by Ronald Kelly
When Joan looked back through the windshield, the road was gone. Instead, she saw the gravel shoulder and a metal guardrail just beyond. “Mama!” she cried. “Look out!”
But Blanche’s mind was no longer on her driving. She screamed hysterically as the bird pecked at the side of her face and neck, turning it into a bloody, mangled mess.
The car hit the barrier a moment later. The front end folded up like an accordion and the windshield fractured into a thousand silver cracks. The driver’s airbag inflated, swallowing Blanche and causing her to scream even more. The car went up on its end with a sickening lurch. It stood there for a second, then flipped over the guardrail and into open space.
Joan screamed as the car rolled down a thirty-foot embankment. Groceries went airborne and spun through the interior of the car. A can of stewed tomatoes struck Joan in the back of the head, filling her eyes with flashing points of light. The car traveled for what seemed like an eternity. Then it came to a crumpling crash at the bottom of the embankment.
She sat there for a long moment, feeling dazed and nauseated. By some shred of dumb luck, the car had landed back on its tires, two of which had ruptured during the crash. Joan groaned and felt the back of her head. There was no blood, but a good-sized knot was rising beneath her hair.
Joan stared out the side window and saw the branches of a juniper bush pressing against the glass. Then she turned and looked at her mother. The airbag had already deflated and Blanche sat back in her seat, unconscious.
The entire right side of her face was torn and glistening with blood.
“Mama!” she cried out. “Mama, are you okay?”
Blanche moaned, but didn’t wake up.
Suddenly, Joan thought of the thing that had come through the rear window. The crow. Was it still back there? She could imagine it perched in the darkness, eyes gleaming, its bill dripping with blood.
She was about to turn and look around her seat when she smelled a burnt odor. Something that looked like pale smoke drifted from the rear of the car. Oh, God! she thought at first. The car’s on fire!
Then, a second later, the smoke was gone. She breathed in deeply. The sulfurous scent still lingered in the air, but she could not detect the odor of gasoline.
A small sound came from the back seat, almost like the weight of someone settling against the vinyl cushions.
Slowly, she peeked around the edge of the passenger seat.
A tall, thin man sat in the gloom, a man with gray hair and a mustache. His eyes seemed to glow in the dark.
“Hello, my dear,” he said softly. Then his lips parted, revealing a smile bristling with sharp, white teeth.
Dud Craven sat in his truck at the side of the road, waiting.
Forty feet away was the guardrail that the Camry had flipped over several minutes before. The rail had a deep dent in it but was still anchored firmly in the ground. The dust that had been churned up from the shoulder of the road had already settled. Anyone driving by would probably not even notice that an accident had taken place.
Dud sat in his truck, the lights extinguished. He prayed that no one did show up, at least, not for a while longer.
The image of the big black crow flying over the hood of his truck and crashing through the Toyota’s back window came to mind, and he shuddered.
The farmer sat there for a moment, listening for some sound to echo from the bottom of the ravine. Then it came: a high-pitched scream full of terror. Dud closed his eyes and wished that the horrible screaming would stop. If it didn’t, he was certain he would start the truck up and get the hell away from there, no matter what might happen to him afterward. Then, a second later, it stopped suddenly, like a phonograph needle being lifted from the grooves of a record. He stuck his head out the open window and listened. Silence hung heavily in the night. Even the crickets had grown quiet.
He waited ten minutes more. Then he saw a dark form appear at the guardrail. The tall man in the black suit stepped over the steel rail and walked calmly toward the truck. A moment later, he paused next to the Dodge’s open window.
“It is done,” said Grandpappy.
Dud saw a trace of blood on the old man’s bottom lip. “Are they coming, then?”
“Joan Craven is,” he said. “We must be there to meet her.”
“What about the old woman?” asked Dud. “Blanche?”
Contempt shown in Grandpappy’s eyes. “She serves no purpose,” he said. “Besides, she isn’t family. Not blood kin.”
Dud nodded. Grandpappy walked to the rear of the Dodge and climbed into the bed. The farmer glanced in the mirror. He saw the tarpaulin lift, but, of course, caught no image of the preacherman.
When he was satisfied that Grandpappy was hidden from view, he started up the truck and made a U-turn in the center of the road. He already had his instructions.
They must return to Craven’s Mountain as soon as possible.
Company was coming.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Patty Simmons was looking at her wristwatch for the umpteenth time when a knock came at the door. She nearly jumped out of her skin. It was nearly ten-thirty. Mrs. Andrews and her mother should have been back from the grocery store by eight-thirty at the latest.
The babysitter hopped off the couch and ran, in her stocking feet, to the door. Patty peered out the peephole. Seeing who it was, she sighed and unlocked the front door.
She stared at the woman standing there, trying not to seem angry. “Mrs. Andrews! Where have you been?” She checked her watch again for emphasis. “I should have been home two hours ago.”
Joan Andrews stood on the other side of the threshold, looking strangely pale. “I’m sorry about that, Patty.” She looked past the girl and into the house. Her face seemed guarded. “I’m coming in,” she said.
“Well, sure!” laughed the babysitter. “It is your house.”
The expression on the woman’s face eased a little and she stepped inside. She looked around the living room. Paul and Bessie were nowhere to be seen. “The children,” she said. “Where are they?”
“Oh, I already packed ’em off to bed,” said Patty. “I figured you’d want me to, it being a school night and all.” She looked at her watch again, more as a nervous habit than anything else. “Speaking of school, I’ve got to be getting home myself, Mrs. Andrews. My daddy’ll likely tan my hide as it is.”
Joan reached into her purse and pulled out thirty dollars. “Here. I hope this will cover it.”
Patty was happily surprised. She had never made over twenty dollars from any of her babysitting jobs for the Andrews. “Yes, ma’am!” she said cheerfully. She pocketed the money. Grabbing her schoolbooks and stepping into her shoes, she headed for the front door. “Oh, where’s Mrs. Craven?” she asked innocently.
Joan seemed to consider the question for a moment. Then she smiled. “She decided to stay with a friend in town.”
“Oh, cool,” said the seventeen-year-old. Before she left, she turned and noticed the brunette’s face again. “Mrs. Andrews? Are you feeling okay?”
“Never better,” Joan replied. Then she hustled the girl out the door and closed it behind her.
She stood there in the foyer, knowing that she had little time to waste. Joan waited until she heard Patty’s Sunbird back out of the drive and start off for town. Then she walked down the hallway toward the children’s rooms.
Joan stopped at Paul’s room first. She opened the door and turned on the light. Her son was stretched out on his belly, like he always slept, his left foot dangling from beneath the covers.
When the light came on, he squinted against the glare and sat up. “Mama? Where have you been? Me and Bess were getting kinda worried.”
His mother gave no explanation. “Get up and get dressed, Paul,” she told him.
“But why?”
Joan’s eyes, strangely bloodshot, stared at him firmly. “Just do as I say. We’re going somewhere.”
As Paul got out of bed and went to
his closet, Joan walked to the room at the end of the hallway. She opened the door and snapped on the light. “Bessie,” she said. “Wake up, honey.”
Bessie popped up out of the bedcovers like a jack-in-the-box. “Mama! You’re home!”
“Get out of bed and get dressed,” she told her. “Wear something warm.”
“How come?” piped Bessie, yawning. “Where we going?”
Joan placed a finger as thin and pale as a candle to her bluish lips. “No questions,” she said.
Paul left his room and walked down the hallway toward them. “I don’t understand what’s going on,” he said. He was dressed in jeans, Nikes, and his orange-and-white UT jacket. He looked back down the hallway toward the living room and dining room. “Where’s Grandma?”
“She’s not coming,” Joan told them.
As Bessie was struggling into her clothes—corduroy pants and a pink sweater—Paul studied his mother for a long moment. Her face was alarmingly pale and her eyes were redder than he had ever seen them, like his father’s eyes when he had been drinking heavily. “Mama?” he asked. “Are you okay? You look sick.”
“I’m fine, sweetheart,” she said. She smiled at him, but it didn’t match the expression in her eyes, an expression of mysterious purpose, as if she had something important to do but didn’t want to tell the children exactly what it was.
Paul took another step closer. He looked past her navy windbreaker and suddenly saw the ribbed neck of her white turtleneck. There was a wide spot of dried blood at the left side of her neck about the size of a half-dollar. “Mama!” he cried out. “You’re bleeding!”
Bessie finished tugging on her shoes and ran out into the hall, her eyes scared. “What’s wrong, Mama? Did you get hurt?”
“It’s nothing,” Joan assured, a little more harshly than she intended. “Just a scratch, that’s all.”
But Paul wasn’t convinced. “I think you ought to go to the doctor,” he said. He started down the hallway to the living room.
“Where are you going?” she called out. Her eyes flashed like those of a caged animal.
By the time her son answered, he was picking up the receiver to the phone on the far end table. “I’m gonna call Daddy,” he said. “He’ll be over here in a minute, and—”
Abruptly, without warning, his mother was standing next to him. Paul was about to dial his father’s number when Joan’s hand came crashing down on the phone with a speed he had never known his mother to possess. Even more amazing than how fast she moved was what she ended up doing to the phone. Her palm slammed down, shattering the plastic cover into a dozen pieces and flattening the inner workings of wires and electrical parts. Paul stared down at the mangled phone, holding the now useless receiver. Numbly, he realized that she would have broken every bone in his hand if he had been dialing at the time.
“No!” she hissed. “Leave him out of this!”
The receiver dropped from Paul’s grasp and he took a frightened step backward. His mother’s eyes were glowing. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “What’s happened?”
Joan looked at her son and daughter. Paul was clearly upset, and Bessie stood in the living room doorway crying over her mother’s strange behavior. Joan felt a pang of pity shoot through her, but it failed to last very long. She recalled Grandpappy’s stern face and the impatience in his gunmetal eyes. For some reason, his needs seemed to be much more pressing than those of her children.
“I’m not going to tell you again!” she snapped, grabbing them both by the wrists and herding them toward the front door. “Now, come on, or we’ll be late. He wouldn’t like for us to be late.”
Paul kept asking her who she was talking about and where they were going. Bessie merely squalled about how terribly cold her mother’s hands were. Joan dragged them from the house with no trouble at all. That was odd in itself. Joan could still handle his sister pretty well, but she had been unable to do the same with Paul since he was nine. At that moment, however, she fairly lifted him off his feet, as if he were as light as a feather.
Joan reached her four-door Tempo, opened one of the rear doors, then pitched the two children onto the back seat. When she slammed the door, Paul saw his mother reach down to the door handle and give it a twist. He heard the squeal of tortured metal. By the time he reached the door and tried to get out, he found that the door was hopelessly jammed. A similar noise sounded from the opposite door. Paul tried that one as Joan walked away. It also refused to budge.
His mother opened the driver’s door and climbed behind the steering wheel. Paul sat against the backseat, cradling his hysterical sister in his arms. When he looked up at the rearview mirror to see his mother’s face, it wasn’t there.
“Buckle up,” she said, more out of habit than actual concern.
“Yes, ma’am,” muttered Paul. His hands trembled as he buckled first his own seat belt, then Bessie’s.
Joan inserted the key in the ignition and started the Tempo. When she had backed into Stantonview Road, she turned south, heading for town and the tall peaks of the Smokies that lay beyond.
“Where are we going?” Paul asked her again.
This time she gave him an answer, even though it told him little. “You’ll know the place,” she said. “You’ve been there before.”
Paul asked no more questions. He sat there holding his sister’s hand and staring at the rearview mirror that held no trace of a reflection.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Once they reached the mountains, Paul Andrews began to realize where they were headed. His mother was right: he had been there before.
Paul had been seven the last and only time he had visited Craven’s Mountain. He remembered it had been in summer. His father and mother had decided to drive to the top of the mountain to take a look at the place where Joan’s great-grandmother and great-grandfather had once lived. Paul remembered the drive as being long and tiresome. They had traveled a winding mountain road that was bordered by tall stands of timber and heavy thickets of blackberry bramble and honeysuckle. They had passed a farm with its crops growing on the steep slope of the mountain and his mother had told him that it belonged to a cousin of hers, although he couldn’t remember exactly what his name was.
But it was neither one of those places that they were headed for that night. As his mother steered the Tempo up the mountain road, Paul knew where their journey would take them. There was only one place at the top of the mountain, and that was the old Craven house.
Thirty minutes after leaving the main highway, they were there. As Joan parked the car out front, Paul saw a gray truck parked beneath a huge oak tree that looked as if it was five hundred years old. The boy didn’t recognize the vehicle at all.
Joan shut off the engine, then looked into the backseat. Her face looked as white as snow in the gloom of the car; the face of a ghost… or worse. “Let’s go,” she said, then climbed out of the car.
Bessie had cried herself to sleep on the long drive up the mountain. Paul shook her gently. “Wake up, Bessie,” he whispered. “We’re here.”
The girl opened her eyes, startled. “Where?”
“Craven’s Mountain,” he told her. He didn’t expect her to remember their trip to the mountain. She had been only four at the time.
Since the back doors were jammed, he and Bessie had to crawl between the front seats and exit through the driver’s door. Outside, they stood in the chilly mountain air and stared at the ancient structure that had once served as the Craven family’s ancestral home.
It was a huge house, two stories high, with a balcony traveling the width of its upper floor. It looked as if no one had lived there for seventy or eighty years. The windows were shuttered tight and the roof was pocked with large holes. The outer walls were bare and weathered a dull gray color. Any trace of paint had been scrubbed away by decades of wind and rain.
As they crossed the front yard, which was choked with weeds and pink-headed thistle, Paul saw a few more buildings off to
the side of the house. One looked like a large barn, while the others were an outhouse and a smokehouse for curing meat. The two smaller buildings were covered with kudzu and nearly on the brink of collapse.
By the time they reached the porch, the front door opened, revealing the soft glow of a kerosene lamp. A man wearing overalls and a black-and-gold CAT cap stepped outside. He looked familiar to Paul, as if he had seen him around town before. Once they were closer, the boy detected a deep sadness in the man’s unshaven face.
“Joan,” he said with a nod.
The brunette nodded back. “Dudley,” she said. “Is he here?”
Dud Craven stepped away from the doorway. “Back in the family room.”
Joan turned to her children. “Come along. There’s somebody I want you to meet.”
Bessie clutched Paul’s hand tightly as they stepped through the doorway of the old house and made their way down a short hallway. They passed a narrow staircase and entered a large room that took up the entire left end of the bottom floor. The family room was decorated with peeling wallpaper and furnished with chairs and a sofa that would have looked more at home in a museum. There was a huge stone fireplace at the far end of the room, but it was cold and empty. The only source of light came from a lantern that sat on the long oak mantel above the hearth.
“Ah, you are here already,” came a rumbling voice from a dark corner of the room.
Paul watched as a tall form left a dusty armchair and walked toward them. He was an elderly man with iron-gray hair and a mustache. He was dressed entirely in black, except for the starched white shirt that peeked above the top of his vest.
The man crossed the family room and took Joan’s hand. Paul was shocked to see that both of them possessed the same sickly white pallor. The old man stared into the woman’s eyes for a moment as if exchanging a mutual understanding. Then he turned toward the two children.
“Paul, Bessie,” said Joan. “This is your great-great-grandfather. This is Grandpappy Craven.”
