He zipped the bag and got out of the car.
Somewhere out there in the night, behind the row of pines marching along Highway 7, Jared carried them on his good shoulder, balancing the weight as he walked. The Lubbock house was just up ahead past the railroad tracks at Bingham, but the fog rolling off Goose Creek made it difficult to see.
He stood at the house gilded in moonlight, checked his watch. Susan was here, her red hatchback parked in its usual spot under an overhanging maple with gnarled branches at the end of Macklin Avenue. The house was dark and silent.
A cool breeze ruffled his hair. He dropped to one knee and let them out, and as he stood there towering over them like a great commanding demi-god, his eyes locked with theirs––tiny, frightening eyes shining like polished brass––he took a deep breath.
They listened.
After it was over, he watched them disappear into the overgrown grass beside the Lubbock house.
17
After she crept up the stairs, Gina slipped under the covers and lay there watching the ceiling fan gyrate above her. Sleep was not coming easily tonight.
She was sick of this place, this town, yet she felt nowhere else would be like home. Her thoughts turned to that raccoon’s pitiful demise, which made her shudder. Then she thought about the snake.
Perhaps the dream was brought on by the news of Ashley Monroe’s death, but no one had talked about it at school. Hell, had she not heard Bobby Billings talking about it on 98.7, she might not have heard about it at all. And this is what happened every year. A dozen or so kids would die from snakebite and no one seemed to care. Gina did know this had been going on for a good while and occasionally someone would be brought in from the city to study the pattern but none was ever found. That’s just the way things were around here.
But she hadn’t known about Ashley’s death the night before. The next morning, she woke up and had seen a snake in her bed. A chill swept over her.
She heard something outside her window, something gradually drowning out the low hum of the ceiling fan. She went to the window overlooking the open moonlit pasture stretching over the earth like the skin of a sun-baked corpse. The faint, roaring chorus of cicadas echoed a chilling drone alive with voices that brought up gooseflesh on her arms and neck. Something else chimed in––a sound completely foreign to her. It rose and fell with sweeping deliberation as though directed by some great power beyond the realm of human existence or understanding. It swelled rapidly with such intensity that her hands leaped to her ears, but failed to choke out the musical terror caroling from the darkness.
For the next six hours, she listened as those endless bellowing cries coalesced into a haunting, mournful song.
A deadsong.
CHAPTER TWO: CONNECTIONS
1
The number of snakebite related deaths remained the same each year––thirteen. These reports occurred within the same timeframe––thirteen days. Experts said it was a strange migratory phenomenon for any species of snake and simply ludicrous to assume it was anything other than coincidence that thirteen people would die on any given year by a serpent smooch, and you could bet your fur it would happen next year. And the year after that. Why should the pattern change? It had remained constant for almost twenty years.
Both the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the Department of Statistical Analysis published data revealing a similar cycle that lasted thirty-five years in a suburb of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; however, the cycle ended just before it began in Hemming, Tennessee.
This had been the chief study of Dr. Dennis Sedgewick––formerly a tenured professor of Herpetology at Penn State, now a part-time biology and chemistry professor at the University of Tennessee. Ned Robertson considered calling up Dr. Sedgewick every year when the season began––the reaping season, it was often called––but ever since Ned was elected Sheriff, Sedgewick showed a real disinterest in making the trip. He and Ned had become friends over the years, and Ned didn’t feel like it was anything personal. The town said the old man just got old, or maybe he didn’t give a damn about the snake problem. Last year, Ned’s niece, Anita, had graduated from Durden High and enrolled in Sedgwick’s Biology 1010 class at U.T. On the first day of class, Anita stood up to say where she was from, but when the word “Hemming” passed from her lips, Dennis Sedgewick’s blood ran out of his face and left him blindly groping for his chair. The next weekend, Anita had come back to Hemming to visit family and had told Uncle Ned about Sedgewick’s gross out and about the fearful lamentation in his tired eyes. She guessed her professor was well past retirement age and didn’t travel anymore than he had to, but she knew he was afraid to come back to Hemming. Deep down, everyone was afraid to be in Hemming, but Anita didn’t press the conversation any further than it had to go.
Sheriff Robertson sat in his office staring at Sedgewick’s number tacked beside the calendar on the wall, the one that had SCENES FROM BEAUTIFUL TENNESSEE written in script. He knew it might be a waste of time, but he was getting desperate. This was a matter beyond his capacity to correct. Something radical had to be done.
He waited for a dial tone, pressed 9, and drew in lungfuls of air he didn’t want to give up. He held it and dialed Sedgewick’s number.
2
Seth Willard wasn’t too happy about the suspension he and Roger Eakes got for aiding in Duke’s violent display at school, especially since Duke would go unpunished as usual, but that’s the kind of treatment given to children with parents in positions of power.
He slept until noon and drove out to Avery’s Country Store for lunch. He got a turkey sandwich and a large Gatorade and sat outside on the curb watching the Greyhound buses come and go. He regarded the tin sign that read PAYPHONE dancing in the afternoon sun and thought he should tell Avery to take it down since the payphone had been ripped out almost two years ago. All that remained was the empty booth between the men’s and the ladies’ restrooms, the glass windows busted out from stupid kids hurling rocks and beer bottles at them because there was nothing else better to do in this shit diaper town.
Seth pulled out his phone to call his girlfriend, who’d be between classes right now, and saw he had a text message from Duke Pearson. Duke and Roger were going out tonight for Duke’s eighteenth birthday, and Seth was invited to come. No concrete plans had yet been made, but Seth had a feeling he’d be at risk for more punishment later––being Duke’s friend meant getting into trouble even when the objective was causing it. Seth’s excuse was much too long to type out on the tiny keypad in his hand so he decided to respond later.
He tossed the sandwich wrapper and empty bottle into a trash can at the gas pumps and headed home. Perry Smith would be arriving at his house soon to install new carpet in the living room after some water damage caused by a recent rainstorm. After the job was done, he still had to pick up his little brother from Hemming Elementary on Spring Street and then stop at Bill Traver’s junkyard to see if Bill had a transmission for his 1984 Chevy pickup since his own had been on the fritz for a while.
Smitty had arrived shortly after Seth with a large roll of mauve twist-pile carpet on the back of his red Ford. Seth let him in and stepped out onto the porch to call Duke.
3
“You’re such a woman. You know that, Seth?” Duke said, his phone pressed against his ear. He looked over at Jared who was paying him no attention. He was looking up at the aging white water tower rising up into the late afternoon sky, DURDEN, TN: GO WILDCATS! painted in large black letters on the side facing the high school.
Duke kicked up the dust with his cleats and rested against the chain link fence. “All right, I get it. Go babysit. Go be a frickin woman. Be sure to nurse him with your ape tits before beddy-by.” He pulled the phone away from his ear to avoid Seth’s harsh comeback screeching through the tiny speaker on his cell, but he was grinning just the same.
He closed his phone and stuck it in the side pocket of his gym bag. Jared was still standing defiantly beside him, his mind
somewhere else.
“Hey,” Duke said. Jared jerked his head around and Dylan felt a slight tinge of unease in the blankness on Jared’s face.
“Sorry. Daydreaming.” Jared shrugged and began walking towards the gate that led to his blue purring hot rod where he planned to sit with the windows rolled down and go over tonight’s main event.
“You’re coming aren’t you?” Duke asked.
“Nah, I can’t. Kessler’s loaded me down with homework.” Jared shook his head as though he were sincerely disgusted by the overbearing task of reading chapters four through six in his world history textbook, but he knew he’d be doing no such thing. He had other plans.
“Such a buzzkill, Kemper.”
Jared gestured agreement and said “Saw you talking to the Starkweather girl yesterday. What do you think about her?”
Duke stopped just short of the gate and dropped his bag on the grass. “What kind of question is that? What the hell do you think? I think she’d love nothing more for me to fulfill her wildest and ungodly sexual desires. And I think she wants me bad, dude. Real bad. And I think she wants to be bad. Real bad. Know what I mean?”
Jared laughed a little, looked down at his shoes.
“What’s wrong with you? You’re not badassing today. I’d swear you’ve been neutered or somethin.”
“Just have a lot on my mind, I guess.”
“We’ll get it off your mind and come get crazy with us over in Cully.”
Going over into Cullman County, or Cully as Duke liked to call it, didn’t interest him anymore.
Speculation began to turn over in Duke’s little brain, and then suddenly his lips drew wide and flashed his big white chompers.
“You like her, dontcha?”
Jared threw his bag into the back seat of the Charger and rested an arm on the door. “What are you talking about?”
“Gina. The Starkweather girl. You got a thing for her, am I right?”
“You think everyone’s after the girl you’re after, Duke.”
“Not at all,” Duke said. He took a deep breath through his nose, taking in the sweet aroma of freshly cut grass wafting over from Moose Humbert’s yard. Comfort wrapped him up like a warm blanket. “Call it curiosity.”
“You know what curiosity killed, right?”
Duke brought up his hands and and spatted like a pissed off cat. “Rawr!”
Jared got in his car and brought the engine to a fierce roar. “Get outta here, will ya? Call me later.”
Duke gave him a short salute, still cheesing like fool. Once the Charger pulled out of the lot and out of sight, Duke considered this would be the first time they ever had an interest in the same girl. Between them, there had been a silent understanding, a code of honor between best friends, that forbade such a thing from happening. But deep down, he felt this could be a problem. He couldn’t let a hottie in a straw hat tear a rift between them. He wouldn’t let that happen.
As long as he got the girl.
4
Alan Blair was in his last year of graduate studies at the University of Tennessee when Dr. Dennis Sedgewick called him into his office and closed the door. Dr. Sedgewick was a tall man in a crumpled green sport jacket that was much too big for him. The sleeves went down past his knuckles, and he looked like an overgrown child except for the liver spots on his shiny scalp and the gruff of gray hair on his cleft chin.
“Ever heard of a town called Hemming?” Sedgewick asked Alan.
“No, sir. What county?”
“Arlo.” Dr. Sedgewick tucked a Pall Mall in the corner of his mouth and lit it. “Just east of Cullman County.”
“What about it?”
“They’ve had a bit of a…snake problem for a while now. About twenty years actually. Seems kids keep getting bit and dying.”
“How many?”
“This year? Six so far.”
“Six?” Alan said, rising from his chair.
“I’ve poked around down there over the years, but I haven't come up with any logical reason for it. I mention it because of the research you’ve been doing lately.”
Alan eased a bit and sat back down. “The Harrisburg study?”
Sedgewick nodded. “What’s going on in Hemming isn’t much different.”
“But hell, Doc, that stopped twenty years ago.”
“And started here in Tennessee.”
“So, you think they’re connected somehow?”
Sedgewick flicked his ash into a flower pot by the window. “Alan, I want you to go down there and see if you can bring back a live specimen.”
“But, sir, I don’t think––”
“You can take all the credit. I sure as hell don’t want it. If it’s a new species, you can name it for all I care.”
“Then what’s your interest in this?”
“Closure.” Sedgewick dropped the butt into a soda bottle. The hissing sound made his skin crawl. “If we can figure out what they are and why they’re attacking humans, maybe we can come up with a solution. My friend Ned is the sheriff there. He’ll make sure you have everything you need to get started.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, why aren’t you going?”
“Hemming’s a strange town, Alan. I can’t say for sure what it is about the place, but I just get the heebie jeebies thinking about it.”
“And what if I get the heebie jeebies once I get there?”
“You’re young and ambitious. And you’ve got the stomach for it. Besides, I don’t have that kind of zest or patience for discovery anymore.”
Alan looked him over carefully and knew he was lying. The whole episode seemed like something from a old movie that he didn’t want to be a part of, but his academic reputation was suffering from a lack of legitimate publication, and whatever was going on in this little country town might shoot him to stardom if he caught one of these snakes. Hell, he’d been catching and playing with snakes since he was a boy. This should be no trouble at all.
But he had a lot of questions and he felt he’d get no clear answers from his professor and mentor. The answers were far beyond his ability to grasp and, if he were truly honest with himself, Alan didn’t really want them. All of the details floated in the air like poisonous brown spores threatening to settle in his vulnerable lungs.
“But why do you think it stopped in Harrisburg and started in Hemming without any similar incidents in between?” Alan finally asked.
Sedgewick took a deep breath. “Do you really want to know what I think?”
Alan leaned forward, his young face taking on a sick, weathered look, as though he was contracting a terminal illness and watching it happen.
“I think someone up there brought them here.”
5
Gina called shotgun and climbed into her mom’s Buick. Dylan sat in the back with his headphones on, listening to a new pop song by Selina Porter, one about being a hero. Her angelic voice carried him away, far from the pain still throbbing between his eyes. Aside from a sharp wheezing sound that came when he laughed, his nose looked pretty good. He imagined it would probably be another color come tomorrow morning, but he could take care of that with some of Gina’s makeup. If she wouldn’t let him use any, he’d sneak into her room while she was out. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
Linda decided to take the back roads into Durden since the sky had opened up into a bright blue dome only marked by a few smoky jet tails and mockingbirds. Whippoorwill Road was the scenic route you took when the days were nice and you felt like gliding through God’s country, parts that had not yet been scarred by the greed of Man. Once you eased over the railroad tracks and crossed Goodman’s Branch––a connective filament of water that ran from Goose Creek all the way past Youngstown and into Lewiston––you’d be in Durden before you could say Reese’s Pieces. It stayed dry most of the year, but the rainfall had been particularly generous since July. As the sedan swept over the branch, Gina saw it gushing out from under the bridge––a rich chestnut-colored wa
tercourse garnished with debris.
Linda turned up the volume on the car stereo. Bobby Billings was talking about the Monroe girl again. Apparently the radio station had enough goodwill to ask the listening public to send money for the girl’s family since she didn’t carry a life insurance policy. Gina closed her eyes and saw Ashley in a satin-lined casket, her head on a soft pink pillow. The tiny pin marks stood out in pairs around her face and neck where she’d been bitten––like a vampire, Gina thought, and shivered. She popped open her eyes. They were passing the Shop-and-Save on the right, McDonald’s on the left. Soon they’d be parking at the Glendale Department Store on Redwood Avenue beside the sporting goods store her father use to take her to, the one where he’d spend hours window shopping for camouflaged goodies he didn’t need, but wanted just the same.
It wasn’t that she hated this town; as a matter of fact, she had grown quite fond of it over the years. This was home. Memories cascaded over her––visiting her grandmother who lived across from the public library, she and Dylan feeding geese in the state park while her mother snapped pictures of the foliage for a scrapbooking project that never came to fruition, fishing with her father on Goose Creek in the summertime.
But there were other memories, too. Ones not worth commemorating––her father coming home late and arguing with her mother after he’d been out all night getting drunk and gambling away their savings on games of pill pool with the boys from the plant, Dylan wrecking his bike in a ditch and not finding him until well after dark, and…
Uncle Paul. That unforgivable secret they’d shared. Our little secret, he had said. You won’t tell. Will you?
“We’re here,” Linda said, killing the engine. “I’ve got to find a new blouse, something spiffy for the meeting on Friday, so you two don’t wander off. Meet me back at the entrance in half an hour.”
“Okay, Mom,” Dylan said. He and Gina got out and followed their mother into the department store. Once they passed through the security panels, Linda trotted towards the clothing, and Dylan and Gina made their way passed Housewares and headed to the books and magazines.
The Deadsong Page 4
