Dead Man's Song pd-2

by Jonathan Maberry

  “You kidding me here?” Mike said.

  “Nope,” said Crow and tossed the apple. He threw it under-handed and without much speed or force, but it bumped Mike in the forehead despite the wild swings of the wooden bokken.

  “Ow!”

  “Sorry. Now, pick it up and throw it back.”

  Looking angry, Mike picked up the apple and threw it. Harder than he intended and much faster, right at Crow’s face. There was a rasping sound, a glitter of sunlight on steel, and the two halves of the apple hit the back wall of the building on either side of where Crow stood. He held the sword in one hand, the scabbard in the other, and he was smiling. With a snap of his wrist he pointed the sword down at the floor and droplets of moisture from the apple flew from the oiled blade and patterned the flagstones; then with a flash that was too fast for Mike to follow, Crow swung the sword around and returned it to its scabbard.

  “Holy shit!” Mike cried.

  “Watch your language, you juvenile delinquent,” Crow said, feeling pleased with himself—especially since he sometimes bungled that particular trick and screwing it up right now would have really sucked. That it had worked so well just then he counted as a nice gesture on the part of the universe—not for himself, but for Mike, whose eyes were sparkling with excitement. “So…you wanna learn how to be a samurai?” Crow asked.

  Mike looked at the two pieces of apple, then at Crow’s sword, and then at his own.

  “Yeah,” he said softly and when he looked up, Crow could see that something had ignited in the boy’s eyes.

  But Crow read it wrong. Mike was not standing there dazzled by what Crow had just done—he was impressed, sure—but seeing the sweet elegance of that cut had done something else to Mike and he was teetering on the edge of understanding it. He was also dangerously close to lapsing into another fugue state, but that part of his mind was closed to introspection. No, the realization that was slowly catching fire in his mind was how close all of this—Crow, the sword, the skill of the cut—was to the stuff of his recent dreams. Even the sword Crow held looked the same. Mike was almost positive it was the same, though he knew it couldn’t be. As Crow’s sword flashed through the air Mike felt as if somehow lightning had danced from the edge of that blade right into his chest. He felt supercharged and while he stood there listening to Crow speak and not taking in a single word, Mike’s grip on the sword changed. It was a subtle thing, but as he held the sword in his hand his fingers flexed to let the handle rest more comfortably against his palm, his elbow bent a bit more to allow his forearm to counterbalance the weight of the long wooden blade, and he raised the tip of the sword so that it would not touch the ground.

  He was aware of none of this. The changes were small, the corrections subtle, but thereafter he never picked up the bokken and held it incorrectly again. Weeks later, when he held a real sword in his hands, all of this would matter.

  Worlds turn on such moments.

  (4)

  Newton set his coffee cup down, rubbed his tired eyes, and turned back to his monitor screen. He had four Explorer browser screens open and he was nearly fried from surfing the Net all day, getting as much backstory as he could on the information Crow and Val had given him. He did background searches on every name Crow had given him—Vic Wingate, Polk, Bernhardt, half a dozen others—working to get inside of the story, to try and see it from the point of view of a nine-year-old Malcolm Crow. He also searched for any scrap of information he could find on Ubel Griswold. If he was going to go with Crow into the forest to find Griswold’s old farm—thirty years overgrown—he wanted to know the man, perhaps to demystify him as a protection against what Crow believed of him.

  The research, though, was hampered by too much information. Not specifically about Griswold, but about the haunted history of the town. Since 1957 there had been fifty-six separate university studies by paranormal researchers on the hauntings in Pine Deep. The Sci-Fi Channel had run a whole season of one of its ghost hunter shows in town in 2004. The Discovery Channel had done a special last Halloween on the remarkable number of graveyards in Pine Deep (eleven), and on how many of the graves were disturbed each year with no forensic evidence left revealing who had dug them up. When Newton had done a Google search on the keywords “Pine Deep” and “haunted,” he got fourteen thousand hits. Granted a lot of them were repeats of stories about the town’s yearly Halloween celebrations, and movie listings from the film Ghostwalk that Dimension Films had set in the town, but that still left thousands of references to strange happenings in the town. Malcolm Crow’s name appeared as an information source on 1,944 sites.

  “The man gets around,” Newton said.

  As Newton went through his notes, he cut and pasted any unique keyword into the search engine, usually getting some kind of hit, useful or not. When he reached the name Ubel Griswold, he put it into the search screen, hit the button and waited, expecting little. When he switched from using the local catchphrase “Pine Deep Massacre” to “Pine Deep” and “killings” he got more useful hits than he had gotten prior to interviewing Crow, including a list of all sixteen of the official victims, and then a university site that had seventeen names on the list, with Griswold’s filling in the last spot. Then he hit one Web site reference to Griswold that was completely different from all the others:

  …1589: Peter Stubb (aka Peter Stube, Peeter Stubbe, or Peter Stumpf; aka Ubel Griswold, Abel Greenwyck, or Abel Griswald) is the subject of one of the most famous werewolf trials in history. After being tortured on the rack Stubb confesses to having practiced black magic since he was twelve years old. He claims the devil had given him a magical belt which enabled him to metamorphose into “the likeness of a greedy devouring Woolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkeled like vnto brandes of fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharpe and cruell teeth, A huge body, and mightye pawes.” He also claims to have killed and eaten animals and humans for twenty-five years. The court, appalled by these crimes sentences him to having his skin torn off by red-hot pincers before being beheaded.

  —www.werewolfparadigm.upenn.edu/JonathaN

  He looked at it for a while, grunted, and made a note next to Griswold’s name on his notepad. The notation he made was “Ancestor?” That done, he moved on. It was an interesting coincidence of name, nothing more. He hit the back button to go to the Google screen again and kept working.

  (5)

  Terry Wolfe knocked on the door of the Crow’s Nest despite the “Back in Twenty Minutes” sign. When he got no answer he pulled his Razor from his pocket, flipped it open, and punched in Crow’s number. Crow answered on the fifth ring.

  “Your door’s locked,” Terry barked.

  “We’re around back.”

  “I don’t want to walk around the block. Go open the front door.” He flipped his phone shut and waited with bad grace for Crow to unlock. Terry rubbed his eyes and sighed. He sighed a lot these days, and was even aware of it. He tried not to, but he kept doing it, only catching it on the exhale. He tried to work out every day, but lately he couldn’t face the gym, couldn’t even face his own Nordic-Trak. Though he didn’t look it he felt soft and heavy, and his posture was bad. For days now he had been wearing his steel-rimmed glasses because he couldn’t keep his hands steady enough to put in his contacts. His fingers shook so bad he was afraid of putting out an eye. Yesterday he had gotten his short hair and beard trimmed, but he hadn’t shaved since then and above and below the neat beard there was an unkempt red-gold five o’clock shadow.

  When Crow unlocked the door, Terry brushed past him, accidentally clipping Crow’s shoulder. Crow grunted at the impact, but Terry just let it go; it wasn’t worth the effort to apologize. “Jesus, Terry, you look like shit,” Crow said.

  “I feel like shit,” Terry said as he lumbered through the store, pausing only a half-step when he saw that Mike Sweeney—looking sweaty and shifty—had come in from out back and had slid surreptitiously behind the counter. The kid
waved and may have said something, but Terry didn’t want to waste effort on pleasantries, either. Silently he walked through the shop and jerked open the door to Crow’s apartment toward the kitchen, and went inside with Crow following along. Terry went right to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door and looked bleakly inside, poked listlessly at the swollen and vaguely threatening packages of forgotten food, gave a disgusted shrug, and slammed the door. “Make some tea, will you? You got anything herbal?”

  “Just peppermint and chamomile.”

  “Chamomile.” Terry rubbed his callused palms over his face.

  Crow filled the Wile E. Coyote kettle with water and set it on the burner.

  “Why’s that kid running the store? Since when does he work here?” Terry asked.

  “Since the other day…like I told you the other day.”

  “I probably wasn’t listening,” Terry said.

  “I’ve seen you look better.” Crow cleared his throat. “Still having those dreams?”

  “Every time I close my eyes.”

  “And, um, Mandy. You still seeing her?”

  Terry grunted and nodded.

  “Damn, brother. You talk to your shrink about all this?”

  Terry pulled a big pillbox out of his pocket and rattled it. “All he knows how to do is prescribe drugs.” Terry began opening cabinets, shoving boxes of Fruit Loops and Count Chocula back and forth in search of nothing in particular. He took a box of Wheat Thins from one cabinet, fished inside, stared at the cracker as if it was something totally alien to this planet, and then ate it without tasting it. He slammed the box back into the cabinet. Gloomily, he stalked back into the living room and threw himself into an overstuffed chair. In silence Crow finished making the tea and handed a mug to Terry, who took it with and a grunt. Terry said, “Crow, for God’s sake, stop looking at me like I have two heads. If I’m going crazy, then I’m going crazy. Don’t worry, once Halloween is over I’m planning on checking myself into a hospital for a nice long stay, and when I get out—providing they don’t throw away the key—I’m taking Sarah and the kids to Jamaica for the rest of the winter. No crops, blighted or otherwise. And no Halloween.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Crow cleared his throat again.

  “And stop clearing your goddamn throat.”

  “Well, dude, cut me a break. My best friend is going crackers on me and I have no freaking clue about what to say or what to do.”

  Terry looked at him and for a moment a smile softened the worry lines on his face. “Being my best friend is doing a lot, believe me.”

  “Pardon me while I say nothing during the awkward pause that has to follow that kind of statement.”

  Terry threw a small pillow at him; Crow ducked. “I really didn’t come here to discuss my lost marbles,” he said. “I think there’s something wrong with Saul.”

  “You think there’s something wrong with someone else?” Which made Terry grin again. Crow liked to see it. “But I know what you mean. Coupla times we almost had a conversation about something, but each time we get right up to it he gets spooked and bugs out.”

  “Saul’s gotten really withdrawn the last couple of days. Skipped dinner last night, and those plans were made weeks ago, and blew me off again for lunch today. I talked to Rachel and she says he’s acting weird at home, too. He’s all paranoid, jumps at his own shadow. I just think something’s wrong with him.”

  “You think he’s sick?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say he was more scared than sick, and believe I know the signs and symptoms.”

  “Scared? Of what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe he’s seeing ghosts, too,” Crow said.

  Terry shot him a look. “That a joke?”

  “No—hard as it is to believe. At Henry’s funeral Saul asked me if I believed in ghosts.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “Just what you’d expect me to tell him, that of course I believed in ghosts. Let’s face it, big mon, I kind of believe in everything.”

  “All this seems to have started around the time the whole Ruger-Boyd thing got going. Did he say why he was asking about ghosts?”

  “No. Not yet, anyway. Maybe this is not about ghosts, bro. Maybe this is like some kind of mass hysteria. Like a town wide case of post-traumatic stress disorder. With the blight, the Ruger thing…everyone’s genuinely freaked, and for good reason. Happy suburbia doesn’t really prepare folks for this kind of stuff.”

  “No kidding. Really?”

  Crow grinned. He sipped his tea and said, “Terry…there’s something else I want to talk to you about. You know that reporter, Newton from Black Marsh? The one you hate?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “Well, he’s working on a feature piece about the town’s haunted history, hoping to sell it to one of the Sunday color supplements like Parade. Anyway, he came out to the farm the other day and interviewed me and Val, and…well, I decided to tell him all about the summer of ’76. Everything…including about Griswold.”

  Terry dropped his teacup and it shattered on the floor, spattering his trouser cuffs.

  (6)

  “How’d he take it?” Val asked.

  Crow was stretched out on his couch, alone in his apartment. Through the door he could hear Mike talking to a customer, but inside the room was quiet. Muddy Whiskers was curled into a warm ball against his hip. “It could have gone better. First he just sat there in stunned silence for like a minute, minute and a half—and then he started yelling. Called me stupid, called me an insensitive asshole, called me a few other words that a week ago I would have bet a thousand dollars that he didn’t even know, and then he stormed out.”

  “Smooth,” she said. “They should send you to the Middle East to see if you can work your magic there. Is he even speaking to you?”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “I guess. Before that happened, he was opening up about his dreams and all that. He’s a mess, Val, but at least he’s seeing a doc, and he’s able to discuss it with me. He said that when the season is over he’s going to take Sarah and the kids to the islands for a long vacation.”

  “At least that sounds hopeful rather than crazy.” She sighed. “Everyone’s under a lot of pressure right now. Mark is still acting like a jerk and Connie spends half the day crying. I’m embarrassed to say it, but they’re both starting to get on my nerves. I’d rather be alone here than have to babysit them. I do have my own stuff to deal with right now.”

  “I know you do, babe. Which is why I have something planned for tonight.”

  “Tonight? I told you that I had a Growers Association meeting tonight. I won’t be getting home until after eight.”

  “Eight’s good.”

  “What’s the plan? And don’t tell me there’s a Twilight Zone marathon on—”

  “Nope, but it is a secret. You go to your meeting and I’ll see you at home.”

  After she’d hung up, Crow folded his phone and laid it on his chest as he stared at the ceiling, thinking about Terry and Weinstock, Mark and Connie. And Val. Always about Val.

  Ubel Griswold sends his regards. It popped into his head like a firecracker and he jumped, sitting up so fast that his cat tumbled to the floor and howled in surprise and fury and his cell phone bounced off the floor and then skittered under the couch. All at once the immense reality of what he was planning to do on Friday hit him like a fist. Friday morning—just three days from now—he was going to be going down the long slope from the Passion Pit, deep into the darkness of Dark Hollow, and through the woods to try and find the house of Ubel Griswold. On Friday the 13th.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  Chapter 21

  (1)

  Crow went back in to the store and worked for a few hours while Mike sat behind the counter and finished his homework, a paper on Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Crow used the time to make a battery of phone calls related to the big Halloween celebration. He ca
lled the Dead In Drive-in to make sure all of the films had been ordered, and then called Ken Foree, the star of the original Dawn of the Dead, and went over the itinerary for the presentation he’d be giving. Then he called Brinke Stevens and chatted amiably with the “scream queen” about the talk she would be giving after the screening of a couple of her films. Then he made a conference call to his two webmasters, David Kramer and Geoff Strauss, to remind them to post only PG-13 versions of Brinke Stevens’s publicity shots on the Hayride’s Web site—not the versions the two of them had downloaded and e-mailed to him. They were crushed, but Crow reminded them that the Hayride was a family attraction, after all.

  He made a call to Pittsburgh and talked with Tom Savini, and went over the budget for the makeup effects workshop he was giving at the college. Savini was going to have the workshop students do full-on monster makeup so that the whole class would look like flesh-eating zombies. The materials were expensive, but every seat had already been booked and he asked Savini to consider doing a second workshop the following day. Pine Deep was going to own Halloween, no doubt of that.

  When he was done with his calls, he ordered pizza delivery and when it arrived, Mike saved his file, shut down his laptop, and the two of them taunted each other with science fiction trivia while they plowed through double-pepperoni, onion rings, and large Cokes. Customers came and went, waited on by both of them, their mouths puffed out like chipmunks around big bites of pizza.

  Munching the last onion ring, Crow strolled outside for some air. Corn Hill was crammed with cars as Tuesday afternoon faded into evening and the after-work crowd mingled with a fresh tide of tourists. There was laughter everywhere and music coming from at least three bars, the happy sounds spilling out into the street. It was dark, but the street was alight with neon and the glow from hundreds of store windows. Crow leaned against the wall by his door and watched the crowd as he chewed. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and punched in the number for Saul Weinstock. It was answered on the third ring.