Life is good.
Aaron practically wouldn't let go of his grandmother's hand. In the Buick, he was scrunched in between Hillary and Anna Gardner, but he definitely looked happy. Hillary, too, would start talking excitedly every few seconds to her grandmother in a nonsensical chatter. Anna Gardner fielded all the questions, no matter how unintelligible, and reached over her grandson to comb her fingers through Hillary's wild blond hair.
They drove through town, Joe and Jenny talking nonstop about their afternoon. Aaron told about how Gramma showed him pictures of his dad from when he was Aaron's age. The streets were slick with rain; two collies ran circles around a tree, chasing a squirrel; Joe noticed how incredibly gorgeous the houses were, some of them built in the early 1800s, like mini-antebellum mansions. He was feeling pretty damn good, and was surprised.
What is it you want most, Joe? A voice from the past seemed to cut across Joe's brain.
What is it you pray for?
Just as they neared the Angel Wing, Anna Gardner gasped, "Joseph. Joe."
Aaron said, "Daddy, something's wrong with Gramma."
Joe looked in the rearview mirror. He saw such a pained look cross his mother's face that he almost went off the road.
Aaron threw his arms around his grandmother's shoulders and whispered, "Grandma, I love you."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TOWN AND COUNTRY
1
Dale Chambers laughed and slapped Lannie Barnes square on the butt. "I do love you, chicken, you're the best thing that ever happened to me."
They'd just gotten into room 9 of the Miner's Lodge, and Lannie had barely enough time to notice that there were flowers everywhere.
"Dale, what's all this?"
He grinned, shaking his head like a boy. "I love you, girl, that's what this all is. I know you been seeing Jud, and I know you just want me to shit or get off the pot, so I wanted tonight to be special. I left her."
"You left her?"
"That's right."
Lannie went over and sat on the edge of the bed. She looked at her pumps. "You mean you left your wife?"
"You got it."
"After twenty-five years of marriage and three children, you left your wife." Again, he nodded.
She looked up at him and said, "You incompetent noodle. Your wife was the best thing that ever happened to you."
It took a minute or two for this comment to settle into the back of Dale Chambers's brain. The creature called the Gump who resided there started knocking at some unopened door inside him. The Gump whispered, See? They're all betrayers. They all are cold heartless monsters and they only seem warm for a while. They take take take. They're not even real. They're not even human.
"What did you just say?" he asked.
"Now, honey," Lannie said, crossing her legs and reaching for a cigarette from her purse. "It ain't that I'm not hot for you and that I don't love you, I do. I love you more than squat. And if it wasn't for the baby—"
He interrupted, his voice a low growl now as the Gump emerged into his thoughts. "How do I even know it's my baby?"
Lannie lit her cigarette and took a puff. She wasn't even looking at him. She glanced around the room as if he weren't even worth her attention. "Oh, it's your baby, Dale. I only slept with Jud after I was pregnant."
"How do I know you haven't been sleeping with half the county? Hell, you may have done all of Stone Valley for all I know."
Lannie sighed, shaking her head. "Take it to a talk show if you want to, Dale, but trust me, I didn't sleep with anyone else at the time I conceived. Okay?" She waved the cigarette for emphasis.
She was cruel. She was so cruel. He could deal with her infidelity with Jud. He knew she loved sex like a mink. He could even deal with her coldness to him. But the baby. It was their baby! What kind of mother was she going to make? What kind of monster was she going to bring into this world?
But something inside him softened. He whispered, "We're going to have a baby, Lannie. We need to set things right between us."
She smiled, almost warmly. "That's right, Dale, a baby." She chuckled, then laughed out loud.
"What's so funny?" he asked, meekly.
"I'm going to the clinic in the valley tomorrow. I have an appointment."
"This is a night for surprises," he said, feeling colder and Gumpier by the second. "You mean...?"
"Yeah, I am going to get rid of it. I could tell the other night you didn't want it, and frankly, I'm not so sure I do, either."
"You're a good Baptist girl, honey. You always wanted children."
"Well," she took a long drag on the cigarette so that when she spoke she looked like a fire-breathing dragon. "You can't always get what you want, like the song says."
"You're not gonna kill our baby." Dale crossed his hands over his chest and stood like stone. "You are not going to kill our baby."
"Yes," she said, "I am." Then she looked a little frightened, as if she thought he might hit her. He had never hit a woman before, at least as far as he could recollect, so this didn't sit well with him. She scootched back farther onto the bed, carefully keeping her legs together, bent at the knees. "Now, Dale, honey," she began, but she seemed like a sheep bleating—from her tight cap of over-permed hair to her dumbass eyes, the Gump saw that she was just a sheep.
Bleating as if it knew it was headed for slaughter.
(He would have to kill her, there was no way around it. He could not let her live if she was going to do something so immoral as to murder his unborn son. What other choice did he have?)
"Hey, now, bay-ay-by," the sheep stammered. She must've seen the look in his eyes.
He wasn't angry.
Oh, no.
The Gump didn't get angry over the little things in life.
He was calm.
That's what the sheep saw, his calm.
His eyes were placid pools of muddy water, his lips curled gently.
"Not our baby," he said, feeling as if he didn't have to walk towards her; all he had to do was shimmer in her general direction, like sunlight moving across a newly opened curtain.
(Slaughter the lamb, Gump told him.)
"Well, I was only thinking about getting rid of it," she said. "I went over to my mama's grave up at Watch Hill and talked to her for a while. She says you don't really want the baby. She told me you aren't a good man at all."
He sat down on the bed, twisting around towards Lannie. "Your mama's been dead a long time. You making things up?"
"You know how I still talk to Mama? How the spirit world's just in another room and we can talk to any of them if we believe? Well, she said I was too old for a baby and that you only love yourself. She told me something else about you, too." Lannie leaned back against the silky pillows, bringing her knees farther up. He could practically see up her skirt.
He caught her smell there, from between her legs. She slowly brought her knees apart.
No longer sheep, all he saw when he looked at her was sex. Both the inner Gump and the outer Dale liked that quite a bit. Idly, he asked, "What else Mama tell you 'bout me?"
"About a little boy you put down in the mines a long time ago. Little bitty thing. How you killed him and left him and didn't give a whit." As she said this, something small and pink thrust from between her legs and his thoughts became jumbled—
baby's bein' born, good God, the baby's bein born right now
givin' birth
what the hell is goin on
While Lannie leaned forward and grabbed Dale's head, bringing their lips together, the bloody thing emerged from between her legs. He pulled back from Lannie, whose lips were bright red and moist. The thing from between her legs was not an unformed baby at all, but the blood-drenched body of a little nine-year-old boy named Davy Hammond, a boy that the Gump had put down in the bottom of a mine shaft when he, himself, had only been nine. As Davy pushed out of Lannie's flesh, the flesh seemed to slough off, and Davy's eyes were fierce, and before Dale could say anything or move o
r even laugh like crazy because he had just lost his mind, Davy got him.
2
Just downstairs at the Miner's Lodge, Gary Welles sat at the bar, and when he heard the high-pitched shriek from one of the rooms, he shook his head. "Too much of that going on these days. Folks aren't decent no more," he said. "Nobody, not even God. If God was a decent sort, why'd he let that weirdo kill my little girl? Nothin's decent no more."
The bartender brought him his fifth beer. "This is it for tonight, Gary. Closing up early."
The bar was empty and had been all afternoon and into the evening. This made Gary very happy, because sometimes he couldn't even sit at the bar but had to skulk off to a corner to drink himself into a coma.
"Life closes up early." Gary wagged his head around, and pointed at the bartender. "You, you think that life's great, but wait'll some sumbitch kills your little girl and starts talking crazy about how she's still around!" Tears soaked his cheeks as he spoke, feeling the old passion coming back to him. "Think about your little girl in her grave, and some kid digs her up and drives a spike in her heart and cuts off her head. Think about how that would make you feel, huh? And then, Jesus, he talks about her, on and on, about she's saying this and she's saying that, about how she's not dead even though you know this kid killed her!"
Then, quietly, "I'd like another Bud."
The bartender held up his hand in a "halt" gesture. "No can do. Five's your limit tonight."
"Please," Gary whimpered. He felt an always-present sweat increase at the back of his neck; his tongue was dry, his lips, parched. He knew that if he didn't have another beer in a few minutes that he would start shivering. It always went like that. He couldn't even remember anymore when it began. Maybe when his daughter died, way back, or maybe when his wife left him, his son, too, taking off in the night like thieves because they couldn't stand the sight of him. (It was that Joe Gardner's fault, too.) Maybe it was before all that, but Gary didn't think so. He could fairly specify the time and day right down to that car wreck in the Paramount River. The call. Dale on the phone, saying, "Gary, I have some news about your girl." The rest of what Dale had said might've been any kind of gobbledygook, because that was all Gary heard. And then, at the funeral, that boy having the gall to show up and go to Gary's wife and hug her and cry like he cared.
He wasn't crying later on, when he dug her up.
He wasn't crying when he took that spike and put it into her heart.
Even the dead got to be protected from some people.
Gary wiped his hand through his greasy hair. "He shouldn't'a never come back."
The bartender said nothing.
"You ain't gonna give me that beer, huh?" Gary pushed himself back from the bar, almost toppled, but managed to right himself and catch the stool before it fell. He didn't like being denied beer; it would mean maybe hitting Frankie or Wilson up for a freebie, and that could be humiliating. He spat at the bartender. "Maybe you'd have more business if you was nicer. I notice this place's half empty."
The bartender chuckled. "Aw, gee, Gary, I like to think of it as half full. What you gonna do tonight, big guy?"
"Gonna put a fella outa his misery." Gary shambled away, wanting another beer and hoping there was one somewhere out in the night; a beer and a gun and a man who should've died in a river when he'd had the chance.
3
Athena Cobb had just turned the Open sign around to read Closed, when a man approached the door to her antique shop. He was soaked with rain, and must've been freezing because he wore no coat. She pointed to the sign.
The man said something which she couldn't quite hear.
She quickly unlocked the door.
As he stepped inside, she was about to tell him that her shop was closed, when she noticed the bloodstain which ran down his shirt—the blood continued to seep across the rain-soaked cotton. The man's knees buckled, and he fell down.
She caught him.
"Oh, my God," she gasped. He was heavy in her arms.
He whispered against her cheek, "Children."
She couldn't hold him any longer and let him slide to the floor. She crouched down over him and looked up when she heard a noise.
In the rain-dark street, there stood a little girl dressed in a muddy skirt and blouse. In between her lips was something that might've been a drinking straw.
A crazy thought flashed through Athena's mind: the little girl had just sucked the man's blood through the straw.
This was her last coherent thought, because Athena Cobb knew that her fight for survival had just begun, a fight that would end with a straw that felt like steel being thrust into her trachea as several children leaned over her to suck her life.
4
Noah Cristman was seventeen and love was driving him mad. He had tried calling Tenley McWhorter's house, but no one was answering, which was odd.
Noah was accustomed to Tenley's mother getting on the line to preach God and morality to him—he almost missed her whiny sermons. But Tenley hadn't shown up at school, so he drove around her house half a dozen times before swinging by Burger Palace (only to find out it was closed). Then he zoomed over to his buddy's house around six, only nobody seemed to be answering at that house, either.
It was weirding him out.
Noah had to see Tenley. Had to see her. Wasn't going to make it another hour without her. Main problem was, he wasn't supposed to go up and ring the McWhorter's doorbell. Mr. McWhorter swore he would chase boys off his property with a shotgun. In Colony, you didn't take such threats idly.
Finally, extremely frustrated, Noah parked on a side street and jogged across the slick dead leaves and asphalt back to her house. He snuck around through the neighbor's yard and jumped the chain-link fence into the McWhorters' side yard.
He was about to toss a rock up at Tenley's window, when he thought better of it.
He got another idea. There was something about Noah that even he didn't like to admit to himself: he was far too good at breaking into houses. He had a technique involving getting into the house through the basement and then tiptoeing up the stairs.
The McWhorters only had one tiny window in their basement. As Noah crouched next to it, he wasn't sure if he was going to fit through it. He used a rock to smash the glass, then carefully pushed out the jagged shards with his hands.
He slipped his head through, then his shoulders, arms first.
"Shit," he whispered. He was not going to make it all the way through.
He was about to withdraw when someone grabbed his arms, tugging him forward.
"Tenley? That you?" he asked, trying to see in the dark basement.
He felt other hands, small, like little kids', and they were trying to pull him in. He was scared, and tried to get his head back, when something touched his face.
Like a feather.
He opened his mouth to scream, but something in the dark shot into the back of his throat and down his esophagus.
They pulled him into the basement.
5
These were just a few of the events around Colony that night, typical of how the town had begun its descent into darkness.
For some, it was just another cold, rainy November night.
Nelda Chambers was trying to cry herself to sleep, which was impossible. She had drunk six cups of coffee (trying to kill herself with caffeine), after Dale had packed his bags and walked out of the house.
Several families around town were watching the Cosby Show reruns, while more than a few were flipping between Connie Chung and Peter Jennings on the news; Melanie Dahlgren was doing yoga on the small oriental rug in front of her glowing fireplace, anticipating a visit from her new best friend; suppers were being cooked; dogs walked; the Angel Wing Pub was getting a few stragglers in from the inhospitable weather; on the surface, many things seemed the same as they had the evening before, like every rainy evening the town had ever known.
Becky O'Keefe, for example, was feeling like hell, as she did on any given nig
ht in the fall.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BECKY FEELS LIKE HELL
1
Becky O'Keefe had been raised in Richmond, Virginia, and her parents had only moved to Colony, West Virginia, when she'd turned ten. After high school, her parents moved to California because her father felt there were more jobs out West. She had remained behind because she could not stand the idea of California, nor could she justify, at eighteen, still moving with two parents who could barely support each other, let alone an adult daughter. She had gone to work back then at the soda counter at the Five N Dime. Two years later, married to Homer Petersen, she went to work as a bookkeeper and receptionist for Dr. Cobb. Then, after Tad was born, she took two years at home. The bartender shift at the Angel Wing Pub hadn't come until six years back, when Dr. Cobb had severely cut back on his practice and his expenses. He was no longer able to maintain a full-time assistant because most of the medical business went to the medical center over the hills.
With the exception of her divorce, she had lived fairly peacefully until that particular day when her dog lay dead at the bottom of the stairs.
She awoke from a coma-like sleep at four in the afternoon and stared at the ceiling for a full fifteen minutes before she could find the strength to get out of bed. She had cried herself to sleep over the death of her son's beloved pet, and when she awoke, she raged at the impotence she felt at the hands of whoever had committed the atrocity. Becky O'Keefe believed that she could not depend on anyone else in this life (her marriage had proven that), so she had not been surprised when Jud Carey, the only available representative of the local police, arrived at her door before she'd fallen asleep, took one look at her dog, then at the muddy footprints, and pronounced the verdict: "Your dog's dead."
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