by John Lutz
“Mr. Bonifield said it would be all right to speak with you,” he said, advancing on Wintone’s desk with an easy, long stride. “Craig Holt’s my name. I’m from Rothkin University, and I’m with the U.S. Government Phenomena Study Group.”
Wintone shook Holt’s extended hand, noting a dry, extrafirm grip. “I can guess what phenomenon you’re here to study,” he said.
Holt smiled his easy smile. “I’m not really a scientist or a reporter, Sheriff Wintone, more an investigator and journalist. Primarily, I’m interested in folklore and its origins and effects.”
The swivel chair squealed as Wintone leaned back. “You look on Bonegrinder as folklore?”
“Future folklore. Unless, of course, some very common explanation is found for the killings and mutilations.” He gazed over Wintone’s head thoughtfully. “But maybe folklore even then. It might well depend on people’s needs.”
“It might at that,” Wintone agreed.
“In any event, right now I regard Bonegrinder as a burgeoning fear-figure of Ozark legend, and I’m interested. In time I think Bonegrinder might surpass Old Wall-eyes as a fearful legend. I suppose you’ve heard of Old Wall-eyes.”
“Most everyone in these parts has,” Wintone said. “He ran on the ground like a horse only faster, with teacup-size whirlin’ eyes an’ a mouth that got bigger the more he ate. An’ he could swallow a horse. My old grandfather used to tell me about him, about how once a fella had to keep tossin’ meat out of a wagon to slow him down, then finally had to toss out one of his children in order to beat Old Wall-eyes home. There’s a hundred different stories, but that don’t necessarily mean I believe in Old Wall-eyes. Even as a boy I never believed in him.”
“Most of those stories in one form or another appear in almost every culture in almost every corner of the world,” Holt said. “Not that they’re true, but they must have a common basis rooted deep in the human psyche.”
“You’re the expert,” Wintone said, with only the barest trace of skepticism.
“Tell me about this mysterious track discovered near the Larsen boy’s body.”
Holt had identified himself with the government. Wintone knew he had to cooperate with him and might as well do it as pleasantly and painlessly as possible. “I can show you a plaster cast I made,” he said, rising from behind his desk. Holt seemed rather surprised at the sheriff’s size when Wintone moved toward the filing cabinets. Wintone got out the mud-stained white cast and laid it on the desk corner.
Holt leaned over the plaster form and studied it intently, turning it to survey it from all angles. “Large …” he muttered, “very large….” He straightened and looked at Wintone. “Any ideas?”
Wintone chuckled and sat back down behind his desk. “Sure. Either it ain’t a real animal track, or it was made by somethin’ nobody’s ever seen.”
Holt jerked his head slightly and appeared startled. “Not a real track? Surely you don’t suspect …”
“I don’t suspect nothin’ yet,” Wintone said. “I don’t know, an’ possibly I never will. You get used to acceptin’ the fact there are things you don’t know about if you live in these parts, Mr. Holt.”
“And superstition creeps into the vacuum left by that lack of knowledge.”
“That’s true everywhere,” Wintone said, “even at Rothkin University.”
Holt grinned. He pulled a shallow-bowled pipe from a pocket of his corduroy pants and began packing it with tobacco from a leather pouch. Then he began tapping his pockets with his fingertips as if sending some sort of signal code. Wintone tossed him a book of matches from the desk top.
“Is it always so hot in this area?” Holt asked from behind the cloud of smoke he was creating as he sucked noisily on the pipe stem.
“Has been so far this summer,” Wintone said. He was surprised to find that the burning tobacco gave off a rather pleasant, sweet scent. “Farmers are worryin’ about their crops, what with the heat an’ lack of rain.”
“The drought was a contributing factor to the forest fire up north,” Holt said, tossing the book of matches back onto the desk. “Horrible.”
“There’s some around here would disagree with you.”
“Oh?” Holt removed the pipe from his mouth, pointing it stem first at Wintone as if indicating it was his turn to speak.
“Most of the tourist trade was burned out up there,” Wintone said. “Business around here was boomin’ for some time like it never has. The Bonegrinder thing seemed to help draw people to the area. Until Claude Borne was killed.”
“He was the farmer?”
Wintone nodded.
“How do you explain the sudden departure of tourism, then?”
“People got more scared than curious.”
Holt puffed on his pipe and nodded. “Succinct and accurate. Would it be possible, Sheriff, for me to see your files on the Bonegrinder deaths?”
Wintone tapped a boot toe lightly against a leg of his desk. Since Holt represented the federal government, the sheriff knew he probably had no choice but to open his files. Then, too, he didn’t see what harm it could do. “You want to look things over now?” he asked.
“A cursory look,” Holt said. “If you don’t mind, I might have to check for some detail or other at a later date.”
Wintone rose and went again to the file cabinets. He pulled out the Larsen and Borne files and set them on the table by the wall. Chair legs scraped on the hardwood floor as Holt pulled a chair over to the table, nodded his thanks and sat down to hunch over the files.
“What about the Jenkins death?” he asked.
Wintone got him that file, too.
“You never can tell where you’re going to find pertinent bits of information,” Holt said around his pipe stem.
Wintone sat at his desk and busied himself while Holt pored over the files for the next forty-five minutes. Holt barely moved in his chair except to lift his right hand to rearrange the files’ contents. The sweet scent of the pipe-tobacco smoke had lost its pleasantness and was beginning to wear on Wintone, to create a vague hint of nausea that came and went.
“The kind of folktale that persists,” Holt said absently, still examining the files, “is invariably rooted in our primal fear, our childhood fantasies, perhaps a certain consciousness that we are born with translated into fear.”
“You see that possibility in Bonegrinder?”
“Very strongly.” Holt turned in his chair to face Wintone. “A thing risen from the water, from whence we came, our primitive selves, our own primal past come to claim us. The elements are there.”
“Elements of what?”
“Elements of fear, in all of us. Our instinctive fears are the strongest. Creatures of ancient oral literature are found in various forms in our literature today, both written and oral, in our fears. To greater or lesser degrees, Sheriff, all of us are afraid of the dark.”
Holt turned back to the files. Wintone knew that he was right, but he didn’t have to be so damned enthusiastic about it.
“I’m surprised the government is interested in something like this,” Wintone said.
“They’re not.”
“You’re here,” Wintone said to Holt’s back.
“The government has much the same attitude toward my work that they have toward investigating UFOs or ESP. They feel an obligation, need someplace to channel crackpot stories and awkward questions so they won’t have to deal with them direct. So they created this scantily financed and loosely organized agency. It has a name and an office so people think that something is being accomplished, that someone cares.”
“Seems to me you care.”
“Oh, I do. The agency cares. But they don’t want the agency to find anything; not really. They simply want us to exist, and not rock the boat. We’re looking for the truth; they’ll settle for anything just barely possible so that the matter can be dismissed.”
Holt closed the last file folder, stood up from his chair. “You mind if I come back later
and photograph these?” he asked, pointing to the files with his pipe stem. “It would save us both future bother.”
Wintone told himself that it didn’t matter. Practically everything in the files had found its way into the newspapers at one time or another. “Help yourself,” he said.
“Obliged.” Holt one-armed his wood chair to its previous position with another loud scraping sound. “I’m kind of curious about the conditions of the bodies. What do you remember about them?”
“They were badly tore up, each of them. The Larsen boy’s right leg was almost gone. Most of what I can remember of Claude Borne is blood, deep gashes across his body. You seen the autopsy reports in the files.”
“There are details that aren’t necessarily mentioned in autopsy reports.”
Wintone leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. “Doc Amis’d be the man to see about that. He’s the town doctor and the M. E. for this area.”
“I saw his office, low brick building near the edge of town.” Holt walked to the door, seemed to brace himself against going out into the heat. “I’m staying at Higgins’ Motel, in case you want to get in touch.” He smiled and opened the door.
“Obliged,” he said again, and was gone.
Wintone sat watching the blinds swing in a shorter and shorter arc until they stopped tapping the window frame. He didn’t know exactly what to make of Craig Holt.
He did know later that day that Holt had taken his advice about talking to Doc Amis. And apparently he’d done some talking to Sarah Ledbetter. Wintone saw them entering Turper’s Grill from where he was standing on the other side of the street, giving directions to some magazine writers from Saint Louis.
An hour later Wintone walked past Turper’s and happened to glance in and see them still sitting over coffee in one of the booths along the wall.
Holt was talking rapidly, tapping a long forefinger on the tabletop, and Sarah was leaning forward attentively with both hands around her coffee cup.
EIGHTEEN
WHEN HOLT DROVE SARAH home from Turper’s Grill that night, he drew her to him and kissed her as they sat in the Jeep in her gravel driveway. Sarah was expecting his move and returned the kiss, with definite promise.
Holt grinned at her, ran the backs of his knuckles along the side of her slender, warm neck. “To be continued indoors.”
“No,” Sarah said, “not on a few-hours-old acquaintanceship.” Her eyes shone in the feeble light. She wanted to take him inside the house with her, he could tell.
“Hell, Sarah, this isn’t twenty years ago.” He laughed to demonstrate that he was amused rather than angered at this quaint eccentricity of hers. And at this point he was amused.
“This is Colver, though,” she told him. A cricket began to chirp nearby as if in confirmation of her statement.
“You said you lived for six years in Kansas City. If we were there wouldn’t you invite me in?”
“If ducks had fur they wouldn’t need feathers.”
My God, Holt thought, she means it. Even though she could probably wring out her underpants. “I have a feeling you’re being evasive, Sarah,” he said mockingly.
“I guess that’s about the only feelin’ you’re gonna get.”
Holt shrugged in exaggerated hopelessness. She really was an old-fashioned girl, an anachronism. He was intrigued.
This was back country. Holt would bide his time, observe the ritual, if that was what it took. He kissed her again, feeling the eagerness and warmth of her lean body even as she pulled away from him. After she’d got out of the Jeep and walked up onto the porch of her frame home, he called a good night to her and started the engine.
On the third night, with a charming reluctance, she invited Holt inside. The interior of the small frame home was clean and faultlessly neat, and he realized that she’d probably cleaned house this morning or afternoon, knowing then she would give in this far to his advances.
They sat on a large and comfortable early-American sofa, sipping ready-mixed whiskey sours and watching the late news on television.
“It’s got to be a lonely life for you,” Holt said, “a small town like this.”
“Loneliness is somethin’ you get used to.”
“I don’t think so, Sarah. What made you return here from Kansas City?”
“I got involved with someone …”
“And it didn’t work out?”
“For him, not for me.”
Holt sipped his drink and settled back into the soft cushions. “Painful to talk about?”
Sarah smiled and shook her head. “I wish it was. But it wasn’t that deep.” She pointed toward the TV screen, where a violently gesticulating man was talking to a newscaster. “It was like that … like it was happenin’ to someone else an’ I was watchin’, uninvolved. An’ if I didn’t like what I saw, there was nothin’ I could do about it, no way to turn it off.”
“So you came back here … for what?”
“Sanctuary.”
“There’s one big problem with sanctuary,” Holt told her. “It becomes a bore.”
He moved closer to her, gliding his right hand along her thin shoulders. He would have to go slowly with her, not because she was cold or inexperienced. She simply required a certain courting procedure, a time-ordered sequence. In this country the pendulum seldom swung far in either direction, and it swung with the regularity of life and death. Maybe she knew what she was doing; he wanted her all the more for it.
Yet whatever had happened in Kansas City had changed her, made her frightened of herself. The vulnerability was there, had to be. Holt could always sense it. She was one of those women with a thin protective shell that needed only to be cracked, that would mend slowly if at all. She knew that as well as he did.
He pulled her to him and she leaned against him without resistance. Working his right arm down to the small of her back, he encircled her slender waist, inserted his hand beneath the front of her slacks, down the surprising smoothness of her stomach. He explored with the hand until he found her moisture, her warmth, her trust.
Holt decided his stay in Colver would be at least mildly interesting.
Sarah and Holt were seen together often as the days passed. They went for walks along the lake road, picnicked together, and Sarah introduced Holt to many of the townspeople so he could interview them about native superstition and folklore with his portable recorder.
Holt had a way of ingratiating himself with people, getting what he set out after with a minimum of fuss and bother for everyone concerned. And by telling him about Bonegrinder, the people in the Colver area seemed to talk out some of their fears into the recorder. Not only did they cooperate with Holt, sometimes they sought him out.
It became common to see Holt and Sarah having dinner together at one of the better restaurants on the main highway, and Wintone one sleepless three A.M. noticed Holt’s canvas-topped Jeep driving the route from the small, yellow frame house where Sarah lived to Higgins’ Motel.
Wintone shouldn’t have been concerned with the Sarah-Holt relationship, but he was. He tried to analyze what he felt. Vague stirrings of what? Jealousy?
He was stunned by the idea, then appalled.
NINETEEN
“NOW THIS IS POSITIVE action,” Mayor Boemer said, slapping down a quarter-folded newspaper on Wintone’s desk. “Have you seen this issue of the Call?”
“Not as yet,” Wintone said. He picked up the local newspaper, the Clarion Call, and his eyes fixed on the black print that shared the headline space: LOCAL MAN OFFERS $10,000 REWARD FOR BONEGRINDER.
Winton read on to learn that Baily Howe, “described by some as a wealthy eccentric,” had put up the reward for the body, dead or alive, of the thing known as Bonegrinder.
Howe was eccentric or crazy, however you happened to view it. His family had made a fortune in lumber, and he’d inherited it all at an early age and misused it as it multiplied. He was a dilettante scientist in several often-unrelated fields. About six years ag
o he had indulged in what were said to be bizarre ESP experiments at his rambling and luxurious split-log home, some five miles out of Colver atop a tall bluff overlooking a green valley.
After the ESP experiments Howe had suddenly departed on a South African safari which he’d financed to investigate rumors of some living link with primitive man. What he’d returned with was a mild venereal disease and a penchant for expensive firearms. He had bought a huge parcel of land near Hawk Point and opened a gun club, where the regional skeet-shooting tournaments were held, and where it was said that for a fee almost anything could be hunted.
“That goddamn Baily Howe!” Wintone said.
Boemer appeared astounded. “You should thank him for what he’s done. We can be confident now that this thing’ll be resolved. If nothing’s turned up within a few weeks people’ll feel it’s safe to come here again, an’ if by chance some miscreation is destroyed people’ll know they’re safe.”
“The only thing likely to be killed is people,” Wintone said. “Do you know how many screwballs an’ otherwise are gonna be crawlin’ all over an’ around this part of the lake? All greedy for ten thousand dollars an’ armed with who knows what? I can tell you it’ll be too many, an’ it’ll be dangerous.”
“You’re exaggeratin’,” Mayor Boemer said, “becomin’ overalarmed.” But he didn’t appear too sure of his words.
That evening there were a few boats in view on the lake from where Wintone stood overlooking the mouth of Lynn Cove. The setting sun distorted the flat plane of water, laying shimmering changes of light and color along its surface. Heat lingered in the calm, humid air, and there was a stillness about the lake that seemed somehow to emanate from below.
Wintone squinted into the angled light to make out the nearest boat, drifting in glimmering hues of red and green. There were two men in the boat, and Wintone saw that they weren’t fishing. They were sitting patiently, cradling high-powered rifles.
The sheriff found himself wishing it would rain, or that the heat would break. Anything to change the pattern of madness that seemed to grip the area. As he watched, a large bird, possibly a hawk, passed near the boat but high over the lake. The man in the stern of the boat raised his rifle and a shot cracked like an echoing hammer blow across the flat lake water. The bird changed direction and winged toward the opposite shore.