The Oath

by Frank E. Peretti

  The ringleader let go of Kyle’s arm long enough to untie the gag and yank the rag from Kyle’s mouth. “Don’t scream.”

  Kyle didn’t scream; he was too busy breathing—and crying, totally repentant.

  “Don’t feel too bad about it, son. We’ve all been here one time or another. Just don’t forget, that’s all.”

  With a glance from the ringleader, one of the men holding Kyle’s feet cut away the ropes with a knife. Then they dropped him face first into the river and let the current carry him along as he struggled to right himself in the shallow water, his arms still bound behind him, his face dipping again and again under the rippling, splashing surface.

  He was a good distance down the river by the time he finally got his feet under him and could push, kick, and half-float his way to the shore. Then he flopped on the smooth rocks and wept like a child, gasping and coughing, glad just to be alive.

  By the time he’d recovered, he was alone, without tormentors but also without help. He’d washed up on the opposite side of the river. Somehow he’d have to cross again to get home, and his arms were still tied behind him.

  It would be a very long night for Kyle Figgin.

  NIGHT CAME, and in the vast mountainous regions beyond the city lights, the darkness was thick and absolute, enfolding the forests, blanketing the valleys, reducing the ridges to the faintest of jagged lines against the clouded sky. The air was cool and still as the sounds of night took their turns: the crickets up close and all around, the frogs farther in the distance, the coyotes howling and chattering in a faraway, other world.

  Fully dressed, Maggie Bly lay on her bed in the dark, her face illuminated by the cold yellow of the motel’s yardlight. She was looking out the window and listening. The light gave her a sickly complexion, but her eyes were alert and attentive. Her lips betrayed a faint smile, her first in days. She felt at ease, relaxed. Absently, she scratched at the area directly over her heart while a stain, black and odorous, began to spread in a widening circle, saturating her scooped-neck cotton shirt and blackening her fingers.

  She rose from the bed and went to the window, her eyes dreamy and her smile broadening. Then she listened, as if to sweet music, her head swaying lazily from side to side. The dread, the fear, was leaving her. She couldn’t help but giggle.

  ELMER AND BERTHA MCCOY sat in the darkened living room of their mobile home amid TV trays, beer cans, and cigarette butts watching the late show, their stony faces lit by the bluish glow of the television. After the late show, as they did every night, they would take turns washing up in the bathroom and then go to bed. This was all in the routine, as was the two dogs out front barking at nothing in particular as they did every night.

  But something was different. The dogs’ barking was usually sporadic, background sound that barely registered with the McCoys. But that night the barking was louder, insistent, continuous. It was enough to force Elmer out of the soft couch and to the window. “Hey!” he yelled. “Shut up out there. Knock it off!”

  But then he thought he heard singing somewhere out in the dark. Griz yapped again.

  “Shut up!” Elmer turned to his wife. “Turn down the TV for a second.” She pressed the mute button, and Elmer stood at the window, frowning as he tried to hear the strange sound. Even though both dogs kept barking, Elmer could still hear the singing between their barks, a woman’s voice far away, barely audible, then ever so gradually, getting louder. She must be coming up the road toward their trailer.

  By now Bertha was curious. “What is it?”

  Elmer only motioned her to be quiet. She got up and joined him at the window.

  She heard it, too. “Somebody out there singing this time of night?”

  When Elmer recognized the voice, he whispered, “It’s Maggie Bly.”

  “No, it isn’t!” Bertha whispered in denial, immediately clinging to his arm.

  As they stood there, the voice grew louder, moving eerily up the road.

  “It’s her,” Elmer whispered.

  Bertha clung to him tighter, hurting his arm.

  It was Maggie’s voice all right, a very good voice but strange and haunting. She was singing a lonesome country tune about a good man loved and lost, and love never coming again. Then, from behind the big cottonwood in their front yard, a silhouette emerged: Maggie Bly, strolling along the white center line, easy and carefree, singing her mournful song, her hands clutching her heart.

  It was happening again. Bertha had never seen it; she had only heard about it. Elmer had seen it once and never wanted to see it again. But now here it was, unfolding before their very eyes, and they stood frozen, their eyes following that silhouette as it moved like an apparition up the road, the song fading like a ghost crying alone in the night.

  It took only a few moments for Maggie to pass out of sight and for her song to fade. But that was enough. Elmer and Bertha moved away from the window, pulled the shade, extinguished the lights, then dropped to the floor and crawled to their bedroom to hide.

  TRACY SLAMMED down the phone. She’d heard from a friend in Hyde River, and it was bad news.

  Where was that phone number? She was wearing an oversized T-shirt and a pair of cutoff jeans, her favorite relax-at-home clothes. The number had to be in her uniform. She ran to the closet, groped through the shirt pocket, and found the slip of paper with the number of the Traveler Motel. She picked up the phone in her bedroom and dialed the number.

  After five rings—it seemed to take forever—she heard a woman’s voice answer, “Traveler Motel.”

  “Room twelve, please.”

  Tracy could hear the hesitation in the woman’s voice. “Is this, uh . . .”

  “This is Tracy Ellis, Sarah’s friend.” Sarah was the false name Maggie had used.

  “She’s gone, Miss Ellis. She left hours ago, and she hasn’t come back yet.”

  “Left! Did she say where she was going?”

  “No. Just walked out. I saw her hitch a ride out front.”

  “Did she check out?”

  “No, she still has the room.”

  Once again, just to be sure. “She’s not there?”

  “No. I’ve been here all evening, and she hasn’t come back.”

  HAROLD, OH, HAROLD . . .” The voice was smooth, sultry. “

  Bly jolted awake, his eyes darting about, his hand moving toward the .38 revolver in the nightstand drawer. The bedroom was dark and quiet. Nothing moved.

  He relaxed a little and released his held breath. The .38 remained where it was. Man, what a nightmare! That voice sounded like it was right in the house—

  “Harold,” came the voice again, ghostly, teasing. “Sweetheart . . .”

  Bly sat up in the bed, making sure he was awake. He scanned the bedroom carefully. The dresser, the chair, his clothes slung over the bedpost, all were vague shadows in the dark. Where was she? Should he answer? Or was he still dreaming? He sat still and listened. Okay, Maggie, I’m awake now. Let’s hear you talk.

  She laughed loudly and mockingly. That was Maggie, all right, Harold thought. He untangled his feet from the sheets, got out of bed, and looked down from the second-story window. He caught sight of Maggie’s silhouette just below the window, her hair wild and glowing in the light of the moon, her face in shadow. The sight of her made him jump, and she had obviously noticed, for she laughed even more.

  She’d scared him, and now she was laughing at him. Instantly, his temper flared. He grabbed his pants off the bedpost, and, standing at the window, he hurriedly jammed one leg into the pants.

  “So I caught you with your pants down, Harold?”

  “Maggie, I’m gonna tear you apart!” Bly was hopping on one foot. “I’ll tear you apart, you hear me?”

  “Just thought I’d stop and say good-bye, sweetie!”

  She disappeared. He got his pants up to his waist, zippered them, and stuck his head out the window in time to see her moving lazily toward the road. He ran downstairs, toward the front door, hitting a
table in the dark, cursing.

  Maggie reached the street out front and looked for any signs of life. All the old houses were dark, the occupants asleep, or at least acting like it. She stooped and grabbed a rock from the road shoulder, then pegged it at the front door of the mining company foreman.

  “Hey! Wake up in there!”

  No response. The house stayed dark.

  She grabbed another rock and bounced it off the front door again. Now the bedroom light came on.

  “You gotta hear this!”

  The miner and his wife living two doors down must have heard her, too, for their front door squeaked open. She could see their faces, one above the other, peering out through the crack.

  With a not-so-subtle rattling and crash, Harold Bly burst out the front door, bare-chested and powerful, holding a shotgun in his burly arms. Another light went on in a neighbor’s house just down the street, and he halted at the top of the steps. People were hearing this, seeing it.

  Maggie had her back to him. She was still busy rousing the neighborhood. “Hey, everybody! Wake up! I’ve got an announcement to make!”

  Another light came on next door. Then the porch light. Mrs. Cumber, a retired schoolteacher, poked her head out the front door.

  In a quick change of character, Bly stashed the gun on the porch and made his way down the stairs, reaching out toward Maggie like a loving husband should, trying to appear calm and collected. He had to get this madwoman inside before she made him look foolish. “Now, Maggie, honey, why don’t you come inside and let’s talk?”

  She turned to face him, a carefree, cocky expression on her face, the strap of her bag over her shoulder—and a slick, black stain down the front of her blouse from her heart to her waist.

  Bly stopped dead in his tracks. Then he backed up a little.

  The stain was glistening, growing. He could smell the stench, like that of a dead animal. It was obvious she’d been clawing at it, for her hands were blackened, and she had black smudges where she’d touched her face.

  Bly mellowed. Then he smiled a gloating smile.

  LEVI, this is Tracy Ellis. Is Maggie there?” “

  “No ma’am.” Trouble. Levi could sense it in Tracy’s voice. He could feel fear twisting his insides. “I haven’t seen her tonight.”

  “I just got a call from somebody in Hyde River. He says he saw her on the road just a few minutes ago.”

  Levi held the phone to his ear and went straight to the front window to survey the road below. “Where’d he see her? What part of town?”

  Tracy was flustered. “I don’t know. He didn’t say. He just told me he’d driven by her.”

  “Well, which way was she going?”

  “Up the road.”

  That was bad. “Toward Old Town?”

  “You got it.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “About ten minutes.”

  “I’m going after her.”

  “If you find her, just get her back to your place, all right? And do it quietly. I’m going out the door right now.”

  “I’ll look for you.”

  Levi slammed down the phone and bounded for the stairway, grabbing his jacket off its hook as he passed.

  LOOKING AT the black and dripping stain over his wife’s heart, Harold Bly felt a wonderful sense of intoxication—power, that’s what it was. Real power!

  Still, he didn’t approach Maggie and didn’t want her approaching him either. He stood with his arms outstretched to keep her away, and spoke gently. “Now, Maggie. I think you should just move on—just, just keep going.”

  She cocked her head playfully to one side and said too loudly, “I showed Cliff your office at the mining company. We made love up there, Harold; you know that?”

  “Maggie, now—calm down.” He was acutely aware of the neighbors listening.

  But she threw back her head and jubilantly shouted into the sky, “Cliff Benson was the most wonderful lover I ever had! Gentle, and kind, and—” She looked at Harold. “—a better man than you ever were, Harold Bly!”

  This he hadn’t planned on, and it wasn’t so much what she was saying that started raising his temperature—it was that he couldn’t stop her from saying it.

  “We made love under the Five-Mile Bridge,” Maggie announced to the world, “and up on Wells Peak. We even got a motel a few times, but that wasn’t like doing it outside, you know?”

  Steady, steady, he told himself, keeping his hands by his sides even as they clenched into quivering fists. He wanted to smash in that laughing, mocking face, but her face was streaked with black slime, and he dared not touch it.

  She could tell. “Can’t touch me, can you, Harold? Well, nobody can. Not anymore. I can do what I want, go where I want, be with whoever I want. It doesn’t matter anymore, not anymore.”

  Harold said it quietly, but his tone was vicious. “Maggie, you shut up right now and get out of here.”

  She actually sneered at him. “When I’m ready, Harold. When I’m ready. Nobody tells me what to do. I’m free, Harold.”

  He no longer cared how much attention he attracted. He ran up the porch steps for his shotgun, grabbed it, and turned back toward the street.

  But she was gone.

  Across the street, the miner and his wife slammed their door shut and extinguished their porch light.

  Bly went down the front steps slowly, carefully, starting to lose the resolve his anger had triggered. He looked up and down the street. There was no sign of Maggie. She might be hiding, he thought. Perhaps she’d fled. He took one step toward the street and then another, listening, peering into the dark.

  He noticed Mrs. Cumber duck inside and turn off her lights. The company foreman’s door slammed, and the bedroom light went out. Up and down the street, lights winked out, windows closed, doors clicked shut. Darkness and silence returned to the neighborhood.

  Bly stood there alone on the dark street for a moment, suddenly realizing he should be pleased at his neighbors’ behavior—the dark houses, the closed shades, the slamming doors. They really were scared, weren’t they? That brought a cunning smile to his face. Sure, he thought. Maybe it was best that the neighbors heard everything. By tomorrow the messy little scene they’d witnessed would mean a whole lot more, and they’d all be talking about it. Then the talk would spread, and the whole town would get a strong message, a message they’d never forget.

  From down the hill came the roar of a vehicle. Now what? Bly asked. Soon headlights appeared around the corner, sweeping across the faces of the old houses. Bly let the shotgun rest innocently at his side as he backed away from the street.

  The big Dodge caught him in its headlights and rumbled to a halt right beside him. The window was rolled down.

  “Evenin’, Mr. Bly.”

  Harold’s tone was not friendly. “Hello, Levi.”

  Levi had spotted the shotgun, of course. “Some kind of trouble?”

  “No. Thought I heard some coyotes.”

  Levi looked up the hill toward the forest beyond the town, then back at Harold. He seemed edgy. “I—I heard your wife was out wandering through town, Mr. Bly. I was wanting to make sure she was okay.”

  Bly smirked at that. “So you’ve lost track of your roommate, is that it?”

  “You know I haven’t touched her, Mr. Bly, and I’ve tried to be careful about appearances.”

  “Not careful enough.”

  “Have you seen her tonight? Has she come by here?”

  “No. I haven’t seen a thing.”

  Levi gave him a good hard look before saying, “Then I’ll be on my way.” He put the Dodge into gear. “Hope you bag a coyote.” The truck lurched forward, did a U-turn, and roared back down the hill toward the highway, the night closing in again behind its red taillights.

  SHE’D BEEN BY her home, all right. Levi could read Harold Bly’s face like a billboard, and his lies too. She had to be heading for Old Town.

  Levi drove slowly, scanning both sides o
f the road, straining to look back into the trees. No sign of her. Either she’d made remarkably good time or she’d taken the old trail along the river instead of the main road.

  One mile north of Hyde River, Levi pulled off at the Old Town turnoff, a dirt road veering off to the right. The road was now blocked by a huge berm of dirt and debris to keep vehicles out. If Levi went in there, he’d be trespassing on company land.

  He had to go in. He nosed the Dodge up against the berm, shut her down, and continued on foot, flashlight in hand, climbing over the dirt pile and back down to the rutted road beyond. He swept his light back and forth across the road as he hurried along, hoping to find footprints, any sign that Maggie had been this way. So far he saw nothing. She must have taken the trail along the river, he thought. Maybe, just maybe, he could get to Hyde Hall before she did, or before—

  A gust of wind caused him to halt. He clicked off his light and crouched down, looking skyward. Nothing up there but stars. He kept listening. The wind was blowing in small, intermittent gusts, and in the distance, he could hear the gentle, rushing sound of the river. He was getting close.

  He started walking again, and soon he broke out of the old forest and into an open expanse where grass, berry thickets, and diseased, crooked cottonwoods barely survived amid the gutted, sagging remains of old wooden structures. Old Town. There was nothing left now but stone foundations overgrown with brush, teetering walls with no roofs to connect them, fallen piles of weathered lumber that once were homes for miners, prospectors, shopkeepers, and their families. Levi stole quietly into the town, trying to recall where everything was. He hadn’t been there in a long time. Few people had.

  On one side, a beam-and-plank wall with one window was all that was left of the Gold Dust Hotel. Across the rutted and disappearing road, a crumbling foundation outlined where the tavern once stood. Levi vaguely remembered Hyde Hall being near the other end of the town, near the river. This main road should take him there.

  Was that singing he heard? Or was it the wind moving through this old place, sighing through a thousand cracks and voids? He froze. He listened.