responsible.”

  Dylan tried to prepare himself for what Garrett would say next, but he couldn’t be. He was just ready to go back inside and drink till he burst.

  “This is the kicker, Stark, and I really hope I’m wrong about this.”

  Just say it, Garrett. Please just get it over with.

  “The story says that the Keeper only comes to take children who were born because their parents made a deal with Death or the devil or whatever. They could have a child, but the fine print said that child could not reach adulthood.”

  “So you’re saying Mom did this? That’s how she had Gina?”

  “That’s right. And she’s almost eighteen, so it’s just a matter of time.”

  Terror tightened in his lungs. “What about me?”

  The fight had already broken out. They watched from the balcony as a flood of shouting heads ran out from the basement and down the hill towards the creek. The crowd formed a circle around two shadows. Dylan strained to hear what they were yelling, but his buzz dampened his hearing. Garrett must have heard them because he dragged Dylan down the wooden steps and right into the action. Gina appeared and snatched both of Dylan’s arms.

  “Get over here!” she yelled. Jared’s jacket was draped over her shoulders. She pulled them around the back, and Dylan froze immediately. He saw Duke standing in the circle, his face red as a fire truck.

  “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”

  The crowd raged with drunken madness as Jared stepped into the circle.

  7

  I could call them, he thought. They’d come out and everyone could watch it happen. That’d give em something to talk about. Duke Pearson fighting off my children. Yes, that’s what they were now. They listened to me now. I could call them here and they’d be all over Duke in no time. But Duke isn’t marked. He’s got immunity. Hell, he’s the one with the natural gift and he has no clue. Duke hates snakes. This should be fun.

  The alcohol and anger fueled his fury, focusing all his energy through it. His thoughts burned away into a single note, then another. Before he closed his eyes he saw Gina wince. She was hearing it, swelling, fattening, crossing over from another reality.

  One response––two––three––and soon there were many chiming in.

  They were coming. Against the blackness of his eyelids, his five senses fizzled out and pushed on through to his sixth, and within seconds, the screaming began.

  They were on Duke immediately. Dozens of them shot up his legs and struck him repeatedly through his jeans, his shirt, and one latched onto his cheek while he swatted blindly in the air. The crowd broke up and ran away. Some into the McGraws’ house, others into the woods for no other reason than to get away from the horrors taking place. Duke fell to his knees and pulled the one snake from his face, ripping the flesh down his cheek to the corner of his mouth in a hideous scrawl of blood.

  It was incredible. Gina, Dylan, and Garrett watched it all happen right before their eyes and they could not look away. Whether by powers beyond or simply by fear, they were frozen. Jared stood there with his fists balled and his eyes close
d, willing his army to do his bidding. This curled into Gina’s thoughts and flushed Alan’s words back to her. He had said according to that book, the Keeper’s apprentice must be of the same bloodline as the Keeper. But Jared was doing it, and the snakes were now on the one who was destined to kill, not the one to be killed.

  Duke roared like a savage having made fire, and all at once the snakes disappeared quietly into the trees. He was on all fours now, huffing a mist into the air. Someone called down from the balcony and said an ambulance was coming.

  If Duke died, he would be the first one who hadn’t been marked. He was the Keeper’s son after all. Shit was hitting the fan and Gina knew it. Whatever supernatural bond Jared had become a part of was damn near broken in two.

  8

  That college boy’ll never know. They have me now. I had a date with my Remington but it looks like that’s not going to happen. Whatever they do to me tonight, I won’t get that chance. They’ll make me disappear and I’m pretty sure it’ll be no picnic.

  They’ll do something.

  Floyd was pushed out of the pickup and into a clearing. Crickets gossiped all around, the moon hung in the sky like a large milky eye, a threatening eye. He swished through the dew-covered grass by force, Harley Robinson to his left, Perry Smith to his right. His leg hurt really bad. The pinched nerve sent a swarm of needlesticks up his thigh, but he cared very little right now.

  Death was here.

  He stood just ahead of Floyd, a dog-eared Holy Bible cradled under his arm. Carl Motley shook his head.

  “You just had to go and embarrass me like that, didn’t ya, Floyd,” Motley said.

  “I did nothing of a kind. You embarrassed yourself.”

  “You made me look bad. You gave me faulty information and I want to know why.” Motley’s breath reeked of collard greens.

  Floyd felt himself growing heavy and he wanted his cane, but the two strong arms on either side of him kept the old gossip king steady.

  “We ain’t playing, Floyd, but I guess you seein the situation you’re in, you probably know that by now, don’t ya?”

  Margaret Oates and Gloria Webb rested against the rusted door of Motley’s work van. Miss Webb lit a cigarette and sucked it down.

  Motley twisted his head like a confused dog. “Maybe you’re helping him. Maybe that’s why you said something about knowing who the Keeper is and where his snakes are just to misdirect us. God have mercy on you, Floyd. I thought we were friends.”

  “Friends?” Floyd cackled. “You fat dope, I ain’t never liked you! You been using me up ever since you took over that goddamn church.”

  Motley buried a fist in Floyd’s belly, sending him to the ground.

  “Taking the Lord’s name in vain is a commandment and forever shall it be kept,” Motley said, fogging his nasty breath.

  “What about ‘thou shall not kill’?” Floyd was nearing unconsciousness. He hadn’t taken a blow like that since he brawled with Gerald Inslet in back of the billiards hall in the summer of ’77. Floyd had won that brawl because he worked the family farm everyday since he was nine, but now he was on up into his late seventies and he was in no shape to scrap with this wide-eyed reverend who wasn’t even fifty.

  He couldn’t win.

  They’re gonna make me disappear.

  “That is indeed the commandment we are trying to preserve, Mr. Wiggins. Rescue the perishing, save them from death. Kill the Keeper. He is a killer. Made one by the all-powerful and all-deceivin––”

  “You killed before. That one fella from Texas who came in to fix up the downtown area. Came about reapin season one year and you got it in your head he was the Keeper and you killed him. All of you did.”

  “We were justified, brother,” Motley said gently, bending down on one knee to better see the old man’s frightened face. “We believed he was the one. So we did what we had to do. We are forgiven. I confess it to you now, because the Lord has forgiven us and has washed it away and it shall forever be known no more.”

  “You’re crazier than a rabid dog, Carl Motley. You’ll burn in hell for this.”

  “No sir.” The rabid reverend pulled a dagger from his coat pocket and looked at it with glassy eyes. Floyd was looking at it, too––it sliced a wink of moonlight as Motley turned it over in his hand. “But you will. You know why?”

  Oh Floyd had been so close. He had seen Alan Blair talking to Gina and had every intention of taking him to to Ellis’s shack so he could see the snakes and get rid of them, but Floyd was too slow.

  Or the shakers at Sand Mountain were too quick.

  Motley handed Smitty his bible and looked at Floyd with merciful pity.

  “Cause I’m about to send you there.”

  9

  Ellis was outraged when he left Duke at Durden Memorial. His plan to get out was falling apart. Jared was not following orders. He was being reckless with the power he now possessed.

  If you want something done, do it yourself.

  He went into the shack and slid off the large stone slab covering the well. The beam from his flashlight was dim, but he didn’t need light to see. He’d done this for twenty years, and if he was blinded by one of the little bastards––and survived––he could continue on.

  He had no choice now. Unless, Duke…

  The darkness below him rippled. He brought up the bucket slowly, checking the flayed rope often as he turned the crank.

  A bucketful of fear stared back at him with a dozen golden eyes reflecting the burning globe of his flashlight. He dumped them into a burlap sack and went out into the night, hearing nothing else but his footfalls and the rattling and the hissing.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: THE FAIR

  1

  The Arlo County Fair was one of the best fairs around––even the Middle Tennessee State Fair hadn’t been worth the price of admission for several years. Hundreds of Durdenites turned out each year to spend their hard-earned dollars on cotton candy, overpriced soft drinks, corn dogs, Italian dogs, Polish dogs, and even a funnel cake or candy apple for the kiddies. The midway had only recently been paved––too many patrons got their feathers ruffled from having to trudge through the mud after a rain shower. Saw dust just wasn’t cutting it anymore. But it was the first day of the fair, and the skies were as empty as the Durdenites would be when they left the place.

  Gina reluctantly allowed Jared to pay for parking since they could have easily parked up the street and walked, but she said nothing. The Charger huffed past a Shriner waving an orange baton, directing him to the east end of the parking area which was nothing more than an undeveloped lot covered with thick green grass that hadn’t been cut.

  Gina wore leather boots at her mother’s request––don’t want a rattler kissing your shins, honey––but she traded her jeans for a black skirt before Jared picked her up. He cleaned up rather well. His hair was cut and styled, and he was not wearing his usual Wildcats T-shirt. Instead, he donned a plaid flannel work shirt with the sleeves casually rolled up to his elbows. This rugged/clean-cut mix was doing a number on Gina’s nerves. She considered dragging him into the funhouse later and making out in the maze of warped mirrors, but then again, a silent reminder whispered that this was suppose to be a proper date. Maybe I’ll wait, she thought. At least until we get back to my place. Mom will be asleep…

  “You ready?”

  Gina said she was and got out of the car.

  The sun had begun to set behind the Ferris wheel and the bright neon fixed to its frame and carriages came to life. The Zipper flipped and turned, screams of fear and of joy resounded throughout the midway. The shooting gallery was absent this year––a long counter with a row of water pistols mounted across it stood in its place. The carnie behind the counter chanted “Drown the clown, win a prize, everyone’s a winner, shoot water in the clown’s mouth and when the little hot air balloon hits the top, you win big, big, big. How about you, sir? Win a pink ape for your lady friend. How about it, sir? Three dollars, sir. Step right up, rig
ht this way, have a seat right there…”

  Her senses were alive and gears were spinning to the max. Confront him now, Gina. Do it now. Don’t waste anymore time. Others will die.

  She battled with this incessantly. She ignored the fact that last night, an army of snakes had broken up the drunken crowd at the McGraws’ house and had sent Duke to Durden Memorial. But last Gina heard, he was still alive.

  She had become completely infatuated with Jared, much like her mother with Mr. Thade, who hadn’t made an appearance since the football game. He was involved, too.

  And Gina would figure out how.

  2

  Dylan strolled out of the Hemming Theatre with his tie undone. He mashed a pair of earbuds in his ears and hopped into his Geo and sputtered out to the county fair.

  He opened his collar and bought a ticket, strutting as he went, his dark green vest flapping in the cool air. Hundreds upon hundreds of people were here. Some were hanging round by the stadium where the tractor-pull was going on. One angry tractor split into a deafening scream until the weight it carried allowed it to go no further, and then it died away into a glorious cheer from the crowd up in the stands. Dylan wandered through the thick veins of people thickening in the narrow pathways between the food trolleys and merchandise tables. A young girl with a pink bow in her hair bumped into him and began to cry because Dylan upset her newly won goldfish lazily swimming around a twist-tied baggie filled with water. He saw most of the people from the high school. They had formed their usual cliques, moving along, quacking about things that meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. The tempting aromas all around him threatened to reel him in for a five dollar funnel cake, but he made it through onto the midway and disappeared into a sea of lost souls.

  He found Garrett by the Tilt-a-Whirl schmoozing Suzie Grafton, but he abandoned her once his gaze caught Dylan’s.

  “Dude, last night, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! I thought it was the whiskey and all, but hot damn, those snakes!”