“Ralph?” Tom called again and looked at the spot in the middle of the road where Ralph usually could be found, both during the day and at this time of night. But Ralph wasn’t there. Maybe Ralph was finally showing some sense. Tom turned back around and started up the steps, but once again he heard the same sound. Then he realized that the growling was not coming from the road but from the far side of the store.
Tom quickly went down the steps and walked over to where the sound seemed to be coming from. That side of Becky’s was pitch black, the shadow of the old building obscuring even the little bit of moonlight that was otherwise available.
“Ralph? What’s the matter?”
Tom waited, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He stepped closer and, for the first time, saw the dog. It was definitely Ralph; he could tell by the silhouette. But there was something very wrong about him. At first Tom figured that the dog was growling at him, but from the way he was standing, he couldn’t have been. He was facing away from Tom. Whatever was bothering him was farther back in the shadows behind the old building. Back where Tom always parked his old pickup truck.
“Ralph, who it is, boy?”
The growling was louder now, more intense and frantic. The dog was moving back, away from whatever it was he had fixed on. Tom knew dogs well. And he knew the difference between the way a dog growls when it is warning something off, and the way it growls when it’s scared. And there was no question in his mind why Ralph was growling now. He was scared.
“What’s back there?” Tom said.
Then, all at once, the dog lunged forward into the darkness behind the building.
“Ralph...”
Tom waited to hear something. Anything. More growling. Barking. Yelping. Anything. But there was not a sound. It was as if the dog had lunged and jumped into thin air, into a black hole.
Tom took a few steps around toward the back of the store. He could see the outline of his pickup truck at the edge of the shadow cast by the building. He called out twice more tor the dog. but still there wasn’t the least sound from it, or, for that matter, from anything. Not even the crickets.
Then he heard it, his knees going weak beneath him. It was a voice. A voice he knew at once. A voice he hadn’t heard in fourteen years.
“Tom,” it called out again.
“Doc,” he whispered.
13
It was almost twelve o clock. Robins watched as Lou Anne went to the window at the front of the house. She pulled back the curtain and looked out, just as she had done every five minutes for the past hour and a half.
“Is it okay if I make myself another cup of coffee?”
She nodded. “You know where everything is?”
“By now I should,” Robins said and walked into the kitchen. He took his old cup and held it under the tap. He was just about to turn the water on when Lou Anne came into the room.
“I just thought of something,” she said. “I should have remembered it when you told me about finding Hank by Catherine’s grave. An incident that happened years ago.”
“What incident?”
“Nobody thought much about it at the time. I just remember how upset Miss Amelia—the Sunday school teacher— got. Good Lord,” Lou Anne whispered. She walked over and sat down at the kitchen table.
“What is it?”
She shook her head. “Maybe. . . maybe this whole thing’s been wrong. What everyone thought. Your grandfather. And the Klines.”
“Lou Anne? Tell me.”
“It happened during one of the Sunday school outings. Miss Amelia noticed that both Catherine and Hank weren’t with the other children. When she went looking for them, she found them off by themselves. She had a fit, because Hank was kissing Catherine. Later, when she got Catherine by herself, she told her that she shouldn’t let Hank do anything to her like that.”
“What are you getting at?” Robins said. Then, all at once, he realized. “You think it could have been Hank?”
“I don’t know.”
“But why wouldn’t Catherine have told anybody about it?”
“It could be that she wanted to protect him. She knew what would have happened if people found out. She knew he would be locked up or sent away someplace.” Lou Anne suddenly stood up. “What did Charlie say earlier tonight? Rev. Kline told him Catherine kept saying she got the child from an angel. That an angel had given her the child. Remember?”
Robins nodded.
She stood there, as if lost in thought, then turned to Robins. “It’s something Aura Lee—Hank’s momma—used to say to him. I know I must have heard her say it a hundred times. She would stroke his hair and tell him that God had made it white like that, white as a bar of Ivory soap, she used to say, because he was really an angel sent down from Heaven. An angel,” Lou Anne whispered. “That’s what Catherine meant.”
14
Charlie pulled his car over to the side of the road again. “Shit, ” he whispered. After an hour of wandering down every little dirt road and cutoff, Charlie had again caught sight of Hank, or what he at least figured had been Hank. He had followed him for another fifteen minutes, only to lose sight of him when the narrow dirt road made its final rise before its destination.
Still, even though he had lost Hank, he at least knew now where he had been leading him. What he had been leading him to.
He opened the car door and stepped out. He looked up at it. There, right underneath the sliver of moon, was the hulking ruins of the old Randolph house, its rambling shadows merging into the darkness of the kudzu all around, the all-engulfing vines having even mounted the full fifty feet of the rickety cupola that spired up from the roof of the house, and that, in silhouette, looked like a lighthouse that a green sea had swallowed.
Charlie looked around, then called out Hank’s name. If he was around, he wasn’t letting Charlie know where.
After shutting the car door, Charlie walked across the dirt road, toward the house. Maybe it was an accident, but Charlie couldn’t shake the feeling that Hank had brought him here deliberately. Earlier they had found him at Catherine’s grave, and now he had led Charlie back to the place where, fifteen years ago, he and old Doc had discovered the girl’s mutilated, tortured body dangling from a crossbeam in the cupola. And as he stood there, staring up at it, Charlie shuddered, as if he could still hear the sounds she had been making.
Charlie frowned. “Hank?”
There, moving through the weeds and kudzu toward the half-collapsed front porch of the house, was a shadow. Charlie called out again, then started up the rise, walking at first, then running. He tripped over a knot of vine, then righted himself.
“Hank?”
He stopped and stared at the shadow. It wasn’t Hank. Charlie, still not sure who it was, started running again, faster this time, reaching out to touch the figure’s back just as it was about to mount the dilapidated steps of the Randolph house.
“My God,” he said with a gasp.
The figure in front of him turned around. Charlie looked into the vacant eyes. It was Tom Harlan. He tried to say the other man’s name, but the sound evaporated in his throat. There was not a trace or flicker of expression in the familiar face. The slack mouth twisted. “I’m going to wait for Newjesus,” the mouth said, but in a voice that was not remotely Tom Harlan’s, “in the upper room.” Suddenly the mouth twisted one notch more, making a hideous grin. “Your boy, he’s up there waiting for you.”
“Larry?”
“In the upper room.”
“The upper room,” Charlie repeated. He had heard the phrase before. It was the name of the Baptist bulletin his mother used to get. It referred to the room in the inn where Jesus’s disciples went after the crucifixion. But that wasn’t what it meant now. It meant the hidden room, the room Larry and Jamey had found that night.
The thing turned back around and conti
nued to walk up the steps. “No, Tom!” Charlie shouted. He looked back down at his car. His flashlight was in the glove compartment, the flashlight he had replaced when he lost his old one in Aura Lee s crawl space. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cigarette lighter. It would have to do.
15
It was after one.
Larry had just gone back to his room after checking again with his mother and Dr. Robins, to see if they had found out anything about his dad. He sat down on the bed, then looked over at the drawer he had put the gun in after his dad had given it to him. He pulled the drawer up and took the gun out. “Damnit,” he whispered to himself.
Now they were both out there someplace, nobody knew where, both Jamey and his dad.
And he was still sitting there in his room.
He stood up, carrying the gun with him, and went to the window. He put his face close to it, so he could see out into the backyard.
“Dad, Jamey, where the hell are you?”
Just now his mother had told him they would both be okay. That right that minute they probably were together, on their way back. Larry hadn’t said anything. After all, maybe she believed it.
He was just about to turn away from the window when he noticed something. A dim patch of white. It shone for a moment, about ten or fifteen feet back from where the tree house rose up.
It was Jamey’s t-shirt. It had to be.
Larry glanced around, then ran over and locked the door to his room. He went back to the window, unfastening the screen for the second time that day. He set the gun down on the sill and pulled himself into the window. When he dropped down into the azalea bushes outside, he reached back onto the sill and took hold of the gun. A moment later, he was standing under the tree house.
“Jamey,” he whispered.
But there was no trace of him now.
Larry looked back at the door leading into the kitchen. The light was on inside, but it was empty. Apparently his mother and Robins still were in the living room. Above him he heard the pecan trees rustling.
He looked up and saw the stars in the cloudless sky. He stared at Orion and remembered which was Betelgeuse and which was Rigel. If only they could all be up there, far away, where nothing bad could ever happen to any of them, any of the people he loved so much. He stared at Orion’s belt and it seemed he remembered Jamey saying how one of the stars in it was a nebula. Jamey had explained to him what that word meant, but he could no longer remember. He absently reminded himself to ask Jamey about it the next time he saw him. And then he remembered. Would there even be a next time?
Suddenly Larry jumped and turned around. He had heard something, a noise coming from farther back in the dark yard.
“Jamey?”
That was when Larry saw him.
He waited, not sure what to do. Then, calling out the boy’s name again, he stepped over toward him slowly, stopping every now and then to make sure it really was Jamey after all.
“Jamey?” he called out, only ten feet away. But still, even though he had used a normal tone of voice, Jamey had not looked around at him. He was standing motionless, with his back to Larry, wearing his white t-shirt, his frail body trembling all over.
“Jamey, what’s wrong?”
But it was the same as before. Nothing. Not the slightest trace of a reaction.
Then Jamey said something, still without turning around. “Come with me.”
“Jamey? What’s wrong?”
“Your dad, he’s at the Randolph house, They’ve got him.”
“Who?”
“Hurry.”
“Wait. Let me go get Dr. Robins and tell my mom.” “No. If they come, something will happen to them, too. Only you can do it. Only you.”
“Wait.” Larry reached out to take hold of his arm, but just as he was about to touch him, Jamey turned and began to move rapidly toward the far corner of the dark yard. “Hurry!” he called out.
Larry clutched the gun. He glanced back at the house and then hurried after the dark figure.
16
Charlie was on the third floor of the Randolph house. In his hand was his cigarette lighter, unlit. Charlie stood there in the pitch blackness, waiting for the metal top of the lighter to cool down again. He felt it, then clicked it back on.
There, right in front of him, was the room. The room that, moments before, he had watched Tom Harlan—or whatever it now was—disappear into. Charlie stepped into it and saw the fireplace. It was empty. Charlie went over to it and heard a scuffling noise from up inside.
“Tom?” he called out. “Larry? You up there? If you’re up there, call out. Say anything, son. Just let me know you’re really there. It had to be a trick, Charlie told himself. The boy couldn’t be there. And yet, even as he told himself this, he knew he didn’t have any choice. He would have to find out for himself. He knew, too, that there was only one way of doing it.
He held the lighter into the fireplace and saw the foothold in the back of it. He clicked the lighter off and put it in his pocket, then groped in the darkness for the holes. He put his foot in the first one and began to climb up.
When he felt the ledge, Charlie pulled himself up onto it. He half teetered there, in the absolute darkness. He reached out to catch himself on the walls and felt them not just moist, as he expected, but wet, as if something was pouring out of the very stones of the house. His lungs heaved with the stifling atmosphere, more soot than air, as Charlie tried to catch his breath, tried to fight back the gagging nausea that filled him, both from the cramped, suffocating space and from the pure fear that coursed through every vein in his body. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the lighter. He clicked it on and there in front of him he made out the broken door and the narrow passageway that led into the secret room.
“Larry?”
There was not a sound coming from anywhere except himself. He lurched forward and began to crawl through the passageway. When he came to the second door, he pulled himself through and carefully stood up. He held the lighter out in front of him and saw it.
He kneeled down in front of it.
“Jesus.”
He stared into the thing. The surface of the painting seemed to be swirling, the dark, confused images moving with such dizzying speed that, for a moment, Charlie thought it was because he was about to faint. But as he continued to stare into it, the outline of something began to congeal. It was a face. An old woman’s face. She was smiling at him. Only, as he looked closer, he saw that something wasn’t right about it. The face was swollen in places. One cheek sagged down and, as he looked, the flesh seemed to melt away, showing the bone underneath, and the teeth. She was looking at something. At a figure. It was stooped down, as if examining something. And in its hand there was something glowing.
It was a cigarette lighter.
And, all at once, Charlie was able to make it out. It was a picture of himself. Of himself bending down. Bending down in the secret room.
Suddenly he jumped back and looked up. From somewhere in the dark recesses of the room he heard a voice.
“Hush now. We don’t want to scare our nice visitor, now, do we? We don’t want to scare him away after he’s come so far. Isn’t that right?”
Without taking a step, Charlie lifted the lighter and saw where its dim glow fell. Then, in a hoarse whisper, he called out, “Amelia? Miss Amelia?”
Nothing.
“Miss—”
The name caught in this throat.
“Why, what a pleasant surprise,” she said, stepping forward. “Why, look, boys and girls, see who’s come to visit us. You know what we say when we have a nice, lovely guest. We say, ‘Welcome to the upper room. ”’
She had moved closer now and Charlie could make out her face. It was swollen and discolored with massive welts, just like the face in the painting.
“I was just
telling the boys and girls my very favorite story about Newjesus. The one about the sweet old lady who was taking a bath. She thought everything else in this world was just as sweet as she was. But she was wrong, wasn’t she, boys and girls. And Newjesus, he was nice enough to show her just how wrong she was. Does anybody remember how?”
“I do, I do. Miss Amelia!”
Charlie held the lighter out and saw what the voice was coming from. The face was covered with leeches. It was Alvin Anderson.
“Why don’t you tell us, Alvin, hon?”
“Water moccasins!”
“That’s right. This sweet old lady was taking a bath and suddenly all the lights went out in her house and then, before she knew what was happening, boys and girls, she heard plop-plop, plop-plop. Because that’s the sound that big fat water moccasins make when you drop them into a bathtub. And my, I wish you could have heard that sweet old lady screaming and hollering. But wasn’t she just being silly, boys and girls? Because that’s just the way we’re chosen. Chosen to be disciples for Newjesus. Because Newjesus’s disciples aren’t called the way Oldjesus’s disciples were, no, indeed. Isn’t that right, Beulah, honey?”
“My God,” Charlie said with a gasp. In the dim glow he now saw Beulah’s body slumped down on the floor, the eyes empty, her gown torn and shredded, streaks of blood covering her huge arms and legs.
“Now, boys and girls, have you studied the lesson for today? It’s a story. A story about how Newjesus came into the world.”
Charlie stared at the face in front of him. The face that had once been Miss Amelia’s. But now there was something different about it. The eyes no longer seemed dead. They were alive with something he had never seen in Miss Amelia’s face. They were the eyes he had not looked into for fifteen years, not since that evening when he had watched them staring up at him as they sank down beneath the quicksand shoal of the Allatoona River.
“No,” Charlie whispered. Then, turning around, he started to go back into the passageway, but suddenly he felt it, a blow out of the darkness, and, reeling with the pain, he staggered against the wall, taking hold of something to his side. And from in front of him he heard the same singsong voice, “That’s right. How thoughtful of you, Alvin, to get our nice visitor a chair.”
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