Katy climbed onto the narrow access door, then began jumping, staying hunched so she wouldn’t bump her head on the joists. She couldn’t look away from that headless figure, the woman whose place Katy had taken in the Smith House, even though the scurrying was on all sides and shapes wriggled in the eaves.
On the fourth jump, the door gave way and she plummeted into space, the scythe falling from her hand as she bounced off the shelves in the linen closet and tumbled into the upstairs hall.
As the world went gray, the staccato scurrying continued above her, and beyond that, as soft as lamb’s breath, came the whispering stroke of a hair brush through ethereal tresses.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“What’s wrong, Mom?” Jett asked
“I fell.” Katy stood at the sink, rinsing her hands. She had a cut on her chin and one eye was bruised and puffy.
“Good Lord, Katy, how could you get hurt cleaning house?” Gordon said.
“I was in the attic.”
Gordon glared at her, almost owlish with his beard and glasses and sinister, prey-hunting eyes. “I didn’t give you permission. We have valuable antiques and family heirlooms up there.”
“I’m part of the family now.”
“You’re not a Smith yet. You’ve still got too much Logan in you.”
“Where’s Mark?” Katy asked Jett. Her head throbbed. The image of the headless Rebecca at the mirror still haunted her, as if the image had seared itself against the plate of her forehead.
“Gone back to minding his own business,” Gordon said. “We don’t need any outsiders. We take care of our own in Solom.”
“I saw the clothes,” Katy said. “And the scythe.”
“What are you talking about?”
“From the Scarecrow Man.”
“The scarecrow is out there hanging on the wall. Where it always is.”
“No, it’s not,” Jett said. “I told Dad about it. You guys don’t believe me, but he does.”
“That’s enough of this foolishness.” Gordon grabbed Jett’s wrist and pulled her toward the front door. “Come on, you two. I’ll show you the scarecrow is just a sack of rags and straw, not some sinister, evil creature.”
“Let her go, Gordon,” Katy said.
Jett tried to struggle free, but Gordon was too strong and heavy. He tugged her outside, Katy right behind them. The fence gate was open. Katy wondered where the goats were. The barn door was open, too, afternoon sunlight boring through the gap and painting the dirt floor in patches of amber. The rich smell of manure and hay filled the air. The chickens clucked uneasily in their nests.
Jett gave up resisting and allowed herself to be guided into the barn. Katy wondered what Jett had told Mark. She couldn’t believe Mark would just drive away after hearing such strange tales. But Mark had always believed what he wanted to believe, despite pleas or evidence. He lived in his own land of make-believe while ignoring the fantasy lands of others.
“The scarecrow’s right there,” Gordon said, pointing to the spot on the wall above the loft stairs. The figure wasn’t dressed in the bib overalls and flannel shirt that Katy had seen in the attic, inside the locked bureau. This figure wore a dark suit of a heavy material like wool. Straw spilled from the sleeves and ankles of the suit, and the yellowed collar of the white shirt stuck up around the collar. The scarecrow had no head.
“That’s not the one,” Katy said.
“Yes, it is,” Jett said, excited. “That’s the man I saw in the loft.”
“You didn’t see a man,” Gordon said. “Odus must have taken the other scarecrow for some reason. Those clothes look old-fashioned, maybe even antique.”
“What’s going on, Gordon?” Katy asked.
“Maybe the scarecrow hungers,” Gordon said in a mocking tone. “Or my great-grandfather Harmon Smith is making another circuit through Solom.”
“Where are the goats?” Jett asked.
Gordon looked around as if noticing their absence for the first time. “He’s taken them.”
“Who?” Katy touched the welt over her eye. The upper and lower eyelids were swelling together and she could barely see. The side of her face felt as if a pint of hot water had been pumped under her skin.
Katy squinted at the shape on the wall. Hadn’t the original scarecrow been shorter? No. That was the kind of thing that crazy people thought. Crazy people who believed they were being haunted by their husband’s dead ex-wife.
The scythe was absent from its wooden peg.
“It just moved!” Jett said, grabbing Katy’s arm. Katy looked at the gangly, splayed form. A few pieces of straw fell from its cuffs as if an animal were moving inside it. Katy recalled the toenails skittering on the attic floor.
“It’s the wind,” Gordon said. “Odus left the barn door open.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Jett said.
“Go on back to the house,” Gordon said. “I’ll close up the barn.”
Katy nodded and put an arm around Jett’s shoulder. The two of them went into the barnyard. Katy stopped by the chicken roost. “What did your dad say when you told him about this place?”
Jett shrugged and stared at the ground. “Nothing much. He thought I was weird. But he didn’t laugh at me.” She looked up, her blue eyes vibrant and imploring. “I wish—”
Katy reached out and hugged her daughter, pulling her close. The girl was getting tall. The hair on the top of her head brushed Katy’s wounded chin. “Shh. Wishing for lost things isn’t a good idea. We have to work with what we’ve got.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. ‘We’ll get through it together,’ right?”
“Exactly.” Katy brushed away Jett’s black bangs and planted a kiss on her freckled forehead.
“I just wish Daddy was here.”
Katy had no response for that. She had failed her daughter and her marriage. Maybe if she had tried harder, been less self-absorbed, given Mark one more chance ...
No. Gordon was her husband now and she was determined to make it work this time. All it took was sacrifice.
“Let’s go in the house,” Katy said. “I’ll make us some cinnamon rolls. I found a great recipe.”
“What about the scarecrow and the man in the black hat?”
“Gordon will take care of it.”
“Do you love him?”
Katy pulled away from the hug. “What kind of question is that?”
“I don’t know. I saw the way you were looking at Dad, and you’ve never looked at Gordon like that.”
“Gordon is a good man and he’ll make a good father if you give him a chance.”
“I don’t want another father. I want mine.”
“I’m sorry, honey. We’ve turned that page. This is our new life. We’ve made The Change.”
Jett pushed away. The hens squawked at the disturbance, flapping their wings, tossing soft feathers in the air. Inside the barn came the slam of a large wooden door.
“I don’t want a new life. Especially this one. I’d rather be dead.” Jett stomped through the gate and into the house.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Mark Draper checked into the cabin at four in the afternoon. He’d driven around Solom to get a feel for his daughter’s new home. She hadn’t exaggerated when she’d called it a “one-horse town but with a billion goats.” He hadn’t grinned as much as he’d wanted, because Jett’s story was way too disturbing. As fantasy, it suggested dementia. As truth, it suggested a need for escape he understood only too well.
He couldn’t just drive back to Charlotte and hope everything would work out for the best. Mark wasn’t an optimist by nature, and that was probably wise, given his penchant for screwing up his life.
He wouldn’t screw this up, wouldn’t let Jett down. He paid for the room with a credit card, shocked at the $150 fee for one night. Reading his expression, the Happy Hollow clerk explained that it was the fall tourist season, and with the leaf-lookers who would soon be swarming the highways, he was lucky to find a room at a
ll. Mark thought of driving back to Titusville where a Holiday Inn, Comfort Suites, and other chain hotels feasted on the college. But he felt a need to be near Jett. And Katy, too, as much as he tried not to let his mind wander down that particular road. The credit card bill—well, he had a few weeks to work that one out.
He hadn’t packed any clothes, but he always carried a shaving kit in his trunk. He sometimes traveled in his job, and more than once had been caught out of town and having to make a trip to the drug store for shampoo and toothpaste. The cabin was dark and cramped, the sort of place that was just uncomfortable enough to let flatlanders feel they were “roughing it.” However, an eighteen-inch television stood on the kitchenette counter, and the bed’s mattress was thick and soft.
Mark pulled out his cell phone and sat on the bed. Should he call Jett and tell her he was hanging around? Probably. Jett said her cell didn’t get a signal at home unless she was in the barn loft. Katy or Gordon might answer the house line, but he could bluff them, pretend he was calling on his way down the mountain. He thumbed the button. No bars. The entire valley must be dead. He hadn’t noticed any towers on the ridge tops. Perhaps the telecommunications and cell phone companies had yet to invade this backend of nowhere.
The cabin didn’t have a phone. He’d have to walk down to the check-in desk and borrow one. He’d also noticed a pay phone down at the general store, the old-fashioned kind that still took coins, maybe the last one in America. The store was only about three hundred yards down the road, a nice hike that would let him get a feel for the little community. He’d also put in a call to Dick and beef up his spiritual condition for the day’s battle against addiction.
He opened his shaving kit. In the old days, it would have contained three kinds of pills, a little coke, some weed, and—in the even older days—a spoon, rubber tube, and needle. He brushed his teeth instead, promising his reflection that today he’d stay straight. One day at a time. If things were still screwed all to hell tomorrow, well, then he could get wasted. That was a pretty fair bargain.
For now, he wanted to piece together the strange stories Jett had shared: goats, ghosts, some guy in a black hat, a Scarecrow Man.
Even though he’d read Stephen King like everybody else on the planet, he couldn’t quite wrap his head around Katy’s haunting. More likely his ex-wife was being dramatic in an effort to win sympathy from Gordon. That was just like her, making a play for attention. Maybe to divert Gordon away from Jett’s problems, or to pull that selfish “me-first” business that had put the stake in their marriage.
He didn’t believe in the supernatural. But he sure as hell believed in Jett.
Mark walked fast, down the hard-pack road and past the Happy Hollow office. A number of other cabins were tucked away in the woods, all offering the occupants privacy without ever letting them lose sight of the Pepsi machine in front of the office. Mark came to the entrance at the highway, and then decided to cut across the road instead of making straight for the general store.
The river beckoned, a jeweled, frothy dragon, chuckling as it slithered around rocks. The air was wet with the smell of mud and decaying vegetation, and goldenrod shimmered along the banks. Mark’s scalp tingled, and his feet seemed to be hovering two inches above the ground with each step. Solom seemed to radiate a weird vibe, as if unnatural electricity wended through the air.
A little trail among waist-high weeds marked a favorite fishing hole. Mark looked up the road and saw a couple of pick-up trucks parked in front of the general store’s deck. A man in a denim jacket was using the pay phone. Mark headed down the trail, beggar’s lice sticking to his trousers, a stray blackberry vine grabbing his sleeve. He scarcely felt the briars that stitched his forearm.
At the river’s edge, the mud gave way to smooth pebbles. The water was clear as glass, though its motion distorted the colorful stones along the bottom. A fish raced by, sparkling in the diffracted sunlight before disappearing in a deep, shadowed pool beneath the branches of a drooping sycamore. Nature was a trip. He’d have to get out more.
He was about to walk back to the road and see if the phone was free when something splashed upstream. An old concrete dam spanned the river fifty yards away, though it was more holes than anything. A decrepit mill sagged at one end of the dam, a wooden waterwheel dipping into a gray concrete channel. Most of the wheel’s paddles were missing, so it didn’t turn steadily. Instead, it juddered and spun a few feet at a time, wobbling like a giant tire with loose lug nuts.
“Help!” someone shouted.
The sound had come from the same general direction as the splash. The white noise of the rushing water confused Mark, or maybe it was the banging pipes of withdrawal resonating inside his skull. He started up the bank toward the sound. That’s when he saw the boy attached to the paddle wheel. It looked like his clothes had snagged and he was pushed under the water. Mark waded into the river and fought against the current.
The wheel turned, lifting the boy, who looked to be no more than ten. He was dressed in ragged overalls and a flannel underwear shirt, and as the wheel brought the boy higher into the sky, water poured from his bare feet. The boy was silent, but had seen Mark and raised a weak, desperate hand toward him. Mark plowed through the knee-deep water. The river seemed no more powerful than the spit of a garden hose, but time had stretched out so that Mark didn’t seem to be making any progress. The wheel took another hesitant roll and the boy was now at the top, his back arched against the metal framework.
As Mark watched, realizing he should have run up the road and then down to the dam, the wheel moved again, and the boy descended head-first toward the water. His dark hair hung like a dirty mop as he struggled to free himself. He grabbed one of his overall buckles as if to unfasten it, but his fingers weren’t strong enough to fight his weight against the strap.
Mark was twenty yards from the boy now, sticking to the shallows near the overgrown banks, kicking water into his face as he ran, his knees high like an old-fashioned fullback. The boy’s head went under and the wheel seemed to hesitate, as if chocked by the boy’s head pressed against the bottom of the channel. The wire-and-wood frame shook as the boy’s legs flailed in the air. Then the wheel turned again, dragging the boy fully under and pinning him on his belly.
The water was deep near the base of the dam, the edges rimmed with stonework. Mark had to swim the last ten yards, though the current was much weaker where the force of the water spent itself straight downward. He reached the dam and grabbed a chunk of shattered concrete, pulling himself out of the water. The drops that poured around him seemed to each contain a tiny rainbow.
The wheel still juddered in place, hung up because of the boy lodged at its lowest point. Mark pulled himself over to the channel, scrabbling for purchase on the slick and jagged concrete. He reached the wheel, wondering if the boy had already drowned, wondering how he could fight thousands of gallons of water, wondering if he’d failed somebody again. Just as he reached the wheel, it issued a moist, rusty groan and turned. Mark braced himself, expecting to see the boy’s slack face, eyes shocked wide in death.
Instead, the wheel was bare, save for a few wooden blades dangling from the metal frame.
Mark looked into the river below. The boy couldn’t have plunged past without Mark’s seeing. He eased along the top of the dam and examined the upstream edge of the wheel. No body.
Damn. Did I take some drugs while I wasn’t looking?
Mark scanned the road that ran parallel to the river. Through the trees, the general store stood with its green metal roof, white siding boards, and black shutters. Farther upstream was the wooden covered bridge marking the highway that led to Titusville. An old house, its windows broken, huddled at a high bank of the river, boards warped where past floods had touched it. Solom seemed abandoned, as if everyone had driven away for the season and locked up their buildings.
Mark pushed his hair out of his eyes. The water upstream looked too deep to wade, and he was too weary to try it
with his sodden clothes. He’d have to navigate the top of the dam, walk to the other side of the river, and push through the weeds to the covered bridge. The wheel clicked forward a few feet, like a roulette given a half-hearted nudge.
That’s when Mark looked at the window of the millhouse. In the shadows stood a man, barely visible because of his dark clothes. Mark couldn’t discern any features, but he was struck with the notion of being watched. The man was motionless for a moment before slipping into the deeper darkness of the ruins, flashing just a glimpse of his waxen face.
It was the figure from the photos, the one that had leered at his daughter and ex-wife.
To hell with a phone call. I’m going over.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Katy waited until Gordon excused himself from dinner. He’d eaten only half of his sautéed chicken breast and had barely touched his green beans and sweet potato pie. Katy finished her own plate and began collecting dishes. Jett, who had remained sullen and silent throughout the meal, shoved her glass of milk away and crossed her arms.
“What did you tell your dad?” Katy asked.
“That’s between him and me.”
“Honey, remember the deal. We’ll get through this together, okay?”
“Okay, I’ll share if you share. What’s the deal with this ghost you keep talking about?”
Katy dropped a piece of silverware as she stacked dirty dishes with shaking hands. “Nothing. I think I was just suffering delusions.”
“And a ‘delusion’ just happened to give you a black eye while we were gone?”
“I was up in the attic looking for something—”
“Something in a long wooden box, right?”
“No. I found a key. And I thought it might fit one of the bureaus up there.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I found in the box. A scarecrow. Sort of like the one that used to hang in the barn. Not the one that’s hanging out there now. Somebody switched them.”
The Scarecrow: A Supernatural Thriller (Solom) Page 17