by Ronald Kelly
Boyd smiled. “See? Didn’t I tell you she knew what she was talking about?”
“Hey, I ain’t no doubting Thomas,” said Caleb. He eyed the young woman thoughtfully. “Tell me something, Tammy, does fire affect these critters?”
“Yes,” she replied. “That is one way of destroying them.”
The gleam of an idea shone in Vanleer’s eyes. “Boyd, do you have any empty liquor bottles stashed around here?”
Tammy laughed. “Are you kidding? I threw out a whole trash bag full of them last night when I was cleaning up. It’s sitting out behind the trailer.”
“Good,” said Caleb. “Now all we need is a little gasoline and some old rags to make fuses and we’re in business.”
“Molotov cocktails?” asked Boyd.
“You’ve got it.”
“Well, it seems like you guys know what to do,” said Tammy. She glanced at her watch. It was only half past seven in the morning. “Why don’t I drive into town and pick us up some breakfast? Anything else I need to get while I’m out?”
“Yeah,” said Boyd. “There’s a five-gallon gas can over there in the corner. We’ll need some gas for the firebombs. I think I can rustle up some old rags.”
“And pick up some butane lighters, too,” added Caleb. “They’ll be handier than matches.”
“Okay,” replied Tammy, picking up the gas can. She left the garage and started up the driveway to her car. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
“Oh, something I’ve been meaning to ask,” said Caleb. “Just when are we going to Craven’s Mountain?”
Tammy looked at her watch again. “As soon as possible. Hopefully, around noon.”
“That doesn’t give us much time,” said Caleb doubtfully.
“We have to take them when they’re off guard, and that means during daylight hours,” she told him. “If we try it after dark, the odds will be against us. We might as well be committing suicide.”
After Tammy was gone, Caleb turned to the carpenter, who was already selecting wood from the pile in the corner. “Isn’t she being a little melodramatic?”
Boyd thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. God help us, I think she’s hit the nail square on the head.”
“Then let’s get our asses in gear and get to work,” said Caleb.
It wasn’t long before the garage was busy with the buzz of machinery and the sounds of desperate men working against the clock.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Dud waited a couple of hours after daybreak. Then he left the old house on the top of Craven’s Mountain and walked outside to his truck in the cool mist of early morning.
Joan’s tan Tempo and Boyd’s red Ford pickup had been hidden deep in the woods behind the barn, the same as Stan Watts’s Lincoln. The police chief was out there, too, wrapped in a blanket and stashed in the trunk of his car. Grandpappy had told him to leave him there until later, when he had time to bury him properly. But Dud wasn’t sure he would even get around to it. He had other things to attend to; things that were not on the old man’s agenda of rebuilding the clan of Craven.
As he climbed into his truck, he glanced into the bed. His chainsaw sat next to the spare tire. It still reeked of gas fumes, its body still warm and its blade still caked with wood pulp. He had used it late last night to perform one of Grandpappy’s requests. Dud scowled as he closed the truck door. Requests, hell—commands were more like it. That was all Dud had been to Grandpappy since he had first resurrected the old man: a feeble-minded gofer who performed all the dirty work Grandpappy was unable to do himself. Or rather, thought himself above doing. Dud thought of Chief Watts and felt a pang of remorse. God help him, he had even murdered for Grandpappy. He had shot a man down in cold blood, and a police officer, at that.
And that wasn’t all. There was also the matter of the Andrews children. Even from the beginning, Dud had regretted involving them in Grandpappy’s evil business. Sometimes he heard the little girl, Bessie, crying upstairs, and he felt his heart break. He found himself wanting to unlock the door of their prison and free the two, particularly after what Bessie had been forced to do at the home of the Milfords a couple nights before. He knew that their participation would not end there, either. Grandpappy would invade the homes of his unsuspecting descendants again and again, using the two children to solicit the “invitations” necessary to gain entrance.
Dud started his truck and headed down the dirt road that wound its way along the western face of Craven’s Mountain. As he drove, he thought of the subtle change that had gradually taken place during the past three days. Ever since Grandpappy had “baptized” Joan, Dud had noticed that the hold the old man had over him had begun to weaken, especially after the farmer had killed Stan Watts. Dud figured it was due to Grandpappy’s attentions toward Joan. He was focusing so much of his influence toward his new recruit that he had assumed fear alone would be sufficient to keep Dud in line. Dud’s mind had grown even clearer after the initiation of Sarah Milford the night before last.
Part of Dudley Craven welcomed the conversion of the two women, for it centered Grandpappy’s attention on them and not on Dud. But another part of him resented their presence. Deep inside, he actually felt jealous of the attention Grandpappy was lavishing upon them. Dud was himself a full-blooded Craven, not some bastard child. Why were Joan and Sarah being treated like royalty, while he was being regarded as some sort of lowly servant, expected to watch over them and Grandpappy during daylight hours and assist them in hunting for the sustenance they craved at night?
The answer to that question didn’t really concern Dud. All he knew was that he was getting sick and tired of covering Grandpappy’s ass while putting his own on the line time and time again. He knew that sooner or later his crimes would be discovered and he would be caught. Then he would be destroyed either by those who apprehended him or, even worse, by Grandpappy himself. And Dud wasn’t about to allow that to happen.
He drove on down the mountain road to his farm. Dud passed the house and parked his truck next to the barn. Once he left the truck, he stood in the cool morning mist for a long moment and looked out across the unplanted field he had been in the process of tilling. In the fog, he could barely see the plow standing out there, exactly where he had left it. He recalled the moment when the plowshare had struck the corner of the wooden box and cursed himself for letting curiosity get the better of him. If he had simply left well enough alone, if he had only plowed around the obstruction instead of digging it up, everything would have turned out differently. He would have planted his crops as planned and lived his life alone on the mountain, just as he had for the last twenty years. But instead, he had delved into matters he should have left well enough alone—and in the process committed the worst sin of his life. He had unleashed Satan himself, or rather, a very close and faithful incarnation of the foul old gentleman.
Dud walked to the graywood barn and opened one of its double doors. He had experienced a strange feeling the night before—almost a premonition—that Grandpappy Craven’s plan for rebuilding his family was somehow doomed to failure. Dud also had the distinct impression that the one who would suffer the most would be not Grandpappy, but him. Dudley would be the one who’d pay, and pay dearly, for the horrors that the vampire and his great-granddaughters had cast upon the community of Green Hollow. The townspeople would believe Dudley to be the one responsible for all the murders and disappearances. Then Dud would suffer, while Grandpappy and the others escaped. They would probably leave Craven’s Mountain and travel further along the Smokies, perhaps to the wooded foothills of North Carolina, West Virginia, or northern Georgia. There, they would continue their terror, while Dud rotted away in some prison cell, waiting for his turn in the Tennessee electric chair.
Dud recalled something Grandpappy had mentioned after he was first restored. He had said that Green Hollow and the vicinity of Craven’s Mountain wasn’t the sole source of Craven kin. During Josiah’s tra
vels as an itinerant preacher, he had succumbed to the desires of the flesh and spread his seed liberally from community to community. In the last hundred years, Grandpappy calculated that there were hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of his offspring scattered along the chain of the Appalachian Mountains. And if necessary, he would claim them as his own. Just as he had ended up doing with Joan and Sarah.
The mountain farmer now realized the true extent of the evil he had released with the simple removal of that wooden stake. But the time was past for regret. That would do him no good. No, the only thing that concerned Dud now was atonement. And he knew that his atonement had to take place that evening, at the very moment of Grandpappy’s awakening.
Dud entered the barn and saw his mule standing in its stall, looking gaunt and half-starved. He walked over and ran a hand along Alice’s neck, feeling her tremble beneath his touch. “I’m sorry I’ve neglected you, ol’ girl,” he told her softly. “I just ain’t been myself here lately.”
Guiltily, he fed and watered the mare, then turned back to the task at hand.
He went to a far corner of the barn where he kept his tools and farming supplies. Dud crouched next to a long, wooden chest and stared at the rusty padlock that dangled from its clasp. He found the right key and unlocked it, then opened the lid. Amid the clutter he found what he was looking for. He hadn’t used the contraption, or what went with it, since earlier that winter, when he had first began clearing the extra acreage.
Carefully, he lifted the two wooden crates and carried them back out to his truck. He didn’t place them in the bed, figuring it would be too dangerous toting them back up the mountain that way. Instead, he put them on the seat of the truck next to him.
Dud sat in his truck for a long while. He thought of what he intended to do during the course of that day and it frightened him. What if he didn’t complete his preparations before nightfall? What if Grandpappy rose earlier than he normally did and caught Dud in his act of betrayal? Then the old man would kill him, but not swiftly. No, it was certain that Grandpappy would cause him to regret his treachery, slowly and agonizingly.
Dud hoped to come out of this alive and in one piece.
But if that was not possible, then he intended to destroy Grandpappy and his followers at the same time that he himself was destroyed. Perhaps then his sacrifice would be considered penance in the eyes of God and he would not be damned to Hell. At least, not a hell like the one he had endured for the past several days.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Tammy returned a little after eight, carrying a couple of paper bags in one hand and the five-gallon gas can in the other. “I stopped at the Frosty Freeze and got us some sausage biscuits and orange juice. It’s not ham and eggs, but I guess it’ll have to do.”
Boyd and Caleb left their work and dived into the food hungrily. They were halfway through the breakfast when Caleb noticed that the woman was eating slowly, her thoughts apparently somewhere else. “Is there something wrong, Tammy?” he asked, wiping grease from his whiskers with the back of his hand.
Tammy looked at both men, then nodded. “I overheard some talk while I was in town,” she told them. “Sarah Milford over at the elementary school didn’t show up to work yesterday morning. When Jay Mathers finally went over to check on her late yesterday afternoon, she found her husband, Frank, dead. His head had been bashed completely in. But he found no sign of Sarah. There were a few drops of blood on the carpet, but she was nowhere to be found.”
“Uh-oh,” said Boyd. “Sounds like some of Grandpappy’s doings. Sarah is a second cousin of Joan’s.”
Tammy took a sip of her orange juice. “I’m afraid that isn’t all. Bill and Karen Hughs and their daughter, Penny… all three have turned up missing, too. A neighbor called the police this morning and reported hearing noises at the Hughs house last night. When they checked it out, they found the house empty. But they did find bloodstains on the Hughses’ living room couch.”
“Confound it all!” said Caleb, shaking his head. “Do you think ol’ Craven pulled that one off, too?”
“No,” replied Tammy. “I don’t believe so. The Hughses are members of our congregation. Little Penny is even in the Sunday school class I teach. I have a bad feeling that it was Wendell who took them. Obviously, he figured it would be easier to start recruiting members of his old congregation, instead of searching for new ones. These people trust him. They wouldn’t hesitate to invite him into their homes, especially after he’s been missing for several days.”
Caleb looked disgusted. “Taking folks against their will is bad enough,” he said. “But taking an innocent young’un?”
“I know how you feel,” said Boyd. His eyes grew hard. “Grandpappy’s got my own children locked up there in that old house of his. And there’s no telling what he has in store for them.”
“That’s why we need to get up there and put a stop to it, before it begins to snowball,” Tammy told them. “You see what’s happened in only two nights. By next week, there could be four or five families missing. With each new follower Grandpappy and Wendell bring into their fold, the number will begin to multiply… and multiply fast. Half the population of Green Hollow could be taken within a month’s time.”
“That’s scary,” said Boyd.
“Damn right,” agreed Caleb. He crumpled the waxed paper that had wrapped his biscuit and tossed it away. “Well, I’m finished. And I’m ready to get back to work.”
“How far have you gotten?” Tammy asked them.
“Well, Boyd’s working on bolts for the crossbow, while I’m cutting and measuring the bullets for the guns,” the mountain man told her. “It’s proving to be a harder row to hoe than I thought it would. The measurements have to be precise, down to the last centimeter, or the bullets will plug the barrel and the whole gun will explode in your face. Of course, a little axle grease on ’em will help out, but you still have to be right on the money.”
“Sounds tedious,” said Tammy. “Will you have them finished by noon?”
“One or one-thirty, more’n likely,” he told her. He walked over and opened a tackle box. It held all manner of gunsmithing tools: screwdrivers, pin punches, files, and an array of calipers and micrometer gauges. “The faster I work, though, the more mistakes I could end up making.”
“Just take your time, then,” Tammy told him. “Boyd, what about the bolts for the crossbow?”
“I’m only going to make an even dozen,” he said. “But they’re just like the bullets. If I don’t make them aerodynamically correct, they won’t fly true. It’ll be like tossing sticks for a dog to fetch.”
Tammy moaned. “This is proving to be more tune-consuming than I thought.”
Caleb saw the look of frustration on the woman’s face. “Well, little lady, we can do this half-assed and get ourselves killed in the process. Or we can put a little extra care into our work and make sure that our trip up Craven’s Mountain doesn’t turn out to be in vain. Which one sounds better to you?”
“I’m sorry. You’re right, of course. I guess I’m just anxious to get this over and done with. And to tell the truth, I’m a little scared, too.”
“No more than we are, Tammy,” Boyd assured her, as he put on a pair of safety goggles.
“Amen to that!” declared Caleb. He produced his pocket watch and checked the time. It was a quarter to nine. He turned toward the workbench and continued his work on the precisely-gauged pieces of dowel rod that he had cut into revolver and rifle bullets. At the same time, Boyd turned on the lathe and began to fashion foot-long pieces of hickory wood into slender bolts for the crossbow.
At a loss for something to do, Tame decided to work on the Molotov cocktails. She walked to the trailer and fetched the garbage bag full of empty whiskey bottles. When she returned to the workshop, she sat down in the center of the floor and, using a funnel, carefully began to fill the bottles with gasoline from the five-gallon can. After that, she would cut fuses from oily shop rags and feed the strips
meticulously down the necks of the bottles. She just hoped they would work as well as Caleb said they would and not blow up in their hands when they lit them.
It was after one in the afternoon when they finally finished their work.
Boyd had finished the short arrows for the crossbow an hour before and had started cutting crosses of pine using the band saw. He had also taken one of his old tool belts and fashioned it into a quiver to carry the bolts. Caleb had made six bullets for each of the guns they had selected: the two rifles, the Colt Navy, the .44 Dragoon, and his own flintlock pistol. He lubricated the bullets with grease, then went to loading the guns, using black powder, cloth patches, and percussion caps. He seated the bullets firmly into the chambers and packed them in snugly with brass-tipped loading rods.
Tammy had constructed a dozen firebombs from the whiskey bottles, gasoline, and cut rags. She placed them in a cardboard carton and set them beside the open doorway of the workshop. “So, are we about ready?” she asked.
“I’ve got all the guns loaded for bear,” said Caleb. “Or vampires. Just take your pick.”
“I think I’d rather tangle with a grizzly, myself,” Boyd said. He handed Caleb and Tammy a cross, keeping one for himself. A hole had been drilled in the very top and a rawhide thong was looped through it. Boyd hung it around his neck, letting it dangle across his chest. Tammy and Caleb followed his example.
“You know, I’m gonna feel kinda funny waving this thing around,” Caleb said.
“You won’t, when you see how they react to it,” Tammy told him. She recalled the expression of loathing and horror on Wendell’s face at the sight of the crucifixion picture.
They began choosing their weapons. Caleb chose his usual firearms: the Hawken rifle and the single-shot flintlock pistol, as well as a .44 Remington revolver loaded with regular lead round-balls. Boyd took the Mississippi rifle and the big Colt Dragoon. Tammy picked the .36 Navy revolver and the crossbow, along with the belt quiver of wooden bolts.
