by Cullen Bunn
I nodded. “He lives on the other side of Prescott Ridge. Quite a ways away from here.”
Sue cleared her throat, and her brow furrowed. “Should we get him to a doctor or something?”
Seth Stubbs.
Remember when I said I wasn’t afraid to whoop an ass now and then? Well, Seth had been the proud owner of that ass on more than a couple of occasions. He wasn’t really a bad fella, I reckon, but he got a little mean when he’d been hitting the bottle at the Stag Tavern, and I’d put him in his place a time or two.
But nothing I’d ever done compared to this.
Deep scratches crisscrossed over his face and neck, a violent connect-the-dots with his zits. Looked like he had tried to fend off the attack, too, and his hands and forearms were cut badly. At his throat, the skin plowed up and hung in loose, jagged strips down to the collar of his shirt. .
“Whatcha think happened to him?” Cecil asked. “Think a bobcat got ahold of him?”
The way he was chewed up, it sure looked like a wild animal had made quite a bit of sport out of poor Seth. I touched him on the shoulder. “Seth, can you hear me, old son?”
His eyes snapped open.
Bloodshot. Wild.
“D-don’t! Don’t you touch me!” He squirmed in the dirt. “Don’t!”
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Sue said. Sitting back on her haunches, she held her open hands out to show she meant no harm. “We only want to help.”
“Ain’t nobody can help me now!” Seth’s voice was high-pitched and filled with pain. He took quick, shallow breaths. “Ain’t nobody can help any of us!”
“Who did this, Seth?” I asked.
His eyes darted from me to Sue to the woods, as if he expected someone—or something—to come crashing out of the brush to snatch him up.
“Is someone out there?” Sue asked.
Seth swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and nodded.
Sue and I both peered into the trees. Big Jack took a step towards the woods. Cecil took a step back.
“Who’s out there?” Sue asked. I couldn’t tell if she was asking Seth or calling out to the unseen presence possibly lurking nearby.
Tears seeped down Seth’s ruined face. “T-they killed them, every last one. Every one…” His eyes closed again. He skin was very pale.
“Who’s out there?” Sue asked again, turning towards the injured man, sudden fear fueling her impatience.
The dogs, either sensing the agitation of our little group or catching the scent of something in the woods, started barking.
Seth didn’t open his eyes. His answer came as a whisper.
“It’s a feud,” he said. “A blood feud.”
Sue shivered and wrapped her arms around her bare shoulders to stifle a sudden chill. I reckoned she knew more than her fair share of gruesome stories about backwoods lunatics—banjo-picking, inbred rednecks with unspeakable lusts and mean streaks a mile wide. For all she knew, some maniac watched us with lust-filled eyes from the trees even as we tended to Seth.
“Let’s get him inside,” I said. “We’ll call the doctor from there.”
Jack and I picked Seth up, throwing his arms over our shoulders and carried him down the road, his boots dragging behind us. He smelled of blood and and unwashed flesh and shit—more than likely his own.
The dogs jumped and barked like they’d tree’d a possum as we hauled Seth’s limp body past them. They followed us all the way back to the cabin, and deep growls rose from their throats as they crossed between us and the door. When we tried to go around, they nipped at our feet.
Seth moaned.
Cecil yelled and stomped his feet. The mutts tucked tails between legs and slinked into hiding among the wilds of the weeds and abandoned junk.
We got Seth inside, stretched him out on the couch, and covered him with a heavy quilt. Sue removed her bandana and used the cloth to wipe some of the blood away from his face. Exposed, the wounds looked even worse, ragged and inflamed.
I sure didn’t want to meet the man or beast capable of doing such things to a living soul.
But somehow I knew I would.
Soon.
* * *
While the others looked after Seth, I grabbed the phone and called the sheriff. My fingers trembled just a little. I clenched the receiver tightly to steady myself.
A blood feud.
Big Jack looked at me from across the room. His thoughts ran the same course as mine. If a member of the Stubbs family mentioned a feud, it could mean only one thing.
The Whatleys.
The very thought of those strange old coots near about froze my blood.
On the other end of the crackling telephone line, Annie Tills, the dispatcher, answered.
“Well, R. F. Coven!” Annie’s fingernails-on-the-chalkboard voice piped across the line. “Haven’t heard from you in quite a spell. What have you been keeping yourself busy with? You know, you never did make good on that promise to take me line dancing, and—”
“Sorry about that, Annie, but I’m afraid this isn’t a social call.”
“Oh.” I heard the hurt—about half of it for show—in her tone. “What can I do for you, then? You haven’t gotten into another scrape, have you?”
“Reckon you best let me talk to the sheriff.”
“It’s Saturday night, R.F.” I could hear her eyes rolling from across the phone line. “You know he ain’t around.”
Shit. How could I have forgotten? Regular as clockwork, Sheriff Hargrove played bingo at the VFW in West Plains every Saturday night.
Sue paced back and forth, stopping to peek out the window every now and again. Without her bandana, her blonde locks fell in her face, and she brushed them away from her eyes.
A frustrated rumble danced in my throat.
“Listen,” I told Annie, “I got a bit of a situation here. I’m over at Cecil’s place with Sue Hatchell—”
“Who? Sue Hatchell? That weird city girl? What are you doing with her? And Cecil, too? R.F.—”
“Get ahold of the sheriff and tell him something’s happened to Seth Stubbs.” I lowered my voice a hair. “Something bad, I think.”
The hurt in Annie’s voice bristled into snootiness. “Like I said, the sheriff’s unavailable. He’s playing bingo.”
“I don’t give a good God damn if he’s been especially appointed to pluck the hairs from the governor’s back. You get him back here. And while you’re at it, call Doc Bishop and send him to Cecil’s place.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said curtly.
I thanked her and assured her I’d make good on the offer to take her line dancing as soon as possible. I hated being two-faced, but the little white lie lightened her mood and would hopefully make sure she did what I asked.
I put the phone back in the cradle, closed my eyes to clear my head.
So much for the cavalry.
Even if Annie got ahold of the sheriff, he’d likely be too loaded to be of any help. It was just getting to be sunset, but those Bingo games could get wild—and fast. Chances were the sheriff was already three sheets to the wind, and would wake up some time tomorrow morning with his patrol car parked in a ditch, his losing bingo cards spread over his potbelly like a sheet, little daubs of bingo marker ink covering his body like polka dots.
“Sheriff on the way?” Cecil asked.
“It’s Saturday,” I said. “Bingo.”
My cousin’s shoulders slumped.
Sue still hugged her arms as if fighting off the cold. She leaned against the wall and looked at me as if to ask “what now?”
“He’ll get here quick as he can,” I said, knowing full well we wouldn’t see his sorry ass any time soon. “Sent for the doctor, too.”
Sue relaxed a little, but shot a glance at Seth and then at the window.
“What were you doing out here anyway?” I said in a clumsy attempt to make small talk. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I’m working on a paper about the local tarantula po
pulation,” she said. “But I guess just about everyone has already figured that out, huh?”
I smiled and nodded.
“I’m heading back to Springfield in the next few days, so I was just trying to collect some final notes on a colony of spiders moving through here.”
She kept looking towards the window. I doubt she even realized she was doing it. She couldn’t see much anyway, not with the curtains drawn.
“This whole mess has got you spooked, huh?” I asked.
“Guess so.” She looked at her trembling hands, squeezed them into tight fists. “The funny thing is, right before Seth came out of the trees, the spiders scattered and ran for cover. One minute they were moving slow and deliberately, the next they were running in all directions, like they sensed him and were afraid.”
Like I said, it started with spiders.
Sue went to the window and pulled the curtain aside for a better look. Dust motes swirled in the last rays of sunlight trickling through the glass.
“Cecil,” I said, “Do me a favor and fetch a couple of flashlights, some guns, and ammunition.”
Sue snapped her head in my direction, a question trembling on her lips.
“Be quick about it,” I told Cecil.
As my cousin rushed off towards the back of the house, Sue crossed the room and cornered me.
“Flashlights?” she asked. “You’re not seriously thinking of going out there, are you? Something in those woods almost killed a man.”
“Reckon that’s why we’re taking the guns. If what Seth says is true, his whole family might be in danger, might be hurt, just like him, and there are children—lots of them.”
I didn’t like the idea of hiking through the woods, either, what with the twilight deepening to full-on, blacker-than-snuff-spit night and somebody or something meaner than a copperhead in a frying pan waiting in the dark. There wasn’t much choice, though, unless I was willing to abandon the Stubbs family to the desires of whoever—or whatever—had gotten ahold of Seth.
I wasn’t.
Like I said, Seth wasn’t a saint, especially when he’d been walking on a slant, but what had happened to him was just wrong.
Downright inhuman.
“You’re going on foot?” Sue asked.
“Hell, not a one of Cecil’s old beaters has a working transmission, Jack doesn’t own a car, and my truck’s been in the garage for going on three weeks. A car wouldn’t do much good anyway. The road winds through miles of hills before ever coming close to the Stubbs place. We’ll get there a lot faster as the crow flies.”
“Maybe we should try to get to town.”
“We barely got Seth onto that couch,” I said. “I’d hate to lug him all the way into town. We’re liable to do more harm than good. You’re better off staying here and waiting on the doctor. We won’t be gone long. If all’s well, we’ll bring some of Seth’s folks back with us. Chances are Doc Bishop will be here and have everything under control by the time we get back.”
Seth stirred on the couch fitfully. “Got to fight … fight…”
“You don’t need to be fighting anyone,” I said.
I wouldn’t understand until later what he meant.
Carrying a couple of flashlights, a shotgun, a box of shells, and a wooden cigar box, Cecil shuffled into the room. The flashlights—bought on special at Radio Shack in West Plains—were heavy and grey, with red plastic bands encircling five-inch lenses. I flipped the switches on both a couple of times to test them out. One glowed brightly, but the other dimmed and brightened and dimmed once again to a fitful orange pall.
“Batteries are going dead in this one,” I said, knowing full well my cousin didn’t have any extras lying around. “We’ll save it for emergencies.”
A chill raced up my spine. I hoped we wouldn’t run afoul of anything even close to an emergency situation, but somehow I knew we would.
Jack cracked the 12-guage open and loaded it, stuffing the remaining shells into his pockets.
From the old cigar box I withdrew a 1934 Enfield .38 and a handful of bullets. The pistol had belonged to Cecil’s daddy, and to hear my own daddy tell it, had been involved in more than one sort of trouble during younger, rambunctious days. I flipped open the cylinder, loaded each chamber, and dropped the extra ammo into my shirt pocket.
The reflection of the shells glimmered in Sue’s eyes.
I nodded toward Seth. “Keep him warm if you can. If it looks like more trouble than we can handle, we’ll run on back as quick as we can. You’ll be all right here with Cecil.”
She offered my cousin another of her forced smiles.
“Do me a favor, will ya?” I pointed the shaft of the flashlight towards the card table. “Don’t let Cecil mess with those cards.”
“I won’t.” She smiled—a real smile this time. “Be careful.”
Jack opened the front door. “Looks like we’re the cavalry,” he said.
I grinned. “Some things never change.”
* * *
This is Spider Creek:
Only one major highway, slicing and winding through the long shadows of the Ozark foothills, passes anywhere close to town, and only a handful of paved roads branch off from the main stretch like tributaries, leading past the Tastee Freeze and Andy’s Bait & Tackle and the Outfitter Five-and-Dime before giving way to an overrun of dirt, milkweed, and wild onions. A “one horse town,” maybe, and that suits me just fine. Way back in high school, before I blew my knee out and my dreams of playing football for a big university dried up, I wanted to get away to some place bigger and better. In some ways, my bad knee might have been the best thing to ever happen to me. A big city would have chewed me up and spit me out like old chaw, and I needed time to realize just how good I had it in this sleepy little community. You can get one of the thickest cheeseburgers you’ve ever tasted, along with fried potatoes and onions, for less than four bucks at the Red Eye Diner. Neighbors—and we’re all neighbors—still have the common decency to wave when they pass you by, and most folks feel perfectly safe leaving doors unlocked and windows open at night. . Fishing’s good, and I’ve personally seen grizzled old fishermen pull fat, two-foot long catfish out of the river only to toss them back for “being too scrawny.” And on crystal clear evenings, dulcimer music echoes through the hills. No sir, I can’t imagine wanting to live anywhere else. May not be Heaven on Earth, but it’s about as close as you can get these days.
Except, of course, for the vampires.
* * *
Night gobbled up the last of the late afternoon sunlight.
We followed Crooked Hollow (Crook’d Holler, as the old-timers called it) past Brussell Branch and the Old Mill, heading to the Stubbs farm to find God-knew-what. The hollow had once been a meandering cave system, but the roof collapsed hundreds of years ago, before the first settlers stumbled upon what would eventually become Spider Creek. The whole area was riddled with sinkholes and cave systems, but Crooked Hollow was a snaking canyon through the woods, crossed every now and again by a natural bridge—leftover portions of the cave ceiling. Come a storm, rainwater flushed through the Hollow like whitewater rapids, but on a dry night only a narrow band of water trickled along the path. The hollow was the quickest route to the Stubbs place.
Dark caves lined the rock walls here and there, and some descending for miles.
The moon was a great red eye staring down on us.
A blood moon.
More omens.
Dead frogs jumping from a bucket. Blue jays on Friday. And now a plump, bright, full moon, glowing the pale red of homemade strawberry wine. Something bad was going to happen tonight, I realized. Something a helluva lot worse than the injuries inflicted upon Seth.
The Good Lord can be a mighty peculiar sonovabitch.
My fingers flexed on the extinguished flashlight in my right hand. We didn’t need the light—not yet—but I would have preferred pitch blackness to the harsh glow of the moon. Tucked into my jeans waste band, the pistol rubbed
against my thigh as I took a step. I was overly aware of the weight of the spare bullets in my pocket, the jangling sound of the casings clinking against one another. I hoped I wouldn’t need the weapon, but somehow knew I would.
A blood feud.
The Stubbs and Whately families had been at each other’s throats for as long as anyone could remember, and they still hated each other—from Zebulon Whatley, the eldest of his clan, right down to the youngest of the Stubbs children. A Stubbs baby popped out of his mama hating the Whatleys, and the Whatleys taught their brood from a young age how to fling rocks with cruel accuracy if a Stubbs wandered too close to their property. No one remembered how the feud started, probably not even the two families involved. Some say many years back the heads of each household had been good friends. But an argument over land, money, women, or—as the more outlandish stories held—the secret of making gold, set them against each other. Every now and again a story made the rounds about a Stubbs who chased a Whately with a wood axe or a Whately who peppered a Stubbs’ backside with rock salt.
The stale aftertaste of Cold Creek beer lingered in my mouth.
The Stubbs were a rowdy, troublemaking bunch, but the Whatelys—
Folks in these parts spoke of the Whatelys in hushed whispers.
“Them Whatelys,” my granddaddy told me once, “they got the witch’s touch, each and every one of them, and you don’t never want them to turn their wicked gaze towards you.”
According to local legend, the Whateleys ran naked in the woods, beating out strange tunes on deerskin drums, making animal sacrifices beneath the Old Gallows Tree on Summit Ridge, and meeting with the devil himself on pitch black nights.