Evil Never Dies

by Mick Ridgewell

  "None of those four protested the claim that three men they knew to be dead and buried walked into town," Roland said.

  "Bingo," Patricia said, reaching across the coffee table and slapping him on the knee.

  It was a gesture of recognition, but Roland took no glee in the praise he received. Roland's gaze had drifted to the same window he earlier witnessed Patricia staring through. The scenery had grown no more remarkable over the short time since she had fixed on it. Roland needed a moment, and the summer sky invited him in.

  Chapter 15

  "Daddy didn't return home until well past midnight. Mother and I went to bed around 10:00 p.m. like we always did, but I couldn't sleep, and I don't think Mother got a wink either. Not until Daddy was home safe."

  "Did he say what happened?"

  "Not that night," Patricia said. "We, Mother and I, didn't let on that we were still awake. Daddy walked past my closed door, and it took all the willpower I could muster not to run out and throw my arms around him. I suspected that whatever he had been through that night weighed on him something awful, so I stayed in bed. And I heard not a peep from him when he closed their bedroom door behind him, so I knew that Mother was feigning sleep also."

  The room had gone suddenly dark. Roland and Patricia looked to the window. The odds of the clouds moving to block out the sun, just as Patricia's tale and mood turned morose, seemed more than coincidence to Roland. He walked over to the window to investigate the source of the gloom.

  "Looks like rain," he said.

  She didn't rise to check herself. She didn't even bother to look out the window from her seat.

  "It'll blow over before you know it."

  "You're a meteorologist, too?" he teased.

  "Sonny, when you have seen as many days as I have, you get a feel for what mother nature is going to send your way. Those clouds out there are just hanging around to give us a little mood lighting."

  Roland shrugged, pulled the curtain back where it was and returned to his seat. "Did your father talk about it the next day?"

  "Daddy didn't, he kept things tight to the vest if you know what I mean. Bill, the stableman, on the other hand, was a bit of a gossip," she said with a giggle.

  "You went and pumped him for information?"

  "I sure as hell didn't need to prime that pump. Once that man got talking, there was no stopping him. He told me about the men, meeting at the church. That the three strangers were seen in town. They hunted those men all night. Not even Wilf Durham's bloodhounds could get a trail on them. So do you know what those men did?"

  "They dug up the grave in the woods," Roland said without a moment's hesitation. "To prove to themselves that it wasn't the same men."

  Patricia gave an exaggerated nod. "Exactly. They all thought the graves had looked disturbed, but it was in the woods. It's hard to say what kind of animal might have pawed around in the fresh-dug ground."

  "You're going to tell me it was empty, aren't you? The grave I mean."

  She nodded her head the same way. "Of course, it was a lot easier to dig up, being a fresh grave, so it didn't take them any time at all. Do you know what the odd thing was about that grave? Aside from the corpses being missing, that is."

  Roland shrugged. He was getting a feel for this tale, but he couldn't think of anything that could be considered odd. Digging up a fresh grave to find it empty had to be near the top of the oddity scale. What could they possibly have found to rival that?

  "Everything in that hole that should have been alive was dead. The bugs, worms, and ants littered the soil like tiny little corpses. The things that should have been dead were strolling around like they were going to the town meeting, while every manner of crawling thing in that hole was stone cold dead. A great shiver ran down Bill's spine when he told me that. I thought he was shining me on until I saw the way he shivered. Bill was scared, and frightened people don't try to shine you on."

  "You believed his story?" he said.

  "Not at first. My whole life, Bill had been around. He was so full of stories that the other hands would respond with 'Sure Bill,' whenever they thought someone was spinning a yarn. So, at first, I thought he might just be making light of a dark scene. I could tell early on that he was telling the truth this time. That poor man had terror in his eyes. You can't fake that kind of fear."

  "Patricia," Roland said, "I know that people are not inclined to leave their every possession, but it seems to me that when things begin to go south that fast, it's time to get out of Dodge."

  "What you have to keep in mind young man, is this all took place a hundred years ago. There was but one road out of town, and it wasn't much of a road. It cut right through some heavily forested land. For fifty miles, towering trees lined the road on both sides."

  "But if they left first thing in the morning," he reasoned.

  "There weren't many cars in Kings Shore in 1912. Two, maybe three if you count the truck thing they had at the mill. Everyone else was still traveling by horse and wagon. Fifty miles was a two-day journey at best. Not to the next town, mind you. That would only get you by the forest and into some open ground."

  "Which means they would have had to spend the night out there," he said.

  "Exposed to them."

  Patricia nodded, adding, "We didn't know until much later that those demons only came out at night. So in the beginning, the people were just as frightened about traveling in the daylight."

  "When did you find out about their aversion to sunlight?"

  That brought a grin to the old woman's face, removing some of the years that seemed to have grown there over the past few days. She flipped open her journal, smoothed out the pages, and took a drink of lemonade.

  Roland emptied his glass, refilled it, sipped again, and waited for her to read from the book.

  Patricia's Journal—Monday, June 17, 1912

  The men from town caught one of the strangers. One of the men they had buried in the woods. There was no celebration with the man's apprehension. While this one was secured, the other two got hold of Bill and dragged him off before he could be rescued.

  They thought to bring the stranger to the jail. The search for Bill begins in the daylight.

  It was dawn when they led the stranger across the common to the jail.

  They say that as soon as the sun's rays touched the stranger's skin, he screamed like an animal. His face and hands blistered, and his skin started to smoke. The demon man fell to the ground, writhing and screaming.

  They told me he burst into flames right there on the ground.

  When he finished burning, nothing remained but a stain on the ground. No ash, no bones, just blackened earth.

  Chapter 16

  Patricia had grown tired, leaving Roland to fend for himself. He didn't feel right rummaging through her fridge, so he got in his car and headed for town. While he drove, he rewound the tape in his recorder and pushed Play.

  Patricia's strained voice filled the silence with ominous dread. He had already heard her tell this part, but hearing it again enclosed in the car, her words had nowhere to go but into his brain. Whatever doubt Roland was hanging onto for the sake of his peace of mind slipped away.

  At dawn, every able-bodied man in town went into the woods searching for Bill. They started at the place where the two demon men dragged him off. More than fifty men and a dozen boys who were no more than fifteen went into the woods to find Bill.

  They fanned out, working their way into the forest. It was painstakingly slow. At noon, they took their lunch on the shore of Cornatha Creek. They found one of Bill's boots in the beginning of the search, but that was all.

  After lunch, the search party proceeded east in single file, then made their way back to the start. By then some women folk had brought dinner. Some ate on wagons, others just sat on the ground. Not like today where people tote lawn chairs everywhere they go.

  There was only time left for a quick circumference search adjacent to the starting point, and then ev
erybody rushed home. Funny seeing so many grown people rush home as though they were afraid of the dark. Of course, it wasn't the dark that scared them. It was what lurked in the shadows of those trees. By now, everyone had dropped the pretense of an illness.

  Demons were living in Kings Shore as sure as the sun would drop below the horizon after dusk. In another month, we would normally be looking forward to the sunset, to get relief from the heat of the day. Nobody had air conditioning, remember. That spring we would have welcomed hot, humid days without any sunset.

  It was just before ten when a knock came on the door. Daddy was home, but he was exhausted from the search, so I went to answer the door. He yelled for me to stop. I was so frightened I almost made water in my knickers. Daddy had never yelled at me, not ever.

  I looked to him wide-eyed and frightened. My heart was pounding in my chest, and my head went a bit fuzzy. Daddy ran at me. I backed away, but when he got close, I didn't see anger in his eyes. It was fear. I had never seen fear on that man's face until that night.

  He looked through the sidelight, then told me to fetch his scattergun. It was a heavy old thing. I was a grown woman, and I could barely lift it. Daddy took it in one hand, pulled back the hammer and called through the door.

  "Who's there?" he said.

  Nobody answered. We heard some odd scratching, like a cat or maybe a raccoon trying to get in.

  "I'm armed," Daddy called through the door.

  Scritch, scritch, scritch, on the wooden door. All the doors were made of heavy wood. Not like the steel things they put on houses now. Daddy pushed his face against the sidelight trying to see who was on the other side.

  Just when he began to tell me there was nobody there, I saw him through the window. It was Bill. At least it was what used to be Bill. All the humor was gone from his face. He stood by the window, staring at me. When Daddy came to see what I was looking at, Bill disappeared.

  I told him Bill was out there. I thought Daddy would rush outside to welcome his old friend back, but he just pushed the curtain aside and, crouching, he looked out into the dark. He looked left and right and down. No Bill.

  I screamed again, and when Daddy saw what I was screaming at, he fell on his backside. Bill's face was looking down on us from the top of the window. He was upside down. His eyes were black holes, like his eyeballs had been replaced by big black pearls. Seeing him hanging like that made me remember the story Mrs. McKinney told me about Timmy Wilson crawling around the side of the house like a spider.

  Daddy raised the gun, pointing it right at Bill's head.

  "Daddy," I said. "It's Bill."

  "No, darling girl," he said. "That thing just looks like Bill."

  Daddy pulled the trigger, and Bill's head exploded. Oh, how my ears hurt when that gun fired. My hands sprang up to suppress the sound, but of course, it was much too late for that.

  I saw Bill's body drop. It fell like a stone to the garden below the window. I stood there, hands over my ears, screaming. Screaming and crying. I didn't know until that moment how much I loved that silly old man. Bill was like the uncle I never had.

  Daddy hollered at me to go to my room. I refused.

  He said, "Fine, girl. If you're going to be around, then you will have to help. The first thing you need to do is stop crying. There will be plenty of time for that later for both of us." I don't mind saying, that stopped my crying right then and there. I had never considered ever seeing Daddy cry.

  I could never have imagined what he meant by help. I followed him outside, and he went right to Bill's body. I was horrified and wanted to look away. But I could no more look away than I could stop breathing. I used to sit on that man's knee and listen to him tell stories. Now he lay in what remained of the spring tulips, minus his head anyway.

  Daddy handed me the gun and the lantern that I hadn't even noticed him carrying, then he took hold of Bill's ankles and dragged him across the lawn. Daddy was a big strong man, but by the time he got around behind the barn, he was exhausted. He dropped Bill's feet to the ground, and rested with his hands on his knees, gasping for breath.

  I never would have believed Daddy capable of what came next. He took the lantern from my hand and tossed it down on the body. Nothing happened at first. It didn't break, so the grotesque sight was illuminated in a macabre eeriness.

  Daddy raised the gun again and said, "Lord forgive me," and fired one round at the lantern. The lamp oil sprayed all over, and Bill turned into a hideous bonfire spewing acrid black smoke.

  Roland paused the player. He stopped at the intersection of Maple and Divine and stared at the flashing red light on the recorder.

  "Jesus, Patricia," Roland said to the empty car. "How the hell did you ever live with this all these years and stay sane?" He pushed Play to resume listening.

  You can't imagine the heat. The flame in the lamp was a bright shade of yellow and orange. The searing heat coming from Bill's corpse glowed white. The black smoke spewing up from those white flames was preternatural.

  The fire roared like a blow torch until it nearly burned out. Once the flames and smoke cleared away, all that remained was a scorched stain on the ground.

  The story Bill told me about the stranger catching fire and the mark left on the ground afterward made me miss the old man right then. I looked down at the blackened earth, and I swear I heard his voice saying, "There was nothing left but a black stain on the ground."

  Daddy saw the tears on my cheek and said, "It's as good a time to cry as there ever was."

  I looked up to see tears in Daddy's eyes. Not before, and not after did I ever see tears in Daddy's eyes.

  Chapter 17

  Roland spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening going over the previous tapes. He sat at the small desk in his room at the B&B, his laptop open and his voice recorder ready. He would listen to a passage, pause, type notes into his computer, then continue. He tried his best to fill in the blanks from the sessions he forgot to record.

  He emailed the copy and photos of the fluff piece on Patricia's 120th birthday and requested a two-week vacation. He didn't anticipate any problem with the request since the network still owed him three weeks carryover from the previous year.

  He would spend the two weeks with Patricia. He would get her story, and write a novel. He could never sell it as a memoir. As nonfiction, it could only find a home in the rags that print stories of alien autopsies, and women who claim to have had sex with Bigfoot.

  He would change the names and places to protect the innocent, or guilty. To maintain copyright, of course, and ensure that he didn't have to share the proceeds with the Patricia Owens estate. He didn't want to be crass, but she was 120, and at the rate of her decline in the few days since meeting her, he had his doubts that she would live to see the book in print.

  Roland returned to the old house just after 7:30 p.m. Patricia was sitting on the porch. On the table beside her sat a pitcher and two glasses. Roland gave her a wave, and she returned it with a smile, the smile from a few days earlier. The rest had miraculously restored her to a degree. She hadn't captured the vibrancy of the day Roland first met her, but she had the look of a much younger woman than the person he left earlier in the day. Her smile betrayed the improved appearance, however. Roland saw through her bravado somehow. He saw a smile, not of happiness but of deceit. Patricia was trying to convince him that all was well, but her eyes conveyed the truth and Roland began to worry more than ever that she was ill, and with a woman her age every illness is life-threatening.

  Roland cared for this old woman. He liked her as a person and respected her bravery more than he had anyone.

  "Did you rest well?" he asked her.

  "I did," she said, her smile widening a bit.

  "I sent off your birthday story to the network along with some pictures. I hope you don't mind."

  "That is why you came, isn't it?"

  "It was," he said. "I came to get the birthday story, I stayed to get your story."

&n
bsp; "Of course, dear boy, do sit," she said, motioning to the other chair. "Pour yourself a glass of tea."

  Roland filled his glass, topped up Patricia's and settled in beside her.

  "You say you are staying?" she asked.

  "I asked for two weeks off."

  "Did you," she said. It could have been a question, but Roland understood it for the statement it was meant to be. What he heard in her words was, "I knew you would not leave without the whole story."

  "Do you think you can put up with me for a while longer?" he asked.

  "I have to admit," she said. "I am surprised. I thought after today's talk you would have left thinking I was either crazy, senile or fiendish."

  "Or all of the above," he said with a wink and a grin.

  She shrugged, sipped her tea but said nothing.

  Roland looked down at the tray with the pitcher and two glasses on it. "Are you expecting another guest or was it that obvious that I would be back?"

  "Well," she said with a grin. "I had some doubts you would return, but I was very much hoping you would. Truth be told, my doubts were quite small."

  The sun sitting low in the sky cast long shadows. Patricia stood, picked up her journal and said, "Let's go around back for a bit." It was the first time he had been in the back of the house. The entire backyard was shaded by the big house at this time of day. The leaves on the big sycamore hung limp in the still air. It was a warm evening; Roland wore a short-sleeved polo and cargo shorts. Patricia had her typical flowery dress, but tonight she had also put on a grey cable-knit cardigan.

  The sweater in this heat was one more thing to convince Roland that Patricia wasn't doing as well as she claimed. The porch behind the house sported the same furnishings as the front. Wicker chairs, divided by a matching table. He set the tray down and helped her into her seat.