“My dog . . . led me out,” he said in a choking voice.
“Sure he did, sonny. Get yerself up aboveground. The doc’s out there,” another voice said, and someone took John by the arm, gripping his arm above the elbow and leading him closer to the entrance. Once he was outside, John collapsed face-first into a snowdrift. The sudden dash of moist coldness was so intense that he almost passed out. Then strong hands picked him up. He took his first true breath of fresh air. When he opened his eyes to see who was carrying him, the brightness of the cloudless sky all but blinded him.
Then he knew no more.
FIFTY-SEVEN MEN HAD died. John was the only one who made it out of the Tunnel Hill Mine that day. Everyone told John how lucky he was to have survived. It all seemed like a nightmare now that he was safely home and in his own bed.
“You could have—you should have suffocated, bein’ so deep down in the mine like that,” the doctor tending him said.
“Or been blown to pieces wi’ the others,” Mama said.
“Strange thing about that. Some of them must have panicked and just gone crazy. They tore each other apart trying to get out. Never seen anything like it. Bite marks, scratches, limbs torn away . . .” The doctor’s voice trailed off, and he shuddered. Then he came back to himself and smiled a little too brightly at John’s mama.
“It’s a miracle this fella got out, at any rate,” said the doctor, and he was touched to see the expression of relief on John’s mother’s face. He was polite enough not to mention the fresh, swollen bruise that ran the length of her jaw.
Da had been in another part of the mine when the explosion happened, and he had escaped. Mama insisted that John stay home and rest in bed to clear his lungs and cure his fever, no matter how long it took. Da scowled at that and clenched his fists, insisting the boy had to get back to work right away or else lose his job. They needed the money, he insisted, but Mama countered by saying that if John died from pneumonia, it would do nobody any good. The doctor took Mama’s side, insisting that John would be permanently weakened and maybe even die if he didn’t take a week or more to recover properly. He guaranteed that he would speak to Mr. Comstock personally and make sure John would have his job when he returned, so Mama won that round.
Da went straight back to work the next day. Working day and night, the miners shored up the support beams and, once it was safe enough, started digging down to recover the bodies of the dead. It wasn’t long before that section of the mine reopened, and it was back to business as usual.
But not for John.
He was in bed for two days with a raging fever, fading in and out of consciousness, sometimes muttering, sometimes yelling about how “they” had come to life and killed Rudy and how Shep had shown up and saved his life. His thin body convulsed with sobs whenever he talked about Shep.
On the third day, the fever broke, and John lay quietly in his bed.
“You stay right there in bed and sleep for now,” Mama said, soothing his brow. She was obviously worried about his delirium. The bits and pieces she’d gathered from what he said terrified her. She feared he might be a bit tetched in the head from his fever.
“This afternoon,” she said, “perhaps, we’ll set you up on the couch in the parlor. Let you see some sunshine and get some fresh air. You’ll be happy to know that your da got a personal note from Mr. Comstock himself, telling him that not only will you have your job, but he’ll give you three days’ pay, too, for your suffering. So I’ll go ta the butcher’s ’n get you a nice roast for supper.”
John nestled down in his bed, pretending to go to sleep, but it wasn’t long after she was gone that he tossed the covers aside and got out of bed. He felt like he was walking on stilts as he crossed his bedroom floor, stepping over Mama’s pallet. His coat, still thickly stained with coal dust and mud, was hanging on a peg on the back of the door. He grimaced as he reached into his pocket and felt around until, to his great relief, he found that he had not lost his chalk.
In the miasma of the fever-dreams, he had had an idea. It might not work outside the mine, but he had to try. Otherwise, he and Mama were as doomed as poor Shep. Keeping one clear image in his mind—his da kicking the life out of his beloved dog—he took a piece of chalk and walked down the hallway to Da’s bedroom.
I have to make sure Mama locks the door to my room tonight when she comes in, he thought.
Squatting on the floor, his hands trembling with barely repressed rage, he began to draw on the back of the door. First, he drew a finely detailed picture of a bear with its arms raised, its claws exposed, and its jaws wide open. He stepped back to admire his work, and he began to laugh, a low gravelly laugh that racked his whole body. He laughed until the tears poured down his cheeks.
Finally he stopped. “Lion, next,” he said, and picked up the chalk.
Steward of the Blood
Nate Kenyon and James A. Moore
Christian Burr watched his son run across the pebbled drive to the foot-high grass. What a mess, he thought. Of course, it had been a long time. But for some reason he had imagined the house the same as always, with the sweeping drive, sparkling pond, lawn lining the edge of deep green forest. Wild animals had always been prevalent here, darting out from the thick cover of the trees at dusk and dawn, deer drinking at the water’s edge, fox cubs slipping through the twilight. When he was a boy, he’d sworn he had seen a wolf more than once in the mist of early morning.
He couldn’t imagine that now. Even the forest looked empty and neglected.
“Sammy!” Susan had stepped out of the passenger side of the car but held on to the open door. “Don’t go running off yet! We don’t know what’s there!”
The five-year-old boy continued on his stumbling way, now into even higher grass that reached above his waist. Burr imagined the blades suddenly wrapping around the boy, pulling him down and slithering over his mouth.
When Sammy’s mother called his name a second time, he stopped, looked over his shoulder at his parents, and sighed.
“Sometimes I want to tether him,” Susan said. “From the looks of this place I probably should.”
She was right. Burr stared at the sprawling house. Even after what he’d been told by the executor of his grandfather’s estate, he was shocked at its condition.
“It’s in bad shape, I’m afraid. But that couldn’t be helped. Your grandfather was a stubborn fellow, and it was his wish that you not be contacted until five years after his death.”
“Are you telling me my grandfather died five years ago? And nobody told me?”
“I understand this is a shock. I tried to have the court see him as feebleminded, but that didn’t work. Believe me, Arthur was anything but, and everyone around here knew it. He left specific instructions. No one was to come here. And no blood relations were to be told of its condition.”
Five years, Burr thought. It was hard to imagine that this kind of decay had happened that quickly. The farmer’s porch was a weathered claw of wood. The paint was peeling, gutters hanging loosely from the eaves. Brambles grew high and tangled around the back corners and hid whatever cracks might be running through the foundation.
Susan looked at him over the roof of the car. “Are you sure your grandfather didn’t leave it to you to punish you for something?”
Burr smiled at her, hiding his own growing sense of dismay. His grandfather had always loved riddles and practical jokes; perhaps this was his last one. Susan smiled back with less enthusiasm, before turning and leaving the safety of the car (somewhat reluctantly, he saw) to rescue Sammy, who had wandered a bit farther away and gotten himself tangled in brush along the edges of what remained of the lawn.
Burr glanced through the open front door into the backseat. Lisa was looking out the window at something only she could see. As they left the house in New York that morning her rage had been like a hurricane. She hadn’t spoken to anybody since. He understood her anger at being uprooted; change didn’t suit her. A child with her condition
needed to be surrounded by a comfortable, well-known environment. Parenting a girl with special needs had proven even harder than he’d imagined. Lisa was often in her own world, governed by rules nobody understood, least of all him.
“Why don’t you come and explore with Sammy?”
To his surprise she opened the back door and got out, and he was left staring at her back as she walked away, fifteen-year-old shoulders rigid.
Burr turned back to the house and found himself standing alone. The worst events of the recent past faded away; the loss of his job, their money troubles, the death of close loved ones, all lost in a whirl of memories and time. He felt the house pulling at him, a strangely physical ache.
Glen Ridge.
He was still standing there, ghosts chasing themselves around in his head, when he heard the car making its way up the drive.
THE DEVIL, AS they say, is in the details. The house was a shambles, with grass high enough that, as he drove toward them, Rodney Talbot could barely make out the child wandering through it, or the attractive woman who chased after the little one. Aside from the new master of the house, the only one he could see clearly was the daughter, a beauty in her own right, and the one who had what his old friend Arthur had always called “the sight.”
That left Christian Burr, father, husband, and only surviving heir to Arthur’s estate, standing alone by his car.
How long had it been since Talbot had seen Christian? The boy had been a teenager. It was after Arthur had made Talbot his business partner but before he’d become the executor of his estate, and certainly before Talbot knew Arthur was . . . well, that the man he called his best friend was different.
Arthur Burr was not normal. He never had been. But he’d been a good man in his own way. He’d owned this little mountain town once upon a time, supervising the construction of nearly every home and providing protection for generations of families—while receiving valuable things in return, of course.
And where was the money that the man had earned over that very long lifetime? Talbot’s lips pulled into a thin, weary smile. He knew, of course, but was not allowed to say. Not yet.
Christian was staring at his Cadillac as Talbot came to a stop, a puzzled expression on his face. Arthur’s grandson was older now, but his expression was much the same as always. That was the boy’s trouble, really. He was as much a dreamer as his grandfather but without the resources to allow him that sort of mentality. Talbot was familiar with the problem. It was the way of the blood, trickling down through the line until it found a pool in which to gather.
Problems could also present opportunities.
Talbot slid out of his comfortable car and stood on legs that preferred sitting whenever possible. Getting old was never a pleasant notion, and he had done all he could to delay the inevitable, but just lately it was worse. Arthritis guaranteed that. The wind caught his thinning hair and tried to pull it from his scalp. The appropriate level of hair gel made it stay in place, even if it also gave him a slightly greasy look that he disapproved of, not that it mattered anymore. He still dressed himself in finery, but he also knew that no woman was looking at him with an eye toward courtship.
There had been a time when he would have made Christian stand on the other side of his massive oak desk and wait patiently while he sorted through a thick sheaf of papers in his briefcase. That too had changed with age. These days he preferred to be done with theatrics and merely handle matters quickly and efficiently. The time for drama was long past in his eyes. Not so with Arthur. Talbot had every intention of following the rather obscure demands of his best friend—at least at first—but he didn’t have to enjoy it.
Very well, Arthur. One last time we shall play your games. Talbot reached into his custom-tailored suit jacket and pulled a thick envelope from the inside pocket.
“Can I help you?” Burr was looking at him with a slightly perplexed expression that would have never been found on his grandfather’s face.
Talbot smiled. “I think, my good man, that you have that the other way around. I’m the executor of Arthur’s estate, and I’m here to help you.”
Burr smiled, his face a full decade younger as the expression eased the tension in his features. “Mr. Talbot? We spoke on the phone. I wasn’t expecting to see you.” Burr offered his hand and Talbot took it, pleased by the firm grip. Damn, but he looked like his grandfather had in his prime: the bright, piercing eyes and a strangely icy tint to his skin, as if he was perpetually cold. It was almost haunting.
Talbot smiled back. “I thought I would give you the keys in person.” He patted the envelope in his other hand and the metallic tinkle of the ring of keys sounded dully through the thick paper. “Along with a few final words from your grandfather. Arthur requested that you read it yourself.” He paused a moment. “He wanted to make sure that no one else confused the matters he wished you to consider.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.” Burr took the envelope and seemed surprised by the weight.
“Well, you know your grandfather, Christian. He was a man who liked to handle things a certain way, with a bit of mystery thrown in.”
Burr nodded. “I meant to ask you, Mr. Talbot: what happened to my grandfather’s body?”
Rodney Talbot looked away, his eyes moving over the grass and line of trees that stood like motionless soldiers about to march upon the helpless interlopers. “He asked to be buried out there, in the forest he loved,” Talbot said. “An unmarked grave. It was his dying wish. I didn’t see any reason not to grant it.” Talbot motioned to the envelope. “Now, go ahead and open that, if you like. You may be surprised at what you find.”
COLORS SWIRLED BEFORE her in the air like oil on the surface of a pool. She reached out and dipped her fingers through them, watching streaks of blue and orange trail from her fingertips, mix, and form faces with mouths open in silent screams.
Sounds assailed her from all sides, the tick of sunshine off pebbles, a hiss of insect legs moving in the tall grass, the squeal of dust dancing beyond the passage of the car that had stopped near her father.
A few more steps and she reached the edge of the abyss. Somewhere beyond her feet was the source of the strangest sensations, wafting up like a cloud. The darkness before her was only a wall, built to protect and conceal; she could see that much clearly. But she could not see all that lay beyond, and it puzzled her.
The rage early in their journey had been about this change, her frustration over her inability to see what was coming. But something was coming, something important. All her life, she could sense things that others could not. Inanimate objects spoke to her; music played through living creatures; spirits gathered in places of death. There was a world beyond the one that most people knew. She felt it, every day.
Just as she felt the others gathered within the forest, thousands of them, watching from places that hid them.
Waiting for her to arrive.
CHRISTIAN BURR TOLD Talbot to head home, that he preferred to read the letter later and on his own terms. Looking for privacy, he left Susan to tend to the children outside and found his way into the house.
Once inside, he felt better almost immediately. Past the sagging remains of the porch, the structure appeared to be fairly sound; remarkably so, in spite of its appearance. The interior was in much better shape than the porch. Immediately ahead of him the stairs led up to the second floor. To his left was a study, to his right an archway into the living room. They used to have the Christmas tree in there during the holidays, Burr thought. Memories flooded over him. He could remember them wheeling the piano into this little front room and they would all gather around near the tree and sing carols in his grandfather’s native Czechoslovakian tongue. That tree was always a living one; his grandfather had insisted on it. After the opening of presents and the meal, Arthur would take him alone into the forest and they would plant the tree somewhere in a weighty and somber ritual filled with words that Burr did not understand. He had always sensed the ri
tual was more important to his grandfather than the holiday itself. Arthur Burr filled nearly every other waking moment with jokes and wordplay, winks of an eye, riddles that left everyone stumped for hours on end. But he never joked about the planting of that tree.
Strange. He had forgotten about that until now. Another memory flitted at the edges of his consciousness, something important he couldn’t quite remember. Distracted, Burr stepped into the living room, dust swirling in the still air. All the furniture was exactly the same. He could hardly help feeling angry at the state of everything. Why hadn’t somebody notified him sooner? His grandfather had loved this house. Perhaps Burr could have seen to it that the place was kept up.
Of course he could never have afforded that, not after being downsized and their recent money problems. Everything had seemed to happen all at once, the bad news rolling in day after day until he’d very nearly broken under the weight. His own parents’ death in a terrible car accident six months ago had been the worst of it. He’d tried to reach his grandfather then, without success. Now that made more sense; Arthur was already gone himself, as it turned out. The news of the old man’s death had been another blow, and to find out that he had actually died years before had made it even more bizarre and disturbing.
They had had no other choice but to come here, city slickers forced to relocate to this isolated mountain community five hundred miles from home. Driving through the town center had felt like going back a century in time. People had stared at the car as they rolled by. They had stopped for gas at the only station available, and a mention of Arthur Burr had gotten nothing but a shrug and muttered breath from the attendant. Christian’s grandfather had practically built Glen Ridge with his own hands, and had been beloved, as far as Christian had ever heard, but apparently the courtesy always shown him did not extend to his descendants.
This is our home now, for better or for worse. Fate had seen to that.
The envelope could not be put off any longer. Burr took a chair and sat down in the sunshine, pulling the contents free with trembling fingers. The letter he set aside for now, drawn to the other papers; at first, genealogy reports that appeared to trace the Burr lineage back to the Czech territories. It appeared that his grandfather had changed the family name from Burian to Burr when he came to America around the time of World War Two. With that came the memory that had eluded him earlier: his grandfather telling him Czechoslovakian legends as bedtime stories. One in particular, about a giant forest creature called a Leshy that could take any shape, had terrified him to the point of sleeping with the light on and the covers pulled up to his chin, quaking at the blackness beyond the bedroom window.
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