by Jaye Wells
His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
“Help!” Ruby screamed. “Someone help her!”
Peter West broke from the men helping him and ran toward her. In his wake, he left a confused Bunk and Earl staring between Peter’s retreating back and the tiny bear cub yowling in the front seat of the truck.
“Deacon?” Junior said from near his shoulder. “Why did you do that?”
There was no sense pretending he didn’t know what Junior meant. “You saw me. I was trying to get that damned devil!” He pushed himself off the ground and turned to face Junior. “I didn’t know the bullet would—” He cut himself off because giving voice to what had happened would make it real.
Desperate for support from someone, he turned toward Edna. “You saw me, right?”
But she wouldn’t look at him either. Instead she waddled off to go see if she could help Ruby and Peter.
“Daddy?” Sarah Jane whispered. Her voice sounded too young, like when she was little and woke up from a scary dream and needed him to check under the bed for monsters.
“You killed your brother,” she said, “and now you killed Granny Maypearl.” The words were spoken as a verdict.
“No,” he shook his head. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
The little boy with the bashed-in head cackled.
“You said you killed Isaac.” Sharon looked at him like he was a stranger. “That’s why all of this is happening.”
“It was the evil,” he said, desperate. “The evil thing did it.” He pointed toward Isaac. “I didn’t kill him.”
“The evil is you.” With that, his wife and daughter turned their backs on him and walked toward the church.
Isaac sing-songed in a mocking tone, “Virgil is evil.”
“Shut up! Why didn’t you just stay down where you belonged?”
“You’d best hand me that gun, Deacon Fry,” Junior said.
He frowned at the man and then looked at the gun in his hand.
“It’s over,” Junior continued, “you’ve done enough damage.”
“You’ve doomed them, Virgil,” Isaac said.
He looked up. “I was trying to save them. Us.”
Junior sneered at him. “You kilt that old woman, too.”
“I was trying to stop them.” His voice sounded wild.
“Granny Maypearl was stopping that devil with her song and you shot her.”
He felt like he was going crazy. “I shot Jack—I mean Isaac.”
“No, you beat Isaac,” Isaac said. “And you sent Jack down into the mines.”
“That wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know!”
“You need to atone for your sins, Deacon,” Junior said.
Deacon Fry pulled the gun to his chest and backed away, shaking his head. “No, it’s them that’s evil, Junior. Can’t you see it? They’re turning you against me.”
Bunk and Earl and several of the other townsfolk were closing in on him with determined expressions on their faces.
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
His heart sank and the gun in his hand was a heavy, inevitable weight.
“Save them, Virgil,” Isaac said. “Save them.”
He glanced at his little brother and remembered the day when he’d been born. It had been a spring day, and Mama and Daddy acted like Isaac was the Savior. That had been the first time Virgil felt the white hot arrival of his rage. He realized now Isaac had been the snake that introduced evil to Virgil’s Eden. He thought he’d disposed of that evil on that cold day fifty-seven years earlier, but now, by some mystery of God’s design, the snake was back and the only way to purify his Eden once again was to make the ultimate sacrifice.
“The time has come for revelation,” he whispered.
He lifted the gun to his temple.
Isaac looked into his eyes and smiled.
“Lord, forgive me.”
Deacon Fry pulled the trigger.
66
Lamentations
Ruby
The crepe-paper skin of Granny’s cheeks was the color of the mountain mist. The paleness made the blood glistening on her lips seem impossibly red.
“Ruby.” The word was barely above a whisper. “It’s over, darlin’.”
“No.” She hated how petulant the word sounded.
Peter had taken off the shirt he’d been wearing, ripped it two, and handed it to her. “Use this.”
The blood covering her hands nearly soaked the fabric before she could place it over the wound on her grandmother’s left breast.
“Pressure,” Peter said in an apologetic tone.
“Sorry, Granny.” She pushed hard.
A gasp rushed from Granny’s mouth. “S’all right.” She swallowed audibly. “Listen now, girl, ’cause we ain’t got long.”
The way the words slurred from her bloody lips made Ruby’s insides feel like they were coated in the menthol chest salve Mama used to spread on her chest when she had the croup.
Peter took her hand and squeezed it. His hand felt big and warm, which was good because she felt so small and cold.
“You’re gonna have to be real brave, Rubybug. There ain’t no one else who can do what needs doing but you.”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid.”
“I know, darlin’. Being scared is just your mind trying to protect you, but you got to ignore it and listen to your heart instead. Your heart knows the truth.”
The weight of all those years that she’d been robbed of pressed down on her—the years they’d already lost and those yet to come. So much time wasted.
Tears spilled freely now and distorted her vision. She swiped at them, not wanting anything to get in the way of seeing Granny’s face. “I love you, Granny Maypearl.”
“Ah, Rubybug, I love you, too. Ain’t nothin’ ever gone change that, you hear?”
She wiped away more tears. “I don’t know what to do.”
“When the time comes, you will. That heart of yours been hurt real bad, but it’s not so broke it can’t sing again.”
All this talk of hearts and songs while her grandmother bled out in the street made something inside Ruby snap. “You’re wrong!”
“Ruby.” Peter’s warning tone only made her angrier. She shrugged his steadying hand from her shoulder.
“I didn’t stop listening to the mountain. It stopped talking to me. If it wanted to save us it already would have.”
As she spoke, a gunshot exploded followed by the sounds of screams. Peter jerked and cursed as he looked toward the front of the church, but Granny tightened her grip on Ruby’s hands and captured all of her attention.
Granny wanted her to believe that faith was enough to save them. But she’d lived her whole life watching Deacon Fry use faith to control the people of Moon Hollow, and where had it gotten them all? The way she saw it, Granny’s faith and the deacon’s were two sides of the same warped coin. Either way you flipped it, it was a loser’s bet.
“You’re going to leave me just like Mama did, only this time it’ll be worse. Mama left me alone with Daddy and his fists, but you’re leaving me alone to face something no one can handle.”
Granny had listened to her up until that point, but now, despite her obvious pain, that old steel came into her expression. “Hush up and listen to me, young lady. You don’t know as much as you think you do. The women of our family been saving this town’s goose for more years than you can count, and as long as we been saving it, the men of this town been taking the credit. Alodius Fry?” She snorted. “It was my great-grandmother, Yona, who fought back the devil that bent that cross. Don’t tell me that you’re facing something you can’t handle. Just ’cause you ain’t done something before don’t mean you can’t do it now.” Granny’s cold hand found hers. “You got strong blood in your veins and a heart that’s filled with songs you ain’t sung yet. You just gotta get out of your own way.” A coughing fit interrupted whatever she’d been about to say.
Peter moved in and
placed a hand on Granny’s forehead. “Easy now.” He looked at Ruby and shook his head, a warning that time was almost up.
Ruby took a deep, centering breath. She was scared as hell, but she refused to send her grandmother to the beyond the same way she’d sent her Mama—begging her to do something she had no power to do. To stay and protect her.
She wrapped both hands around Granny’s and leaned in close. She placed a kiss on Granny’s forehead. “Thank you for believing in me.” Granny’s pupils were so large it seemed to Ruby that she could see the whole universe inside there. “I’ll try to do you proud.”
Granny’s chest pumped up and down rapidly, almost as if someone was opening and closing a bellows too quickly. Ruby leaned down to catch the words from her lips. “Own your magic.”
A rush of breath rattled against Ruby’s cheek, cooling the tears. The erratic beat under her hand stuttered and then stopped altogether.
Granny Maypearl was no more.
67
Homeward
Granny Maypearl
Steel bands tighten around her chest. Sweet Ruby’s tears drip onto her cheeks, but she doesn’t complain. If she has to go, best to do it with the baptism of salt water to send her off.
Oh, Ruby, I have so much to say. So much more I wanted to teach you, but we’ve run out of time.
It feels like someone is playing hopscotch on her heart.
Ruby is closer now. Good, words require too much air. She whispers the words her own grandmother said to her on the day she initiated Maypearl into the art—the initiation she was never able to give her Ruby. “Own your magic.”
The last of her precious air rushes from her, along with her soul. Now I return to you, Mother.
She caresses Ruby’s cheek for the final time as she rises.
She is light, now. She rises like a warm breeze on the night air. Above, Mother Moon glows bright to welcome her to the beyond. Below, Ruby’s grief is a lonely song.
Moon Hollow unrolls beneath her. There, the house where she was born during the worst blizzard on record. Over there, the general store, where she’d buy penny candy with her allowance. Farther, the hill where Ian first told her he loved her. Up on the ridge, the first house they’d lived in as man and wife—the home where they’d made her sweet Rose. And there, looming over it all, was Cemetery Hill, where just that afternoon she’d placed a small white anchoring stone on his grave.
Goodbye, town. Goodbye, hills. Goodbye, beloved river and whispering pines.
And there, beyond the town and the hills and everything, the Blue Ridge Mountains stretch into the Appalachian range.
The supple curve of the horizon spreads out like the hip of a lover. The dark of the eastern seaboard fades across the Atlantic to the bright line of sun heralding the tomorrow that Moon Hollow might never see.
She looks up at the stars and the great beyond, where wait the open arms of her mother and grandmother, all the way back to great-grandma Yona and her mother, the beloved Gigahu, Galilani.
Finally, she is home.
68
Promises
Peter
Ruby placed a final kiss on Granny Maypearl’s forehead. Peter helped her rise and then knelt to cover the body with his jacket. He should have come back sooner. Hell, he never should have left. She’d asked him to stay but he’d refused to listen. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’ll watch out for her.”
He wasn’t sure how he’d accomplish it, but he meant his promise. The least he could do was make sure Ruby had a fighting chance of walking away from this—-whatever the hell this was.
By the time he turned around, she had marched off.
“Ruby?” He grabbed Granny’s bag of supplies and jogged after her.
She didn’t stop to wait for him. Next to Deacon Fry’s body, a boy laughed and pointed. Peter had seen the deacon kill himself while Ruby said goodbye to Granny Maypearl. The last thing she needed now was to see another corpse.
He caught up with her and took her arm. “Hold on.”
She didn’t fight him and allowed him to turn her body away from the crowd. “What?”
He looked at her, really looked. Her bottom lip was pinned between her teeth and her eyes wouldn’t quite meet his. “You okay?”
She raised a hand and slapped him so hard his head whipped to the side. “You left us.”
He raised a hand to his burning cheek. “I did, but now I’m back.” He nodded toward the truck. “And I brought your bear.”
Her mouth fell open and her eyes filled with tears. “Why? Why did you bring her back here? She was safe.” Ruby beat at his chest but he grabbed her hands and pinned them to her sides. “She was safe.” She fell into him, sobbing.
Peter looked over her head toward the animated corpses closing in on the group near the deacon’s body. He might write about demons and ghosts for a living, but he’d always been a skeptic when it came to stories of the paranormal in the real world. To him, people who believed in haints and hauntings were more likely to need the help of a psychologist rather than that of a psychic. But in the last fifteen minutes, he’d run over the corpse of Ruby’s mother and watched her grandmother sing a magical song that made the corpse of Ruby’s father explode into ashes. Thing like that tended to make a man reassess his beliefs.
“Listen to me,” he said, “there’s a reason that bear stopped me on the road as I was trying to escape.” He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back enough to look into her eyes. “For some reason, that bear needed to be here and so did I. I suspect it has something to do with helping you, but we’ll never know if you don’t get ahold of yourself and do what Granny Maypearl told you to do.”
Ruby sniffed and shook her head. “It’s no use. She was wrong. I don’t have any power.”
“How do you know if you’ve never tried?”
She laughed bitterly. “I’ve been trying to hear the mountain’s song for weeks. It’s gone, Peter. I can’t sing its song like Granny did.”
He looked her in the eye. “Then don’t try to sing the mountain’s song. Sing your own.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but the shout of a shotgun ripped through the air. Peter looked over in time to see Junior Jessup aim the shotgun at an approaching skeleton and pull off another shot. The skeleton exploded into a cloud of bone fragments.
“Everybody in the church,” Junior shouted.
“Let’s go.” While Junior provided cover fire, Peter pushed Ruby ahead of him toward the church steps. On the way, he grabbed the bear from the truck.
69
Mama’s Song
Ruby
Once inside the church, Peter handed Ruby Granny’s bag. “Maybe something in here will help.”
She doubted it. How could anything help now?
The bag was filled with a collection of small jars filled with herbs and a random assortment of snail shells and what appeared to be beetles. She shook her head. “I don’t know how to use any of this stuff.”
He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Remember, she had a chance to tell you the secret recipe if there was a potion that would win the day. Instead, she told you to use your own power.”
She opened her mouth to tell him Granny hadn’t been in her right mind at that moment—she didn’t have any power at all—but the church doors flew open. Junior stumbled inside, dragging Bunk and Nell with him. Behind them, Lettie and Earl Sharps came through. Sharps slammed the doors and slid the lock home.
Everyone talked at once until Peter whistled. “Hold on, where’s everyone else?”
“There ain’t anyone else!” Sharps shouted.
“We’re here.” They all turned to see Sharon and Sarah Jane enter from the side room Reverend Peale used to use to prepare for services. “Virgil?” she asked.
Earl shook his head.
She took a shuddering breath and mouthed something that was probably a prayer, and Sarah Jane deflated sobbing into her mother’s side.
“Those things are gonna
kill us,” Edna said. “I just know it.”
“Like hell.” Junior lifted the barrel of his shotgun to his shoulder. “We just need ammo.”
Lettie wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. It left a red streak of Deacon Fry’s blood. “Them bullets ain’t done a lick of good besides slow ’em down, Junior.”
“What do you want us to do then? Sit in here until they find a way in?” Junior asked.
Bear chose that moment to growl from his spot at Ruby’s feet.
“What the hell?” Junior said, coming to investigate. Once he saw the bear, he cursed and his face went a dangerous shade of red. “You gotta lotta nerve, girl.”
“Leave her alone,” Ruby said. “She’s not hurting anyone.”
“Maybe we should throw her out to them devils, huh?”
“That ain’t a devil,” Nell shouted. “That’s my Jack.” The woman burst into tears, and crumpled into one of the pews.
Junior lunged toward the bear.
“Get away from her!” Ruby wrapped her arms around the bear, who snuggled into her throat.
“You little bitch,” he shot back. “If it weren’t for your daddy none of this would be happening. Maybe we should throw you out there, too.”
Peter stepped in front of Ruby and the bear, blocking them from the heat of Junior’s anger. “Fighting each other won’t accomplish anything. Back down.”
Junior spit on the floor. “Who put you in charge, author man?”
“I’m not in charge, Mr. Jessup. I’m just trying to be sure we don’t kill each other before they do.”
Lettie came forward. “You heard the man, Junior. Sit your ass down.” She turned to Peter. “What you thinking?”