by Ninie Hammon
Rebecca Mason and her daughters, Melanie, and Marianne, had been killed in the fire that consumed their stately home on a hundred acres of prime bottom land in Nate’s Creek Hollow. John Mason had been away at the time. The best it could be determined, the fire had started in the wall next to the chimney — not an uncommon occurrence in houses with fireplaces if the chimneys were not kept scrupulously cleared of creosote.
It had turned out to be an unseasonably cold night in early September, and Rebecca had started a fire in the fireplace. John had not yet cleaned out the chimneys, the creosote buildup had caught fire, and the fire had spread through a crack in the bricks into the wall of the upstairs bedroom.
John Mason had been utterly devastated by his loss, and had built a stone edifice with a statue of the Virgin Mary on top and steps leading down into the … crypt, tomb … burial chamber below, where the bodies lay entombed in side-by-side chambers with names inscribed.
There was a space between the stonework in which the bodies where interred and the back wall of the burial chamber. It was warm in the winter, cool in the summer, dry all year round and one of Fish’s favorite home-away-from-homes in the county.
He kept a sleeping bag there that he’d been given by Lester Peetree. The last time he had spent the night in that particular abode, he taken four bottles of wine and a bottle of whiskey down into the dark confines with him, had drunk all the wine and passed out. But the whiskey was still there, or so Fish’s memory assured him, gleaning that information from fuzzy images, like out-of-focus photographs.
It was the only place he’d ever left booze — since it was safe there. Nobody ever went down there. John Mason had married again later in life and had two children, but they had grown up and moved away, and there was nobody left to mourn Rebecca and little girls.
And then Fish was there. He had been walking down the street in Persimmon Ridge and then he was crossing the cattle grate beneath the archway that said Cherry Blossom Acres into the cemetery. He had no memory of the miles in between. Perhaps his sharp mind was not as razor-edged as he’d thought.
Well, it was about to become even more blunted.
Fish crossed the cemetery to the back corner, walking in the lanes that had been laid out with stepping stones between the graves. He wouldn’t walk on someone’s grave.
There was no door on the stone building beneath the gigantic Mary, just stone steps leading down into the room below where the three bodies were encased in their own chambers. There were dried leaves on the stone steps and the crunching sound they made under Fish’s feet had an oddly ominous sound. He had never been creeped out by the fact that he chose to make a nest and sleep in a building with three white-boned skeletons, but he felt a chill down his spine now.
The only light was what little filtered in through the doorway. In the dim interior, Fish went around to the back side of the stone structure that held the entombed caskets, knelt in the cool darkness of the alcove and felt around for …
Yes, there it was. His eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness, but he didn’t need to see it to know that the bottle was almost full.
Letting out a sigh of relief — it might not have been there, you know! — and resignation, he sat down with his back against the wall, opened the bottle and gulped a drink, felt the fiery liquid warm him all the way down.
He hadn’t even taken a second swallow when he heard the voices outside.
Chapter Four
“What’s the matter with you, Neb?” Obie asked as the three brothers got out of Obie’s new black pickup truck. “You’s grouchy as a bobcat with a boil on its butt.”
“Essie’s dead,” Neb cried, hadn’t meant to say it like that, but he didn’t seem to have no control over how he said things, not since yesterday when he had looked down at Essie lying on her back on the porch in a growing puddle of her own blood.
And he had to keep it together, had to be careful what he said, he couldn’t just blurt something out and then everybody’d know.
“I know she’s dead,” Obie said. “It’s a pure D shame for a fact, but you ain’t acting sad. You acting pissed off.”
“Naaa, he’s actin’ scared,” Zach said.
Neb froze, averted his eyes so the other two couldn’t see. He’d never imagined his brothers was smart enough to pick up on a thing like that, on how he was acting about Essie’s death. Wasn’t neither one of them the sharpest knives in the drawer and Neb was both surprised and frightened that they’d figured it out. They was just makin’ conversation without even knowing they’d stumbled on the truth of it.
He was pissed. And he was scared, too. Way more scared than pissed.
He was pissed that it had happened at all. Like you get mad at yourself when you get caught sneaking off to smoke weed instead of tending to the garden like Mama said. You knew you hadn’t ought to do a thing like that, knew Mama always caught them when they didn’t get their chores done, so you’s mad at yourself for not listening to yourself when you’d thought better of it and almost didn’t go.
He was mad at himself like that now. Why’d he have to go practicing shooting in the front yard, for crying out loud? There Essie was, sitting on the porch, big as life, except now she wasn’t alive anymore, she was dead. He shoulda stayed in the backyard to practice. But really wasn’t his fault because she wasn’t happy nowhere but the front porch and wouldn’t come out to the back. It scared her. And he had to stay close to her — being alone scared her, too.
Still, he shoulda known better.
Of course, he couldn’t rightly be blamed for what happened because how was he to know the trigger pull on that Colt .45 was so loose? Who’d a thunk a thing like that? Revolvers always had stiff triggers — unless you cocked them first — because the trigger had to do all the work of pulling the hammer back. Them kinds of guns was hard to aim right because it took so much strength just to pull the trigger you was like to yank the gun barrel off the target. How was he supposed to know this gun was different? Wasn’t his fault.
That’s what he was mad about — for not having the sense not to practice in the front yard and at that trigger that pulled light when it wasn’t supposed to.
But he was way, way more scared than he was mad. If Mama found out …
He hadn’t never in all his years on the earth seen anybody look like Mama looked when she told Malachi yesterday that she was gonna find out who done it and make them pay.
What would she do if she knew it was him? Would she shoot him? Might be she would. Mama always favored Essie over the boys — well, all except Malachi — took up for her against the boys. But that didn’t happen very often because Essie never gave nobody no trouble, not Mama nor her brothers neither. She was like … kinda like a puppy, wagging its tail and just being happy and not causing no trouble for anybody.
Yeah, if Mama knew, she might shoot Neb. Or …
He couldn’t even imagine or what else. But it’d be awful, that’s for sure. He sure as Jackson didn’t want to find out.
“Yeah, I’m mad. Course I’m mad. Ain’t you mad? Somebody shot Essie, just drove by the house and bam, blew her away. Poor little Essie, wouldn’t hurt a fly — don’t that make you mad?”
“Sure it does,” Zach said, but he didn’t sound like he was mad. “Only you’re acting … I don’t know. Funny, that’s all. Like you’s scared Mama was coming after you ‘stead of whoever shot Essie.”
Neb whirled on Zach.
“I ain’t scared of no such thing. Don’t you say a thing like that or I’ll bust you in the mouth. You take it back.”
Obie stepped in between them, shoving Zach one way and Neb the other.
“Knock it off. Ain’t got time for fooling around. We got to fill up our tanks and go cruising.”
Mama had said she wanted all three of the boys to fill up the tanks on their vehicles and drive all over the county showing folks how they had plenty of gas. Neb’d had no idea Big Ed had fixed hisself up his own private gas station, but it was j
ust like Mama to know a thing like that and take advantage of it. Big Ed musta been out of town on J Day ‘cause he wasn’t home when they went out there before sunup to fill up. Mama’d let Neb take Howie Witherspoon’s Dodge after all, and Howie’s house was on the way to Big Ed’s.
“Don’t it strike you odd that Big Ed was gone but all his cars was there and his pickup, too?” Zach said.
Obie elbowed Neb in the ribs. “‘Pears little brother ain’t figured it out that Mama got rid of Big Ed.”
“How you know that?”
“I just know Mama.”
The boys had crossed the cemetery to the Mason family’s tomb-thing, or whatever it was called, and Neb looked up into the stone eyes of the Virgin Mary standing guard on the top.
“I don’t like this business,” he said miserably.
“What — you scared of ghosts?”
“It ain’t about being scared, you moron. It’s about not wanting to open up a grave. You know how … gross that’s gonna be?”
“Oh, no it ain’t. All the gross part’s over by now. Ain’t gonna be nothing in these boxes ‘cept bones. You got the crowbar?”
The three men went down the concrete steps into the cool interior of the vault.
“Mama said to open up the one marked Rebecca,” Obie said. “She was a grown woman and the boxes they put them little girls in might be too small to fit Essie.”
“It don’t feel right,” Neb said. “Throwin’ out somebody’s bones and putting Essie’s body in their place. I don’t want to get buried in a borrowed grave.
“We ain’t borrowin’ it, big brother,” Obie said. “We stealing it. Mama said she was gonna get somebody to change the names, so it says Tackett instead of Mason. You best get used to it because this is where you’re gonna be laid out when you die.”
“The Nower House. The Mason family’s grave. It don’t feel right.”
“Bobby Griffith’s ‘Vette, Earl Jackson’s pickup, and now Howie Witherspoon’s Dodge,” Zach scoffed. “Them’s ours. We took ‘em. Things b’long to whoever can keep ‘em, and they couldn’t.”
Neb didn’t say anything else. Now he just wanted to open this grave up, get the bones out and get out of here.
Obie worked the end of the crowbar into the crack of the little doorway to the box where the bones of Rebecca Mason lay.
“How many you think it’ll take?” he said as he worked.
“Take to what?”
“How many people you think Mama’s gonna have to shoot before somebody comes forward and admits they killed Essie?”
Neb felt like he might throw up.
“Might take a right smart lot of them. You gonna have to threaten to shoot somebody who knows who done it — scare ‘em into giving the shooter up. You might have to kill a lot of people ‘fore you get the right one.”
Neb suddenly turned and made for the steps, rushed up out of the tomb and upchucked his breakfast into the grass.
He leaned against the building panting, his eyes watering.
“You alright up there?” Obie called out.
“Just get the job done and don’t worry about me.”
He refused to go back down into the tomb, not even when they said they needed his help to pry open the final door to get to the box. He stood right where he was when they come back up the steps with the black plastic leaf bag full of bones.
“What’re we gonna do with these?” Obie asked.
“Throw ‘em out the car window,” Zach suggested. He grinned. “See if you can hit one of them Do Not Litter signs.”
The others headed back toward the truck but Neb stood where he was, leaned against the rock building. They was throwing away somebody’s bones, then they was gonna bring Essie here and stick her in that box, and after that Mama was gonna start shooting people. And all of it was his fault.
“I didn’t mean to,” he said aloud, choking back tears. “As God is my witness, it was an accident.”
He turned and started for the truck. Maybe after it was all over, he’d come here and put flowers on Essie’s grave. Real regular like. Maybe every week, he’d bring her flowers.
Yeah, he’d do that.
He noticed as he walked across the graves back to the truck parked by the entrance how isolated and still the cemetery was. It’d be a great place to practice his quick draw.
Fish listened to the Tackett boys outside the building, and to Zach and Obie when they came down the steps inside. Viola Tackett would never cease to amaze him. She was even stealing a grave for her daughter.
But the shock of that revelation was quickly eclipsed by the horror of what the men discussed next.
Fish didn’t know the specifics of what was going on but it wasn’t hard to figure out the gist of it. Somebody had shot Essie, drove by the house and shot her, and Viola was determined to find the shooter. She must have called a county meeting, summoned everybody from the four corners of Nowhere County to assemble them in once place so she could catch the murderer.
But how she intended to do it … staggering.
“How many people you think Mama’s gonna have to shoot before somebody comes forward and admits they killed Essie?”
“Might take a right smart lot of them. You gonna have to threaten to shoot somebody who knows the one done it — to make them give the shooter up. You might have to kill a lot of people to do that.”
Could that really mean Viola Tackett intended to just … just randomly shoot people, one after the other, until somebody confessed they’d done it or fingered the person who did.
Even Viola Tacket …
No, that was not outside the realm of what that woman was capable of.
She had known Dylan Shaw didn’t kill his grandmother. Fish had stood right in front of her and confessed, told her he had accidentally killed Martha Whittiker when she caught him stealing booze. Viola knew that boy was innocent. But she hanged him anyway. Killed, murdered an innocent teenager because …
Yeah, why?
Fish didn’t have any idea what the reason could be but he did know it was useless to try to understand the workings of a mind as depraved as hers.
Shoot one person after another.
Fish was grateful he was already sitting because he would have fallen down at that revelation if he’d been standing up.
Then they’d broken open the crypt, taken the bones and put them in a garbage bag and hauled them away, leaving Fish sitting in silence in his little nest in the darkness.
What should he do? What could he do?
Well, one thing he couldn’t do … he looked at the bottle of whisky from which he had already taken a lone swallow, the bottle every fiber of his being was demanding he lift to his lips again and swallow more and more, feel the burning liquid slide down his throat and the blessed fuzziness cloud his thinking.
But he couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t. He rose to his feet and with trembling fingers, turned the bottle upside down and started to pour out the contents on the floor. A small amount splashed around his feet before he yanked the bottle upright again, panting.
Fine, then … he’d put the cap on and set it right back where he’d found it. Then he could come back. If he got desperate enough, he could come back.
But right now he had to focus on what to do. Warn people. Get help. Something!
Then he heard a voice from above. One of the Tacketts … it was Neb … was still there, had remained behind. Fish froze.
“I never meant no harm,” Fish heard Neb whisper, his voice anguished. “As God is my witness, I done it on accident.”
Then he heard footsteps as Neb hurried away.
Didn’t mean to. An accident.
The full understanding slammed down on Fish like a wrecking ball, hit him in the chest. The knowing and understanding of it almost knocked him to his knees in the little puddle of whisky by his shoe. If anybody on the planet knew how it felt to … to be responsible for the death of somebody, to kill someone by accident, it was Holmes Fischer, knew
it in his guts, in his bones. In his very soul.
He heard that feeling in Neb Tackett’s voice, was attuned to it, his own guilt reaching out to touch the same sensation in another.
Neb had killed someone. It’d been an accident, but he had taken a life. Fish would have bet his own life on that. And who else could it be?
Neb Tackett had killed his little sister. And now their mother was intent on killing one person after another until she found the killer. Which meant … would she really keep killing and killing and …?
In the opinion of Holmes Fischer, she absolutely would.
Fish had to find help.
The Middle of Nowhere! He had to get to there, tell Sam and Malachi and Charlie. They’d know what to do.
Chapter Five
Shep. It’s time.
Shepherd Clayton’s head snapped up, but he didn’t look around like he done at first, trying to see who’d called his name. He knew now it was Abby, though she didn’t sound in his head no more like she done at first, when he first sat in their wrecked house off Sawmill Lane in Poorfolk Hollow, listening to the whispers. Then she’d just sounded like Abby, a voice like little bells ringing. Of course, then, she just told Shep what she thought about things, and suggested what she thought he’d ought to do about them.
Wasn’t that way no more, though. The voice didn’t sound like Abby at all, though it was Abby, had to be, who else could it be? And the voice didn’t just say that Shep might oughta do a thing. The voice was in charge now. It had taken over Shepherd Clayton as surely as somebody shoving the driver out of his seat and driving off with the bus. Shepherd done whatever the voice said to do. Mostly, he didn’t even talk no more, Shep didn’t. Wasn’t no need. The voice spoke out his mouth, said things as if it was Shep talking but it wasn’t. He was just along for the ride.