Blood Kin

by Ronald Kelly

  Wendell began to realize what Grandpappy was saying. “No! You can’t be serious!”

  “But I am. The Master is calling, Wendell. Abandon your faith and cleave unto him.”

  “Never!” declared Wendell Craven. He pulled away from Grandpappy’s grasp and backed up a few steps. “I will not abandon the Lord. I have devoted my life to Him!”

  Grandpappy laughed mockingly. “You no longer have life! The existence you do have belongs to the Lord of Darkness. You must bow down to him and do his bidding.”

  “I refuse to accept it!” said Wendell. “These powers you’ve shown me, they don’t have to be used for darkness. They can be used for the good of the Lord.” He glared at the old man. “And that is just what I intend to do. I shall continue my ministry, as I did before you turned me into this thing. You and your ‘church of the undead’ can burn in Hell, for all I care.”

  “So you refuse to join me?” asked Grandpappy, his eyes furious.

  “Yes!” said Wendell defiantly.

  “Then you are no longer a Craven in my eyes,” he growled in disgust. “I have banished you from my heart. But heed my words, Wendell: you are wrong. You are no longer the man you once were, and you will no longer do God’s work.”

  “You’re wrong, old man!” said Wendell. “I’ll never abandon my faith in Christ!”

  Grandpappy’s eyes were steady, holding a dark wisdom. “You will see,” was all he said.

  “I’ll show you,” declared Wendell. “I’ll show you who’s wrong.” Then he stepped into the night and was gone.

  The tall man stood there for a long moment, glaring into the darkness. “I was a fool!” he hissed beneath his breath. “I should have known he would be too headstrong to honor my wishes. He cares nothing about family. He cares only for himself and his illusions of righteousness.”

  “Aren’t you going after him?” asked Dudley.

  “No,” said Josiah Craven. “I have wasted enough time with the ingrate. I need someone less strong of will, more susceptible to my bidding. Someone who has a love for family and would do whatever is necessary to preserve that most sacred of bonds.”

  Suddenly, a face surfaced in Dud’s mind. The face of someone who matched Grandpappy’s idea of the perfect servant.

  The old man noticed the look of uneasy inspiration in the farmer’s eyes. “You know someone,” he said with a sinister grin. “Tell me.”

  “I really don’t think—” stammered Dud.

  “Tell me!” commanded Grandpappy. His eyes locked with Dudley’s, sending spears of fire into his brain. “You have no choice.”

  Dud dropped to his knees, the agony in his head growing unbearable. He knew that the man was right. He had no choice in the matter, and more than likely, he never would again.

  Weeping, he uttered a single name, hating himself as he said it.

  As the pain in his brain began to lift, it was replaced by Grandpappy’s fiendish laughter. In a way, it was worse than the torment he had just suffered.

  Much worse.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The jungle was the hottest he had ever felt it. The air was so humid and muggy that the leaves glistened with moisture. It was late in the afternoon, but still the heat refused to diminish, even by a few degrees. The lush, green mountains of the Highlands towered to the east. Beyond their peaks lay the coast, while to the northeast stretched the no-man’s land of Laos and Cambodia.

  Colonel Caleb K. Vanleer felt a river of sweat run beneath the olive drab material of his fatigues, causing them to cling to his muscular body like a second skin. He ignored it, the same as his men. Discomfort was a part of the Nam, along with the rashes, the foot rot, and the snakes and leeches.

  There were five of them. Caleb preferred to work light; there was less chance of fragging the wrong guy that way. Mendez was a wiry little Puerto Rican with enough tattoos on his skinny arms for four or five grunts. Conners was a redheaded Irishman with the face of Howdy Doody and the eyes of a stone-killer. Singleton was a lanky Texan whose hobbies included arm-wrestling, listening to Buck Owens and George Jones on his transistor radio, and garroting unsuspecting Cong. The FNG of the group was a black private named Jefferson. He was a street-hardened kid from East Harlem who had a thing for knives.

  The colonel was the fifth. Caleb carried a .45 automatic and a flamethrower. Singleton and Conners toted sawed-down 12-gauge pumps, Jefferson a CAR-15 and his trusty KA-BAR. Mendez carried a sidearm and a bag slung over his shoulder, packed full of grenades and C-4.

  They all looked at Vanleer waiting for the word. They respected the colonel and would have given their lives for him if it had been necessary. Caleb was a down-in-the-mud officer, not the kind that hid out in Saigon, eating steak and calling the plays. Neither was he one of those frigging non-coms who didn’t know their prick from a punji stick. He was a man with a job to do and he did it better than anyone south of the DMZ.

  They crouched in the shadows of the jungle, staring across a grassy clearing. “Whose turn is it to pop the cork?” asked Caleb.

  Jefferson grinned, his face blacker than hot tar. “That’s me,” he said. He crept toward the edge of the forest, the parkerized knife fisted in one dark hand.

  “Keep your eyes peeled for wires and pits,” he whispered. The Cong were notoriously dirty in that respect. Many a grunt in the Highlands had lost a foot to a shit-smeared punji or his life to a pressure mine. Caleb had taught his men what to look for and how to disarm the booby trap if necessary.

  Jefferson was across the clearing a second later. Halfway there, he pointed down at a thin filament that ran from the base of one tree to another Caleb saw the surprise package a moment later, barely hidden in the tall sawgrass; a communist version of a claymore.

  The soldier searched the clearing for a while, then gave a thumb’s-up. He returned the KA-BAR to its sheath and exchanged it for the CAR-15. He trained the muzzle of the assault rifle on the ground, while the toe of his boot rooted beneath the false earth. A moment late, he flipped over a wicker mat innerwoven with live grass. Beneath it was the dark mouth of a tunnel.

  “Bingo,” said Caleb. He looked at the others. “I’ll take point, followed by Singleton and Mender. Conners, you bring up the rear. Watch out for that tripper unless you want to get mailed back to mama in a black envelope.”

  One by one, they crossed the clearing, stepping over the hair-fine wire and joining Jefferson at the hole. Caleb produced a flashlight and inspected the pit. It was barely as big around as a garbage can, its sides chiseled from earth and stone. Bamboo rungs were anchored into the dirt to one side. The beam of the light failed to reach the bottom.

  Silently, they entered the opening. Like the links of a chain, Caleb and his men descended into the hole. The last one in was Conners. He pulled the cover of the mat back into place and they were in complete darkness.

  The earthy odor of raw soil hung heavily in their nostrils. No one spoke. They knew how sound could carry. Twenty feet down, they touched ground. Caleb snapped a red filter on the flashlight, then turned it on. A narrow tunnel stretched ahead of them, seeming to go on forever.

  The tunnels beneath the Highlands were legendary. It was rumored that beneath the jungle were between a hundred and two hundred miles of tunnels, enough square footage theoretically to hide the entire NVA. During the three years Colonel Vanleer had been a tunnel rat, he had been responsible for destroying thirty miles of tunnel and the caches of weapons and supplies that were stashed there. In his opinion, thirty miles wasn’t nearly enough. He wanted the whole two hundred before he collected his medals and went back to the world.

  In the red glow of the flashlight shone the faces of his men. Conners, Singleton, and Mender wore no expression whatsoever. Along with Caleb, they could have been the four faces of Mount Rushmore. Jefferson wasn’t so seasoned. He smiled in the gloom, his white eyes and teeth hanging there like the disembodied grin of the Cheshire cat.

  They started forward. The tunnel was so short and c
ramped that they had to crawl on their hands and knees. Caleb found a booby trap a hundred yards further on, another tripwire rigged to a grenade. The colonel calmly deactivated it and they continued.

  It was a mile further on when the tunnel began to widen, almost like a funnel. Caleb spotted a muted glow around a corner up ahead. He motioned for his men to stop, then snapped off the flashlight. In the dark, he searched for his Zippo. He found it a second later. Blindly he flipped the lid, struck the flint, and held it to the muzzle of his flamethrower. The fumes caught fire immediately, leaving a blue arc hovering inside the notched muzzle guard. Caleb nodded to himself. One press of the trigger and it would spit a twenty-foot stream of pure hellfire.

  Behind him came the soft click-clacks of the shotguns being pumped and the slides of automatics being jacked. He waited until they were all ready, then led the way forward.

  They turned the corner and found themselves at the entranceway to a large cave. Within the portal glowed dozens of flickering lights, the flames of long-stemmed candles.

  Then they stepped into the cave and saw the baskets. They were weaved of dried reeds and were long and narrow. Almost the shape of…

  Caleb opened his eyes. The glow of those distant candles faded, leaving him in darkness. He sighed deeply, and throwing back the quilt, sat on the edge of his bed. He growled irritably, cussing beneath his breath.

  “Damned nightmare!” he grumbled. “Why don’t you tell me it all or just leave me the hell alone?”

  The only one who answered him was Old Nailhead. The hound lifted his head from where he slept beside the bed, whining curiously. Caleb reached down and ran his hand along the dog’s back, his fingertips leaving trails in the animal’s loose skin.

  Caleb got up and padded barefoot across the cabin floor, dressed only in a pair of faded red longhandles. He went to the footlocker and opened it. He rummaged through the darkness and found what he was looking for: the gallon jug of white mule. He took it to the table with him and sat down. He found a bell jar that wasn’t too dirty and poured it half full of liquor.

  The mountain man took a big swig. He sat there and waited for the bomb to drop. When it did, he grunted in satisfaction. His hand trembled as he lifted the jar again, but not quite as much as it had a second ago.

  Caleb had suffered through the nightmare maybe a dozen times since his discharge from the military. It was always the same, ending with those wicker baskets. He focused on that candlelit cave, trying to push his mind further, but it closed up on him like a steel trap.

  “Shit fire and save matches!” he cussed. Caleb took another swallow of his homemade brew and thought of his men. Mendez, Singleton, Conners, and Jefferson. All swallowed up by the earth and never found. And himself, Colonel Caleb Vanleer, discovered in the jungle three days later, gibbering like an idiot.

  “Why can’t I remember, damn it?” he yelled. “Why?”

  He had asked himself the same question time and time again, but the answer never came. It remained buried just as deeply as those four soldiers he had left behind in the darkness.

  Caleb felt something nudge at his elbow. He looked down to see Old Nailhead staring up at him, his hang-dog eyes full of concern. He felt the sting of warm tears in his eyes, as he bent down and hugged the hound. “Don’t you worry about me, ol’ boy. It’s just that confounded dream gnawing at me again.”

  He got up from the table and walked to the hearth. The fire had died down to an ashy glow. In the faint light, he saw the Bowie knife and the flintlock pistol lying on the mantel.

  Caleb shucked the gun from its holster. The walnut handle was cool in his hand, the long, blued barrel even cooler. He lifted it to his face and held it there. Sometimes he thought that would be the best way: to just put a .45-caliber round ball through his temple and put an end to that damnable dream forever.

  But he knew that he couldn’t. Not until he broke through. Not until he remembered exactly what had happened down there in that cave.

  With a shuddering sigh, Caleb Vanleer returned the flintlock to its holster. Then, with Old Nailhead at his heels, he went back to bed.

  Part Two

  Revelations

  Chapter Seventeen

  Boyd Andrews left the True Value in the middle of town and climbed into his red Ford half-ton. The sack in his hand held a bottle of linseed oil and a quarter pound of carpentry nails. He had finished the shaping and sanding the night before. Now all that was left was nailing the sides and base together, installing the hinges and lid, then rubbing several coats of oil into the wood.

  He tossed the sack on the seat next to him, then cranked the ignition. The radio blared to life, conjuring the second chorus of a Brooks and Dunn song. He grinned, slipped on a pair of aviator sunglasses, and shifted the truck into gear. Then he pulled out of the parallel parking spot in front of the hardware store and merged with the traffic.

  As Boyd passed the tall, stately structure of city hall, he glanced at his watch. It was a few minutes past two-thirty. An idea came to mind and he turned down Milford Avenue. As he approached the low brick building that housed Green Hollow Elementary, he spotted the school zone sign flashing its orange caution lights up ahead. He slowed to fifteen miles per hour, hoping he wasn’t too late. A long line of yellow diesel buses—five in all—stretched in front of the school. Dozens of children were already swarming around their doors, boarding in single file.

  Boyd turned into the school parking lot and cruised slowly past the crowded sidewalk. At first, he was sure Paul and Bessie had already made it onto their bus and found their seats. Then he spotted a head of bright red hair tied into pigtails at the end of a line. Behind it was the familiar combination of orange and white that marked a die-hard UT fan.

  He leaned over and rolled down the passenger window. “Andrews Taxi Service!” he called out. “On duty, no waiting.”

  Bessie peeked around the shoulder of a tall boy in front of her and smiled. “Hi, Daddy!” she greeted. “Look, Paul, it’s Daddy!”

  Paul turned from where he had been sharing an X-Men comic with a couple of his classmates. When he saw the red truck and the face of his father grinning from the cab, he swallowed nervously and nodded. “Yeah, squirt. I see him.”

  His sister grabbed his hand and tugged him out of the line. “Well, then, let’s go.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t, Bess,” he said, dragging his feet. “You know how Mama wants us to ride the bus.”

  “Aw, this is better,” said the seven-year-old. “Now, snap out of it and come on.”

  When they reached the pickup truck, Boyd lifted his shades and gave them a wink. “Can I give y’all a lift?”

  “Sure!” said Bessie. She opened the door and tossed her books inside. A second later, she was on the seat next to her father, giggling.

  Boyd looked over at his son. Paul still stood on the sidewalk, an expression of uncertainty in his eyes. “You coming, son?”

  The boy glanced back at the bus. “I don’t know if we should…”

  “Aw, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud, Paulie,” said his sister. “It’s Daddy, you dweeb, not the boogeyman!” The ten-year-old flinched. He hated it when his sister called him “Paulie.” He glanced over his shoulder to see if any of his buddies had overheard.

  “Well, what about it, hoss?” asked Boyd. “You can take the bus if you want to. I don’t care.”

  But Paul could tell by the look in his father’s eyes that he did care. “Naw,” he said finally. “I guess I’ll come along.”

  Once the boy was sitting next to his sister with the door closed behind him, Boyd let the sunglasses drop back over his eyes. “Belts,” he reminded them.

  Bessie and Paul buckled their seat belts, something they had been taught but preferred not do unless someone insisted. When Boyd had heard the twin clicks of the buckles snapping into place, he crept out of the parking lot and onto Milford again.

  A minute later, they were back on the highway, heading for home. “How was school
today?” their father asked.

  Bessie frowned and pulled the paper sack of linseed oil and nails from under her butt. “I made a B-plus on a geography test,” she told him. “Would’ve made an A if I hadn’t forgotten the capital of South Dakota.”

  “It’s Pierre, sweetheart,” Boyd told her. “What about you, Paul?”

  “We dissected an earthworm in science today,” he said. “Cindy Preston puked all over the place.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Boyd, sticking out his tongue. Bessie laughed. The carpenter glanced over and saw something fat and square in the front pocket of the boy’s Levi’s. “How’d that Game Boy turn out?” he asked.

  “Oh, okay, I guess,” said the boy, staring out the side window.

  Bessie snorted. “Ha! He hasn’t put it down since Saturday night! Mom got onto him this morning ’cause he was playing with it and wouldn’t get ready for school.”

  Paul turned and gave her an icy grin. “Tattle-tail, tattle-tail! Gonna get a switch and paddle tail!”

  The girl’s face reddened in anger, blotting out her freckles. “Daddy, Paul’s picking on me!”

  “You two simmer down,” laughed Boyd. “Or I’ll end up paddling both your tails.” He looked up ahead and saw the Frosty Freeze with its big ten-foot ice cream cone made of chickenwire and painted plaster. “Hey, why don’t we stop for ice cream? How does that sound?”

  “All right!” squealed Bessie. “Can I have a hot fudge sundae? With nuts?”

  “Sure you can,” said Boyd. “How about you, son?”

  Paul looked doubtful. “Mama really don’t like us to eat so close to supper. She says it ruins our appetite.”

  “Aw, stick a dirty ol’ sock in it, Paulie!” said Bessie.

  It was Paul’s turn to lose his temper. “Daddy, tell her not to call me that!”

  “Bessie, don’t call your brother ‘Paulie,’” he told her firmly. “You know he can’t stand it.”