A Minister's Ghost

by Phillip DePoy

  As luck would have it, I was roused from such ridiculous flights of pensivity by a bright, shiny tourist sign: Old Mill. There was even an arrow.

  “I’m guessing it’s that way,” Orvid said, deadpan, pointing the same direction as the arrow.

  “Could be,” I allowed, turning the truck.

  As the lights of the tourist center faded behind us and the road turned into shadow, I was surprised to let out a sigh of relief. I was actually more comfortable in the dark. Why that would be I couldn’t guess, but the answer would soon become all too obvious.

  The old mill loomed ahead of us like the bones of a huge dead animal. A rusted Parthenon, moonlight shot through it exactly the way beams of light broke holes in the high November clouds.

  High, black weeds made a nest for the carcass, and wind shook the trees around it, a harsh, warning whisper in the rustle of the leaves. Here and there a shadow darted. I was glad I wasn’t alone.

  “Nice place,” Orvid said softly. “Perfect for the man we’re after, don’t you think?”

  “I do.”

  I turned off the truck engine and my headlights. The landscape around us took on a dusted gloom in the pale moonlight.

  We sat for a moment, surveying the weird desolation. All four walls were partially standing, the roof was gone. No window had glass in it, no door was closed. The hulk was made mostly of brick, some wood, the occasional stone. Some sort of vine had taken over the better part of the back of the building. It was impossible to tell what the vine was in the dark, but it looked like poison ivy to me. Most of the recesses of the place were pitch-black, impenetrable. The glaze of white moonbeams across the tops of bricks only made the dark places darker.

  “In some ways,” Orvid said, barely above a whisper, “this is beautiful.”

  “You see where the entrance used to be,” I said, ignoring his sad aesthetic judgment, “over there by the big oak?”

  Next to a leafless black trunk, the ruin of a doorway seemed the best spot to enter, a double-wide space relatively free of debris and vegetation.

  “Let’s go,” he answered, nodding.

  We both got out quickly. For my part, I was trying not to think too much about what we might find in the place, fearing what that thinking might do to my resolve. Orvid, on the other hand, seemed eager to forage.

  As we moved toward the entrance, small sounds distracted us: night birds, or bats, stirred up the air high above our heads; something moved in the denser woods beyond the entrance door.

  “What was that?” I whispered.

  “Possum?” Orvid said without thinking. “Come on.”

  He plunged forward, taking the last few steps faster than I did, and hopped through the door.

  “Wait,” I called, still whispering.

  I followed where he had gone.

  Orvid stood in the middle of bits of brick and dried-out weeds. A pool of moonlight lay just beyond where he stood, his silhouette etched against it. Before I could say anything, he grabbed the top of his cane and drew out a vicious silver blade; it looked three feet long.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I stammered, stumbling toward him.

  “Sh!” Orvid answered, electric eyes glancing my way.

  “No, seriously,” I demanded, “what do you think you’re going to do with that?”

  “Do?” he responded, lowering the blade a little. “I’m going to kill Hiram Frazier.”

  “Kill him?” I froze.

  “Yes,” Orvid shot back, irritated. “What were you going to do?”

  “Take him to Skidmore,” I answered, my face clearly stunned by his revelation.

  Orvid rested the tip of his weapon gently on the ground.

  “How were you going to do that?” he asked, amused.

  “I was going to, that’s all.”

  “You don’t think he might disagree with your suggestion?”

  “Yes, but I’d convince him.”

  “This man is not someone you can reason with,” Orvid objected. “He doesn’t have those faculties any longer. Surely you must realize that.”

  “I’m much bigger than he is.”

  “Eppie Waldrup is bigger than you are, and you dropped him down your front porch like a sack of wet cement. And P.S.: everyone’s bigger than I am.”

  All I needed was an image of Georgie, the man at the train trestle laid out on the ground, to apprehend his point.

  “Fine,” I said quickly, “but no matter what, I didn’t chase him to kill him.”

  “Why not, exactly?”

  “Because that’s not something you do!” I exploded. “You don’t chase down a derelict and cut his head off because you’re pretty sure he was involved in an accident.”

  “I wasn’t going to cut his head off,” Orvid began. “But now that you mention it, that would be fairly decisive.”

  “That’s hardly the key issue. You want to kill him!”

  “I’m going to kill him.”

  I could see the look in Orvid’s eye, even in the dim light. There was no doubt, no hesitation there. His intention was clear. If we found Frazier, Orvid would dispatch him instantly. I knew it.

  “Orvid,” I said, starting over, “let’s discuss this.”

  “Nothing to discuss,” he said firmly.

  “Well,” I said, folding my arms, “I really can’t stand by while you murder someone. Would you kill me too?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “All I’d have to do is disable you for a moment.”

  Reminding myself again that I’d recently seen him disable a man with no effort whatsoever, I took a different tack.

  “Skidmore knows I’m looking for Frazier. At the very least, he’ll eventually ask me if I found anything. I won’t lie to him, I’ve already told you that. I’d have to tell him what you did.”

  “Judy and I are moving after this,” Orvid said, a smile on his lips. “Somewhere in Europe, I think. The main thing that was keeping her in Georgia was the Dyson girls, so that’s done with. She’s ready to move. We’d disappear. You and Deputy Dogg would never even find Frazier’s body, let alone Judy and me. There’d simply be no case.”

  “Orvid,” I fumed, “we can’t actually be having an argument about killing a human being, can we? I mean, I just can’t let that happen. I’d do everything I could to stop you. I mean it.”

  “Why?” he exploded. “Isn’t Lucinda in torment because Tess and Rory are dead? Isn’t she wondering how and why a thing like that can happen? Wouldn’t you do anything to give her some respite from that?”

  “Yes,” I said, taking a step toward him, “but her solution would never be to murder the man responsible!”

  “Well,” he answered, calming. “There’s where Lucinda and Judy are different. Hunting down Hiram Frazier and killing him, that was more or less Judy’s idea.”

  “Judy wants you to kill him?” I couldn’t believe it.

  “She does,” he said, breathing deeply to calm himself. “In fact, she hasn’t let up on me since we came to the conclusion that Frazier was responsible for the accident.”

  “No,” I insisted, “we haven’t come to any conclusion about that, we’re just speculating. That’s another good reason not to hack off his head, we’re just guessing!”

  “I’m not going to hack off his head,” Orvid snarled. “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “Well, what else would you do with that scythe?”

  “Plenty,” Orvid answered. “Nick the jugular, cut the hamstrings, come up under the sternum for the heart, slip in at the back of his head, base of the medulla oblongata.”

  I stopped breathing. It was suddenly clear to me that Orvid had done that sort of thing before.

  “We’re absolutely at cross-purposes,” I said quietly, steeling my voice. “I can’t be a party to this. I’m going home.”

  I turned my back on the man with the sword and headed toward the doorway.

  “Stop,” Orvid commanded.

  I kept walking.

 
; “Fever, wait,” he said, his voice softening.

  I slowed.

  “I don’t have any desire to do you harm,” Orvid began. “How about if we keep looking for Frazier, and I hold off on my mission at least until we see him and you have a chance to talk him into coming with us to face the sheriff?”

  I turned.

  Orvid replaced his blade, and he was once again holding a stylish walking cane.

  “I wouldn’t have expected you to be this reasonable,” I said suspiciously, “after that look in your eye a moment ago.”

  “And I didn’t think you’d object so strongly to my plan. I had no idea. I thought you’d endorse it. It’s simple and direct and solves everyone’s problems.”

  “It’s morally reprehensible.”

  “According to whose plan?” Orvid said, resting on his cane.

  I was certain that he had not given up on his plan to kill Frazier. He was clearly humoring me. But at least he’d put away his blade. What I didn’t tell Orvid was how difficult it had been for me to argue against the murder, a confession I was barely able to make to myself. A part of me would be happy to see Hiram Frazier die.

  I looked around, burying such thoughts. Instead I let my eyes run over the geography of the ruined mill. It offered almost no place to hide. All the walls were crumbled.

  “Well,” I said to Orvid, managing a wan smile, “we’ve done everything we can to warn Frazier, if he’s here.”

  “Yelling and threatening to kill him,” he agreed, “yes, you’re probably right.”

  “If he was here at all,” I said, softer.

  “We should still have a look around.” Orvid surveyed the place.

  “I think it might be worth a quick look in the back. There were most likely train tracks close by at one time, usually the case with a mill this size. We could see if the tracks were there.”

  “Are you sure they’re still operable?” Orvid said, a spark of excitement in his voice.

  “Absolutely,” I said, moving toward the back of the building. “That would be the way freights get to Chattanooga.”

  “Indeed.” He nodded. “Then let’s go have a look.”

  We moved through the rubble and weeds to the back of the mill through wide-open expanses in what was left of the building. No one could have been hiding there.

  Not fifty feet from the back of the building I could see railroad tracks.

  “There.” I pointed.

  “I see them,” Orvid said, moving faster.

  The tracks seemed recently worn. The top of the rail was steel gray, not a trace of rust red.

  “Which way is town?” Orvid said, trying to get his bearings.

  “South, and a little east.” I inclined my head slightly. “That way.”

  The tracks ran straight toward the town in that direction, probably right to the tourist center. The opposite way, down the mostly westward run, they disappeared into a thick cover of evergreens.

  “I think I’m just going to see where the tracks go,” Orvid said, peering into the evergreens. “It looks like they might bend a little more northward up there, and there’s a clearing, can you see?”

  I strained.

  “No,” I reported, “but we know your eyes are better than mine in the dark.”

  “Well, if they do bend, it would be a lot like the turn in the tracks at Pine City, a place where the train has to slow down.”

  “A perfect place to hop on.”

  “I’m checking it out.” Orvid started down the tracks. “Are you coming?”

  “Wait,” I told him. “I’ve got a flashlight in my truck. It looks kind of dark in the woody part.”

  “Good. Go get it, then catch up. I’ll follow straight down the tracks.”

  He took off and I turned back the other way, loping toward my truck. A minute later I rummaged under the driver’s seat and came out with my trusty flashlight.

  I snapped it on; the beam shattered shadows in the mill. I dashed through the mill once again, toward the woods where Orvid had gone.

  I was almost to the the back of the building, my light glancing off the steel beams of the tracks, when I heard a deep voice directly behind me whisper a curse.

  Seventeen

  I spun around.

  Hiram Frazier stood framed by brick and moonlight, a rusted iron bar in his right hand. His black suit was soaked, and his shoes frayed at the soles. Hair was wild about his head, face a mask of gnarled pain. The eyes were red blisters, burning holes in the air around the face

  My flashlight was blinding him.

  “Put down that damned torch!” He raised his iron bar and took a step toward me.

  I stumbled back, clicking off the flashlight.

  “You waiting for the train?” Frazier said, his voice like a hollow stone tunnel.

  I started to speak before I realized he didn’t know who I was.

  “Yes,” I said, my voice low. “It slows down around the bend in the woods.”

  “I know that,” he snapped. “I been ride these rails for a hundred years, you don’t think I know that?”

  His words were slurred, and he swayed unsteadily. He was full of liquor, full to the brim. The smell of it poured out his mouth, oozed from his skin, his scars. Rage and bone were all that kept him standing. It was clear that he might explode at any moment.

  I took another step back from him, deciding on something of a risky course of action.

  “Are you Hiram Frazier?”

  “What?” he roused, trying to focus his eyes. “That’s my name.” He peered all around me, trying to see me in the dark through a drunken fog.

  “Everyone knows the preacher from Pistol Creek,” I continued, my voice steady.

  “Stop!” He dropped the iron bar and put his hands to his ears. “No one knows who I am. No one knows what I am.”

  “You’re Hiram Frazier, wandering preacher,” I said, stronger, “and the Lord’s whipping boy.”

  “Oh,” he moaned low. “I am.”

  “You have a trick. You know how to get money whenever you want it. You stick close to the rail crossings and red lights and you reach into the cars and take their keys.”

  “What are you?” he whispered, looking down at the ground.

  I took a deep breath. My heart was pounding.

  “You were at a train crossing a few nights ago. You stood there in the rain until an orange Volkswagen came by. A pumpkin car.”

  “Pumpkin car,” he repeated softly.

  “Two young girls were in the car, and you took their keys.”

  “I did?” he asked helplessly. “It sounds like me.”

  “Only there was a train coming.”

  “The Lord’s recompense,” Frazier rattled hypnotically, “come to repay every one for what he has done.”

  “No,” I hedged, careful not to break the spell he was under, “it was a train, a train coming around the bend. You didn’t give the keys back, and the girls didn’t have time to get out of the car. They were killed.”

  “I don’t remember,” he howled.

  “It was just two nights ago,” I coaxed.

  “I had a church in Pistol Creek, Tennessee,” he mumbled, “many years back. Good congregation: sober, plain, and mean. But the Lord took me as his testing scourge. I awoke one morning to find my wife, my jewel, she was stone-cold dead in the bed beside me. No warning, no word of farewell. We all come to death, one way or another. Some come to it slow. This is my punishment: to be a traveling creature, a beacon to woman and man. If you would shun the burning hell, you’d take a warning by me.”

  “And two nights ago you tried to get two girls to give you money,” I prompted.

  “Two virgins in a pumpkin carriage,” he said, his voice growing louder. “Laughing. God smote them. For no good reason. Just took them, sent them a black snake belching smoke which roared over them like an iron thunder. They were gone before the noise of it left the air. Gone.”

  He held his hands wide, a poisoned imitation of th
e crucifixion.

  “When God wants to purge this earth,” Frazier went on, gaining strength, “he sends a dark angel. No creature of light can help this pustule globe. There is no salvation, there is only cleansing. Those who are pure are washed clean, those who are weak are washed away. There are Two Rivers in God’s wilderness, the one that rides a body to sweet fields arrayed in living green and pastures of delight, the other that turns molten and purges skin from bone, in a place no human tongue can tell.”

  He thumped his chest hard, it made a hollow drumming sound.

  “God chose me!” he shouted. “I am a soldier in the army of darkness, God’s purging river. But it’s hard. It’s hard to do.”

  “Why?” I asked, hoping to steer his thinking back to Tess and Rory.

  “Because God’s Ways are impossible to comprehend.” Frazier heaved a sigh, a lifetime of desperation in a single breath. “He’s taken my mind. It’s gone. My mind is dead. But this body keeps doing things, things I can’t even recall on the morrow of the next day.”

  “What things?”

  “I drink,” he confessed, suddenly weeping, his entire demeanor collapsed into begging for pity. “No other way to bear the pain. The demon of alcohol chases all other demons away. I concentrate all my efforts on that one demon, and God keeps the rest at bay.”

  “The demon of memory.”

  “Gone,” he said with a flourish of his wrist.

  “Guilt.”

  “Swallowed up,” he said, his voice shifting again. “I know you?” His eyes were clearing a little. His head stilled and his breathing steadied.

  “We’ve met. You told me before that you saw the accident the other night at the rail crossing in Pine City.”

  “Pine City,” he said, closing his eyes, “is the one with the nice rhododendrons.”