NEW STUFF!

EDIT: I added more.

DON'T FAINT!

It's been a while since I've been here. I came here this morning because I had my first ever friend request ... the lovely Elena!

Funny thing is, I was thinking of a new chapter last night. So, here it is ... the opening of Chapter Two! It's definitely not developed and I'm not sure where it's going. Yet.

===

February 15, 1956

It was one of those mornings that made you glad you were a Southerner. A bright sky the color of the plates used in a blue plate special and a Sun relentlessly beating down on your head. You break a sweat walking from the front door to the car and you wonder why you even bothered taking a shower this morning. The humidity in the air kissed you and made your clothes stick to your skin like your sheets after making love with a blonde all night. It was the kind of day that made you skip work and go fishing.

Too bad it was February.

My name is Chuck Knight. I'm a private detective. Guys in my profession are usually played by actors like Humphrey Bogart or Dick Powell. If they ever made a movie about me, I reckon I'd be lucky to get Jimmy Stewart. More'n likely, the suits in Hollywood would pick Wally Cox to play me. Out in Los Angeles, they call guys like me "hard boiled." I'm not sure if I qualify for "scrambled" or "fried over hard" but I ain't hard boiled. The only time I've ever been shot at is when I've gone hunting with my cousin and the only time I've ever been knocked in the head ... it was the same damn cousin! Hey! I owe that durn hillbilly a lick or two!

Yeah ... being a private detective in Laodicea means I spend most of my days sitting in the courthouse, hunched over the deed books, making sure that the guy selling his place has a clear title. If I'm lucky, some woman hires me to check on why her husband stays out at the County Line all night.

Today ... I don't know if I'm lucky or not, but I'm being paid to sit on my butt and smoke cigarettes. So, I reckon I can't complain.

Much. And I went to college for this. I guess this is what history majors end up doing.

The streets that run perpendicular to Main Street are named for US Presidents. They're in order, from Washington through Taft, skipping the second Adams and Grant. No good Southern city planner was going to name a street for Ulysses S. Grant, the man who beat Robert E. Lee, God rest his soul. They're in order, too, which helps you find the street you're looking for pretty easy. That is, if you know the presidents in order. I reckon I'm one of only three people who paid attention in Mr. Whitten's history class. Me and the good boys down at the sheriff's department are always giving directions to fifty year old men who have lived here all their lives, and still don't know that Lincoln served before Johnson.

Anyway ... there I was, sitting in my 1949 Ford on Monroe Street, smoking my third Lucky of the day, sipping some of Mildred's coffee. Mildred's coffee was the kind that reached up out of the cup, poked you in the eyes, smacked you on the cheeks a few times, then planted a nice lingering kiss on your lips that left you panting for more. Just what I needed on a morning like this. Forget checking for stray husbands down at the County Line last night. I was down there checking for my own stray common sense, and after one beer too many, I thought I could take Judson Tate in a game of pool. I reckon he hustled me but good, and after a pint of the Jones brothers' best corn squeezin's, Judson and I finished the night with a howling tribute to Hank Williams that ought to have brought the old boy back from the dead. In other words, my head was the size of a watermelon and some kid was going to town on me with a hammer.

I thought the knocking on the roof of my car was that kid. Until I looked up and saw Mike Tilden looking down at me and grinning like a possum.

"Hey, Mike," I said through what felt like enough cotton to make a grandma's Sunday dress. "Am I double parked?"

"Nah," Mike said. "I'm bored and thought I'd check in with you. You workin'?"

"If you call it that," I said. Mike was one of two deputies that worked for Sheriff Drake. Rumor had it that Drake was going to retire after this term. Hell, he'd been sheriff when I was born, so why not? Mike was also rumored to be going to run for the spot. I might as well vote for him. Good guy. When he's sober. With the mood around this town, why be sober? He was only 30, but he already had a beer gut on him that would make most guys in this town jealous.

"What you got today?" Mike asked.

"Old Man Dugan asked me to watch the guy living up at 1315. He keeps callin' in sick. Dugan wants me to make sure he's really sick and not just slacking off. I've been here for three days and ain't seen nothing. He's either sick, dead, or has one hell of a brunette in there with him."

"How can you tell he ain't sneaking out the back door, Chuck?" Mike asked. Huh. If he's that observant, maybe I won't vote for him.

"Three days worth of the Telegraph sitting on his front porch. If he's going to pay for the paper, he may as well drag it in and read the funnies. I don't reckon he's dead. Windows are open, and I ain't smelled nothing that reminds me of chitlins yet. Could be a girl but I ain't heard nothing. If he's going to shack up with a girl, after three days, I ought to hear some moanin'. So I reckon he's really sick."

"Ain't that Joe Burden's place?" Mike asked.

"Yeah," I said. "I don't really know him. I see him in church, but that's about it."

Mike leaned his head in through the window of my car and stared at me like a preying mantis looking at a moth.

"You go to church?" he asked.

I grinned and said "Methodist girls are easy, Mike."

Mike stood back up and spat on the asphalt. "Damn. That's what I get for being a Baptist!"

We heard a sound that reminded me of my grandmother strangling a wet rooster. "Hold on," Mike said. "I got a call."

Mike was gone back to his cruiser for some time. I started my fourth Lucky and checked back on Joe's house. Still nothing. The kid still kept banging on my head, and my breakfast of aspirin wasn't doing much good. I wanted some more of Mildred's coffee.

Mike walked back to my car window. He looked a little pale. He just stood at my window for a full minute, looking down the street. Finally, he muttered, "Hey. I just got a call."

"I noticed," I said.

"Somebody found Lucas Pickett. He's dead."

"What!" I said, dropping my Lucky in my lap. I reached around like a high school senior trying to unbutton his fly after the homecoming queen had just peeled off her bra. I grabbed it, and noticed the little black dot under the business end. Damn! Another burn spot on my upholstery! I'm going to have a hard time trading in this car, whenever 1965 gets here.

"Yeah," Mike continued. "Dead. Real dead, from what Mary said."

"Do they make them any other way?" I snapped. I wasn't mad at Mike. I was mad at myself for that cigarette burn in my car seat.

"His nephew found him. Neck's broken."

"God, that ruins my day," I mumbled.

"I gotta run out there," Mike said, starting to walk away. "See you around."

"Hey," I shouted out he window to Mike. "Can I go with you? Lucas is ... was ... a friend of mine."

"Sure," Mike said, standing at his car door. "I could use the company."

Before I could start my car and put it in gear, Mike had already roared around me in his big Dodge, lights flashing, and was blowing a dust cloud at the corner. I forgot that before he became a deputy, he had been a runner for a 'shiner. My little flathead threw a tantrum as I raced to catch up with him. Following a sheriff's cruiser with its lights going was a nice way to go through Laodicea. I kept on his bumper as we blew through the few red lights in town and before I realized it, the small red brick buildings were gone and the pavement ended and we were surrounded by oaks and maples and kudzu and the swaybacked shells of octogenarian barns that pocked the landscape. I couldn't see Mike's bumper anymore. Too much dust. All I had to do was follow the thickest part of the dust and pray that Mike didn't come up on a red bone crossing the road and decide to slam on brakes.

The Pickett places were about five miles outside town, on the road that leads to MacLeod. They were good people. Kept to themselves, mostly, coming to town, going to church, and raising about the best vegetables in the county. Which isn't saying much. Other than that, nobody saw them. My grandfather told me that the Pickett places had once been one farm, but had been broken up between feuding brothers back in his day. Now, it was a cluster of small farms, each owned by a Pickett family a little more reclusive than the first one. They were strange for Rachelend Countians. No ghost stories, no rumors of brothers raping sisters, no legends of witches or vampires. I used to wonder why Lucas even stayed around here. Now, I reckon he won't have to anymore.

I blew by Lucas' driveway, engulfed in a hurricane of dust before I realized it. Durn, Mike! I threw my car into reverse and backed up fifty feet and pulled into the Lucas Pickett place, past the two skeletal oak trees he used for gate posts and down the long ruts of driveway to his house. Mike was already out of his cruiser when I pulled up behind him.

Lucas Pickett's house wasn't much to look at, but he had done more than most people around here. The house looked like Lucas had bought it somewhere around Charlotte and had it dragged here. It just didn't belong. Everybody else lived in places that looked like they had been built by a cousin of Boris Karloff. Lucas' was almost charming. Almost. Typical little shotgun house made of board and batten, not much different than everyone else's, but unlike everyone else, Lucas had kept it up. Painted white with brown shutters, door and window sashes. Paint. I wondered how he got it to stick. Mine peeled off every summer, around July 10.

He lived here alone ... well, he used to live here alone. Lucas had been married until about five years ago. I reckon I broke up his marriage. No, I didn't sleep with his wife. Lucas hired me to follow his wife around and I caught her sleeping with the Pentecostal preacher and that was all she wrote. Lucas divorced her. I heard the preacher's offerings went up after that.

Mike leaned against his car door and jerked his head toward Lucas' house. "I got a call in to the coroner. He'll be here as soon as he finishes delivering a baby."

"Which nephew found him?" I asked, walking up to Mike. I rolled up my sleeves to the elbow. The air around here felt like it was 90 degrees and thick with enough humidity to make rain.

"Junior," Mike said.

"Well, that's good. Junior has more common sense than the rest of them. Still, he's just a kid."

"Yeah, had to be hell finding his uncle dead like this. Well, I reckon we best go in and see what we can see."

We walked up on the porch. Nothing on the porch, unlike everyone else. I was used to the usual collection of ringer washing machines, gas powered refrigerators, broken down Davenports and pedal powered sewing machines. Not even a swing on this porch. Mike opened the screen door, the spring reminding me of a Siamese cat crying. The front door was open.

"That's stupid," Mike said. "Leaving his door open like this."

"Maybe Junior left it open," I said.

"Or maybe he was killed during the day. No point in locking the doors until after nightfall."

We went inside. Lucas' house was modest. It smelled of bacon and coffee and burnt oil. A kerosene heater sat against the wall, cold underneath the open window. His furniture was just a couch that probably had been new in 1928, a coffee table that looked like he had built it as best he could, two arm chairs that I thought I had seen down at Averett's Furniture two years ago, a big GE radio, and a hoop rug that no doubt had been woven by some Pickett grandmother. There were a few odds and ends on the mantle of a fireplace that hadn't been used since Hoover was president and some pictures hung on the wall, but I didn't look at them. The reason we were here lay on the floor in front of the couch.

Lucas lay there, one hand on the rug, the other rested against the couch, clenched in a bloodied fist. He wore tired overalls, a shirt that had once been white, and boots that still carried the fields on them. His blue eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling.

We knelt by the body.

"Oh, Lucas," I said. His hair had turned even more iron gray since the last time I saw him. Whoever had killed him had left a faint trace of anger, surprise and fear in the creases around his eyes.

"Strangled," Mike said. "Well, I reckon I best start dusting for fingerprints."

Mike stood up and started for the door.

"Hey, Mike," I said. "Look at these marks."

"What about them?" Mike asked, turning back.

"From his jaw to his shoulders, his neck is black and blue. No finger marks. Just all this discoloration. All the way around from what I can tell. He wasn't strangled. His neck was totally crushed. Slowly. As if by some giant cable."

"Yeah?" Mike said. "Probably a rope."

"Rope? There ain't any rope marks. It doesn't take a coroner to tell that no man with a rope did this. It looks like his neck was crushed by something about this big around," I said, holding up my hands until my fingers formed a circle of about eight inches in circumference.

"Aw, come on, Chuck! Don't go and pull them ghost stories on me!"

I stood up and snapped "Look, Mike. You and I grew up here. We know they ain't just fairy tales! We've both seen enough to know that weird stuff goes on around here. Stuff that makes campfire stories look like Tom Sawyer. You check for fingerprints and try to find a rope. But I bet you ain't going to find any. I ain't saying you got a monster. I am saying you got yourself a murder that's a little different. You go ask your boss and he'll tell you flat out that sometimes men ain't killed by men around here."

"I should have left you watching Burden's house," Mike sighed.

Chapter One (reposted)

April 7, 1970

“This is a Cuban cigar,” Grandpa said.

“Yeah,” the young man answered. “You can buy all you want in Tokyo. They don’t check soldiers coming through customs, so I brought back a ton of these.”

Grandpa clipped the end off the cigar with his pocket knife. He leaned back in his rocking chair and smiled at his grandson. The warm, sultry spring day slapped him in the face and made him glad to be alive. He looked out at his front yard, at the grass starting to grow too high to ignore any more, at the mockingbird stalking a grasshopper, at the marmalade cat stalking the mockingbird.

“I haven’t had one of these in over ten years,” Grandpa said, lighting the cigar with his Zippo. “Beats the pants off a White Owl, I tell you!”

“Dried oak leaves beats the pants off a White Owl,” the young man said, lighting his own cigar.

Grandpa watched as the mockingbird noticed the cat approaching, and with a scolding screech, flew off to the hood of Grandpa's 1959 Buick. Grandpa took a deep puff of the cigar, let the smoke linger in his mouth for a moment, then blew a perfect ring. He looked at his grandson and asked “Ain’t you still too young to smoke?”

The young man snorted and said “I’m too young to kill, too, and I’ve done my share of that.”

“From what I’ve seen on TV, Vietnam is Hell,” Grandpa said. He looked over at his grandson and squinted, trying to see himself in the young man’s face. He didn’t see much of his own face, seeing more his wife’s eyes and nose, and his son’s wife’s mouth and shape of the head. The old man smiled and added “I’m glad you’re back in one piece.”

“I’m not in one piece,” the young man said in a whisper. He took a deep drag on his cigar, let the smoke linger in his mouth and slowly blew it out. “I left a big piece of my soul back there.” The young man took his cigar out of his mouth, looked at it and rolled it around between his thumb and forefinger. Then he said, letting the words roll out of his mouth the same way the cigar rolled in his hand, “I don’t remember, but were you in the Army?”

“Naw!” Grandpa said. “I was old enough for World War One, but they don’t take men who can’t load and hold a rifle,” Grandpa said, holding up his right hand. His four fingers were long and beautiful, like an artist’s, but where his thumb should have been was only a flat, ugly scar.

“I’ve always wondered how you lost your thumb,” the young man said. “Dad always said a snapping turtle took it off, but he thought there may be more to it than that. Every time I’d ask you or Grandma, I’d always hear that I wasn’t old enough.”

“You still ain't old enough,” Grandpa snorted and sucked on his cigar.

The young man frowned and snapped “I’m old enough to kill innocent people. They were just farmers, working in their fields, armed with shovels and hoes, and I shot them all. I had orders.”

“I reckon so,” Grandpa said. He took a deep puff on his cigar. “I reckon you did what you had to do. I know your Paw still ain’t told me what he did in Germany.”

“So, how did you lose your thumb?” the young man asked.

The old man smoked in silence for a full minute, then slowly said “I ain't never told nobody this story, not even your paw or grandmaw. You familiar with the goings on over in Rachelend County?”

“I’ve heard the stories, Grandpa,” the young man said. “Been over there maybe twice. Dismal, really sad place. My friend Wayne disappeared one night. He came in third in the FFA steer judging. He was so upset that his steer didn’t get first. Said he was going to get drunk, swim the Gourdvine to Illslip and beat up some retards. He never came back. The paper said he got drunk, and drowned half way across the river. We used to joke that he made it to Illslip, but the werewolf got him.”

“I reckon that might be true.”

“Come on, Grandpa!” the young man snapped.

“A slew of those stories are true, son.”

“Come on, Grandpa! Don’t tell me you believe a bunch of superstitious wives’ tales!”

“Rachelend County is one of the least inhabited and most god-forsaken counties in North Carolina,” Grandpa said. “There ain't no telling what goes on across the river every day that we don’t know about. Just because you’ve been to Vietnam don’t give you the right to poo-poo what goes on over there. You asked about my thumb? My thumb here is proof that the stories about Rachelend County are true! They say that when the white man first crossed the river into Rachelend County that there was a large village of Cherokee Indians living there. They was friendly to the white man, but the white man wanted the place for himself, so they slaughtered the village. As Chief Wolfskin lay dying, he was overheard to curse the ground. Ever since, nothing wants to grow over there. Farms fail. Logging runs out early.”

“Poor soil conditions, Grandpa,” the young man said. “They’re on the Smokies side of the river. Probably the runoff poisoned the soil.”

“During the Revolution, there was a patriot lived over there named Colonel Drake. One night, a group of Tories who lived there dragged him and his whole family out of his house into the yard. They butchered his wife and son in front of his eyes, gang-raped his daughter and hung him. As he was dying, he cursed the Tories saying that the blood of his family would be on their heads for ten generations. Ever since, there've been more loonies and idiots and just nasty people born over there than anywhere else.”

The young man laughed and said “Inbreeding. Incest will do that.”

Grandpa frowned and continued. “During the War between the States, a troop of Yankee cavalry came through Rachelend County, doing reconnaissance for General Sherman. They disappeared. Sherman sent another troop to find out what happened to them. They found the first troop lying in the forest. They was naked and their blood had been drained from their bodies. Even the horses was bled dry.”

“Local farmers killed a bunch of green Yankee recruits by cutting their throats while they slept. All of these stories can be explained. I suppose you’re going to tell me there really is a werewolf over there, too!”

“Dammit, boy,” Grandpa roared. “Don’t you believe nothing? Now, I didn’t see any werewolf, but I will tell you what I did see. You’ve been down to Keller Mills?”

“Down by the river, just above Marysville. The Ruins. Yeah! I deflowered Janey Murray there after my senior prom.”

“You and about every other kid in school!” Grandpa said. “Well, I used to work there. It burned down in September of 1916. Twenty-nine people died in that there fire. The official cause of the fire was a bearing went bad and jammed a flywheel, which overheated a belt and it caught fire and the fire spread through the looms. I was there that day. The owner liked me, so I could go to school and work, too. I was a spoiled kid! I pulled five people out of the fire before the roof fell in. The townsfolk called me a hero for pulling five people out. Five. Hell, I ain’t no hero. A hero would have pulled out the other twenty-nine. And it wadn’t no bad bearing that caused that fire, either.

“Something happened that day that seldom happens. The wind shifted. The wind always blows from Fulton County across the Gourdvine River into Rachelend County. But that day, the wind blew from Rachelend into Fulton. They say that when that happens, the evil in Rachelend County crosses the river and bad things happen here. I believe that sometimes, the evil over there gets so bad that it has to escape, like the steam in a tea kettle, to keep the place from blowing sky high. That might be the Almighty’s way of keeping Rachelend from consuming the whole state. That day, the wind shifted, and the Keller Mills burned down. Other things happened, too. Old Man Parker lost four of his five children, each on a different part of his farm to a different accident. Lewis Groves murdered his brother and never did know why. Things like that.

“At the time, I didn’t believe the stories, neither. I was educated! I could read. I was going to graduate from high school. That was rare in those days. I read the Bible and reckoned that all those bad things was just coincidence. Bad things had happened on the same day before, and on this day, the wind simply blew a different way. But the people talked, especially the people I worked with, and my parents believed that the wind had something to do with it. So we decided to go take a look.”

“We?” the young man asked.

“We,” Grandpa continued. “Charlie Pitts, David Maynard, Ed Allen and myself. About a week after the fire, we decided to go over to Rachelend County. Ed’s family lived on the river, so he had a boat. After sundown we rowed down the river from his place to where the Mill was. Across the river was the remains of a town called Hegel’s Bend. There wadn’t much more there then than you can see from the Ruins now. It had been an important stop in the steamboat days, but since the railroad come through, the town had died. Same thing happened on our side of the river at Marysville. At the time, the old steamboat landing dock was still there, and it was in fairly good shape. We could see the old Hegel House, too. It still stood and you could see it across the river in the trees. The old store and warehouse had fallen down and the piles of lumber stood up like mocking fingers pointed back toward the town.

“We pulled up to the dock and tied the boat. We climbed out and stood on the dock. It felt queer to be on that side of the river. I looked across at the Ruins. In the light of the full moon I could easily see the hulk of the mill, now just a shell. The first storey still stood, but the second storey was pretty much gone down to the bottom of the windows. We looked around the dock. In the moonlight we could see that the boards had been bleached white by the sun and was splitting down the middle. We kept to the edges, thinking the boards was strongest near the pilings. I tried to imagine what it was like when it would have had a steamboat tied there instead of our little skiff, and the dock was filled with bales of cotton and barrels of tobacco. I looked upriver to the old lumber mill, just up the Gourdvine from the dock where we stood. We continued to lumber in Fulton County until about 1931, but the Hegel’s Bend mill fell silent in 1911. They say the trees in Rachelend County was cursed, and made of iron and shattered the saws. My father told me tales of when the sawmill operated. He said every now and then you could hear a scream all the way across the river to Keller Mill and he knew that a cursed tree had just broken a saw and someone had just lost a hand.

“We left the dock and started walking toward the town of Hegel’s Bend. A dirt road began at the dock and ran straight into the woods beyond the Hegel House. It was a hard road, packed down over the years by logging wagons and farm wagons and oxcarts, cutting a swath through the woods like you would cut a deep mark in a steak with a butcher knife. We walked past the Hegel House. It’s gone now, fell down in a storm in 1945. It was this great pile of ... I think they call it Greek Revival ... but it was some old plantation type nonsense. I always heard that Hegel was a merchant who fancied himself to be a great plantation owner, made his money on the steamboat trade and lost it in the saloon. The house looked livable, but no one lived in it, not that we could tell. Those monstrous columns leaned a little and the roof looked buckled, and the front door stood open and there was no lights in the windows. In the moonlight, we could tell that most of the paint done peeled off. David wanted to go inside, but we hadn’t taken any lanterns. We was going to see by the light of the full moon, so as not to attract any attention. We didn’t think the locals would like visitors from Fulton City snooping around at night. So, we kept walking.

“About one hundred yards from the Hegel House, the road made a sharp turn to our left. We could see the town about two hundred yards beyond the bend in the road. Light in those days mostly all came from kerosene lanterns. Lots of small towns didn't have electricity yet. From where we stood, the lights in the house windows made the town look like a small colony of lightning bugs in the trees. We started walking toward it, keeping real quiet like.

“David was the first to notice. It was just nine at night. A full moon. But there was no animals in Hegel’s Bend. We didn’t see no cats. We didn’t hear no dogs barking. We didn’t hear no night birds or bats. We didn’t even hear no frogs. We didn’t see no coons, possums or skunks. Nothing. The wind wadn’t even blowing in the trees. The only sounds we heard was our own footsteps on the road. The closer we came to the actual town, the quieter it seemed to get. This was 1916. True, it was a rural town, depressed from the loss of steamboats and the closing of the lumber mill, but we didn’t hear a single phonograph or anyone playing a fiddle or guitar. There was silence in the town, like you'd find in a graveyard.

“Hegel’s Bend was an old town, built around 1850 or so. The houses was small, pier-and-beam houses, like the ones down by the Ruins. The town was in bad shape. The houses sat back from the street, amongst the trees, as if they was carved right into the forest. The trees all looked twisted, like the air fought them every second in some great wrestling match. I felt like the branches was reaching out to me, not threatening me, but like they was calling for help. We could see the houses in the moonlight, setting back in amongst the trees, their old whitewashed walls glowing faintly in the moonlight like tombstones in a graveyard. We could tell that a lot of the roofs was bowed. Some of the porches had fallen down. One or two houses leaned sharply to one side. Yet, they was all lived in. We could see the cold yellow gleam of kerosene lanterns coming from at least one window in each house, the light giving us a faint, silent warning to keep our distance.

“The air was still, you know, like in a house what’s been closed up all winter. That’s what Hegel’s Bend felt like. And it was hot. Unseasonably hot. This was September. Usually by then, the night air is cool. It had been over here in Fulton City before we left. But Hegel’s Bend felt like a July day at noon. There was no wind, not even a night breeze. The air stank. The best I can describe it is the smell of old rotten leaves and decayed pumpkins mixed with urine. I don’t recall seeing any leaf piles or pumpkins or anything, not even a skunk that could have caused that urine smell. The yards was just bare dirt. Just trees and bushes, then the forest beyond the houses, lurking behind the houses like a mountain of dark and shadow.

“We reached what we guessed to be the center of town. Four or five stores. Some looked like they was made of brick. Single storey, the windows dark.

“Then there he stood. He just appeared out of nowhere. He must have been down an alley by one of the stores. We all jumped. I know I gasped. We couldn’t see him too well at first. He was a tall man, slightly heavy set, broad across the shoulders. He had this big, railroad type kerosene lamp, and shined it in our faces. Then by the light we could see him. Not much detail in his face, it was deep in the shadows. But we could see his collar. He was an Episcopal preacher.

“‘You scared us, Father,’ Ed said.

“‘What are you boys doing here, and after dark, too?’ the Preacher said in a voice that reminded me of the sound of wood against wood.

“‘We was curious,’ Ed said. ‘About the wind.’

“‘The wind changed direction and Keller Mill burned down,’ I said, my mouth going dry.

“‘And you wanted to see for yourself what evil lay over here that could have done such a thing, right?’ the Preacher asked. ‘Well, you’re going to find out, unless you follow me.’ We heard a creaking noise nearby, followed by a slap. The Preacher grunted and said ‘Mr. Drummond has a loose shutter.’

“Charlie asked ‘How can it be slapping against the house? There’s no wind.’

“The Preacher said ‘It’s the wind you can’t feel that does the most damage. Come on.’ He turned and began walking away from us, toward the other end of town. He stopped and looked back at us over his shoulder. ‘Come on,’ he said again. Something told me to obey him, so I started to follow, and the other boys fell in after me. The light of the Preacher’s lantern lit the road ahead of him, and was the first sign of actual warmth I had seen since we landed at the dock.

“He led us through the rest of town, passed a few more falling down houses with cold lantern light in their windows, to a small, wooden church near the other end of Hegel’s Bend. It lay deep in the shadows of a grove of oak trees that must have been old when George Washington was a boy. The church looked like it was the only building in town that still stood upright. We followed the Preacher inside. It was a small Episcopal church. About twenty pews, ten on each side, wooden with none of the carvings you see here in Fulton City. Simple. A table stood at the front, which I reckon was the altar, then a small elevated area with a small pulpit on one side and a larger one on the other, and a small simple wooden cross hung on the wall behind the pulpits. The church was lit by four kerosene lanterns.

“The Preacher said ‘I apologize for the dim light. Electricity hasn’t reached here from Laodicea yet.’ He shined his lantern around the church. He nodded toward the pews and said ‘You may spend the night here. The pews are hard, but you may sleep on them. You may leave at sunrise. You’ll be safe here.’

“‘Excuse me, sir,’ David said. ‘Safe from what?’

“The Preacher sighed. ‘The powers of darkness. They live here. This is a church. They won’t enter here. They don’t like the presence of God.’

“I sat down on one of the pews. David and Charlie sat down on a pew on the other side of the aisle from me. Ed walked up to the altar and stood there, looking up at the cross. The Preacher didn’t say another word. He just looked around, and then walked to the door. He opened it, looked out into the darkness beyond him. Then, without a sound, he stepped out into the night and closed the door behind him. We sat around in silence for what seemed like an hour. The air inside the church felt cool, comfortable, like a back porch in the twilight of a fall day. Then Charlie sighed. He stood up and walked to the door and opened it. He looked out into the dark street. ‘I’m going home,’ he said.

“‘You know what the Preacher said,’ Ed said, his voice trembling. ‘We’re supposed to wait here until sunrise.’

“‘We have to be home by sunrise!’ Charlie said. ‘I have chores tomorrow. My Dad thinks I’m fishing tonight.’

“I said ‘This is all boogeyman stuff anyway. That Preacher is probably in someone’s house right now, laughing his fool self silly over a cup of tea and telling how he spooked some kids from Fulton City who was skulking around.'

“‘All right,’ Ed said. ‘Let’s go. I’m glad I brought this,’ and he pulled a revolver from his jacket pocket.

“Charlie yelled ‘What the Hell did you bring that thing for?’

“‘Don’t say Hell in a church!’ David screamed.

“‘Hell!’ Charlie snapped. ‘There. I said it again. That Preacher probably says it every Sunday. It’s his job.’ Charlie looked at Ed and said ‘I asked you a question.’

“Ed shrugged and said ‘I reckoned that if we did find any ghosts, they’d be the flesh and blood type. You know, idiots armed with pickaxes and such.’

“‘Well, put that thing away before you go out there,” Charlie snapped. 'If someone sees you with it, it’ll get real bad. We ain't from around here and I bet the court will be packed with that Preacher’s cousins.’

“We stepped out into the night. The air outside the church felt about twenty degrees hotter than it had inside. We walked down to the street. I looked back at the church, looking more like a lost soul itself in this worn out rag of a town. Charlie said ‘Let’s go,’ and turned left, toward the river. We followed him. We went about one hundred yards, and noticed that there was no houses. We was surrounded by forest.

“‘We must have gone the wrong way,’ Ed said.

“‘I thought if we turned left, we’d be headed toward the river,’ Charlie said. I said I thought so, too. So we turned around and went the way we had come. About two hundred yards along, we still hadn’t come to any houses or the church or any other buildings. We was still in the forest, no lights peeking through the trees, only the moonlight clawing its way through the branches overhead.

“We all stopped. Charlie said ‘Where’s the church?’ I asked ‘Where’s the town? There’s only one street in and one street out.’ Charlie sighed and said ‘There must have been a cross street right at the church and we didn’t see it and took it by mistake. Come on, let’s go back! The moon’s mighty bright tonight. Keep your eyes open for a cross street.’

“About that time, I realized that we was not the only people standing in the road. I say people, if you can call these other things people. They was figures. Dark figures. They looked like solid shadows. They just appeared out of the night from the woods. First three of them. Then six. Then they was twelve. Two was holding scythes. One had a pitchfork. Another held an old cavalry saber from the War between the States. The rest didn’t seem to be holding nothing.

“We stood there, frozen like statues for what seemed like eternity. The figures just stood there, too, I reckon staring at us. I didn’t see their faces, much less their eyes. We started to move in a circle, around each other, looking at them. We was surrounded.

“Charlie was the one furthest out from the group, being the one leading the rest of us toward the river. The two figures with scythes moved silently forward, and faster than I can count to one, they drove the blades deep into Charlie’s knees. He screamed and fell. Two other figures moved quickly toward him, grabbed him by the legs and dragged him off into the woods. We could hear him screaming in the night, his screams growing faint as if the figures was running with him.

“Then Ed did something mighty stupid. He pulled that revolver. I think he shot the figure with the saber twice. Maybe three times. If the figure felt the shots, I couldn’t never tell. He moved like a log floating in the river toward Ed and before David or I could do anything, we saw the flash of the saber in the moonlight and Ed’s hand and the revolver was gone. Ed screamed and then he just vanished. He just vanished into the shadows. I think four or five of the other figures grabbed him and pulled him back away from the road. I couldn’t never tell.

“David yelled ‘Ed!’ I could still hear Charlie screaming in the distance, but Ed’s scream almost drowned him out. Then they both went silent at the same time. That was enough for me. I grabbed David by the collar and yelled ‘Let’s go!’ We started running as fast as we could. We ran down the street for what seemed like five minutes, and then I noticed that we was headed in the right direction. We never passed through the town of Hegel’s Bend again ... to this day, I don't know where the town went ... but we was headed for the river. I could see the Hegel House and the dock beyond it. I didn’t hear anyone behind us.

“Then I heard a ‘whuff’ from my left. Just a whuff. Like the sound you make when someone pops you in the stomach with the flat of his hand. I looked to my left and David was gone. I stopped and looked around. Nothing. I was standing in a clearing and the moonlight shone down on me and around me. Nothing. I walked back a little. No David. Nothing.

“Then there they was. At least a dozen of the figures. I could see the two with the scythes, and the one with the pitchfork. And there was the one with the cavalry saber.

“I started to turn to run away, stumbled and fell, and as I did, the figure with the saber slashed at me. If I hadn’t fallen, he would have struck me in the face. As it was, he missed my face, but I felt a hot, searing pain in my right hand. I hit the ground hard. I looked at my hand, and my thumb was gone, cut off at the base, like you see it now. I just stared at my hand, stupid with the pain and shock. The wound gushed blood. Then I screamed and grabbed my hand.

“The figures started gathering around me. The one with the saber stood in front of me. I couldn’t see their faces. No details. Just shapes. I couldn’t even tell what they was wearing. The one with the saber took one step toward me, and when he did, this other figure jumped in front of him, between me and him. I heard a familiar voice say ‘That’s enough!’ It was the Preacher. He said ‘You have your sacrifices. Take them and go, but spare this boy.’ The figures didn’t move. The Preacher said ‘I said go! In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost!’ What I could see around the Preacher, it looked like the figures simply melted into the night. They just disappeared.

“Then the Preacher turned to face me. He looked like one of the figures, just a dark shape, except for his collar. I could see the white tab on his collar, shining like a silver dollar in the moonlight. And parts of his face stood out like new money. The rest of his face was just a shadow. He looked angry. And sad.

“The Preacher helped me to my feet. He placed his hand over where my thumb had been and the pain stopped. I looked at it in the moonlight. The bleeding had stopped, too. The Preacher said ‘If you fools had listened to me, you would all be alive right now.’ I said ‘We needed to be back home by sunup.’ He looked at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. The shadows caused by the moon made his eyes look like dark holes in a skull. He said ‘You would have been.’ He started walking toward the river. ‘Come with me,’ he said.”

“We reached the dock where Ed’s boat was tied. The preacher said ‘Now, this is what you’re going to tell your sheriff. You were hunting cooters at night, and you caught one. You were removing the hook from its mouth when your boat struck a submerged log and overturned. The cooter must have bitten your thumb off in the confusion. When you came up, your thumb was gone, your boat was gone and your friends were gone. Do what searching for them you need to do.”

“I turned to the preacher and said ‘You want me to lie, sir?’ The preacher said ‘If you do not lie, you will certainly be hanged.’ I said ‘but ...’ He leaned close to my face and whispered ‘Swim!’ I didn’t hesitate. I jumped in the river and swam as quickly as I could to the other side. Once I got there, my wound began bleeding and hurting again.

“I made it back to town just as the sun came up. I found the sheriff and passed out on his porch. The doctor patched me up while I told the sheriff exactly what the Preacher told me tell him. The sheriff gathered the townspeople and they went down the river searching. They found the boat, washed up on the bank of the river, below Marysville. The bow was smashed. Two days later, Charlie’s body washed up down where Clark’s Fish Camp is now. There was no marks or wounds on his body, and I know I saw him hit in the legs by two scythes. The doctor said Charlie died of drowning. Ed and David was never seen again.”

Grandpa fell silent for a minute. Then he put his cigar slowly into his mouth and took a deep drag on it. He exhaled and watched the smoke rise from his face. He said, “I ain't been back to Rachelend County since. That is how I lost my thumb and why I was not in World War One.”

The young man shrugged and said “Well, Grandpa, how do you know it didn’t happen the way you told the cops? Maybe you hit your head when you fell out of the boat and dreamed about those ghosts.”

The old man’s mouth dropped open. He spat, “Maybe you spent two years smoking opium and shacking up with teenage Vietcong girls, instead of shooting farmers!”

“I know what happened,” snapped the young man.

“So do I, boy. So do I.”

BETHCA NEVER THOUGHT YOU'D SEE ANYTHING HERE AGAIN!

Future Plans

Here are the kernels for some upcoming stories:

1864 -- Union cavalry Major James Waverly and his detachment have disappeared on a routine reconnaissance mission.  General Sherman dispatches Captain O'Malley and his troop to find them.  The trail ends at Hegel's Bend, deep in the heart of Confederate territory.  What O'Malley finds is beyond his darkest nightmares and all that stands between him and his men meeting the same fate is an aging preacher, who may or may not be a Confederate first and a man of God second.

1880 -- the railroad is coming through Rachelend County!  Augustus Dugan donates the land for the construction of the depot, and it is built ... right on top of the grave of Chief Wolfskin.  Is the wave of murder the result of the feud between the Barristers and the McKays, or is Wolfskin seeking revenge after all these years?

1899 -- Young Father Drake receives a visit from the bishop, and is caught with the writings of Enoch in his possession.  The bishop plans to defrock Father Drake, but the very evil that Drake fights has other plans. 

1909 -- beautiful debutante Felonia Dugan has just returned from her Grand Tour, and brought back an antique book from Italy.  As she reads it, she becomes more and more entangled in it.  Her brother Francis, and suitor, Dr. Gilbert Julian, recognize the book for what it is, an ancient guide to sorcery.  As Felonia becomes more a witch, her father becomes more a demon.  Francis and Gilbert may not be able to stop the inevitable collision of dark powers within their own home.

1931 -- five sixteen year old girls have disappeared within two months.  They were all seen in the presence of an Alcorn boy.  Sheriff G.W. Drake sets out to talk with the Alcorns, who might actually be cousins of his, and plans to let his shotgun do the interviewing.  But a figure from the past shows up to make him put the shotgun away.

1935 -- Greenberry MacAulliffe takes his life into his own hands to stand up to an abusive landowner, Robert Julian, who has cheated a black sharecropper, Johnny Marvin.  Sheriff Drake is called out, but will he arbitrate a settling of accounts, or bury the dead?

1939 -- Willis Dugan wants to play blues, like the black men he had heard, but his father won't let him.  A friend tells him that if he goes to a crossroads at midnight on a full moon, the devil will give him the ability to play.  So Wills goes to find out ...

1943 -- While the nation fights the Germans and the Japanese, Rachelend County has its own war.  After nearly a century of being a myth, the werewolf has finally appeared, in downtown Dugan Hill.

1981 -- The people of Rachelend County have often wondered why Miles, Claibourne and Leonard Pope never seem to age.  In fact, by all recollection, they are well over 200 years old!  Claibourne proposes to his sweetheart and tells her the truth.

2002 -- Rachelend County Community College instructor Dr. John Drake is interviewed by a Charlotte Observer reporter who wants to know the truth behind all the legends.  Drake takes him through the cemetery and shows him a collection of artifacts, then takes him on a journey of reason versus faith, fact versus truth.