by Jaye Wells
The exit across from Reverend Peale’s office didn’t look right. The door expanded in and out like a lung filling and exhaling. He stopped to watch it.
“Open up, Cotton.” This time the voice didn’t echo inside his brain; it came through the breathing door, muffled as if spoken from within a coffin.
“Is Rose with you?”
A pause. “Yes, Cotton.”
His fingers fumbled with the latch. Excitement made him clumsy. His brain wasn’t working right. It stumbled over words and sped forward over ideas and circled, chasing itself, like a mongrel pup after its own tail. He was afraid of the door, breathing in and out. The sound of the metal creaking in and out, groaning. The muted sound of the demon Jack’s voice coming through the distended panel. What if his new friend was lying?
“Cotton,” the voice said, “it’s time.”
He ran his palm down the frigid door until it encountered the hard steel bar that extended across the surface. One hard push and the latch would engage and the door would swing open and there would be his Rose.
“Cotton!” The voice came from inside the building. It was not his new friend’s voice, but that of his old enemy, Deacon Fry. If he caught up with Cotton, he’d shake him until his teeth rattled in his skull and his eyes banged in their sockets and he’d kill Cotton.
“Yes, he’ll kill you,” said his new friend’s voice beyond the breathing door. “Come on out. Your life is out here, Cotton. Your life—Rose.”
His fingers circled around the handle and pushed with more resolve than Cotton Barrett had ever had in his whole living life. The door stopped heaving and simply swung open into the misty night air. The humidity hit him in the face. Behind him Deacon Fry shouted something. His nose filled with the sweet stink of rot.
Cemetery Hill rose above him, empty.
He stumbled into the wet grass. High above, the moon pressed its face to the glass dome above the hollow, bearing witness. His insides slithered like worms digging into fresh turned earth, excited and seeking.
Behind him, screams from Deacon Fry. “Come back, Cotton!”
But he was too smart to listen. Mrs. Murphy wanted to shake him, shake him until his brain became liquid in his skull and he forgot all about Rose.
The angels, the beautiful angels, lit from inside against the dark backdrop of moody hills. His new friend glowed, too, though brighter than the rest. The new Jack, the one Deacon Fry thought was dead, was a dark angel who glowed with black light and the promise of life eternal. Life he promised to share with Cotton and his beloved Rose.
The screams behind him stopped. Deacon Fry whispered, “God have mercy on you.” The door slammed.
His new friend didn’t speak, and despite his clumsy thoughts, Cotton understood he should not speak, either, or risk breaking the dark spell.
Jack lifted a hand and purple tracers followed it through the air. The angels, so beautiful—such dark beauty—parted like Moses’s sea.
She wore a white dress made of moonbeams and promises. Like a fairy tale princess, she’d escaped the sleeping spell and returned to her prince. The night breeze caught strands of her raven hair and lifted it like birds’ wings, ready to take flight. Her skin, paler now, looked so soft, and those lips, those pink petal lips, begged for his kiss.
She looked sweeter than she had that first day he’d seen her on the church steps when they was just kids. He’d loved her—although that word wasn’t strong enough … wanted, desired, coveted—yes, he’d coveted her—for years. It hadn’t been until she returned to Moon Hollow that he finally had her. Now, she looked like the Rose who’d returned a little broken and sad, but more beautiful for the pain. She’d wanted him then because she knew how lucky she was to have anyone want her for keeps.
His Rose, his life, his, his, his.
His knees gave out at the relief, the God damned relief of seeing her again after being taken from him for what seemed like forever. Now, thanks to his new friend, they’d be together for eternity. “Rose,” he whispered. “My sweet, sweet Rose.”
She floated over the grass. Her arms opened, inviting him to commune at her breast. He’d never felt more devout in his whole life.
This is real. This is the realest moment of my life. Now, I am a real man. You hear me, Pappy? I’m a man.
God had just been testing him, see? And his reward was Rose.
“God is good,” he said. “Amen, forever and ever.”
53
Devils
Deacon Fry
The fool. The damned fool.
If Deacon Fry was fortunate enough to make it to the ripe old age of one hundred, he’d never forget the moment he looked through that door and saw Cotton Barrett surrounded by dozens of the most gruesome … abominations—they were too far decayed to be considered human—he’d ever seen.
Lord help him, he’d tried to convince the fool to come back inside. How that man could stand there with the stench of death on the air and those grotesque faces smiling like diners at an all-you-can-eat buffet he’d never understand. But then, that devil had looked at him with such an expression of ravenous anticipation that he knew if he didn’t lock that door, he’d be next on the menu.
“God have mercy on you,” he’d whispered. What he’d meant was, God have mercy on us all.
Because it was not until the moment just before he slammed that door and the lock slid home that Deacon Fry understood that God had abandoned them—him—to these soulless ghouls.
Standing alone in the hallway, behind the locked door, he whispered, “Why hast though forsaken us, Lord?”
The only answer was the sickening growl of those demons.
“Rose!” Cotton’s voice sounded so joyous, the Deacon couldn’t resist turning to look through the small window next to the door.
Cotton knelt before the semicircle of shuddering and rotten undead. The demon Jack said something he couldn’t hear, and the masses of walking corpses made way for a new arrival.
His gasp fogged the window.
Calling the thing a woman would have been a blasphemy. The body bent in odd curves, like a question mark, and limped sideways, dragging its right foot behind it. Black hair, matted with mud and leaves, hung in ropey strands around fleshy planes that used to be a face. Large holes lay moist and open in the gray skin, which gaped at the eye sockets and under the cheekbones. Pink worms hung like gruesome ribbons from the holes.
He realized that this new thing looked so terrible because the rot was so fresh. A recent burial, which could only mean one thing—that abomination was Rose Barrett.
As he watched in horror, the revenant Rose opened her arms and approached Cotton. Her husband raised his face to the sky, as if offering thanks to the good Lord.
“No,” he gasped, barely aware that he’d spoken out loud. “Please, God, no!”
He should run. He should run and get a shotgun, help, anything.
But his mind wouldn’t let him lie to himself. Cotton’s fate was sealed.
Some small voice in the back of his brain whispered something he’d never admit out loud. His death will be the easiest of us all.
Cotton’s undead bride finally stood over him.
Why wasn’t he running? Couldn’t he see the rot? Couldn’t he smell her? Didn’t he know the danger?
In the end, the answers to his questions didn’t matter. Because whether Cotton could see and smell his rotten Rose, he still took her hand—the one with strips of skin hanging like fringe from its palm—and stood to embrace her like a man about to kiss his bride at the altar. The couple turned sideways, and Cotton’s searching, pink mouth touched the drawn-back gray lips of his love. The kiss lasted mere seconds, but the horror of it made it feel like an eternity to the lone, living witness. When it ended, there was no relief. Instead, his horror only increased as the putrid being that used to be Rose Barrett, opened its jaw wide like a pit viper.
Deacon Fry slapped a hand across his lips to prevent the bile in his throat from escaping.
The mo
nster adjusted the angle of Cotton’s face just enough to offer a view of his expression. No man’s face in the history of the world had ever borne a look of such sublime ecstasy as Cotton Barrett’s in the split second before grey teeth set in blackened gums sank into his shoulder and crushed through bones. As his body went limp, her arms wrapped around him in a lover’s embrace. She feasted until every inch of her was baptized in his blood, and, when her demonic cohorts tried to get scraps, she raised her ruined face, pulled the body tighter to her breast, and hissed to warn them there would be no sharing.
The demon joined the bloody Rose and her rag doll trophy in the clearing. Rose didn’t hiss at Jack.
She handed over the too-still, bloody body of her husband, and watched as the demon raised a finger and pointed it to Deacon Fry. And when the demon mouthed, “Revelation,” Rose lifted her bloody face to the sky and laughed.
The last thing he saw before he ran away was the way Cotton’s head flopped to the side enough to show that, even in death, he looked like the happiest man on earth.
54
Preparation For Battle
Granny Maypearl
Whispers danced in the wind. The messages arrived so fast she could barely keep up with them.
Picking up her pace, she lifted her bag higher on her shoulder. “Tell Ruby I’m coming,” she whispered to the wind. “Help her be brave,” she sang to the running water. “Have mercy on us all,” she pleaded with the sky.
By the time she made her way down the mountain to the trail leading into town, she was winded and every hair on her arms prickled from the static electricity hanging over the town like a plasma dome. The trail dumped her out just beyond the end of town, down near The Wooden Spoon. Stepping into the road, she looked up toward the church.
A group of townsfolk gathered on the front steps. They fussed and carried on, like they were there on a mission. She shook her head and crouched down so they wouldn’t spot her. She needed time to prepare.
She glanced around to take stock, and spied Peter walking toward her. He started to call out, but she waved her hand to stop him. They met up in front of the library.
She pulled him into the shadows. “Where are you going?”
He held up a set of keys. “Bunk’s truck.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Things are getting a little too intense for me.” He nodded toward the church steps and the angry people. “Time to hit the road.”
“Didn’t take you for a coward.”
“Pragmatist,” he corrected. “Never should have come here to begin with.”
“You came to this town looking for something. You told us all you was looking for a story, but I got a different idea.”
He made an impatient face. “I really should be going.”
“Don’t sass me, boy. I got to say my piece.” She poked him in the chest, not hard but just enough to make him know she meant business. “You didn’t come looking for a story. You came here looking for Peter.”
He frowned, but she wasn’t done.
“What you got to ask yourself, is if Peter is the kind of man who only writes other people’s stories or is he the kind of man who authors his own fate?”
“Peter is the kind of man who wants to go home.”
She blew a raspberry. “To what? An empty apartment?”
“What does it matter to you? Ruby’s still here. You got your way.”
“You don’t know as much as you think. What’s going on is not my way.”
“Don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “If I were you, I’d head back up the ridge and stay as far away from town as you can until Sheriff Abernathy gets here.”
She snorted. This boy had way too much faith in the law. “Sheriff ain’t coming here. We’re on our own.”
His expression changed, as if he finally clued in that she was talking about more than just the angry mob. “Everyone’s always on their own. That’s why I’m leaving.”
“If you leave, this will haunt you,” she said. “You won’t ever be able to leave it behind no matter how many stories you tell to try to exorcise it.”
He stepped back. “Goodbye, Granny Maypearl.”
“Good luck, Mr. West.”
He muttered “thanks” before he jogged over to Bunk’s truck. As he got in and started the engine, she waved but inside she was cussing him seven ways to the Sabbath. Damned coward.
The tires crunched as he pulled out of the space and turned the truck toward the hill out of town. The taillights flashed like a demon’s eyes in the dark.
She sent up a quick prayer to the Mountain to allow him safe passage.
The door to the diner opened and Bubba Ogelsby ran out, looking panicked. Boy was barely older’n sixteen.
“We have to get to the church,” he said. “Deacon Fry’s orders.”
She stood her ground. “You go on ahead.”
He paused and glanced back toward the diner. “Don’t feel right leaving Reverend Peale’s body alone in there.”
“Did you lock the freezer?”
“No, ain’t like he’s gonna try to get out.” His laughter sounded forced.
A loud crash came from inside the diner.
Bubba jumped. “What the—”
“Run,” she said. “Run to the church and don’t stop until you’re inside and the doors are locked.”
He opened his mouth to argue.
“Go!”
He took off like a shot. Once he was safely on his way, she turned toward the diner and removed the tools she needed from her bag. “It’s begun.”
55
The Spooked Flock
Deacon Fry
By the time he made it into the chapel, he’d gotten ahold of himself. It wouldn’t do to let them see him crying like a little child. Yet, that’s exactly how he felt—helpless and frightened. What he’d just witnessed, no man on earth could see and ever feel safe again.
The shock of Cotton’s death and its implications pierced his brain like an ice pick. The pain was visceral and the hole it created allowed in the idea that if he didn’t act, the empty graves up on Cemetery Hill would be filled with new bodies—his body and those of everyone he loved.
Closer to the chapel, raised voices reached him. From the sound of it, Edna and the rest had arrived at the church. He had to be sure the doors were locked before that demon and the rest of his horde made their way around to the front of the church.
When he stepped through the side door into the chapel, he found Edna and Junior shouting nose-to-nose with Smythe and Sharps.
“Hand him over or we’re gonna take over this whole damned church,” Junior shouted.
It didn’t take him more than a breath to realize who he was—Cotton.
“And I told you, you cain’t have him!” Sharps shouted back.
Edna planted her hands on her generous hips. “He’s got to pay for what he did!”
Standing there, watching them fight, the absurdity of it all hit him with brute force. But before he could tell them to stop, Edna spotted him. “Deacon Fry, where you got Cotton locked up? The people of this down deserve justice.”
He lifted a hand to his mouth to trap the hysterical giggle that threatened to escape right there in front of God and everyone. His eyes stung from the effort and he shook his head at their questioning looks.
“We demand answers!” Junior this time, but the shotgun in his hand made it more difficult to laugh at him.
By then, Smythe’s and Sharps’s expressions shifted from confrontational to confused. “Deacon? Where is he?”
It was too much. The pressure valve needed release or he’d explode. He considered just venting his hysterical laughter, but then Ruby Barrett stepped around from behind the quarreling foursome.
She didn’t look confused or angry. She looked resigned. The expression was too old for her face, weighing it down, aging it. “What happened?” The words, spoken softly, seemed to reverberate through the church. Everyone, even Edna, shut th
eir mouths and watched her. “Where is he?”
Her calm frightened him.
The dregs of his hysteria scraped down his throat and left a bitter aftertaste, like a too large pill. “I—he—”
He looked around the room, at the people who’d gathered, thinking they were about to see justice served. They had no idea justice didn’t exist. Not really. If it did, he would never have to say the words he had to say. If justice existed, Reverend Peale would still be alive, and so would young Jack, with his whole future ahead of him. But the bloody shell that used to be the reverend was sitting in a meat locker. And Jack—
Well.
“Are you okay, Deacon?” Bunk asked. He’d barely noticed the old man with all the shouting, but now he realized that, as usual, he’d been standing on the edges of the drama, waiting to step in when things were about to get out of control.
Good old Bunk. Steady, trustworthy Bunk. Seeing him restored some of Deacon Fry’s equilibrium. He nodded and swallowed hard again. His palms were sweating. “I’m okay, Bunk.” He licked his dry lips. “About Cotton—well, there’s no easy way to say this.”
Anxious glances were exchanged around the room. But Ruby stood there looking ancient and too knowing. He avoided looking in her direction, preferring instead to deliver the news to good old Bunk, instead.
“Cotton is dead.”
Edna gasped. The deacons in the room each stepped back, as if his words had punched them in their chests. Only Bunk came forward. “What do you mean? You didn’t—” He trailed off, as if the next words were too awful to say aloud.
It took a moment for the meaning to sink in. “I didn’t kill him.” He raised his hands. “I swear on a stack of the deacon’s Bibles.”
Smythe spoke up next, but he took another step back. “But you was the only one with him, Deacon. No offense.”
“Did he kill himself?” asked Junior, sounding hopeful.
Truth was, Cotton had committed suicide. He had not delivered his own deathblow, but he certainly had set into motion the events that led to his own demise. His mind’s eye filled with an image of Cotton’s blissed-out death mask. A tremor vibrated through him.