Blood Kin

by Ronald Kelly

  Caleb placed a hand on the carpenter’s shoulder. “You’ve got it. And what about ol’ Grandpappy?”

  “We destroy the son-of-a-bitch and burn his remains,” he said. “If we can do that, maybe we have a chance of ending this for good.”

  “Amen to that!” agreed Caleb. Then, together, they made their way across the weedy yard to the porch of the old Craven house.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Tammy grew restless. She hopped down off the car and peered at her wristwatch in the gloom of dusk. She still had five minutes to go before she left the grove.

  She looked toward the barn. The shadows had darkened since Boyd and Caleb had left. The structure could hardly be seen from where she was. She considered jumping in the Lincoln and taking it to the road ahead of time, but she knew she must allow them plenty of time to make it into the house. If she acted too soon, the sound of the car’s engine might alert those inside and spell disaster for the two men. And she certainly didn’t want to do that.

  Idly, she began to pace back and forth between the red truck and the Lincoln, trying to work off her anxiety. It was then that she noticed a stifling scent hovering in the air—the stench of decay.

  She walked to the rear of the Lincoln. The smell was worse there. Tammy bent down and put her nose next to the trunk. “Shoo!” she said, almost gagging. “That’s got to be where it’s coming from.”

  Tammy considered opening the trunk but knew she would be unable to see what was inside. She went back to the Lincoln and opened the door. The dome light illuminated the interior of the car. After rummaging through the glove compartment, she found a black aluminum flashlight, the kind preferred by law officers. She snapped on the light, and leaving the car, headed back around the rear fender to the trunk.

  She stood there for a moment, wondering if she really wanted to open the trunk after all. Given the awful stench that drifted from the compartment, did she really want to see what had been stashed inside?

  “Why not?” she asked. She slipped the key in the lock and turned it. The latch disengaged and the trunk swung open automatically.

  Tammy directed the beam of the flashlight into the trunk, then stumbled away, covering her nose and mouth. “Oh, my God!” she muttered.

  It was Stan Watts. The police chief stared up at her with only half a face. It looked as if the other half had been blown away by some horrible explosion. She reached up and began to close the trunk lid. Before she did, however, she saw another wound, this one in the center of the chief’s bloated belly. A second later, the trunk was shut again and Tammy’s curiosity had been gruesomely satisfied.

  She returned to the front of the Lincoln, the stench of decomposition hanging heavily in her nostrils. She gagged twice and was sure that she would puke. But after a couple of breaths of cool mountain air, she felt her nausea mercifully pass. She stood there steadying herself next to the car until she regained her bearings.

  “That’s what you get for being so nosy,” she told herself.

  She looked at her watch again. Two more minutes…

  Tammy climbed behind the wheel and quietly shut the door of the Lincoln. Even with the window down, she could smell the stench of the rotting man in the car, seeping past the cushions of the backseat. She tried to forget that he was there and prepare herself for the drive through the woods.

  A couple of minutes later, she put the key in the ignition and started the car. The engine idled quietly. “Well, here goes,” she said. Then she put the car in gear and slowly made her way through the maple grove.

  Once she reached the heavy undergrowth of kudzu, the car moved sluggishly. The vegetation clung to the undercarriage and the tires, and at first, she was afraid she’d be stuck there, unable to proceed. But an extra tap of the gas pedal remedied that problem. Soon she was moving forward again, heading in the direction of the old barn.

  They reached the front porch and made their way across it as quietly as possible. Boyd had reloaded the crossbow, while Caleb still held the shotgun he had taken from Watts’s car. They reached the door and listened. They heard nothing from inside. All was silent.

  “Hand me one of those cocktails,” whispered Boyd. “I may need it.”

  Caleb nodded silently. He carefully eased the bag from his shoulder and handed one of the whiskey bottles to Boyd. The carpenter stuck it in the side pocket of his denim jacket.

  The two looked at each other, exchanged a nod of understanding, and then opened the door. It was unlocked. The door swung inward, revealing only darkness.

  They stepped into the foyer and produced their flashlights. Boyd pointed to the staircase and Caleb nodded. Boyd snapped on his light and mounted the stairs cautiously, leaving the mountain man on the floor below.

  He reached the head of the stairs, then started along the upstairs hallway. Boyd carried the flashlight in one hand and the crossbow balanced in the other. His finger was light on the trigger, ready to send a wooden bolt at anything that moved from out of the shadows.

  Boyd reached the last door at the end of the corridor, the one that led into the bedroom where Paul and Bessie had first been imprisoned. He stepped inside and swept the beam of the flashlight around. The window was open and unrepaired, and the iron bed was gone. It had been moved to another room. He cussed beneath his breath. That would only cost him more time—time that he had precious little of.

  He left the room and started back down the hallway, checking one room after another. A moment later, he found the one he was looking for. He opened the door and shined his light inside. He saw the bed, but that was all.

  Boyd stepped inside. “Paul?” he whispered. “Bessie? Where are you?”

  When they failed to answer, he swept the beam around the room. He found them nowhere. There was a closet in a corner. He walked to it, thinking maybe they had heard his approach and, frightened, had hidden there. When he opened the door, he found the closet empty.

  Boyd felt a cold dread in the pit of his stomach. Paul and Bessie were gone.

  He turned around. Abruptly, the beam of the flashlight revealed a form dressed in slacks and a navy windbreaker. He recognized the clothing. Boyd lifted the light and revealed a pale face wreathed with dark brown hair.

  “What have you done with them?” demanded Joan. “What have you done with my children?”

  Boyd’s heart raced. “I didn’t do anything with them,” he said. “They were gone when I got here.”

  “Liar!” snapped Joan. She clenched her fists and took a step toward him.

  Boyd took a step away from her, then remembered the cross. He grabbed it and held it toward her. “Stay back!” he ordered.

  Joan’s face filled with horror and she raised her arm, shielding herself from the sight of the homemade crucifix. “Stop it, Boyd!” she cried. “Don’t!”

  Boyd edged his way around the woman, holding the cross in front of him. Soon he had reached the door, but rather than attempt escape, he reached over, and grabbing the brass knob, pulled the door closed.

  “What are you doing?” asked Joan in surprise. “Don’t you know that I’ll kill you?”

  Boyd felt an aching in his soul. “No, you won’t,” he said. “You could have killed me before, when I came for Paul and Bessie the last time, but you didn’t. You roughed me up a little, but you didn’t kill me.”

  “What are you trying to say?” she asked. She sounded less angry than before, more confused than anything else.

  Joan’s hand still shielded her from the cross, but Boyd could see her face past it. He found none of the contempt that had been there before. Instead, there was an expression of intense remorse and sorrow. “You know what I mean,” he said, feeling a sadness of his own. “You still love me, Joan. Just like I still love you.”

  A sob emerged from Joan’s throat and she lowered her hand. Boyd lowered the cross at the same time. Joan’s eyes were wide and full of torment. He expected to see tears there, but there were none. He suddenly realized that she was no longer capable
of crying.

  “Oh, Boyd!” she moaned. “Why did he make me into this? Why did he have to take away my life the way he did?”

  “He’s evil, that’s why,” said Boyd, his voice cracking. As he looked at her, Boyd stared past the pallor of her skin and the unholy light of her eyes. In his imagination, he saw the old Joan again, the one he’d once hoped to spend the rest of his life with. “Oh, sweetheart,” he muttered, feeling his own tears emerge. “I love you so much.”

  Joan’s face grew into a mask of grief and heartbreak. “I know, Boyd. I love you, too. I never stopped, no matter what I said to you before.”

  Boyd nodded, unable to speak around the lump in his throat. He had known that all along. He had waited to hear it from her lips, but now that he had, it ripped him apart inside. For he knew that all hope of reconciliation was lost now. There was no chance of their being together again, and they were both painfully aware of that fact.

  “Boyd,” she said softly. “If you love me, then you know what you have to do.”

  He remembered what Tammy had told him. “No,” he told her. “I can’t.”

  “You must,” she urged. “You know it’s best that way. For you and the children. And for me. Especially for me.”

  He looked at her and saw the expression of misery in her lovely eyes. She was damned. He knew it, and so did she. There was no bringing her back, no returning her to the state of normalcy she had enjoyed before. Even if she abstained from the horrible yearnings of her affliction—and he wasn’t at all sure that it was possible—she would still be one of the living dead. A servant of the devil in the form of a wife and mother.

  “Will you do it, Boyd?” she asked again.

  Boyd stared at her for a long moment. He let the crossbow dangle at his side and reached for the Colt Dragoon. In his mind, he counted the number of shots he had fired at Bill Hughs. He had loaded five wooden bullets, leaving one empty chamber behind the revolver’s hammer. That meant he had one shot left.

  He withdrew the gun from his belt and aimed it at Tammy. His hand trembled, causing the barrel to waver.

  “Do it.” Joan’s eyes pleaded. “For me.”

  Tears welled in Boyd’s eyes, blurring his vision. He blinked them away and saw the white V of Joan’s turtleneck above her windbreaker. He steadied his hand and centered the Colt’s sights on the spot directly between her breasts.

  He cocked back the hammer “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  Joan smiled gently. “Don’t be. Tell the children that I love them.”

  “I will,” he promised.

  They stood there silently for a long moment, knowing that there was nothing else to be said. He stared into Joan’s eyes and saw love there. He returned the gesture, mustering as much emotion as he could, letting her know that he felt the same for her.

  Then he took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.

  Caleb was standing in the doorway of the family room when the sound of a gunshot rang from the floor overhead.

  He felt his heart leap in his chest and almost turned and bounded up the stairs. But he didn’t. He caught himself before he could take a single step. He knew that both of them had a job to do. Boyd was doing his upstairs, which left Caleb to take care of business on the ground floor. He turned back to the family room, holding both the flashlight and the shotgun ahead of him.

  The room was dusty and furnished with antiques. He swept the light along the walls of the huge chamber, looking for movement and listening for the least noise. When he finally discovered that no one was there, he began to turn, intending to continue down the outer hallway. But before he could, the beam of the flashlight revealed something in the far corner. Curious, he returned the light to the object.

  “What the hell—?” he asked, walking closer. At first, he couldn’t make out what it was. Then, abruptly, he recognized the contraption.

  It was a red wooden box with a handle jutting from its top. It also had two metal knobs, one on either side of the handle. Connected to those knobs—or terminals—were plastic-coated wires, their ends shaved clean down to the copper core. A green wire was secured to the left terminal, while a yellow one was wound to the terminal at the right.

  It was a detonation box.

  Caleb’s heart began to pound as he lifted the flashlight and traced the trail of the green-and-yellow wire up the wall and into the darkness above. There was no ceiling to speak of, only naked rafters. He shined the light into the shadows of the recesses in between.

  The wire led to two sticks of dynamite secured there by gray duct tape. It left the explosives and traveled on a few feet further. Caleb spotted another pair of sticks, followed by yet another.

  “The whole frigging place is wired and ready to blow,” he said to himself.

  “That’s right,” someone said from behind him. “Now, you just step away from that box.”

  Caleb froze. He had never heard the man’s voice before in his life, but he knew who it was. “Dudley Craven?” he asked.

  “Yep,” he replied. The metallic click of a hammer being cocked rang throughout the large room. “You got no cause to be here, Vanleer.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Caleb. “We came for Grandpappy Craven and those he’s cursed.” The mountain man paused for a second. “What’re you planning to do with me, Dud? Are you gonna kill me like you did Chief Watts?”

  Caleb didn’t give the farmer time to answer. He knew he had to act now, while his statement had thrown the man off guard. Caleb whirled and brought the shotgun in line, hoping that he got Dud before Dud got him.

  As it turned out, both shotguns went off at the same instant. Their thunderous reports merged, rolling through the old house as if one. Then both men felt the impact of the shots. A converging swarm of buckshot hit them both at the same time, knocking them off their feet and splattering the walls of the family room with blood.

  Paul Andrews heard the distant crack of a gunshot. He turned and looked back up the road. Two hundred yards away, he saw the black hull of the old house against the darkening sky.

  “What was that?” asked Bessie.

  The boy waited a moment before answering. Another shot came, this one sounding much deeper, like the blast of a cannon. “Come on,” he said to his sister.

  “But Dudley told us not to go back,” whined the girl, pulling on Paul’s hand.

  Paul had been waiting for the roar of the dynamite, but he hadn’t expected the gunshots. He knew that Dud hadn’t fired them, at least, not at Grandpappy or the others; it would be futile to attempt to kill them that way. That meant only one thing. Someone else was there.

  “I think it’s Daddy,” he told Bessie. “I think he came back for us.”

  The seven-year-old’s eyes brightened at the mention of her father. “Then let’s go!”

  Together, they ran back up the mountain road, aware of the danger that might await them there, but neither one of them caring.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Caleb Vanleer landed hard on his back, ten feet from where he had stood before. He groaned and with some difficulty, craned his neck and looked down at his stomach. A huge hole had been blown through the center of his abdomen by the blast of Dud’s shotgun. Blood bubbled from the ugly wound and flowed like a river across the crotch and legs of his buckskin pants. Strangely enough, he felt nothing. He knew it was the shock of being shot. He had been shot before, back in Nam, and it always took a few minutes for the numbness of the impact to fade and the pain of the injury to set in.

  He looked toward the doorway of the family room. Dud Craven sat against the far wall of the hallway. The pits of stray pellets pocked the wallpaper over his head, as well as a brilliant spray of fresh blood. An ugly hole had been blown through the farmer’s left shoulder. Dud glared at Caleb, then at his double-barreled shotgun, which lay seven feet from his grasp. Caleb saw the .45 automatic protruding from the side pocket of his overalls about the same time that Dud remembered it.

  The mountain man spotted
a long sofa standing three feet away, and turning on his side, attempted to crawl toward it. As he did, he saw Dud draw the pistol and fire. The bullet struck Caleb in the thigh. It bore through muscle and hit the femur, snapping it completely in half. Caleb bellowed loudly. He pumped the riot gun and fired blindly. The blast hit the wall a good two feet over Dud, raining plaster and bits of wallpaper down upon his head.

  A second later, Caleb was behind the sofa. He looked down at his leg and grimaced. Jagged splinters of bone jutted from the exit hole in the back of his thigh. The wound bled profusely. Soon, he found himself lying in a huge puddle of his own blood. Caleb ripped the cross from around his neck and quickly tied the rawhide thong around his upper thigh. He knotted it tightly but felt no relief at his mediocre attempt at first aid. The ugly crater in the pit of his belly began to come alive, throbbing with pinpricks of hot agony. “Damned sodbuster!” he yelled angrily.

  Dud answered him with another shot from the Colt. The bullet punched the arm of the couch, throwing a cloud of dust into the air.

  Caleb dropped down and peered beneath the old sofa. Between its skinny wooden legs he could see Dud, still sitting with his back to the wall. He grinned and pumped the shotgun again. He stuck the barrel underneath the sofa and fired in the man’s direction, sending the blast across the floor of the family room.

  He heard Dud scream and peered beneath the couch again. The load of buckshot had hit the farmer in the right leg, shattering his kneecap. Caleb watched as he crawled around the corner of the doorway, seeking cover.

  “Gotcha, didn’t I?” yelled Caleb, half laughing, half screaming in pain. He was about to draw his face from underneath the sofa when he saw the muzzle of Dud’s pistol snake around the baseboard of the doorway.

  The gun went off. The .45 slug hit the bottom edge of the sofa, ripping through wood and springs. Caleb felt something sharp slice across his face and pierce his right eye. With a shriek, he rolled backward and fumbled at the source of his agony. His fingertips touched a jagged sliver of wood that protruded from the side of his eyeball.