Devil's Creek

by Todd Keisling

  5

  A bank of storm clouds rolled in from the west, blanketing the forest in a downpour that ended the day’s search for the two boys with a depressing flourish. The officers were covered in ponchos, having prepared for the possibility of poor weather, but the civilians who’d joined the search—including the Gilpins and Taswells—had done so quickly, and now marched their way back to the campsite parking lot in drenched clothing. No one spoke a word, their voices raw from calling out the names of Ben and Toby, and the mood among the party was sour long before the rains came.

  Officer Gray tried to keep his spirits high despite the lack of any solid leads. The heavy footprints leading them beyond the tree line vanished in the undergrowth. Whoever took Ben Taswell and Toby Gilpin could be anywhere, traveling miles from here in the hours they’d spent searching the woods. A nagging thought intruded upon his otherwise positive demeanor: They’re dead, man. You know as well as everyone else does. You saw the look on Grant Taswell’s face. He knows it, too.

  Indeed, the look on Grant’s face alarmed Marcus. It was the look of utter defeat, a father’s instinct that his son wasn’t coming back.

  John Gilpin wasn’t much better. He passed Marcus on the way back to their cars, and Marcus said, “Don’t worry, sir. We’ll find your boy.” Mr. Gilpin looked back, his eyes swollen red, his cheeks pallid. He began to say something but stopped short and offered the officer a weak nod.

  Marcus watched the defeated man walk down the gravel path toward his parked sedan. Poor guy. He stripped off his poncho and climbed into the car. He’d hated to call off the search, but the inclement weather would only worsen their slow trek into the brush of Daniel Boone National Forest. Though they’d walked a search line for the better part of a day, he estimated they’d covered less than two miles, and found nothing more than the occasional deadfall, animal spoor, or patch of poison ivy. The woods had swallowed every trace of the boys, a thought which drove a chill right down the young officer’s spine.

  Of course he’d heard the stories. Some bad voodoo went down out here back in the day, long before he was even a twinkle in his daddy’s eye, and though the chief hadn’t said anything, Marcus figured that’s where he was headed when he left earlier. Devil’s Creek Road wasn’t too far from here, a straight walk through the woods for a few miles, and he wondered if that was the dark cloud hanging over the search party all day. Were they all thinking the boogeyman from Devil’s Creek took those boys?

  Surely not. Those were ghost stories told by the old folks to scare kids from going out there to party. God knew Marcus had attended his share of drinking parties out near the old church site, amid the skeletal remains of the tiny cultist village, but he’d never seen anything out there. Sure, there were rumors of people hearing children laughing from beyond the tree line, somewhere near the hilltop where the church used to stand, but he’d never heard such things himself.

  The creepiest thing he ever saw was a carving in one of the trees out there. A strange symbol, like something out of those tabletop fantasy games his older brother used to play in the basement with his friends on Friday nights. Something foreign and bizarre, a symbol of erratic lines carved together to form a sigil of some kind. A rune. A warning.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket, startling him out of his reverie. Marcus pulled out his phone and checked the screen. A text from Chief Bell: Went to Devil’s Creek. Nothing there. How is search?

  He replied: Pouring rain here. Called off search until tomorrow morning.

  A moment later, Bell responded: Headed to station and then home. See you in morning.

  Marcus frowned. Sometimes he questioned the chief’s sense of duty, but on the other hand, he wouldn’t have this job if it weren’t for Ozzie Bell. Besides, who was he to doubt Bell’s authority? Nobody, he thought, starting the car. That’s who.

  As Officer Gray shifted into gear and drove away from the campsite, he found his thoughts returning to the old stories he heard growing up.

  The shadows, he thought. They used to say there were shadows stalking through the trees.

  “Shadows with blue eyes…” he whispered. Another chill crawled down the back of his neck, prompting him to press down on the gas pedal.

  6

  Agnes Belview stifled a yawn as she parked her Cadillac in Ruth McCormick’s driveway. She’d not slept well at all last night. “A bad case of the night haunts,” she’d told her husband, Jerry, before packing up her tote bag full of church paperwork. Only they weren’t really haunts at all but full-fledged nightmares. Horrible things, with pale children guided by a dark man like a demonic pied piper, his glowing eyes lighting up the darkness of her dreams.

  She shivered, pausing to listen to the radio a moment longer before turning off the ignition. The radio DJ spoke of an ongoing search in the woods near Holly Bay Marina following the apparent abduction of two boys. The DJ didn’t say the names, nor did he have to—Agnes already knew who they were, courtesy of a phone call from Maddie Gray. Her son, Marcus, called her earlier that morning—the poor boy couldn’t do his business without checking in with his dear mother—and let slip the names of the two children who’d been taken. By lunch time, the whole town knew Toby Gilpin and Ben Taswell were missing, and volunteers had departed to offer whatever aid they could in the search.

  Agnes gave a silent prayer for the wellbeing of those poor boys, collected her things, and climbed out of the car. She was already twenty minutes late for her church meeting with Ruth. She’d made a habit of meeting every Saturday after Ed McCormick passed away years back, primarily out of comfort for her grieving friend, but also out of their shared duty to lead the ladies of First Baptist to a higher understanding of their lord. Lately their meetings had more to do with the evil sermons from that awful radio station and how the bold Christian women of this town would unite to combat the devil in all his vile incarnations.

  But Agnes found she was distracted today. What was this world coming to, when a couple of good Christian kids couldn’t go camping in the woods anymore? She shook her head as she walked up the sidewalk toward Ruth’s home.

  Agnes pulled herself together and rang the doorbell. When a full minute passed, she opened the screen door and knocked.

  “Ruth? It’s Aggie. Did you forget about our meeting?”

  There was movement somewhere in the house—the subtle pop of the foundation settling, the weight of someone walking across the room in slow stride.

  Agnes knocked again. “Ruth, dear? I can come back if you aren’t feeling well. I can—”

  The latch clicked and the doorknob turned. Agnes stepped back, the sound stealing breath from her throat. The door opened slowly, and Ruth appeared in the entrance.

  Oh my God.

  Ruth’s eyes were swollen and red, her cheeks pale and her forehead beaded with sweat.

  “Good afternoon, Aggie. I’m sorry, I forgot all about our meeting.”

  “That’s…that’s all right, Ruthie. I can see you aren’t feeling well. I can come back another time, maybe next Saturday.” Agnes backed away, turning toward her car, already planning to call Maddie Gray and tell her all about what horrible illness Ruth had come down with.

  “Oh, stop that, Aggie. I’m right as rain. Come in.” Ruth opened the door wider.

  “Are you sure, Ruth? It’s no trouble at all to postpone, we’re just going over the daily lesson plan, and…”

  Ruth smiled. A weak, almost pathetic sort of expression, the smile of someone feeling their age, and worse, someone starved for company. Ruth had been so alone since Ed passed away, and then her neighbor, Imogene, went just a couple of weeks ago. Who else did Ruth have if not her dear friend Agnes?

  She turned, and with the slightest hesitation, walked over the threshold into Ruth’s home. The dim living room was lit by a single reading lamp next to Ruth’s recliner. Musty air filled her nostrils, punctuated with the hint of something sweet and ripe, the pungent odor of fruit nearly gone bad. Static hissed from a small portab
le radio next to the window, the white noise broken erratically by a voice she didn’t recognize. She listened and thought the noise sounded like a sermon of some kind.

  A stack of notebooks sat beside the recliner in a haphazard tower, their pages ruffled at the ends. Agnes stared at them for a minute while her eyes adjusted to the gloom. She knew Ruth was staying up late to record the infractions of the late-night devil’s broadcasts, but this was too much. Had she literally written down everything?

  “Been writing, I see.” Agnes cleared her throat, inviting in the stuffy air of this domestic tomb. “Is that all from last night?”

  “Not quite,” Ruth said, wandering across the living room toward the recliner. She took her seat, plucked a notebook from the top of the pile, and opened it to a marked page. Ruth cocked her head toward the radio like a curious puppy.

  Agnes watched her friend for several minutes as she scribbled across the page, her eyes transfixed on the radio. A tear beaded from the rim of her eye and slowly dripped down her cheek into the pursed crevasse of her lips. Ruth wiped it away absently and kept writing.

  “W-what are you writing, Ruth? May I see?”

  “I’m writing the gospel of our lord, Aggie. Can’t you hear Him?” Ruth gestured to the radio. Intermittent static burst from the tiny speaker.

  She must be running a fever, Agnes thought.

  Agnes tried to steer the conversation back to something tangible, something to engage her friend and bring her back to earth. “Did you hear about those two boys who went missing out in the woods last night? Awful, awful news.”

  Ruth kept writing, her arthritic hands scribbling across the page at an erratic rate, faster than Agnes could keep up with her eyes. She tilted her head to see what Ruth was writing. Jagged symbols lined the page, a primitive tableau depicting a story she couldn’t read. Staring at the odd geometric glyphs made her eyes and head hurt, and she looked away to the door.

  “Ruth, maybe you should see a doctor.” Agnes reached out, placing her hand on the old woman’s forehead. Ruth’s skin was ice cold. “I can drive you. Really, I don’t mind. I think—”

  “Aggie,” Ruth said quietly. She put down her pen, set aside her notebook, and stared up at her friend. “I promise you, I’ve never felt better. Honest.”

  She took Agnes’s hand. Agnes squeaked at the sensation of her friend’s touch. Ruth’s hands were cold, clammy, the thinning skin pulled tight over her bones.

  Like a corpse, oh God, she’s dead, she’s dead, she’s DEAD—

  “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got more writing to do.”

  Ruth let go of her friend’s hand and took up her pen. Stunned, Agnes slowly backed away toward the door. The radio static grew louder with swollen bursts, mocking her.

  “Will I see you at church tomorrow?” The meek rasp of her voice startled her, forcing the air in her throat to hitch.

  Ruth didn’t look up from her notebook, kept scribbling those weird symbols down the page. “Uh huh. I’ll be there, honey. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Agnes nodded, nearly jumping out of her skin as she backed into the door. A moment later, she was outside and racing to her car, her heart pounding with a fear she didn’t fully understand.

  The front door stood open, the static laughter seeping out like an aural infection, a chorus bleeding through from beyond.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  1

  Susan wandered across the street from the Burger Stand, toward a pair of red picnic tables in front of the high school. She planted herself on the nearest table and lit a cigarette. A soft breeze brushed her hair back from her forehead, cooling the sweat beading there, offering a slight respite from the day’s humidity.

  She checked her phone. No texts and no missed calls. She’d not heard from Ozzie since that morning. The latest news she’d heard came via radio chatter from a customer’s open window. A search party was underway in the woods, but that was hours ago. Susan looked toward the horizon again and frowned. Dark clouds rolled eastward. Thick gray sheets of rain fell in a distant haze.

  A twinge of concern for her boyfriend poked the back of her brain, but the sensation passed as quickly as the breeze. In its place was a growing apathy toward their relationship, a sense that whatever it was between them had run its course and he was only good for the sex—which, let’s be honest, wasn’t even good to begin with. He was a lumbering ox of a man, intelligent enough to tie his shoes and do his job, but vapid when it came to conversation about things that mattered.

  They had nothing in common, and for good reason. In their younger days, Susan was well aware of Ozzie’s notoriety. Everyone in Stauford’s school system knew who he was. He ran with Ronny Cord and Tony Burgess, a trio of bullies who ruled over the halls of Stauford High like the football gods they were. Ronny was a violent drunk who scraped through life by cleaning the floors of the train depot. Tony worked construction like his old man and would probably die of a heart attack on the job like his old man.

  Only Ozzie had amounted to anything, rising to the rank of chief like his daddy before him. His religion was football and hunting, money and drugs. She’d known this going into their relationship, when she’d pursued him at the insistence of her father’s godly voice in her head. Before then, however, they were non-entities in each other’s lives, two fish on opposite sides of the Stauford pond.

  Ozzie had friends, a crowd, he was known in the popular circles. Susan was an outcast like her brothers and sister from the church, one of the cursed Stauford Six. Her siblings were her crowd, and even to them she was an outcast. They might have been kin, bound by their father’s blood, but they weren’t siblings in the true sense. Susan never felt tied to them. They were inconsequential beings in the great scheme, flesh and blood birthed for offering to their buried lord.

  Like her mother, Susan Prewitt was ready to give her life for the sake of their church. This was her purpose in life, an act she was literally born to perform, and the opportunity was stolen from her. Her memories of childhood were marred by a profound sadness, a low-hanging cloud of sorrow hovering over her life for years and evading her understanding—until she bled for the first time. That’s when her father finally spoke to her, an errant voice from the grotto of her youth, a place in the earth but filled with the stars of another place. A place where their lord sat upon His throne.

  She’d dreamed of the grotto for years, but after the mortifying conversation she’d had with her grandfather about what her bleeding meant, she was haunted with visions before her eyes. Phantoms of the church congregants, standing at her bedside, tracing the symbols of the temple into the walls of her room with their blood. They filled every surface with the lord’s scripture, tracing the Old Ways in those odd symbols she couldn’t read but could feel, each glyph resonating with an electricity in her bones.

  Her father stood before her, a spirit cast in impossible moonlight. He looked almost real, almost plausible, and for the first time in her young life, Susan felt something like true happiness.

  My little lamb, do you love your father?

  “I do,” she’d whispered, lying in the darkness of her room, crying with happiness that she wasn’t alone and shivering with fear that she might be losing her mind.

  Will you be my hand, my eyes and ears? My disciple?

  “I will.”

  She’d made a vow that day and had done so every day since. The sound of her spoken vow softened the world around her, the air suddenly thick and fluttering, a curtain draped over reality itself. There was a paradise behind this world, and soon her father would pull back the curtain to allow her passage. She felt the promise in her bones, her fingertips electric, her nipples hardening, a swell of warmth between her legs. Her mind wandered back to her early memories, to those nights in the grotto with her father, when he’d touched her in the ways society wouldn’t understand.

  Unlike the others, she welcomed his touch, a desire following her into adulthood. Susan embraced her lineage, running t
oward her fate. She was alone in her pursuit for so long, until now.

  She smiled, her cheeks flushed with warmth when she thought of her brother Zeke. She’d tried to help him years ago, through the ways of flesh and lust, but he wasn’t ready to understand. But Zeke understood now. He was with their father. She saw him in her dreams last night, held tightly in their father’s embrace. Finally, they would be a family once more—

  A sharp jolt ran through her fingertips, and she dropped the smoldering cigarette. She stuck her finger in her mouth to quell the burn. The phone in her apron buzzed. Ozzie’s face lit up the screen.

  She answered. “Been trying to reach you all day.”

  “Yeah, I know. I was busy.” He spoke with a lazy, stoned drawl. He’s been smoking up. Susan rolled her eyes. No wonder he never answered. “When’s your shift over?”

  “Hour and a half from now. Why?”

  “Need to talk to you.”

  “About?”

  “Your brother.”

  Susan opened her mouth to ask which one, but she already knew. He was going to ask about the only brother who mattered to her.

  “What about Zeke? Is something wrong?”

  And then he told her, and Susan decided her relationship with Ozzie Bell might come to an end sooner than she’d planned.

  2

  Chuck sat in the far corner booth at Devlin’s, sipping scotch and looking over the prior day’s ledger, wondering if he’d spent all those years in law school to become an overpaid accountant. Entrepreneur, he reminded himself as he scrolled down the list of transactions making up Friday night’s orders, alcoholic and otherwise. After nearly an hour of reconciling figures, he leaned back and yawned. I want a vacation, he thought. I need a vacation.