by Hank Early
I fell back onto my gun. Later, I’d wonder if that little piece of luck had been the thing that saved my life. Sometimes it seemed as if survival, like evil, was random and unthinking, that there was little a man could do to make his life go right, to find happiness, that sometimes he just had to hope he fell in the right spot.
And even luck guaranteed nothing.
My first shot missed.
Before I could get my next shot aimed and fired, Old Nathaniel, who was at least six feet from the edge of the cornfield, covered the entire distance, vanishing into the waves of tassels, husks, and corn as if he’d never been there at all.
My second shot seemed on target as I got it off, but the sounds of the cornstalks, snapping, bending, and rustling, told me I’d missed.
Briefly, I considered following him, but I felt like I was damned lucky to still be alive after our encounter outside the cornfield, and going in after him would be suicide.
40
My hip was worse than I’d originally thought. Not only would it not stop bleeding, it also hurt like hell. I rummaged through the drawers in the bedroom of the old house and found a dirty pair of sweatpants, which I tied as tightly as I could around my hip. The blood soaked through the sweatpants within minutes.
I went through several kitchen drawers until I found some duct tape. I untied the sweatpants, dropped my jeans and my bloodstained boxers and wiped at the wound with paper towels. I stuck a thick wad of paper towels on my hip and pressed my bare ass hard against the refrigerator to keep it in place while I worked some of the duct tape free with my hands. Once I had the tape ready, I stood up straight and pulled the wad of paper towels out of the cut. As soon as I did, I placed the duct tape directly on the wound, pressing it flat. I followed the first piece with several others, and pulled my jeans back up, sans underwear. I ran some water over the underwear, and used them to wipe the blood off the refrigerator and floor.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a phone in the house to call the sheriff, and I didn’t want to use mine. Using mine meant he’d know I’d been here, and at this point, that was just unacceptable. Hell, I’d be the number-one suspect in the kid’s murder. And explaining why I was here would only force me to talk about how I’d held Frank Bentley at gunpoint. While I really wanted to believe that Patterson was one of the good guys, I also understood that being a good guy meant arresting men like me who went around the law out of desperation.
I walked back outside and searched Jason’s pockets until I found his phone. Just in case, I picked it up with a kitchen towel to keep my prints off it. I carried it back inside and laid it on the kitchen counter. My hip felt like it was melting from the inside out. I could really use some whiskey, but it would have to wait.
I found a pencil on the kitchen counter and pressed the phone’s home button with the eraser end. Passcode required. Shit.
Using the pencil, I selected “emergency” and the phone connected me to 911.
I reported the crime anonymously, being sure to mention the burlap sack and the fact that the killer had emerged from the cornfield. When the operator asked for an address, I didn’t know what to tell her.
“Can you track the phone?”
“You’ll have to stay on the line.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll do that.”
I laid the phone on the kitchen counter and started to limp out, when something caught my eye. It was hanging on the refrigerator, an invitation.
Neal, You’re invited to a cast party, it read. 10/4 at Tag’s place. Party starts at 9 and runs until the sun comes up …
There was an address and a gate code. I pulled out my phone and took a photo before continuing to limp to Susan’s car. Once inside, I tossed the bloody underwear in the backseat, and eased down onto the injured hip. A new, sick kind of pain broke out, one that radiated up from the hip, through my stomach, and into my neck.
I gritted my teeth until it eased a little and then cranked the car and started back down the primitive road.
* * *
By the time I reached Riley, I was starting to feel like I might not make it. I’d blacked out once already, only to be jolted awake when an oncoming vehicle blasted its horn at me as the Honda drifted into the wrong lane. I righted it and focused on staying awake, which, I reasoned, had become the same thing as staying alive.
Focus on living, Earl. Not the pain. Or, hell, focus on the pain if it helps you stay alive. Awake. Alive. Both.
A tree was suddenly in my path. I swerved just in time to avoid it, but the sudden turn caused me to run off the road. The car died. I looked around. I wasn’t far from the Holy Flame now.
If I could get there, I could give in to the pain, just go ahead and pass out. The church would almost certainly have a first aid kit, and Susan could put a real bandage on it, give me something to ease the pain …
I laid my head against the steering wheel.
When I lifted it again, it was only because of the blood. It was pooling in my seat, soaking through my jeans, warm against my ass and crotch.
I cranked the Accord again and pulled back out onto the road like a drunk, weaving and running up against the curb. Everything felt dark, darker than usual, and I turned on my brights. An oncoming car flashed brights back at me, angrily. I saw the sign ahead.
The Church of the Holy Flame.
I never imagined it being a place of salvation, but that was exactly what it was for me tonight.
I made the turn and then pointed the Honda at the awning near the front entrance. The car came to a stop when it hit the brick wall of the church. I opened the door to get out, but instead of stepping to the ground, I stumbled and fell, landing hard in the parking lot. I struggled to my feet, somehow understanding even in the deep fog of pain that my life might depend on getting to the door. That and somebody waking up soon enough to help me.
I made it to the awning, stumbled, and fell right at the double glass doors. I lay there for a moment before looking up, as if hoping I could get someone to help me just by using my eyes.
There was no one there. Not at first.
Then, gradually, I saw a shape behind the glass. One of the doors moved slightly, trembling, as it opened wider. A man stepped out, wearing my father’s old boots.
At first, I couldn’t get beyond the boots. They were Daddy’s all right. He’d always had a thing for flashy boots. The rest of him was hard and grim and unrelentingly stoic, but he favored boots with intricate stitchwork done over bright brown, almost orange, leather. His most treasured pair had been handmade by one of his favorite members, a woman named Myrtle, who was so smitten with him, it was hard to imagine they hadn’t carried on an affair at one time or another during their long relationship. These were the boots Myrtle had made. She’d stitched three snakes on each one, their forked tongues stretching and growing into flames that ran around to the front of the boots and licked the area where Daddy’s toes would have been.
Slowly, I lifted my eyes from the boots up to his face.
“Look at you, coming home when you need the Lord,” he said. “That’s about right, though. I gave you all the chances in the world, and what did you do with it? Ran after some mulatto bitch and killed your own flesh and blood. Made sure to get the only other kin you had left locked away over in Hays. Here you go, Earl. Look around. This is what you earned in this life. You gonna bleed out right here on the damned steps of the house I built for you.”
I shook my head at him. “No, not yet. I’ve still got to meet the black water. That snake you handed me gave me one more thing I never wanted.”
“You never wanted anything but pussy anyway,” this foul-mouthed ghost version of my father said. “What kind of man lives some fifty-odd years and leaves a legacy like that?”
“A better man than you,” I said, but I was losing consciousness, and I wasn’t sure how much I said or didn’t say out loud. In fact, I wasn’t sure of very much at all. Was there really someone standing over me? Was I even still alive?
She was standing over me now. Daddy was gone. Just Mary and me, and her mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear her or read her lips. My ears felt like they’d been filled with a long, slow crashing sound, or maybe it was the sound of water sloshing back and forth, in and out of my ear canals.
Her face disappeared, eclipsed by the night sky, filled with countless stars, none of which could come close to alleviating the dark pain that had entered me because Daddy was right: I had needed saving all along. Just not by his God.
41
Tuesday passed in a blur. My memory of it was like a deck of scattered cards, each one holding a poorly sketched image of a moment that might or might not have really occurred.
Mary’s face came and went, the look of concern predominant, but sometimes she smiled, and once she whispered to me, telling me secrets that made me clench my fists and try so hard to hold onto her words that when I finally came to my senses, I had cut my palms with my fingernails. But all the trying in the world didn’t help. I couldn’t remember what she’d said.
I remembered Deja. Briefly she stood over me and told me that she had seen her brother’s ghost once, that he was headless and carried his skull in his arms when he came to her, and that the skull had spoken with her brother’s voice while his body stood very still and did not move at all. I asked her what the skull said, but she only shook her head at me, looking at me with the saddest eyes.
I also remembered Virginia. She kept grabbing my arm and shaking me awake every time I would go to sleep. I was angry at her and told her so, but she kept doing it anyway. Finally, I sat up, screaming as the pain in my hip hit me. “What?” I said.
“You forgot the mirrors,” she said.
Finally, there was Daddy. He was back, laughing at me from the corner of the sanctuary where they’d laid me. Once he stood behind the lectern and preached a profanity-filled sermon that would have made Satan himself walk out in anger.
The sermon was directed solely at me. Fortunately, I was unable to remember any of the exact lines, though the tone and timbre of the sermon would likely stay with me forever, filed away right next to the time he had kicked me in the face after I’d just awakened after a five-day coma. What little conscious thought I could muster during this time was unfortunately devoted to the sense that I was already dead, and Daddy was my welcoming committee in hell.
But I wasn’t dead. And sometime Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, I sat up, fully conscious for the first time in twenty-four hours. My very first thought was of Mary. My second, that I’d wasted too much time. I struggled to my feet, wincing at the pain in my hip. I nearly fell right back down but managed to brace myself on a chair. I looked around in the darkened space, blinking my eyes hard, trying to make them adjust.
I wasn’t in the sanctuary like I’d thought. Instead, I was in a children’s room. Sunday school class for the little ones. I heard snoring. Rufus was asleep in the corner, covers pulled up to his chin. There was movement behind me. “Mr. Earl?”
It was Virginia.
“Hey,” I said. “How long have I been asleep?”
“A long time.” She glanced over at Susan, who slept on the floor by Briscoe. “She took care of you. Stopped the bleeding. Mr. Rufus wouldn’t let her take you to the hospital. He said, ‘If he ain’t dying, he don’t go.’”
I smiled. Good old Rufus. Thank God for him. He understood that going to the hospital would alert Patterson to my whereabouts, which would mean I might be arrested.
“I’m going to go now,” I whispered. “Take care of your brother and Ms. Susan.”
“What about Rufus?”
“Him too.”
“Mr. Earl?”
“Yeah?”
“The full moon is coming.”
“Why would you say that?”
Virginia shrugged. “It was just something that seemed important. The only time I ever saw him was during the full moon.”
I didn’t have to ask who she had seen any more than she’d had to ask me what I meant to do when I left there.
It was only when I was trying to find Susan’s keys that she woke up. “Earl?”
“Shh,” I said. “Go back to sleep. I just need the car one more time.”
“I will not. You aren’t leaving in your condition.”
“Susan,” I said, hoping against hope she didn’t become indignant and wake up Rufus. “Please. Just let me borrow the car one more time.”
“Do you even know how much blood you lost?”
“A lot,” I said.
“A lot? Ha! That’s like saying the Pacific Ocean has ‘a lot’ of water in it.” She was standing up now, both hands on my arm. “I’ll hold on if I have to.”
“Let him go,” Rufus said.
“I won’t do it.”
“Susan,” I said, “Mary’s life might depend on it.”
She let go of my arm then and put her hands over her face.
“Hey,” I said, putting an arm over her shoulder, “what’s wrong?”
She shook her head, still not removing her hands. “I had a dream.”
“A dream?”
She nodded. “You…”
“Just let him go,” Rufus said.
“… You died.”
“Earl don’t put stock in dreams, do you, Earl?” Rufus said, his voice tinged with the barest hint of sarcasm.
“No,” I lied. “I don’t believe in that. And you shouldn’t either. I’ve got to go. You took good care of me, but I’m fine now. I’ve got to get to the cornfield. Try to find her before Thursday night.”
“You do know that it’s Wednesday morning now, don’t you?” Rufus said.
“I guessed it was something like that.”
“Where are you going to go?” Rufus asked. “What’s the plan? And what the hell happened anyway?”
“Long story. But I’ll put it like this. Old Nathaniel did this to me. And he killed someone else, so I was lucky. I’m heading back to the cornfield. I feel like something is going to happen on Thursday night. That’s tomorrow. Today, I need to head back out to the cornfield, and tonight I’m going to a party.”
“A party?” Rufus and Susan said at the same time.
“Yeah. At Taggart Monroe’s house.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Rufus said. “Sounds like they’ve already got you pegged. You go poking around that party, you’re liable to get yourself killed.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“Jesus Christ,” Susan said. “You’re going to die.”
How could I reply? That I didn’t even care about that anymore? Somehow, I’d become obsessed with one thing only: finding Mary. Now that the kids were safe, there wasn’t anything else to keep me from achieving the goal. Nothing, except fear. And I wouldn’t even think of letting that stop me. I was close. So close.
“Please,” Susan said. “At least consider resting for a few more hours.”
“I can’t. I’ll rest when I’ve found her. Not until then.”
I turned back to the others. Briscoe still slept soundly, wrapped up in three thick blankets on the floor.
“Give them hell at the rally, Rufus.”
He nodded. “You do the same at the party, but do it on the sly. Getting yourself killed isn’t going to bring Mary back.”
I thought of the dream, of falling into the black water below the train trestle. “It might.”
I turned to Virginia. “Take care of your brother.”
Her solemn eyes just watched me. Finally, she nodded very slowly. “Of course I will.”
With that, I turned and walked out of the room and my family’s church. I couldn’t help but sense I woul
dn’t ever be coming back.
42
The sun was already high in the sky as I left the church parking lot. My mind was jumping from one image to the next, trying to make sense of the dreams and visions I’d experienced the day before.
The one thing I kept coming back to was Virginia. “You forgot about the mirrors.”
She was right. I had no idea what she was talking about. I searched my mind until it hurt, but I couldn’t remember any mirrors. Except that wasn’t quite true was it? I had a vague recollection of hearing about mirrors once, but it was like seeing a face and not remembering a person’s name. I knew that I should remember more, but the memory still wasn’t there.
I stopped thinking about it, focusing instead on the drive ahead of me. I was going to go to the cornfield and see if I could find this place Jason had talked about—Skull Keep—where they were keeping her. This was a method I’d used many times in the past. It was time for intuition instead of logic, and intuition always failed if you tried to force it. But if I focused on something else, it might come to me naturally.
So, I tried to imagine Skull Keep. The old newspaper article had said it was a bunker, which didn’t make a lot of sense. Why would there be a bunker out in the middle of rural Georgia? I supposed there might be reasonable explanations, but none of them occurred to me. Was it out in the middle of the cornfield somewhere? And if so, wouldn’t it be nice to see the cornfield from above, an aerial view …
Shit. It came to me then. Mirrors. I still didn’t know where I’d heard about them the first time, but it hardly mattered. When we’d visited Billy Thrash in prison, he had been telling me a story just before Ronnie hit him. A story about the previous owner of the cornfield and what he’d done to see the cornfield from above.
He’d put something up on Summer Mountain. It had to be a mirror.
The realization made me nearly giddy with newfound energy. I jerked the wheel, made a U-turn, and floored it. I’d have to go by the house first, but after that, I’d be able to test my theory.
