“Or the survivors,” Littlefield said, but he was the only one around to hear it.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Pearl had took sick since the shenanigans of the night before, and Hardy figured a day in bed would do her good, not to mention get her out of harm’s way in case Kirk’s bunch paid a return visit.
He’d forgotten he’d set the tea kettle on the stove to make her a cup of that fancy Darjeeling hippie-sounding stuff. When it broke steam and erupted in a whistle, he about jumped out of his skin, thinking it was the shriek of one of those contrary creatures from the Hole. He’d scalded his thumb while pouring the hot water, and now balanced the cup and saucer as he made his precarious way up the stairs.
He skipped the thirteenth step, where the drummer boy had been shot the night before. There was no blood, no bullet holes in the wall, nothing to mark the confrontation between Earley and Kirk’s Raiders. If not for the musket that had wound up at the far end of the hall, Hardy would have written off the incident as a dream, though that damnable rattling of the snare drum still echoed in the stairwells of his memory. At least Pearl and Donnie had been protected from the sight of the ghosts, though his wife’s imagination had done worse things to her than her eyes ever could.
And Donnie had no imagination worth worrying about.
Donnie’s room was quiet, which meant his son was either coloring again or else he was sleeping, or maybe just sitting cross-legged in the corner and rocking back and forth as he sometimes did. Hardy was almost past the room when he saw the opened door and the black wedge that filled the space leading behind it.
The door had been locked from the outside when Hardy had gone down to the kitchen. He’d checked it twice to make sure. Pearl might have taken Donnie into the bedroom to comfort him the way she had when he was six and the nightmares came. Except she’d been snoring loud enough to wake the dead, compliments of the blue pills the doctors had prescribed her in February, when the latest round of tests had resulted in the suggestion of a state hospital stay for Donnie.
Hardy swallowed hard and kicked the door wide with the toe of his boot. It squeaked open and Hardy slopped some of the tea on his overalls. The room held nothing but the little table with its scattered crayons and papers, the rumpled cot in the corner, and a plastic water tumbler. Hardy set the saucer on the table and picked up the lone drawing on it. He angled it so it caught the light leaking from the hall.
Stick figures. A man and a boy.
Marching toward the Hole, which held smears of red and yellow in its dark squiggles as if the devil was serving up hot peppers for dinner.
He hurried down the hall to his bedroom and checked on Pearl. The hand-stitched quilt rose and fell with her breathing. Maybe merciful God would let her sleep through it all. Hardy took the musket from the closet, knowing it was as impotent as the slack, wrinkled meat between his legs, but like that part of him that had sired Donnie, its presence gave him comfort nonetheless. The Bible offered a little less, but he tucked it in his overall pocket anyway, just to feel the weight of the words.
As he made his way back through the hall, he was troubled by two things. Something had unlocked Donnie’s door and then led Donnie down the creaky stairs and past Hardy in the kitchen without being seen. Well, there was a third thing, too. The Hole had come unplugged and hell had let slip a few of its occupants.
From the porch, he surveyed the pasture and the twin ruts that led to the far gate. The dew had long since dried and the cows were grazing with their heads toward the west, working the last of the season’s grass as if storing the sweetness against the dead taste of winter hay. A lone buzzard circled high beneath the clouds, lazy and patient.
The rumble of heavy equipment oozed down from Mulatto Mountain as if the ancient stacked granite was being shaken to its foundation. He thought he heard a snare cadence in the diesel-fueled throbbing, but it might have been his own erratic pulse fluttering against his eardrums.
The musket had grown heavy by the time he reached the woods, and he considered tossing the Bible to ease his load. He thought about that little inspirational picture he’d seen in the doctor’s office, where there were footprints on the beach and the bit about where there was only one set of footprints and it turned out Jesus had carried a man across the sand for a while.
There was no mention of where they both were headed or why Jesus wouldn’t allow the fellow to rest for a minute, but that was the way of things. You just kept walking, no matter the burden.
Entering the high church of trees, he shivered. The temperature had dropped about 20 degrees and the advance scouts of December had grown a little bolder, baring their teeth in the shadows. This was a time of year for digging potatoes and setting aside cabbages, hauling in the feed corn and piling it up in the barn crib. Autumn was a season of dying, and the weak wouldn’t see it through.
Budget Bill Willard’s machinery was rumbling away, carving up the mountain and changing it forever. In a few years, there would be no Mulatto Mountain. Only Elkridge, with a fancy embossed sign down by the highway, and a stone entryway with a steel gate that could be lifted by punching in a code. Hardy wondered if the Hole would still be there, Kirk’s Raiders sleeping under the million-dollar houses that dotted the slopes.
Time passes and human greed outlasts even the eternal.
But when it came to sins, Hardy carried enough of his own. Pride went before a fall, the Good Book said, and he’d never figured out whether that meant pride led to trouble or whether you better throw over your pride before it got the best of you. Maybe pride was just another form of greed, but one thing Hardy knew, the Hole wasn’t taking his boy without a fight, even if Hardy had to march right down in there and wrestle bare-handed with Kirk and his entire troop.
He could have avoided the construction area, but that would have meant cutting below the ridge and climbing a steep, rocky incline on the north slope, where the laurel grew tangled and tough. He didn’t want to waste either the time or the energy, and he didn’t intend to let anything stand in his way, even a bulldozer. He emerged from the logging trail onto the turnaround, where Budget Bill Willard had planned to place the clubhouse for the resort. A dump truck was parked on the gravel, idling as it awaited a small steam shovel whose jaws plucked at gray boulders.
The Caterpillar bulldozer was higher on the slope, digging its thick, rusty blade into the dirt, turning up stumps and stones. It hadn’t taken long for Budget Bill to replace Carter Harrison, and the raw road was much closer to the ridge than it had been during Hardy’s last visit. Bill’s crew was making good time.
Hardy followed the fresh cut of the road, ignoring the clanky steam shovel. Budget Bill’s pick-up was off to the side in some weeds. The cab was empty, and Hardy hoped the sawed-off developer was away checking out property lines or maybe taking some of those photographs of the mountaintops he was able to parlay into calendars and postcards. Hardy followed the loose soil until he was near the bulldozer, and then realized the new road was barely a hundred feet from the Hole.
The air was charged with the static of a coming storm, though only a few clouds dotted the horizon. The ground throbbed under Hardy’s feet as he ascended the road bed, and the roar of the big diesel engine shouted down the forest noises. Ahead was a gap in the laurels where he could duck into the woods and reach the cave. Hardy thought he would make it without being seen when one of the Caterpillar’s treads locked and the machine swung around sideways.
Budget Bill was in the cab, working the dozer’s levers, his hands encased in White Mule work gloves. He eased down the throttle and a tuft of black smoke spilled from the smokestack. As their eyes met, understanding and horror dawned on the developer’s face.
He thinks I’ve gone squirrel-shit nutty and that I killed Carter, trying to stop the development. And he reckons he’s next.
Hardy nodded at Budget Bill and patted the musket barrel, letting him think the worst. He let a grin creep up one side of his face, enjoying the developer’s torm
ent. He considered the steep hike remaining to reach the Hole. Even if he made it without his heart exploding, he wouldn’t have much wind left to take on a haunted platoon before Kirk and the mountain took whatever little bit was left of his son’s mind and soul.
He pointed the musket toward Budget Bill, not bothering to aim. Budget Bill eased back on the levers and raised his hands like a prisoner in a war movie. Hardy eased the barrel of the musket back and forth, motioning for Bill to dismount. Bill reached for the ignition but Hardy shook his head. Bill climbed down, eyes flicking back and forth as if considering escape.
Hardy met him when he reached the ground and yelled over the rumble of the diesel engine. “How do you run this contraption?”
Bill, perhaps sensing if he let Hardy take the bulldozer he could escape with his life, made a pulling motion. “Left bar forward, right for back, brake in the middle.”
“Like an old Massey Ferguson tractor,” Hardy said.
Bill nodded, though Hardy suspected the developer didn’t know the first thing about Massey Fergusons. Bill would have probably agreed that the sun rose in the south and the Tooth Fairy was real if it would keep Hardy’s finger away from the trigger.
Hardy settled in the cab seat, laid his gun across his lap, and pulled back on the throttle. He yanked the lever–Budget Bill, who was skidding down the muddy road as fast as his stunted legs could carry him, hadn’t lied to him–and the dozer lurched into the saplings and strewn granite stones, grinding toward the Hole.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Jangling Hole was cool, the air fetid. Vernon Ray was just past the reach of daylight, beyond the spot where the rubble had settled during the long-ago cave-in. The throat of the underworld was now open, the slumbering lungs taking a deep breath of the outside universe as if starved for light and life.
The dead soldiers were resting around an unseen campfire. They no longer appeared solid, except for Kirk, who crouched near the cave’s mouth and surveyed the edge of the woods. Another soldier, whose cheek bore a deep scar, stood just beyond the opening, his musket at the ready. Vernon Ray adjusted his kepi and blinked into the darkness, expecting the icy pierce of a bayonet or the muffled detonation of a deadly powder charge.
The ground trembled with the drone of heavy equipment, and a rock kicked loose from the cave ceiling and bounced near Vernon Ray’s feet. A shower of moist dirt sprinkled on his shoulder.
“You warm enough?” one of the men said, and the words echoed a couple of times before dying in the rumble of heavy equipment.
“You can talk,” Vernon Ray said, and laughter erupted around the circle, mimicking the low rumble of machinery.
“Yeah, but you can’t rightly hear,” said another soldier. His kepi was pulled low over his forehead, but white bone glinted dully where his chin should have been.
“Leave the boy alone,” Kirk ordered, before turning his gaze back to the forest outside the cave. His voice was the same as the one Vernon Ray had heard in his head during the rain-shed encounter.
Those words rose from the depths of his memory like a drowned corpse bobbing up from a watery grave: We don’t belong together.
The soldier to the left of Vernon Ray was scraping his spoon against a tin plate, dredging up air and scooping it toward his moss-covered face. The moss parted, revealing a black maw, and the spoon entered. After a brief slurping, the spoon pulled free, dribbling bits of gooey mud. The spoon hit the plate again, combining with the rattle of hardware and the cleaning of muskets in a jangle of activity that had given the Hole its name.
There were three soldiers between Vernon Ray and the opening. Kirk was one, the sentry the second, and the last lay sprawled behind Vernon Ray, propped up on the stump of an arm. Shattered bone emerged from a ragged sleeve packed with rancid, discolored meat. The stench of corruption mingled with the mildew and mud and the acrid smoke that arose from somewhere below.
Vernon Ray thought of running for daylight, leaping the soldier behind him and plowing past Kirk. But he wasn’t sure his legs would work anymore. The Raiders had marched him up the mountain under the cover of gun-smoke, somehow diverting the attention of his dad’s Living History group.
The bullets had whizzed past, manifesting into solid things, the battle made real for a short stretch of the morning. The ghost soldiers could have killed him, or let him get shot by friendly fire, but instead they had taken him prisoner.
So they wanted him alive for a reason.
“Here come Eggers,” the sentry shouted.
Several of the soldiers reached for their muskets and Kirk rose to his feet and moved to the edge of sunlight. Vernon Ray shifted away from the dark depths of the tunnel that promised its own special brand of gravity, one that would suck and tug until all light was defeated. He knew better than to trust his depth perception in the Hole, and the grinding of the bulldozer’s steel against ancient granite added to his disorientation.
From his vantage point, he could see Donnie Eggers approaching the Hole, grinning like a rabid possum and tapping two sticks against his thighs as he juddered up the slope. Branches slapped at his face but he seemed oblivious to the welts raised in his flesh. His cotton shirt was torn, naked toes covered in mud, his hair greasy with sweat. Donnie’s wild eyes were fixed on the cave as if the darkness inside it held vast pleasures and joys.
“Go back,” Vernon Ray whispered.
“Ain’t no going back,” Kirk said, though Vernon Ray’s words had barely been audible.
That’s when the corporal came out of the trees, floating over ferns and galax and jackvine. It was the man from the railroad tracks, the one with the CSA canteen. Earley Eggers. Decades dead and as hellacious and rebellious as ever.
“All right, boys, we got one more battle,” Kirk said, and though the command was issued loudly enough to carry over the bulldozer that was crashing through the trees on the back side of the ridge, the soldiers rose with a languid reluctance. The man with the stump lifted himself by his wounded limb, gangrenous flesh dropping from the effort.
Boneface with the kepi was grinning, but Vernon Ray couldn’t tell whether it was due to nervousness or the fact that his lips had long since melted away to dust. The soldier with the red kerchief and crusty blue tunic drifted toward the mouth of the cave, moving his legs as if his spirit still harbored memory of needing them. The preternatural platoon was mustering around their leader, taking a stand, black eyes flinting tiny sparks of hellfire. They were misfits, losers, a band of outcasts that the world had no room for, a coalition of the damned whose camaraderie had survived the grave.
We don’t belong together.
And one of them had broken ranks. The deserter, Eggers.
No wonder they were riled.
But that didn’t mean the innocent should suffer. Every war had its collateral damage, every conflict its unintended targets. If Cindy Baumhower’s law of balance was correct, then Earley’s return should end the war, at least for this go-round.
But Donnie might reach the Hole first, and Kirk might decide a living Eggers was better than a dead Eggers, and fresh blood might be welcome.
Donnie was close enough that Vernon Ray could see a strand of clear drool dangling from one corner of his idiot grin. Donnie’s head bobbed as his wrists flexed in a fluid grace that defied the spastic jerking of his legs and shoulders. He was stamping out the vintages of his mental isolation, marching to the beat of an indifferent drummer.
Earley was mostly solid, though ripples of light played in his limbs as he staggered toward the Hole. His face was like dishwater, sloshing around the soulless eyes.
Kirk rubbed his beard, standing with broad shoulders squared and one hand on the hilt of his saber, his silhouette dark against the spilled shaft of sunlight. Muskets rattled as the Raiders tamped sulfur and brimstone into their barrels.
“Want them dead or alive?” Boneface asked Kirk.
“Let him go,” Vernon Ray said. “He never belonged here.”
Kirk angled hi
s head around, then around, until he was facing Vernon Ray, though his boots and medals were still pointed toward the forest. Kirk’s words were nearly lost in the roar of the diesel engine and the cracking of tree limbs, but Vernon Ray wasn’t sure whether they were spoken or were voiced by the dank wind oozing up from the depths of the cave.
“Nobody belongs nowhere,” the voice said, reverberating in Vernon Ray’s head as if his skull were a granite sheath.
Donnie was less than 30 feet from the cave now, eyes bright with fevered hope. He would reach the Hole before Earley. And the oddest part was that Donnie, who was alive, appeared to fade and become less substantial the nearer he got, while Earley grew more solid and heavy, his scuffed boots now flopping over the ground.
The grinding, splintery thunder of the bulldozer swelled louder as the earth machine ascended the ridge.
“Vernon Ray?” came a shout from the edge of the forest.
Bobby . . . .
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Bobby had raced ahead of Cindy and the sheriff, anxious to find Vernon Ray before Kirk and the goon squad siphoned him so deep into the Hole he would never return.
At least not in any recognizable, useful, human way. Donnie Eggers had been only half gone, according to the rumors, and an intangible half of him was trapped lurking somewhere in those black depths. Vernon Ray’s fate might be far worse.
Bobby wasn’t sure what he would do when he got to the Hole, but he slowed enough to scoop up a fist-sized stone from among the fallen leaves. Th’ow it, doof, Dex repeated in his head.
And if what Dad said were true, Vernon Ray was more than his best friend, more than the guy who tried to kiss him, more than a fellow survivor of the Dysfunctional Family Circus. Vernon Ray was his brother by blood. That carried extra obligation, and Bobby was willing to risk death, or whatever passed for death in the depths of the Hole, to rescue V-Ray.
When he entered the clearing in front of the Hole and beheld that terrible orifice of rock, dirt, and darkness, the sun ducked behind a clump of clouds and stretched a shadow over Mulatto Mountain. Earley Eggers staggered toward the Hole like a wayward son returning to the family doorstep.
Ghost Box: Six Supernatural Thrillers Page 57