The windows shattered with the noise of shotguns going off, all exploding outward as if from a terrible, awesome pressure.
And then the saw was humming again, the headrig slowing its rocking motions, slowing, slowing…
A last light bulb flickered, flickered, and went out. The remaining few buzzed and blinked, and raw sparks jumped from the open sockets. The saw’s sound pitched softer, until there was only the noise of the humming generator.
Lying on his side in the dust, Billy heard the mill’s door slam shut. Then, in another moment, an engine started. Tires threw gravel. He raised his head with an effort, one side of his face pasted with sawdust, and saw that Mr. Chatham had fled. He lay back down again, totally exhausted; within him flowed the currents of desperate emotions, of fear and confusion and loss. He was sure that he now held within himself the emotions that had bound Link Patterson to this sawmill, to this world, perhaps even to the moment of physical death. He wasn’t certain if he’d done it right or not, but he didn’t think there was anything left of Mr. Patterson; the revenant had passed on, leaving its pain behind.
Billy forced himself to his feet. The saw was spinning silently, and he turned off the power. Billy clutched his right wrist and worked his hand. There was a needles-and-pins sensation in it, as if the blood flow had been cut off. A soft, warm breeze was blowing in through the shattered windows; in the last blue light a fine mist of golden dust was stirred up and floated through the air to coat the silent sawmill machinery.
When he was strong enough to move, Billy started home. His legs were leaden, and a dull pressure throbbed at his temples; for one thing he was grateful though—the feeling was slowly seeping back into his right hand. He took a shortcut through the dark and quiet forest, with the man in the moon grinning down, and prayed he’d never have to do anything like what happened tonight again. I’m not strong enough, he told himself. I never was.
Nearer Hawthorne, he was startled by something moving at the crest of a rise, there amid pines and boulders. It looked like a large man in the moonlight, but there was something animalish and disturbing about it. Billy stood still for a moment, his senses questing, but the figure was gone. As he skirted the rise, he thought he’d seen moonlight glinting wetly off what might have been curved, sharp tusks.
And he remembered the beast’s warning and promise.
I’ll be waiting for you.
23
“FEED THE FIRE, BROTHERS and sisters!” Jimmy Jed Falconer roared, his face licked with firelight above the bright yellow suit. “Feed the fire and starve the Devil!”
He stood on a wooden platform out in the middle of a dusty dumping ground near Birmingham. A backdrop had been constructed to hold the huge FALCONER CRUSADE banner.
Falconer grinned. Before him was a huge crackling circle of fire, feeding on hundreds of pounds of paper and several hundred black vinyl discs. There was a line of teen-agers waiting to throw their record albums into the flames, and people with boxes of books obtained from school and public libraries. The service had been going on for almost three hours, starting with psalm singing, then one of J.J. Falconer’s most searing sermons on the Devil trying to consume America’s youth, followed by an hour-long healing session that had left people dancing and talking in tongues.
Burning pages wafted into the air like fiery bats. Embers puffed out and drifted down. Records cracked and melted. “Here, gimme those, son.” Falconer carefully leaned over the platform’s edge and took several records from a heavy set young man with newly cropped black hair and acne scars. He looked at the jacket art, all psychedelic drawings and pictures, and held up one of them, by a group called Cream. “Yeah, this’ll ‘blow your mind,’ won’t it? It’ll send you to Hell, that’s what it’ll do!” He sailed the record into the fire, to shouts and applause. The Jefferson Airplane flew into the flames next, followed by Paul Revere and the Raiders. “Is this what the Lord wants you to hear?” he asked, baiting the crowd. “Does He want you to grow your hair to your knees and take drugs and ‘blow your mind’?” He tossed Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs into the flames.
There were resounding cheers as Falconer broke a Beatles record over his knee, then held it at the jacket’s edge, with his other hand clamping shut his nostrils. He threw it in to burn. “Folks, if somebody tells you that everybody’s growin’ long hair and fillin’ themselves full of LSD and runnin’ away from the Commies like yellow cowards, then you tell them this: I’m the American majority, and I’m proud to…”
Suddenly he couldn’t draw a breath. A sharp, cold pain ripped across his chest, and he felt as if he might pass out. He held the microphone at his side, afraid that it might pick up his whimper of agony; then he was sinking down to his knees, his head bent over, and he heard people clapping and hollering, thinking that this was all part of his message. He squeezed his eyes shut. Oh God, he thought. Not again…please…take this pain away. He struggled to draw in air, his chest heaving, but he stayed crouched on his knees so no one could see his graying face.
“Burn it!” he heard a high, merry voice shout.
A hand gripped his fleshy shoulder. “Dad?”
Falconer looked up into his son’s face. The boy was growing into a handsome young man, with a lean strong body that looked trim in the tan suit he wore. He had a long, sharp-chinned face topped with a mass of thickly curled red hair, and now his deep-set, electric-blue eyes glinted with concern. “You all right, Dad?”
“Lost my breath,” Falconer said, and tried to struggle to his feet. “Let me rest for just a minute.”
Wayne glanced out at the congregation, and realized they were waiting for someone to lead them. He grasped the microphone his father held.
“No, Wayne,” Falconer said, grinning, with the sweat running down his face. “I’m fine. Just lost my breath is all. It’s the heat.”
“The TV cameras are on us, Dad,” Wayne said, and pulled the microphone away from his father. As Wayne straightened up and turned toward the congregation, his face abruptly pulled tight, the blue eyes widening and the perfect white teeth showing in a wide smile that hung on the edge of a grimace. His body tensed, as if gripping the microphone had sent a charge of power through him.
“The glory of the Lord is with us tonight!” Wayne crowed. “It’s cracklin’ in the air, it’s fillin’ our hearts and souls, it’s put my daddy on his knees because it’s not a weak thing, no it’s not a frail thing, no it’s not a feeble thing! If you want to listen to sex-and drug-music and you want to read sex-and drug-books, you’ll be real happy in Hell, neighbors! Lord says WHAT?”
“BURN IT!”
Wayne balanced on the edge, seemingly about to leap into the fire himself. “Lord says WHAT?”
“Burn it! Burn it! Burn…”
Falconer knew the boy had them now. The local TV station cameras were aimed at the young healer. Falconer rose unsteadily to his feet. The pain was gone and he knew he’d be all right. But he wanted to get back to the Airstream trailer to rest, then he’d return and give the benediction. He made his way across the platform to the steps. All eyes were on Wayne. Falconer stopped for a moment to turn back and watch his son. Wayne’s entire body seemed to glow with energy, with wonderful strength and youth. It was Wayne who’d come up with the idea of holding a “sin-burning,” sure that there would be local media coverage. The ideas and plans just seemed to pop out of the boy’s head fully formed; Wayne had suggested they move the Crusade into Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia, and into Florida where they could work year-round. The schedules had been drawn up, and for the past seven years the Crusade had expanded like a tick on a bloodhound. Now Wayne was talking about pushing the Crusade into Texas, where there were so many little towns and so far apart, and he wanted Falconer to buy a Fayette radio station that was about to lose its license. Wayne was taking flying lessons, and had already piloted the Crusade’s Beechraft on short business trips.
The boy was strong and had God in his heart, Falconer knew, but still…so
mething ate at Wayne, day and night. Something drove him, and tried to control him. He had fits of moods and temper, and sometimes he locked himself in the prayer chapel at home for hours on end. And Wayne had been complaining of a strange recurring nightmare lately, some nonsense about a snake and an eagle. Falconer couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
Falconer was tired. He felt a sudden and awful pang of jealousy, and of anger at growing older and heavier and weaker.
He walked toward the trailer. His heart was deteriorating, the doctors had told him. Why, as he’d asked himself many times, was he afraid to ask Wayne to heal his heart, to patch up the leaks and make him strong again?
His answer was always the same as well: Because he was deeply afraid that Wayne’s healing Toby had been a strange—and terrible—fluke. And if Wayne tried to heal him and nothing happened, then… What had stayed with him for seven years was the voice of that Creekmore woman, the Hawthorne Valley witch, raised to tell everybody that he and his young son were murderers of the worst kind. Down deep inside, far from the light, in a dark place that knew neither God nor Satan but was instead wholly frightened animal, a nerve of truth had been trembling for seven long years. What if? What…if…?
What if Wayne already knew? And had known since he’d touched the legs of a little girl whose frightened mind had kept her from wanting to walk.
“No,” Falconer said. “No. The Lord’s workin’ through my son. He healed a dumb animal, didn’t he? He’s healed more than a thousand people.” He shook his head. He had to shut off his thinking before it was harmful. He reached the shining silver trailer, unlocked it, and stepped inside. There was a plaque on the wall that said BELIEVE, and that was good enough for him.
SIX
May Night
24
THEY HAD DRIVEN IN silence since leaving the house. John Creekmore watched the road unwinding before him in the yellow glare of the headlights; he was purposely keeping their speed ten miles per hour below the limit. “You sure you want to do this?” he asked, finally, without looking at his son. “I can turn the car around on the next dirt road.”
“I want to go,” Billy said. He was wearing a spotless but tightly fitting dark suit, a starched white shirt, and a bright paisley tie.
“Your choice. I’ve said all I can, I guess.” His face was set and grim; he looked much the same as he had when he’d stepped out of the house one morning last week and had seen the scarecrow dummy hanging by its neck from an oak-tree limb. It was wrapped with used toilet paper. Ever since that evening Billy had gone up to the sawmill with Lamar Chatham the air had been ugly; Chatham had gone around telling everybody with ears what had happened, and the story soon became embellished and distorted to the point that it was said Billy was in command of the demons that infested the mill. John knew all of that was ridiculous, but he wasn’t given the chance to explain; when he’d last gone over to Curtis Peel’s to play checkers, the other men had frozen him out, talking and looking right through him as if he were invisible. Less than ten minutes after he’d gotten there, they’d all decided they’d had enough and left, but John had seen them later, sitting on the benches in front of Lee Sayre’s hardware store; Sayre was with them, the center of attention, and Ralph Leighton was grinning like a hyena. “Did your mother put you up to this?” John asked suddenly.
“No sir.”
“Don’t you know who’s gonna be there, son? Just about everybody in the junior and senior classes, and a lot of their folks too! And everybody knows!” He tried to concentrate on his driving as the road snaked to the left. Fayette County High wasn’t far now, just a mile or so ahead. “You ever ask anybody to go with you?”
Billy shook his head. He’d gathered the courage to call out Melissa’s name in the hallway one day; when she’d turned toward him, Billy had seen her pretty face blanch. She’d hurried away as if he were offering her poison.
“Then I don’t see why you want to go.”
“It’s May Night. It’s the school dance. That’s why.”
John grunted. “No, that’s not all of it, is it? I think you want to go because you want to prove something.” He flicked a glance at the boy.
“I want to go to May Night, that’s all.”
He’s stubborn as a deaf mule, John thought, and he’s got a hell of a lot of guts, I’ll say that for him. Billy was different, stronger-willed, somehow, and much more intense. Looking into his eyes was like seeing a thunderstorm on the horizon, and you didn’t know which way the storm would turn or how fast it was moving.
“You may think you’re not different,” John said quietly, “but you’re wrong. Lord knows I’ve prayed over you, Billy, and over your mother too. I’ve prayed until my head aches. But the Lord isn’t gonna change you, son, not until you turn away from this…this black belief.”
Billy was silent for a moment. The lights of Fayette brightened the sky before them. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “Maybe I never will, and maybe I’m not supposed to. But I think that part of Mr. Patterson was in that mill, Dad; it was a scared and hurt part, and too confused to know what to—”
“You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about!” John snapped.
“Yes I do, Dad.” The strength of his voice frightened John. “I helped Mr. Patterson. I know I did.”
John felt the quick, hot urge to strike his son across the face. Seventeen or not, the boy had no right to dispute his father’s word. In John’s way of thinking the boy was like a corrupting tarbaby, and John was afraid some of that evil tar might fix itself to him, too.
The county high school stood just outside the Fayette city limits. It was a large, two-storied red brick building that had gone up in the early forties and had survived, like a defiant dinosaur, the ravages of weather vandalism, and county-education budget cuts. A gymnasium had been built off to the side in the mid-fifties, a square brick structure with a band of louvered windows beneath the slate roof. Outside the gym was a fenced-in football field, home to the Fayette County High Bulldogs. The parking lot held a varied assortment of vehicles, from rusted-out pickups to spit-shined sports cars. The school building itself was dark, but a few bright streamers of light shot out through the gym’s open windows, and in the air there was the growl of a bass guitar and the high notes of laughter.
John slowed the car to a halt. “I guess this is the place. You sure you want to go through with it?”
“Yes sir.”
“You don’t have to, you know.”
“I do have to.”
“Ask me, you’re lettin’ yourself in for misery.” But then Billy was opening the door, and John knew his mind was set. “What time do you want me to come for you?”
“Ten o’clock?”
“Nine-thirty,” John said. He fixed his son with a hard gaze. “When you go through them doors, you’re on your own. Anything happens to you in there, I can’t help. You got your money?”
Billy felt in his pocket for the couple of dollars he’d brought along. “Yes sir. Don’t worry, there are chaperones inside.”
“Well,” John said, “I guess I’ll go on, then. Anybody says something to you that don’t set well, you just remember…you’re a Creekmore, and you can be proud of that.” Billy shut the door and started to walk away, but John leaned toward the open window and said, “You look real good, son.” And then, before the boy could respond, he was driving away across the lot.
Billy walked to the gym. His nerves were jangling, his muscles knotted up; he was ready for the unexpected. The gates to the football field were open, and Billy could see the huge mound of bits and pieces of wood—probably waste from the sawmill, he realized—that would be ignited later in the evening for the traditional May Night bonfire; then the ashes would be spread over the field before summer tilling and the replanting of grass for next season. From the gym’s open doors came the tinny sounds of electric guitars playing “Alley Cat”; a large blue-and-gold poster hung across the front of the gym, and read MAY NIGHT! JUNIOR-SENIOR S
OCKHOP! 25¢ ADMISSION! with the drawing of a stocky bulldog dressed in football gear.
He paid his admission to a pretty dark-haired girl who sat at a desk just inside the gym. Golden and blue streamers crisscrossed the exposed metal rafters, and at the ceiling’s center hung a large mirrored globe that cast reflected shards of light over the dancing mob. Papier-mâché planets painted in Day-Glo colors dangled on wires, high enough not to be yanked down but low enough to be stirred by the crowd’s motion. On the brick wall behind the bandstand, where a group with the legend PURPLE TREE stenciled across the bass drumhead began to hammer out “Pipeline,” was a large banner proclaiming SENIORS ’69 WELCOME THE AGE OF AQUARIUS!
A chaperone, a thin geometry teacher named Edwards, materialized out of the crowd and pointed at Billy’s feet. “Shoes off if you’re going to stay on the floor. Otherwise, you go up into the bleachers.” He motioned toward a sea of shoes scattered in a corner, and Billy took off his dusty loafers. How all those shoes would ever get back to their owners was a mystery, he thought as he placed his shoes with the others. He stood against the wall, underneath a stretched-tight American flag, and watched as the dancers Boog-a-looed and Ponied and Monkeyed to strident electric chords. Almost everyone had a date, he saw; the few boys who’d come stag—fat, or with terminal acne—sat up in the green-painted bleachers. Chaperones paced the dance floor. A glued-together couple passed Billy in search of their shoes, and he could smell the distinct aroma of moonshine.
“Well, well,” someone said. “Is that Billy Creekmore standing over there by his lonesome?”
Billy looked to one side and saw Mr. Leighton leaning against the wall several feet away, wearing a checked coat and a shirt open at the collar; his crew cut looked as sharp as a bed of nails. “Where’s your date, Billy?”
“I came stag.”
“Oh? Didn’t you ask anybody? Well, I guess that’s your own business. How’s your momma doin’? Ain’t seen her in a month of Sundays.”
Mystery Walk Page 17
