by Sharon Sala
To a man, not one of them spoke of it.
Buell’s eyes were red and swollen as he stood in the doorway, watching them strip and put on the white suits to tackle the new load of fresh coke that had come in overnight. He knew without asking that they were all thinking the same thing. This had happened because of something they were doing. They didn’t know how, and none of them had any way to prove it, but the guilt was taking seed. What had happened in that house wasn’t just a murder. It was a mortal, send-your-soul-to-hell, sin. If Lonnie had walked up at that moment, Buell would have shot him where he stood.
As soon as the men had changed and taken their places at the tables, Buell stepped out of the room, then strode through the passageway to the office. He couldn’t decide whether to call Lonnie with the news about the deaths or wait for more details before he got in touch.
* * *
Syd came home feeling tired to the bone. He didn’t want anything but a shower and the comfort of his own bed. He’d been a single man ever since his wife left him for another man, so he dealt with his own cooking and cleaning as it suited him.
After a quick shower, he sat down on the side of the bed to check his messages. There was only one, and it was from his sister-in-law, Sue. He pressed Play, and then all of a sudden he heard her screaming, “They’re dead! They’re dead!”
His blood ran cold as he sat through the rest of the message, a jumble of words about Willis stabbing his daddy with a hunting knife and then coming after her before dropping at her feet in convulsions and dying from what the cops said looked like a drug overdose.
Syd looked over at his dresser. He was already shaking when he got up and walked toward it. The drawer was slightly ajar. The little box where he kept his extra money had been moved. He took it out and counted. There was a ten-dollar bill missing.
Then it hit him. That was how much he paid Willis to keep the grass mowed around his place. He ran to the window and looked out at the freshly mowed grass.
“Lord, oh, sweet Lord,” Syd moaned, and then ran back to the drawer and dug deeper, beneath the box and his socks, for the small baggie he’d hidden there.
It was gone.
Shock swept through him so fast that he threw up before he knew it was coming, right into his sock drawer and onto his stash of cash.
He staggered backward until he hit the side of the bed and sat down with a thump, staring down at his hands. He knew what had happened, and he knew that he had killed his nephew and brother just as surely as if he’d shot them himself.
He always left money on the table for Willis when he mowed, but yesterday he’d forgotten. Willis, knowing that Uncle Syd wouldn’t mind, had gone into his drawer and paid himself, then—being the curious teen that he was—poked around and found something that shouldn’t ever have been there.
Syd kept wondering what Willis must have thought, how he had felt, knowing the uncle he idolized had something like that—and wondering why, if it was okay for his uncle, it wouldn’t be okay for him, too? And then Willis Colvin had treated himself to pure, unadulterated coke, and the rest, as they said, was now history.
Syd wiped a hand across his face, too stunned to cry. He sat for a few minutes in the silence of his house, smelling the souring stench of his own vomit in the drawer on the other side of the room, hearing a drip in the bathroom where he hadn’t turned off the shower all the way, and knew his time on earth had to be over. There was no living with what he’d done.
Without a second thought, he went to the closet, dug into a shoe box where he kept his daddy’s old revolver, loaded it with one bullet, put it to his head and pulled the trigger where he stood.
* * *
When Syd never called back, Sue went to check on him. She found him on the floor of his bedroom, lying naked in a pool of his own blood, the revolver at his side. She called Sheriff Marlow and then went outside, too stunned to cry.
Syd’s hunting dogs were whining in the pen. She guessed he hadn’t bothered to tend them before he went to be with Jesus, so she fed them and watered them, and then sat down to wait. A few minutes passed as she sat praying, waiting for God to give her a sign that would explain how all this had come to pass. It wasn’t until she saw Syd’s blood on her dress that she lost it.
She looked down at the red splotches on her breast and started to shake. At that point horror came welling up in her, growing and growing until she threw back her head and let out a shriek so hideous it set the dogs to howling. Once she started she was unable to stop. She threw herself on the ground, wailing with such power and despair that she gave up her sanity, too empty from the grief to give this world another chance.
When Sheriff Marlow and his deputies drove up, they found her lying near a rick of wood, curled up in a fetal position with her eyes wide and fixed, and her mouth frozen open as if she was still screaming.
No amount of talking got through to her. Not only did they have to call the coroner about Syd, but they had to call another ambulance from Mount Sterling to come get poor Sue.
Mae Looney heard bits and pieces of it on her police scanner, then filled in the blanks on her own and promptly called Gertie, because that was how the mountain smoke signals worked.
Gertie took the call in near silence, grunting when necessary, muttering when a grunt didn’t pass for an answer, and hung up on Mae without saying goodbye. She knew Syd Colvin worked at the old mine, because she’d seen his name on the payroll Portia figured for Buell.
Gertie knew people would probably have read Syd’s suicide as stemming straight from grief, but she guessed different. It felt to her like Syd had a load of guilt too heavy to carry in this life and had given it up to the Lord. That was what she believed, and nothing was going to change her mind.
She called Buell the moment she got off the phone with Mae, but he didn’t answer, so she went in search of Portia to tell her the news. Portia’s face turned white, and then she started to cry. Gertie felt like crying with her, but that wouldn’t solve a thing.
As they sat out by the barn a sudden wind came through the trees, wailing like a banshee comin’ for the dead.
“It’s a sign,” Portia wailed. “It ain’t over, is it, Mama? It’s just gonna get worse.”
Gertie jumped to her feet and turned into the wind as it ripped through her hair, yanking and tugging the long gray strands out of their pins, and flattened the fabric of her dress so tight against her that it perfectly outlined the wear and tear on her body from her sixty-some years. Then, just like that, the wind was gone, taking all signs of life with it. The animals weren’t moving. The birds weren’t singing.
Gertie headed for the house. She knew in the very bottom of her soul that it was old sins—her sins—that had created the devil come into their midst.
Portia blew her nose on the hem of her shirt, then called out when she realized Gertie was leaving.
“Where you goin’, Mama?”
“To get my Bible,” Gertie said. “You go on and finish weedin’ them green beans. I need to pray.”
* * *
Mariah was pulling weeds with a vengeance while Moses watched from just outside the garden fence. She worked until she had the entire space weeded, then stopped to stretch her aching back, and as she did, she noticed that Moses had disappeared from sight.
Dusting off her hands, she came out, shutting the gate behind her as she began calling and whistling for the dog. But no long-legged, gangly pup appeared—not from around the cabin or from the forest at the edge of the meadow.
She frowned. Silly puppy. Where on earth could he have gone? She thought of her daily walks. He went with her every time, but this morning she had skipped their walk and gone to the garden instead. What if he had decided to go without her? What if he’d taken off after an animal that could hurt him? What if he went back to that cave where she’d heard the voices?
Now she was really worried. She ran into the house, grabbed the rifle and a flashlight, then remembered her cell phone and dropped it
into her pocket before heading back out.
Her strides were long as she hurried through the meadow, too concerned to dawdle. She had no idea how long Moses had been gone or what kind of trouble he might be in. Within seconds of entering the forest she began to call his name. When there was no answering bark she kept walking, and the higher up she went, the faster she moved. By the time she got to the waterfall, nearly thirty minutes had passed. She had a stitch in her side and tears in her eyes.
“Moses! Moses! Come here, puppy!” Then she whistled, but there was still no answering yip.
She moved to the edge of the creek, making sure his little body wasn’t floating somewhere along the banks after falling victim to the snapping turtle, but the only things she saw were small fish darting into the shadows.
Just as she started to turn back, she saw a muddy paw print in the dirt along the bank. She knelt, running her finger lightly along the edge. It was barely dry. The print was fresh.
She stood up. The little shit. He had come this far. Where the hell would he have gone next? God, please not that cave.
She turned and headed farther up the path toward the mouth of the cave. When she walked inside and turned on her flashlight, she saw more paw prints. Granted, he’d left plenty there the last time, but not this many, and a lot of them were new prints over the old shoe prints she and Quinn had made. As she feared, he had been here. Whether he was still here or not was another matter.
“Moses! Moses! Come here, puppy!”
She whistled again and walked farther into the cave. She was so scared she’d lost him that she forgot to be afraid. She walked all the way to the back wall with her flashlight pointed down, and when she finally found puppy prints going into that unexplored passageway, she groaned.
She was about to call out, but before she had a chance she began hearing voices again. Like the last time, they sounded more like murmurs rather than distinct words.
Her heart started to hammer at the onset of panic. She was spinning out of control, with no way to stop herself. She staggered toward the wall, grabbing hold of an outcropping, desperately trying to steady her legs and slow the rapid thunder of her heart, and then sank to the ground, her shoulders slumping as she waited to disappear.
All of a sudden she heard barking and swung her flashlight into the passage just as Moses came running out of the darkness. He leaped against her and began licking her face.
Mariah threw her arms around him. “Bad dog, bad puppy. Don’t you ever run away from me again.”
She pushed herself up, grabbed the rifle and the flashlight, and headed for the mouth of the cave with the puppy at her heels. And for all the good it did, she scolded him all the way back.
But there was another, far bigger issue on her mind. It was sobering to realize that she might be getting worse. This was the second time she’d heard voices in that cave. She wondered if they were ghosts, or if it was all in her head. By the time she reached the cabin, she’d made up her mind to call Dolly. If there were stories of people having heard or seen ghosts there, she was going to go with that theory. She’d heard of people turning psychic after head trauma, and she was far more willing to go there than to accept the fact that she was genuinely crazy and going crazier by the day.
* * *
Dolly was bringing in a load of laundry from the clothesline when her phone began to ring. Meg had gone to Mount Sterling a couple of hours earlier to run some errands, so she hurried to answer, dumping the clothes on the kitchen table before picking up the phone. She was a little breathless as she answered.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Dolly, it’s me, Mariah.”
A smile spread over Dolly’s face. “Hi, honey. How’s the garden growing?”
“Good, really good. I think I’ve finally found my calling. Now all I need is for you to teach me how to cook what I’m growing.”
“I’ll be happy to do just that,” Dolly said. “All you have to do is say the word.”
“Okay, thanks. Uh, actually, I called about something else, though. Do you have a minute?”
Dolly pulled up a chair and sat. “I even have two or three. What do you need, sugar?”
Mariah hesitated. She didn’t want to give herself away, but she had to find a way to get her questions answered.
“The other day Quinn took me up to see that waterfall and the cave where the kids used to play. It’s really something.”
Dolly beamed. “It is, isn’t it? All us kids did our fair share of leaving tracks up there when we were young. I haven’t been up that way in years.”
“I was wondering what you knew about the cave. You know, like did early settlers ever live in it, or was it ever a hideout for some outlaw? I know there’s a place in a park in Oklahoma called Robbers Cave, where some famous outlaws like Jesse James and Belle Starr used to hide. I heard they even scratched their names into the rocks.”
Dolly laughed. “I don’t know about outlaws, but I know my great-granddaddy had a still in there once.”
Mariah grinned. “Really? How funny.”
“Not to them it wasn’t. Whiskey was serious business.”
“I’ll be honest, it freaked me out a little when I first went in,” Mariah said.
“Oh, we scared ourselves in there on a regular basis,” Dolly said. “It was part of the fun.”
Mariah’s pulse kicked. Now they were getting to the conversation she needed to have.
“Scared yourself how?”
“We were always imagining bad guys were going to come out of the dark and we’d never see home again. As scared as we were, we still went back for more. Kids are crazy like that,” Dolly said.
“I’ll bet you saw everything from wild animals sneaking up to ghosts about to grab you, too,” Mariah said.
Dolly laughed. “Probably, but us kids never talked about ghosts—or haints, as our grannies called them.”
“Haints? What’s a haint?”
“It’s the mountain way of saying ‘haunt.’”
“Oh. Did you all believe in them, too?”
“Everyone believes in ghosts up here, honey. There’s too much history not to, you know.”
“Did you ever hear or see any in the cave?”
“Lord no,” Dolly said. “If we had, we’d all still be running.”
Mariah’s hopes fell. “Oh.”
“I’ll tell you one thing I remember about that cave. It was something Granddaddy Foster once told us. He said the passage at the back goes all the way through the mountain and comes out on the other side. Course we never went in to test the theory, but Granddaddy wasn’t one to stretch the truth, so I guess we all believed him.”
Mariah frowned. That still didn’t help her cause. She wanted ghosts, not a hole in the mountain that went in one side and out the other, kind of like the growing hole in her sanity.
“That would be something, wouldn’t it?” she said.
“For sure. If Granddaddy was right, it would be over near the park side of the mountain where Quinn works. And speaking of Quinn, when are you two going to come to supper? I’m a real good cook, and it’ll be a treat for Meg and me to see you again.”
Mariah smiled. “I don’t need to be asked twice. As soon as I can get an answer out of Quinn, I’ll let you know. How’s that?”
“Perfect.”
“Well, it was good talking to you, Dolly. Thanks for letting me rattle on.”
“Good talking to you, too, honey. Take care.”
“You, too,” Mariah said, and disconnected, leaving her alone with the knowledge that she was hearing things nobody else seemed to be hearing. And she didn’t like the way that made her feel.
* * *
It was midafternoon when Quinn started back to the ranger station. As the days moved into summer, it was always good to keep an eye on the amount of deadfall in the forest. That played into how fast a wildfire might spread, which was a constant source of concern for park rangers.
He was coming around the curve i
n the dirt road where he usually met the mushroom truck and slowed down out of habit, but today it was nowhere in sight. He glanced toward the gates up ahead, marveling at what time and money could do.
The big green-and-white Mountain Mushrooms sign at the gates was hard to miss. It was common knowledge now that the men who worked for Lonnie Farrell took home good money. It was also common knowledge that he was no longer hiring. Quinn surmised it didn’t take all that many men to sit and watch fungus grow.
As he neared the entrance he heard something thump hard against the bottom of his Jeep. He hit the brakes and then put the car in Park, hoping he hadn’t run over anything living.
He dropped to his hands and knees as he got out and looked underneath, praying he wasn’t going to see some kid’s cat or dog squashed beneath his tires. To his relief all he saw was a chunk of a dead tree branch. He pulled it out and tossed it in the ditch, then began checking the underside of the vehicle, making sure the branch hadn’t punched a hole in the oil pan. Reassured that everything looked secure, he circled the Jeep, kicking the tires as he went to make sure none of them were going flat. It wasn’t until he got to the front tire on the passenger side that he saw a sight that stopped him cold.
It was a shoe print—the kind of print left by a lace-up work boot—and there was a distinct wedge missing in the left heel of that boot, just like the print he’d found at all the poacher’s kill sites.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, and began following the tracks—straight to the gates of Mountain Mushrooms.
The gates were locked, which was odd, considering it was nothing but a mushroom business. He could see nearly a dozen cars parked around the new trailer house. He needed to find out who was in charge and get a list of employees, but he didn’t see anyone outside.
He went back to his Jeep, got out his binoculars and then returned to the gate and began scanning the site, but nothing was moving. He jiggled the gate, thinking about climbing over and walking onto the property, but the clearly posted No Trespassing sign left him without that option, as well, at least if he wanted to stay within the law.
