by Catie Rhodes
Roderick’s wrinkled face creased in thought. His words came slowly, as though he had to weigh each one before he said it. "I think that place is like a disease, taints everybody who lives there. Maybe that boy did push his girlfriend outta that window. Or maybe a ghost did it." He snorted into his beer and took another long pull. "Maybe the devil himself did it."
The devil himself. The words sparked a memory. I scraped my mind for it and finally found it in my memory of the farmhouse. Over the flaking paint of one wall had been painted the words "Josie is the devil." I told Roderick what I’d seen. He nodded, finished his beer, and stood.
"Yep. That’s another story," he said. "Lemme get another cold one, and I’ll tell it to you. Y’all want one?"
Tanner nodded his head and finished the last of his beer. I shook my head and waved my hand over my beer, of which I’d had maybe five sips. It tasted worse than it smelled.
Roderick came back a few minutes later with three bottles. Inwardly, I cringed but made myself smile. Roderick winked and set a bottle of water in front of me.
I took a long sip and sighed. Much better than the beer. "Thank you."
"Next time, tell me you don’t want beer." He shook his finger as he said the words and sat back down with a heavy sigh. "All right. You was talking about that ‘Josie is the devil’ business. I’m going to assume you have a vague idea about what happened to the Messengers."
I licked barbecue sauce off my fingers before I spoke. "They were murderers who the police killed."
Roderick nodded. "Good enough. The deputy who got the credit for figuring out those hippies was murderers was a feller named Freddy Stephens. Freddy ended up buying the farmhouse and all the land that came with it. No doubt he got the deal of a lifetime."
"And that’s where the name Stephens Ranch comes from?" Regretfully, I took the last bite of barbecue rib.
"Yep. That little dirt road became Stephens Ranch Road. Now that you’ve got all the background, here’s the story." Roderick paused for a sip of beer. "Freddy Stephens and his wife raised their only child out on that ranch, a little boy they adopted and named Freddy Junior. Freddy Junior grew up, got married, had two kids of his own. Freddy Senior and his wife got old, and she died. Freddy Senior started having a hard time taking care of himself. Freddy Junior lived over in Austin and decided to put his daddy in a retirement community close by so he could keep an eye on him. You follow me so far?"
Tanner and I both nodded. He curled his barbecue-stained fingers over mine.
Roderick watched, eyes squinting into a smile. "So the whole family piles on down to the ranch to have one last good old family weekend before they moved Freddy Senior to the retirement community." Roderick drank again. "Things did not work out according to plan. Something happened that ended with every single Stephens dead except the granddaughter, Josie Stephens. Little college-aged thing. Cute as a button."
"Did Josie kill them?" I took out my cigarettes and showed them to Roderick.
He waved a hand. "Go on and smoke. Those no smoking laws are stupid anyway. Just ash on your paper plate there, and we’ll throw it all away when we’re done." Roderick took out a green and white pack of cigarettes and lit up. "To answer your question, there ain’t nobody really knows if Josie killed those folks or not. Sheriff’s deputy found her wandering the road, covered in blood, and about to die of heatstroke. Traumatized. When the po-lice went out there to the farm and found the carnage, suspicion started up about her doing the killings."
The vision I’d seen back at the Stephens Ranch let me know that Loretta Nell could have incited Josie into a killing rage. But I also knew that Loretta Nell was a powerful ghost, capable of murdering a living person. The murderer could have been either Josie or Loretta Nell.
Tanner’s rough purr broke into my thoughts, nearly made me jump out of my seat. "What did the cops decide about Josie’s involvement?"
"An aunt on Josie’s mother’s side of the family showed up with a lawyer, and they ended up dropping all charges. But Josie wasn’t right no more." Roderick touched his temple to show us exactly what part of Josie had broken. "She’s over at the state mental hospital. Probably be there for the rest of her life."
Pity for Josie and her ruined life hardened my stomach, making it feel overfull.
"I’ve answered your questions." Roderick tapped the table to draw me out of my reverie. "Now you answer one for me."
I nodded.
"What did you come out here looking for? Excuse me for saying, but you two’re a good bit older than our usual visitors." He snorted, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
Tanner and I exchanged a glance. He nodded. I gave a slight shake of my head.
He rolled his eyes. "If it hadn’t been for Roderick here, we’d have been beaten to death in the parking lot."
I flushed, dug the picture out of my bag, and pushed it across the table to Roderick. "Looking for this book."
I’d expected Roderick to show surprise at the picture the way Dwight had, but he began nodding right away.
"I thought this was the Christian Bible first time I seen it." He took a long sip of beer. "When the Messengers first come to town, they came in here. Loretta Nell was carrying this book under her arm."
Roderick smoked and thought for a while. Finally he nodded to himself and began speaking again. "Loretta Nell…well, you see this picture. I was a young man back then, and young men think there might be a chance with every pretty woman they see. So I knew where the Messengers was staying. Hell, everybody in town did. Back then, it was the old Pilz Ranch."
Roderick stopped talking and shook himself. When he continued, his voice had lowered as though he was afraid of someone hearing. "I went out there. Looking to get in Loretta Nell’s pants more than anything. They welcomed me like long-lost family. Including Loretta Nell. Especially Loretta Nell. We smoked a little of their wacky-tabacky, and Loretta Nell got out that book and started reading out of it."
I drew in a deep breath, and my stomach began to churn. From Loretta Nell’s vision, I knew firsthand what the contents of Mohawk’s book did to people. But I’d been able to leave the vision. Roderick had looked into the abyss and had to live with the aftermath.
Roderick took a trembling breath. "I’ve never felt that way, before or since."
I gulped, remembering the purity of the rage I’d felt in that vision, the way I’d wanted to hurt that boy Kevin. I’d wanted to see his brains splattered everywhere.
Roderick rubbed his hands over his face, shaking his head. "I decided the fella next to me was competing with me for Loretta Nell. I attacked him, and we fought. It was like something else, something mighty mean, just took me over." Roderick’s eyes had gone glassy as he told his story. "I got that fella down and beat his head into the floor over and over again, hollering, ‘In his name.’"
Tanner listened in stunned silence, eyes taking up most of his face.
"Did you kill him?" In the vision, I’d have killed Kevin if he hadn’t killed me.
Roderick nodded, his faded eyes fixed on some distant hell.
It occurred to me that we were all alone with this man. He could pull a butcher knife out of his shirt and stab us to death right here. Maybe that’s what he was building up to.
Roderick took a hard pull on his cigarette and crushed it out on my plate. "After that feller was dead, the room smelling of shit and blood, Loretta Nell came over, rubbing herself on me like a cat, all boneless." Roderick turned his gaze on me. His eyes, rheumy with age, blazed with fear of that long ago time.
“What happened to the body?” Tanner sat tensed as though ready to fight again.
“Those crazy motherfuckers dragged it out to the barn, strung it up, and started writing on the walls in that poor boy’s blood,” Roderick said to the table. “They tore him apart eventually. Ate pieces of him like animals. That was when I left. Ran home like the devil was after me.”
“How’d you get away with it?” I wasn’t sure why I cared. Roderick di
dn’t deserve my judgment, and whatever he’d done forty-plus years ago didn’t matter today.
“The guy wasn’t from town, so nobody here missed him. During the day, I could pretend it never happened.” Roderick wiped the sheen of sweat off his face with one trembling hand. “But nighttime was a different story. Loretta Nell would come to my window and tap on it. Then she’d motion me to come outside. I knew if I ever did, I’d be lost forever. So I pretended not to see her.”
Now is when he’ll attack us. I tensed my body.
Roderick’s voice continued, softer than ever. "Month later, I joined the Navy. During Basic, I got a letter from Daddy saying what had happened to the Messengers. He asked if I’d seen anything funny out there. I never answered."
"But you never did anything else like that?" Tanner watched me out of the corner of his eye, no doubt remembering what I'd seen in the vision back at the barn.
"They was a war going on, boy. Don't you know what that's like? You kill people when you’re at war.” Roderick's eyes were like two deep pits, hundreds of years old and sad about it all.
Neither Tanner nor I answered. We hadn't been to the kind of war Roderick had. We couldn't possibly understand.
“I'd go into a red rage and then come to myself like I'd been asleep, always saying, 'In his name.' Loretta Nell would come to me in dreams, like she'd been that day at the farmhouse, all boneless and full of promises." He lit another cigarette.
"How'd you make her go away?" I'd worked with spirits long enough to know they didn't just take pity on their victims and leave them alone.
"The last time it happened, I swore never again. Went to bed that night. Sure enough, Loretta Nell came. I turned the rage on her, beat her and beat her. Killed her in my mind. Every time she tried to come back, I fought her. When that rage came, I fought it. After a while, she quit coming. Or maybe I quit seeing her.” Roderick shook himself and made a rough sound in his throat. His eyes cleared.
He reached across the table and put one sun-spotted hand over my arm. "Reason I spoke of things I ain’t never told another soul is that you don’t want to find that book, young lady. I see Loretta Nell all over you, sense her. Don't let her come in. Get out of this town and never look back."
Oh, how I wished we could do that. Between the vision I had in the barn and Roderick’s story, I knew we were dealing with something more powerful and mean than I knew how to beat. Worse, the book of the Serpent God would release mayhem into the world, make sane people do things they wouldn't normally do. But what was my other option? I wouldn’t become Mohawk’s slave. That left death. I thought about Hannah’s gun. Maybe I should just kill myself. Tanner slid his arm over my shoulder and gave me a squeeze.
"We can’t quite walk away," he said in his concise California non-accent. "We’re under some pressure, outside pressure, to find that book."
Roderick watched us from behind a haze of smoke. "Never heard of life working another way."
I lit my own cigarette. "You ever hear any more about the book, what became of it?" I knew it was a long shot. Roderick wasn’t even in town when the Messengers met their end.
He shook his head. "Might’ve gone into evidence. But don't go down to the sheriff’s office asking a bunch of questions. When the Crime Channel came to town last year, Sheriff Hale threw one of them in jail for what she called loitering." He chuckled. "There’s two kindsa folks in Devil's Rest. One group would just as soon lynch anybody who comes to town asking about the Messengers. The other group, which includes me, is willing to put up with them to keep their dying businesses afloat. If I were you two, I’d go to the library."
"The one downtown?" I remembered passing it right before I discovered Phil’s, Home of the World Famous Monkey Burger.
"Same one." Roderick nodded. "Now if you go in there and old lemon lips Burris is behind the counter, ask if Mandy Drake is working. She’s the one who’ll help you." He smiled and winked. "Mandy’s my niece. She loves the notoriety the Messengers give this town. Might be why I ain’t so hard on those who come looking for the truth, whatever that is." Roderick checked the worn watch he wore on his wrist and raised his eyebrows.
Tanner immediately slid out of the booth and began gathering the plates. "Just tell us where to throw this away, and we’ll get out of your hair."
We spent a few minutes helping Roderick clean up after our mess. His parting words as he held open the door for us to pass through were, "If you won’t leave town, at least promise me you’ll take care of each other. Seeing the two of you together reminded me of the good times with my wife, all six months of ’em."
We left laughing, and Roderick left the lights on until we got into Tanner’s truck and started the engine.
We stopped by the library on the way back to the motel. It was long closed, as expected. The sign gave the time it opened the next morning.
"I don’t know what we’ll do if tomorrow is Mandy’s day off," I said to Tanner back in the truck.
Tanner, the voice of reason, said, "If Mandy’s not working, we’ll see if Roderick will tell us where she lives." He drove us back to the motel.
I checked the clock on my phone, its dull glow lighting the cab of Tanner’s beat-up pickup truck. Closing in on twenty-four hours since Mohawk’s visit. One-third of my time gone, and I was no closer to finding the book than when I’d started. I checked the time again.
Tanner took his eyes off the road. "Expecting a call?"
I tossed the phone on the dashboard. "I’m running out of time."
The words threatened to choke me. The idea of becoming Mohawk’s prisoner hurt more than the idea of death. I glanced over at Tanner. He made the idea of death hurt pretty bad.
I wanted us to go see the Festival of Lights in Natchitoches this Christmas. And I wanted a future with him that stretched into the great beyond. Admitting that, even in the privacy of my mind, scared me. Getting attached to Tanner couldn’t possibly have a good outcome.
The lights of Devil’s Rest faded behind us. Soon nothing lit our way but the huge moon hanging in the sky and the headlights of the truck. As we neared the motel, the lights on the retro sign’s arrow flashed in the darkness, pointing at Devil’s Slumber Inn. The lights started at the top and cascaded all the way to the bottom. Then the entire arrow and sign would stay lit up for several seconds, flash off, and start again.
Tanner backed into a parking space facing the sign. We sat in the dark, listening to the truck’s cooling tick and watching the arrow. He took one hand off the wheel and curled his fingers over mine.
Words I wanted to say to him but couldn’t flashed through my mind. He’d sucked up his pride and come to help me. Even knowing the risk it involved.
If things went wrong, his life would be in just as grave a danger as mine. But I understood now that he wouldn’t go. Asking would only insult him.
I tilted my head to watch the lights of the sign flash over Tanner’s face. The dim glow cast pools of shadow over his face, rendering it unreadable. He’d acted as though we hadn’t fought before I left. As though he hadn’t threatened to end things because of my asshole behavior.
Though we’d gotten to know each other well, our relationship was still new. I didn’t know everything there was to know about this man. The chemistry between us blew my mind. But I liked Tanner’s personality almost as much as I liked looking at him.
Kind to a fault, fierce when the situation called for it, loyal even when it threatened his own safety. He was the other half of me. But I shied away from even vague plans for a future together. I wasn’t convinced that was possible.
Tanner had a complicated history. The death of his wife and children had scarred him, maybe beyond repair. He’d made progress. Their deaths were no longer killing him with guilt. But he still mourned them and always would.
I knew all too well that Tanner might get up one morning and tell me it was time for him to hit the road. Fear of him breaking my heart kept me quiet. If I said the things I felt and then he left,
I’d have to live the rest of my life knowing I wasn’t enough.
Tanner, perhaps feeling the weight of my gaze, turned to me. He wasn’t movie star handsome, but he had his own magnetism. An intensity burning behind his green eyes, a way of carrying himself that reminded me of a powerful animal stalking its prey. The heat I’d felt since the first second we met built between us.
Tanner took his hand from mine and caressed my cheek. In a soft voice, he said, "We can’t do any more tonight."
I nodded and swallowed the flood of worries I wanted to spout just to get them out of me.
"Whatever happens, I’m going to be here." He scooted closer. The smell of barbecue and the heat of his skin enveloped me. He nuzzled the side of my face, his whiskers rasping against my neck. His whisper heated my skin. "Put your arms around me."
I did and rested my cheek against one shoulder. More words pressed at my lips, asking to get out into the world. I should tell him he’s the most important person in my life. But I kept quiet and put one hand behind his neck, tangling it in his long hair, and kissed him. The salt of his sweat burned my tongue. I tried to memorize the way it felt, just in case.
Tanner had been in the motel room, but I hadn’t. The sign on the office door claiming the Devil’s Slumber Inn had clean rooms was optimistic at best and a bald-faced lie at worst.
As I had suspected, the room made me wish I traveled with a clean bedspread and linens. A dark stain crept down one wall painted the color of cheap wine, and a spiderweb hung in the corner. A fuzz of white dust covered the dials on a TV at least my age.
Tanner had set my hatbox on a dusty dark wood veneer table. I opened it and dug for my flip-flops. I didn’t want the carpet touching my feet. Tanner came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. I leaned into him but said, "Let me shower. I stink."
"I want to help you," he murmured.