Debbie took a step back, unsure of what the boy meant or what he really was. Rather than press his advantage and come after her, the boy turned and fled into the woods, sobbing and mumbling about betrayal, about his love being treated as a shabby thing. Debbie found her courage and chased him, still with the intent of saving whatever he was from harming himself. She could barely make out his figure darting amongst the trees, wiping tears from his eyes with his sleeves, and yet still she couldn’t gain any ground. In an open expanse of the forest, where the trees thinned over flat ground, she lost him entirely.
Debbie turned slowly in a circle to search the area for him, but he was gone, vanished without a trace. She could feel Maggie coming closer though, and so Debbie knelt in the snow, feeling worn out emotionally and physically by the chase. Maggie came upon her in the vulnerable state and gently rested her hand on Debbie’s quaking shoulder—it was one of the few tender gestures that had ever passed between them.
“Not all spirits in this forest are as harmless as the orphans,” Maggie said, “but don’t be afraid of him. He knows what you are and knows he can’t hurt you.”
“Who is he?” Debbie asked.
“A troubled boy. Nothing more.”
Maggie was being kind for the moment and their relationship had grown into something warmer over the past few weeks. Debbie had a thousand questions stirring within her, but she knew her questions only made Maggie angry. Her vague, evasive answers would have to do if peace was to be maintained.
“Can you stay with me tonight?” Debbie asked. “Walk with me some?”
Maggie smiled down to her, helped her to her feet, and nodded her agreement. They walked along the creek bed in silence the rest of the night, returning to the stone cabin before morning to crawl into the cellar crypt together, to sleep mere inches apart.
Part 4: Repentance and Revenge of the Father
Spring 1956 – Henry
1.
Henry Corker stood in his backyard in the earliest days of spring, flask in hand, staring at the slowly crumbling remains of a dog house. The croakuses were pushing through the still frosted earth all around him as the back lawn threatened to turn to mud at the tree line. He lifted the metal flask to his mouth and let the rye whiskey inside burn its way down his already raw throat. He missed his son, he missed his daughter, and he even missed the old Border Collie. It was Warren’s dog, and had made it to a ripe old age of twelve before finally needing to be put down to save on suffering. Henry normally would have shot the dog himself to spare his son the pain of it, but even he couldn’t bring himself to put a gun to that old dog. They’d taken it into town to the vet who did the same job with drugs while Warren and Henry held the old black and white collie, listening to its strong heart slow and finally stop. That was all four years and a little more ago.
Warren had signed up for another hitch in the army, which put a stop to any talk of him coming back to New England to take a position at one of his father’s businesses before talk could even start. Henry and Warren, despite sharing so many similarities, didn’t understand one another. Henry and Grace, despite having nearly the same personality, hadn’t understood one another. Henry and that old dog, whose name he couldn’t remember, had understood each other. Henry knelt before the doghouse and traced his hand over the name plate above the door. The paint was all peeled from the wood, leaving no sign of the name it formerly held.
He’d gone on through winter believing, like everyone believed, that Grace was a runaway. They’d held out hope she would show up in New Haven at her aunt’s at some point after disappearing, but as January and February passed without word, Henry and his wife had come to terms with the reality that their daughter wasn’t likely to turn up. He’d even started to get used to the idea that she was probably off on her own somewhere, making her own way, strong-willed and hot-headed as ever. Then they found her knife, tracing it back to him by the initials he’d carved into the handle. The sheriff’s son had found it during an early spring thaw. That afternoon the sheriff was on Henry’s doorstep with the bloody knife Henry had given his daughter. The theory changed quickly—Grace was likely another victim of the same drifter who had taken the Poole girl.
Henry knew better. He’d been awake every night after the night his daughter had said she saw an intruder outside her window. He couldn’t help it. After his wife fell into a deep slumber, obvious by her rhythmic breathing, he slipped from bed as quiet as a ghost to stalk the darkened house, looking out the windows in hopes of catching the culprit. He’d seen her in his front yard when he was looking out through the living room window; she’d been looking up at Grace’s window. Something set her off and she screamed in a way that he swore put a fresh shock of white through his already fading black hair. He strove to convince himself it was a matter of sleep deprivation and paranoia playing tricks on him, but when the knife turned up bloody, the house of cards that was reasonable explanation came tumbling down. His daughter was dead and that creature who had screamed on his front yard had killed her—of that he had no doubt.
More than anything possible in that world, he wanted to kill that creature and burn its worthless body on a pile of garbage. If he’d had the faintest clue where to start to hunt the thing, he would already be armed and on its trail. Having grown up in the Maine wilderness, he was an accomplished hunter having killed close to a hundred deer in his life, two black bears, a handful of wild cats, and more than a few Germans and Italians during the war—killing wasn’t going to be a problem if he could find the blasted thing. It may look like a girl, but he knew it wasn’t and wouldn’t let that be an obstacle to laying his hands on its throat.
He slipped the flask back into his pocket, turned on his heels, and walked up toward the house. He would dig out his guns, clean them, and prepare for the work he desperately hoped would be shortly at hand.
2.
Henry slipped from the bed after eleven when his wife had fallen into a deep sleep. He crept into Grace’s old room, which had existed in the same state of partial packing since her disappearance. He retrieved the pump action shotgun loaded with heavy goose shot from the closet he’d hidden it in, pulled the chair from beside her vanity to the window, and sat at the sill, gun across his lap, eyes on the place in the yard he and Grace had both seen the creature.
For a week, he waited until the small hours of the night. As with all the nights before, sleep began to overtake him despite mustering his will again and again to pry his eyes open. On what he suspected would be his last rally for that night, he was shot through with adrenaline at finally seeing someone indeed approaching his yard. A girl, dressed in a mishmash of men and women’s clothing was approaching from the field across the way. He slipped from the chair, creeping through the house as silently as a forest stalker, out the backdoor and around the outside of his hilly property. He’d left his Cadillac parked near the fence, outside the garage, for an exact purpose and made good use of it, taking cover behind the long, finned rear end, which brought him within striking distance of the girl standing in his yard. He waited, watching her bare feet as the only part of her he could see from his concealed position. Finally, after what felt like close to a half hour, the girl walked away from the house, passing briefly by his hiding place.
Henry slipped from behind his car, wracked the pump on his shotgun, and brought the barrel to bear on the back of the girl’s head. “Turn around, slow,” Henry growled. He wanted to see her face, to know for certain it was her, and so she would have to look into his eyes before he ended her.
The girl turned slowly as instructed, hands held up at her sides. Henry’s jaw dropped as though slung with lead weights. It wasn’t the creature; it was his daughter’s friend, Debbie Poole.
3.
He hadn’t managed to get much from Debbie. She was delirious and distraught all on her own and shoving a shotgun in her face hadn’t done her emotional state any good. He was left with three very important pieces of information before she begged him to l
et her go: she didn’t know where Grace was, Pastor Gunderson was more culpable than he let on, and Maggie made use of deer trails near the highway to lure her prey. Henry had let her go, unsure of how she’d survived or what she was planning on doing next, but he couldn’t find the will to make himself care. He had enough information to launch a proper hunt and a name for his daughter’s murderer—Maggie.
Debbie, before she left, asked him one favor in return for all the information she’d given him. He agreed with a slight nod of his head. “Tell Grace I still want to go to New Haven with her,” Debbie asked of him. She was so fragile, so on the edge of hysterics already, he had agreed, which seemed to give her some small degree of comfort.
He returned to bed, but not easily to sleep. When the rush left him, he felt guilty about letting Debbie wander back into the woods alone. He didn’t care for the Pooles, but they were as deserving as anyone of knowing what became of their daughter. He resolved himself to find Debbie again once his own daughter’s soul had been laid to rest; he would return her to her parents and hope that might bring them all a little peace as well. As far as the town was concerned, Grace had always had to play second fiddle to Debbie, and Henry was about done with that nonsense—he would put her first even if that meant Debbie’s reunion with her parents would have to wait a few more days. It had already waited several months anyway.
Debbie’s comment about Pastor Gunderson rang in Henry’s head as he struggled to find sleep: “He nailed me into my room so he could send me to Waterbury and he told lies about your daughter when I disappeared.” If Henry lived a thousand years, he would never forget the way she looked when she said those words.
4.
Henry skipped work the following day, something he’d never done in his entire life. Having lived through the Great Depression, he viewed work as a scare commodity to be treasured and couldn’t imagine a reason beyond the one he had in that moment to pass up the chance to go to a job. He dressed in a suit all the same, ate breakfast as if to prepare for a normal day, made a show of reading the paper although his eyes passed meaninglessly over the words, and left at the appropriate time, but didn’t drive to the office. Instead, he turned early at the center of town and pulled up to the church.
Pastor Gunderson was in his office, reading over some letters of some kind when Henry walked in. He stood, put on his best, if transparently false, smile, and shook Henry’s hand. Henry sat across from him in the tiny room without a desk. Henry didn’t care for the layout or the audacity the pastor showed in calling the room an office—it wasn’t an office if it didn’t have a desk to work on.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Corker?” Pastor Gunderson asked.
“I’ve got something you need to see,” Henry said.
“Could you be more specific?”
“I’m afraid I can’t. Come by my house after sunset and be ready for a wait.” Henry stood, hat in hand, but didn’t move for the door while he waited for Pastor Gunderson’s response. Gunderson was taller than him when standing, but not nearly as substantial as a man and they both knew it.
“I don’t see how that would be…”
Henry reached into his jacket pocket, removing a handful of nails. He slapped them down on the little end table next to Pastor Gunderson’s chair. When he pulled away his hand, he could see he fully had the pastor’s attention. They were nails from his own workshop, but there wasn’t any reason Gunderson needed to know that.
“Nailing a girl into her room so she can’t escape,” Henry said. “Do you feel like having that conversation here or tonight, at my house, away from prying ears?”
“Tonight will be fine,” Pastor Gunderson murmured under his breath, never tearing his eyes away from the nails.
Henry slipped his hat on and gave Gunderson a stern nod. “Keep the nails, Gunderson,” he said. “I think you need them more than me.”
5.
That evening, Gunderson stopped by, ate dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Corker, although he looked about on the edge of crawling out of his skin with discomfort the entire evening. Mrs. Corker was thrilled at having the company and even happier to see that Mr. Corker was the one to invite the pastor. Henry ate in silence, letting his wife and Pastor Gunderson talk as they felt necessary. When the meal was over, and the dishes washed, Henry asked his wife to give them their privacy to discuss a few things. She reluctantly complied, bidding them both a good evening before heading up to bed.
Henry and Pastor Gunderson sat in the living room for several hours smoking cigars, and doing very little talking. The ticking of the clock on the mantle and the occasional rustling of Pastor Gunderson’s uncomfortable fidgeting offered the only sound in the room for several hours. Pastor Gunderson seemed to be on the verge of saying something when Henry finally stood from his chair and directed them both to the front window.
“Who you’re meant to see should be here soon,” Henry said.
Pastor Gunderson watched the darkened lawn, clearly becoming more agitated by the moment. Henry stood in silence beside him, smoking his cigar in slow, deliberate motions, eyes never leaving the spot at the edge of his property. Finally, the ghostly white figure of a girl arrived, and Henry could feel the tangible shift in Gunderson’s posture and breathing.
“Who is that?” Pastor Gunderson asked.
“I think you know,” Henry replied. “She’s been coming by nearly every night now for awhile now, wondering after my daughter.” Henry set aside the last stub of his cigar on the ashtray left on the windowsill for just such an occasion. “She thinks my daughter ran off to New Haven without her. I can’t bring myself to tell her Grace is dead.”
“How is this…?”
“Don’t talk, Gunderson,” Henry cut him off. “This is your chance to do some listening and in a little while, I’ll give you a chance to take some action.” Henry guided Pastor Gunderson away from the window, back to their original positions of sitting in the dark on opposite sides of the living room. “My daughter is dead—I know it, and so do you. She died because you didn’t believe her and I didn’t do enough to protect her. The Poole girl outside isn’t dead, although this whole town stumbled ass-backward into believing she was because it served your purposes for everyone to think so, and don’t think I don’t know where those placating stories came from. You lied about her, lied about my daughter, and did it all in the name of covering your own zealotry.” Henry gave the comment a moment to sink in and to let the rage rising within him subside a little before continuing. He hated Gunderson with a growing fire, but he also needed him for what was to come. “There’s something in the woods feeding on our town and the thing out there isn’t human. It’s been allowed to thrive on our disbelief and the failure of this town’s men to act. You and me, we’re putting a stop to it.”
“Say I do believe you,” Gunderson said, “why would I help you in this mad witch hunt?”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll give the people of Vigil’s Rest a new witch to hunt,” Henry growled. “How do you think it’ll look for you if I bring Debbie Poole home to her parents with a very different story to tell about the night she disappeared? Hell, her very existence contradicts everything you’ve been telling people for months.”
“And if I do help?”
“I’ll give you a two day head start to clear out before I bring the Poole girl back to her parents,” Henry said. “Don’t think of it in those terms though. You dug your own grave long ago. I’m offering you a chance to be a soldier of heaven in fighting something truly evil; I’m offering you a chance to be the shepherd of this town and protect the flock you’ve let wolves feed upon.”
Finally, Gunderson agreed with little more than a nod of his head. They parted company with a firm handshake and a promise to resume their planning later in the week. Henry held him in the house until Debbie was gone before walking him to his car.
Henry watched the pastor pull away and kept watching the woods long after Gunderson was gone. The pastor hadn’t asked him how he knew
any of what he knew—the galvanizing words had sufficed. He slipped an envelope from his pocket and weighted it down on the top of a fencepost with a large enough rock from the garden. Within the envelope was a handful of nails and a newspaper clipping about Pastor Gunderson presiding over Deborah Poole’s funeral. He went back inside to head to bed, confident the envelope would be gone before morning.
6.
The Vampires of Vigil's Sorrow Page 9
