Do you know what you’re doing, son?
YES HE KNOWS! Falconer raged. HE KNOWS, YOU SATAN-SPAWN BITCH! When Wayne got home, Falconer would tell the boy how they would run the Creekmores out of Hawthorne, drive them off like dogs, far away to where their wicked influence couldn’t seep back into the Falconer Crusade. Pain ran up and down his body, lancing across his ribs. “Cammy!” he moaned. “Cammy!”
Pluck them out! he thought. PLUCK THEM OUT!
“CAMMY!”
His hands curled around the armrests, the knuckles whitening. And then the pain struck him full-force, and his heart began to twist and writhe in his chest. His head rocked back, his face turning a deep reddish blue.
From the doorway, Cammy screamed. She was shocked, couldn’t move.
“Heart…” Falconer said in a hoarse, agonized voice. “Call…somebody…”
She forced her legs to move, and raced for the telephone; she heard her husband moan for Wayne, and then as if from an awful fever dream he cried—or Cammy thought she heard—“Creekmore…pluck them out…oh, God, pluck them out…”
33
DEAR MOM AND DAD,
Hello, I hope everything is all right and you’re doing fine. I’m writing this letter from Dothan, where the carnival is set up at the fairgrounds. We’ll be here until the first of September, and then we go to Montgomery for a week. So far business has been good, Dr. Mirakle says, and he thinks we’ll do real good when we get to Birmingham the first week in October. I hope all is well with both of you.
Dad, how are you feeling? I hope your reading is still getting better. I had a dream about you a couple of nights ago. We were walking to town on the highway, just like we used to do, and everybody waved and said hello to us. It must have been springtime in my dream, because there were new buds in the trees and the sky was the soft blue of April, before the heat sets in. Anyways, we were walking just to get out and see the sights, and you were as fit as a new fiddle. It was good to hear you laugh so much, even if it was just in a dream. Maybe that means you’ll get better soon, do you think?
Mom, if you’re reading this letter aloud to Dad you should skip this next part. Just keep it to yourself. About two weeks ago a new ride called the Octopus joined the carnival. I found out the man who runs the Octopus is named Buck Edgers, and he’s been traveling around with it for the better part of four years. A couple of the roustabouts told me there’ve been accidents on the Octopus. A little girl and her father died when one of the gondolas—that’s the part you ride in—broke loose. Mr. Edgers took the Octopus down to Florida for a while, and a teen-age boy fell out of that same gondola when the ride was moving. I don’t know if he died or not, but another roustabout told me a man had a heart attack on the Octopus two years ago, in Huntsville. Mr. Edgers changes his name when he applies for a permit from the safety inspectors, I hear, but it seems the inspectors always pass the Octopus because they can never find anything wrong with it. Mr. Edgers is always working on something or another, and I hear his hammer banging late at night when everyone else is asleep. It seems he can hardly stand to leave it alone, not even for a whole night. And when you ask him what he’s working on, or how he got the Octopus in the first place, his eyes just cut you dead.
Mom, something’s wrong with that ride. If I said that to anybody around here, they’d laugh in my face, but I get the feeling that a lot of other people stay their distance from the Octopus too. Just last night, when we were setting up, a roustabout helping Mr. Edgers got his foot crushed when a piece of machinery fell on it, like he did it on purpose. There have been a lot of fights lately, too, and there weren’t before the Octopus joined us. People are irritable, and spoiling for trouble. A roustabout named Chalky disappeared just before we left Andalusia, and a couple of days ago Mr. Ryder got a call from the police because they found Chalky’s body in a field behind the shopping center where we were set up. His neck had been crushed, but the police couldn’t figure out how, I heard tell. Anyway, there’s a bad feeling in the air. I’m afraid of the Octopus too, probably more than anybody else, because I think it likes the taste of blood. I don’t know what to do.
Dr. Mirakle and I have been talking after the Ghost Show closes up for the night. Did I tell you he wanted to be a dentist? Did I tell you the story he told me about the machine Thomas Edison invented to try to communicate with spirits? Well, Edison drew up the blueprints for it, but he died before he could build it. Dr. Mirakle says nobody knows what happened to the blueprints. Dr. Mirakle drinks a lot and he loves to talk while he drinks. One thing he told me that is interesting: he says there are institutes where scientists are studying something called parapsychology. That has to do with your mind, and spirits and stuff. I’ve never told Dr. Mirakle about Will Booker, or the sawmill, or the black aura. I’ve never told him about Gram or the Mystery Walk. He seems to want to know about me, but he never comes right out and asks.
Well, I’d better get to sleep now. Dr. Mirakle is a good man, and he’s been right about one thing: the carnival does get into your blood.
I know you can put this thirty-five dollars to good use. I’ll write when I have time. I love you both.
Billy
34
WAYNE FALCONER SAT WITH his mother in the backseat of the chauffeured Cadillac limo. They were on their way to the Cutcliffe Funeral Home in downtown Fayette. Jimmy Jed Falconer had been dead for two days, and was going to be buried in the morning. The monument was already picked out, ready to be put in place.
Cammy had been sobbing all morning. She wouldn’t stop. Her eyes were red, her nose was running, her face was bloated and blotchy. It disgusted Wayne. He knew his daddy would’ve wanted her to carry herself with dignity, just like Wayne was trying to do. He wore a somber black suit and a black tie with small red checks on it. Last night, while his mother was drugged and sleeping, he’d taken a pair of scissors and cut his silk shirt and trousers, both of them stained with grass and lake mud, into long strips of cloth that he could easily burn in a trash barrel behind the barn. The stains had gone up in smoke.
Wayne winced as his mother cried. She reached out and grasped his hand, and he gently but firmly pulled away. He despised her for not getting the ambulance to the house soon enough, despised her for not having told him about his father’s weak heart condition. He had seen his daddy’s dead face in the hospital: blue as frost on a grave.
The last word J.J. Falconer had spoken in the hospital, before he went into a deep sleep that he never came out of, was a name. Cammy was puzzled over it, had racked her brains trying to remember what message it might carry—but Wayne knew. Demons had been afoot in the darkness that terrible night; they had been grinning and chuckling and drawing a net around Wayne and his daddy. One of them had appeared to him as a faceless girl on a lake’s diving platform whose body—if indeed she had existed as flesh and blood at all—hadn’t yet emerged from the depths. Wayne had checked the newspaper, but there was no account of the drowning. Terry Dozier had called yesterday to give his sympathy, but again there was no mention of a girl named Lonnie found floating in the lake. And Wayne had found himself feverishly wondering if she had existed at all…or if her body was caught in a submerged tree limb down on the muddy bottom…or if his daddy’s death had simply eclipsed that of a poor white-trash girl.
The second demon had come creeping in the darkness to steal his father’s life away; it had been sent by the Hawthorne witch-woman in revenge for his father’s urging a few Hawthorne men, in a secret meeting, to put a scare into the Creekmores and get them out of the county. It was for the best of the community, Wayne remembered his daddy telling the men, their faces washed by candlelight. If you rid Hawthorne of this corruption, Falconer had said, then God will see fit to favor you. In the darkened, shadowy room Wayne had imagined he’d seen movement over in the far corner, beyond the ring of listening men; he’d had the impression—just for an instant—of something standing there in a place where the candlelight couldn’t reach, something that l
ooked almost like a wild boar that had learned to walk upright, seven feet tall or more. But when Wayne had stared into that corner the thing wasn’t there at all. Now, he thought it might’ve been Satan himself, spying for the witch-woman and her son.
There were scores to settle. Wayne’s hands were curled into fists in his lap.
The Crusade, the Falconer Foundation, the radio station, the magazine, the real-estate holdings in Georgia and Florida, the stocks and bonds, the Airstream trailer, and all the road equipment had become his, Henry Bragg and George Hodges had told him yesterday. He’d spent the morning signing papers—but not before he’d read them over several times and knew exactly what was happening. Cammy was to receive a monthly allowance from J.J.’s personal account, but the remainder of the estate, and the responsibilities that went with it, had fallen to Wayne.
An evil voice hissed through his mind like the noise of wind through lake reeds: You can’t get it up…
Reporters and photographers were waiting in front of the funeral home when the limousine pulled to the curb. Cameras clicked as Wayne helped his mother out of the car, and she still had enough presence of mind to lower the black veil of her hat across her face. He waved the questions aside as George Hodges came out of the funeral home to meet them.
The interior was cool and quiet and smelled like a florist’s shop. Their heels clicked on a marble floor. Many people were waiting for Wayne and Cammy outside the memorial room where Jimmy Jed Falconer lay; Wayne knew most of them, and began shaking their hands and thanking them for coming. Women from the Baptist Ladies’ League came over to comfort Cammy. A tall, gray-haired man in a dark blue suit shook Wayne’s hand; he was, Wayne knew, the minister of a nearby Episcopal church.
Wayne forced a smile and a nod. This man was one of his father’s enemies, he knew—one of the coalition of ministers who had questioned J.J. Falconer’s passionate approach to the gospel. Falconer had kept files on the ministers who opposed the tone of his Crusade, and Wayne planned to keep the files in good shape.
Wayne went to his mother’s side. “Are you ready to go in, Momma?”
She gave a barely perceptible nod, and Wayne led her through a pair of large oak doors into the room where the casket was displayed. Most of the people followed them in at a respectable distance. The room was filled with bouquets of flowers; the walls were painted with a pale mural, in soothing blues and greens, of grassy hills where flocks of sheep were watched over by lyre-playing shepherds. From concealed speakers “The Old Rugged Cross” was played on a mellow-sounding church organ—it was J.J. Falconer’s favorite hymn. The gleaming oak casket was back-dropped by white curtains.
Wayne couldn’t stand being at his mother’s side for another second. I didn’t know he was sick! he screamed mentally. You didn’t tell me! I could’ve healed him and then he wouldn’t be dead right now! Suddenly he felt terribly alone.
And the whispering, leering voice said, You can’t get it up…
Wayne stepped toward the casket. Three more steps, and he’d be looking in at the face of Death. A tremor of fear shot through him, and again he was a little boy on a stage, not knowing what to do, as everyone stared at him. He closed his eyes, put his hands on the casket’s edge, and looked in.
He almost laughed. That’s not my daddy! he thought. Somebody’s made a mistake! The corpse, dressed in a bright yellow suit, white shirt, and black tie, was so perfectly made up it looked like a department-store mannequin. The hair was combed just so, every curl in place; the flesh of the face filled with lifelike color. The lips were tightly compressed, as if the corpse were trying to hold back a secret. The fingernails, on the hands crossed over the body, were spotless and manicured. J.J. Falconer, Wayne realized, was going to Heaven like a dime-story dummy.
The full realization of what he’d done—lying in sin with a scarlet Jezebel while his father lay with Death pressed close to his chest—hit him like a shriek. His daddy was gone, and he was just a little boy playacting on a stage, mouthing his healing rites, waiting for the same bolt of lightning he’d felt when he had placed his hands on Toby. He wasn’t ready to be alone, not yet, oh Lord not yet…
Tears filled his eyes—not tears of sadness, but of livid rage. He was shaking and couldn’t stop.
“Wayne?” someone said behind him.
He whirled upon the strangers in the memorial room, his face a bright, strangled red. He roared, “GET OUT OF HERE!”
There was a shocked stillness. His mother cowered, as if afraid of being struck.
He advanced upon them, “I SAID GET OUT OF HERE!” he shrieked, and they retreated, stumbling into each other like cattle. “GET OUT!” Wayne was sobbing, and he pushed George Hodges away when the man reached for him. Then they were all gone, and he was alone in the room with his father’s corpse.
Wayne put his hands to his face and moaned, the tears leaking out between his fingers. After another moment he walked forward and locked the oak doors.
Then he turned to face the casket.
It could be done, he knew. Yes. If he wanted to hard enough, he could do it. It wasn’t too late, because his daddy wasn’t in the ground yet! He could lift up J.J. Falconer, the South’s Greatest Evangelist, and all the doubts and torments that had ever plagued him about his healing powers would fly like chaff in a strong wind. Then he and his daddy would march upon the Creekmores, and send them to burn in Hell forever.
Yes. It could be done.
Someone jiggled the doorknob. “Wayne?” a voice asked meekly. Then: “I think he’s locked himself in!”
“Lord, let me do it,” Wayne whispered, as tears ran down his face. “I know I sinned, and that’s why you let the demons take my daddy away. But I’m not ready to be alone! Please…if you let me do this one thing, I’ll never ask you for anything else again.” He trembled, waiting for electricity to charge through him, for God’s Voice to speak through his mind, for a sign or an omen or anything. “PLEASE!” he shouted.
Then he reached into the coffin and was grasping his father’s thin hard shoulders. Wayne said, “Get up, Daddy. Let’s show them what my healing power is really like, and how strong it is. Get up, now. I need you here with me, come on and get up…”
His hands clamped harder; he closed his eyes and tried to summon up the raw healing power—where was it? Had it been all used up, a long time ago? No lightning struck him, no blue burn of power surged from his hands. “Get up, Daddy,” Wayne whispered, and then he threw his head back and shouted, “I COMMAND YOU TO GET UP AND WALK!”
“Waynnnne!” Cammy screamed from beyond the locked door. “Don’t, for God’s sake…!”
“I COMMAND YOU TO THROW OFF THE CHAINS OF DEATH! DO IT NOW! DO IT NOW!” He shook like a lightning rod in a high wind, his fingers gripped tightly into yellow cloth, sweat and tears dripping from his face. The flesh-toned makeup on the corpse’s cheeks were running, revealing an undercolor of whitish gray. Wayne concentrated on bringing up the power from deep within himself, from a place where volcanoes raged in his soul, where wild flames leapt. He thought of nothing but pumping Life into this casket-caged body, of willing Life back into it.
Something ripped in his brain, with a sudden sharp pain and a distinct tearing sound. A startling image whirled through his mind—the eagle and serpent in deadly combat. Black pain beat at Wayne’s head, and drops of blood began leaking from his left nostril to spot the casket’s white satin lining. His hands were tingling, now itching, now burning…
Falconer’s corpse twitched.
Wayne’s eyes flew open. “YES!” he said “GET UP!”
And suddenly the corpse shook as if plugged into a high-voltage socket; it contorted and stretched, the facial muscles rippling. The hands with their perfect fingernails began rhythmically clenching and unclenching.
And then the eyelids, sewn shut with flesh-colored thread by the mortician, ripped themselves open. The eyes were sunken deep into the head, the color of hard gray marbles. With a violent twitch the lips stretche
d, stretched…and the mouth tore open, white sutures dangling; the inside of the mouth was an awful oyster gray, and cotton had been stuffed in to fill out the cheeks. The head jerked as if in agony, the body writhing beneath Wayne’s hand.
Someone hammered wildly at the door. “WAYNE!” George Hodges shouted. “STOP IT!”
But Wayne was filled with righteous healing power, and he would atone for his sins by bringing J. J. Falconer back from the dark place. All he had to do was concentrate a little harder, sweat and hurt a little more. “Come back, Daddy,” Wayne whispered to the writhing corpse. “Please come back…”
In Wayne’s tortured mind there was the image of a dead frog, stiff and smelling of formaldehyde, lying on a table in biology class. Its leg muscles had been sliced open, and connected up with little electrodes; when the current was switched on, the frog jumped. And jumped. And jumped. Jump frog, Wayne thought as crazed laughter rang through his head. Falconer’s corpse writhed and shook, the hands clawing at the air Jump frog, jump…
“Wayne!” his mother screamed, her voice on the raw edge of hysteria. “He’s dead, he’s dead, leave him alone!”
And he realized, with a sickening certainty, that he had failed. All he was doing was making a dead frog jump. His daddy was dead and gone. “No,” he whispered. Falconer’s head twisted to one side, the mouth yawning wide.
Wayne unclenched his fingers and stepped back. Instantly the corpse lay still, the teeth clicking together as the mouth shut.
“Wayne?”
“Unlock the door!”
“Let us in, son, let us talk to you!”
He stared down at the drops of blood on the marble floor. Numbly, he wiped his nose on his sleeve. It was all over, and he had failed. The one thing he’d asked for, the most important thing, had been denied him. And why? Because he had plummeted from the Lord’s grace. Somewhere, he knew, the Creekmores must be celebrating. He touched his pounding forehead with his bloody hand, and stared at the opposite wall with its mural of sheep and shepherds.
Mystery Walk Page 25
