The Deadsong

by Brandon Hardy

  “Oh mercy, boy, we can’t have you wrestlin around and yellin like that,” Motley said, setting Garrett back upright.

  Harley Robinson appeared from the back room carrying duct tape in his right hand. In his left, a nail gun. He passed it to the reverend dutifully.

  “Ah, thank ya, Harley. So, Mr. Eucher, what kind of game you want to play? No suggestions? How about we shut you up and tack you down first?”

  Harley smacked a strip of silver duct tape across Garrett’s mouth.

  Motley turned the nail gun over his hand. “Let’s see here…ah yes, there’s the button.”

  Garrett shook his head violently as Motley shot four nails in his left foot. Garrett screamed though his nose, blood welled up in his cheeks, and veins stood out on his neck in cords.

  After Motley put a few more nails in Garrett’s other foot, he passed off the nail gun and looked at the boy, pleased.

  “You people underestimate the awesome power of God and the power of His vengeance upon those who seek to destroy his church. I’m a God-fearin man, Mr. Eucher. Are you?”

  Garrett’s nostrils flared, trying to reel in as much oxygen as possible before he passed out, but the strong fumes of the adhesive only kept the pain somewhat bearable. He managed to slip two fingers into the front pocket of his jeans. His backup plan was in reach.

  Motley began to pray as Smitty wiped off a long serrated dagger with his hanky.

  When Motley opened his eyes and saw the butane lighter in the boy’s hand, he stopped praying. The next thing he and the rest of them saw was a brilliant flash of light then darkness.

  In a fleeting instant, Sand Mountain Church and its followers––along with a young martyr named Garrett Eucher––were reduced to charred remains scattered along the property.

  11

  Gina was glad to see Jared when he arrived. But when she and Dylan ran out into the storm to put their bags in the Charger, it wasn’t there. How did he get here? And why is he covered in mud and leaves?

  “Mr. Pearson took me out to kill me. He had a gun, but I shot him instead,” Jared said, but there was something in his eyes that bothered her…

  “Did you kill him?” Dylan asked.

  Before Jared could open his mouth, sirens began to scream across the farm. A tornado warning, Gina thought.

  “We’ve gotta get down to the storm cellar,” she said, grabbing his wrist.

  “I thought maybe we could go upstairs first and––”

  “Are you serious right now?” The wind raged, whistling through the trees and the latticework on the porch. “Come on.”

  Rain slashed at them as they ran to the side of the house where the storm cellar doors lay recessed at the base of the foundation. Dylan flung it open and pointed down into the darkness. “Come on!” he screamed. “Hurry!”

  They bolted down the wooden stairs to a small room damp with the smell of oxidized copper pipes and rotting vegetable matter. Dylan yanked on a shoestring dangling from the ceiling, sparking life into a single incandescent. It pendulated and burned a harsh orange light that threw up dancing shadows on the cinderblock walls. Wind howled through the planks in the double doors above them, the rusty hinges chattering like castanets. Jared held Gina tightly to his chest, caressing her arms, comforting her. Dylan kicked boxes of old magazines and comic books aside to clear a few more square feet of vacant space.

  They squatted in the corner and waited.

  11

  Come on Gina, Dylan, SOMEBODY pick up the damn phone!

  Linda Starkweather pushed SEND on the face of her dying cell phone for the third time. The storm grew stronger by the minute, and the weatherman on 97.8 had repeated the tornado warning, cautioning listeners to take cover. It was bumper-to-bumper southbound on Whippoorwill Road, and she was only eight miles from the turn at Highway 7 where her house may or may not be standing. The panic creased thin lines across her brow, and her stomach gurgled from either the worry or the fast food arguing with her innards. Probably both.

  After Dr. Schlitzer had thoroughly checked over the old collie with a battery of tests and X-rays, he stepped into the lobby and placidly told her that aside from the obvious cuts and scrapes, Fender had a few bruised ribs, and his tail was broken. No internal bleeding was detected, and the consensus was that ole’ Fender would recover just fine. They agreed it was best for him to stay overnight, letting him rest peacefully sedated, although his hind legs would kick while he dreamt of chasing whatever it is dogs chase in their dreams and jolt awake in a fit of pain. Bless his heart. I remember when he was just a pup, Linda thought. Fender’s muzzle was now white with age, and the arthritis in his hips had worsened over the years since the first K.O. in the road which became his namesake. Bless him.

  The news she'd overheard at the jail came back to her. After leaving Fender to recuperate at the vet’s, she had stopped by the county jail to drop off some books she thought Paul might enjoy. They’d been in the trunk since April and were meant for the Goodwill next to The Glendale Department Store, but Paul might need something to flip through until his unsightly lawyer wrangled him from custody.

  The squirrelly guy behind the visitor check-in had told her Paul was in the infirmary getting an abscessed molar checked out. She had left the books, but before she got to the exit, she overheard something, a bit of news she wasn’t suppose to hear…

  “Poor Martha,” she muttered to the empty passenger seat.

  Should she tell Gina what the two deputies had conversed about? Maybe she already knew. News travels fast. It's a small town, surely one of her friends had called her, but now, her own mother couldn't get through to her cell or the house phone. The lines may be down, or she's simply too distraught to talk. Either way, Gina needed to grab her brother's shirt collar and head straight to the storm cellar.

  For a moment, she thought about her husband for the first time in a good while. It was like a wind-blown photograph wedged on the lens of her mind’s eye. She shut her real eyes––very blue, much like those of her children––and saw Dick sitting in the backyard staring out at the fiery sky, the stub of a Pall Mall between his lips and a sweating glass of sweet tea in his right hand. With his left, he’d scratch Fender’s back for a while until the old dog twisted his heard back and looked at him with those bright brown eyes, his tongue flopping threads of saliva on the knee of Dick’s blue work pants.

  Her car lurched forward another ten feet before the brake lights on the Oldsmobile in front of her burned red again. The rain pelting her windshield turned into thick tumbling sheets of water that hissed loudly like white noise on a television set after sign off. She tried to drown it out with the calm but hurried voice of the weatherman speaking over the car stereo, but even at max volume, his words were almost indistinguishable. He said the storm was be soon passing over Durden, then Hemming. Golf ball-size hail and hundred mile-an-hour winds would sweep through their little community within the next fifteen minutes, and she prayed her children were safely hiding in the cellar.

  She sighed, then dialed Gina’s cell phone again.

  12

  It sounded like a freight train speeding over their heads. It was the tornado, Gina was sure of it. She’d heard it before. She had been just a little girl watching a funnel dangle on the horizon, its tail devouring a short stretch of deserted farm land before dissipating into a cloud of blue smoke. But that sound was a little different this time. A feeling of terrific dread prickled the back of her neck. The deadsong. It was coming from far away, she could tell that much. It faded into a new movement, a choir of dead voices in no particular key shrieked with nauseating pitch. It was as though someone was singing it for the first time.

  Something else something terrible, something much closer was coming. Something had its nose to the ground sniffing her out like a police dog, and soon it would find her and gobble her up. Death would lick his fleshless lips as he digested Gina Starweather’s tasty soul.

  The rumbling twister grew louder and louder. The sud
den change in air pressure made their ears pop.

  “Should we hold onto something?” Gina asked.

  “There’s nothing to hold onto!” Dylan said, waving his arms frantically.

  “We could grab hold of the staircase if it gets any worse out there,” Jared suggested. His voice was flat and relaxed. If he was afraid, he sure as hell didn’t seem like it. He looked bored.

  The light bulb dangling from the ceiling went out with a sharp crack. They could have been blinded and known no difference.

  They could see nothing.

  Jared’s voice echoed in the void. “You got a flashlight down here?”

  “There’s one in the kitchen. It’s in one of the drawers,” Gina said.

  “Well that doesn’t do us much good, does it?”

  They listened as limbs snapped from trees. Something fell hard against the side of the house. Leaves and debris danced across the huge double doors above them. The wind whooshed with terrific force then slowly began to recede, fading out quietly like the end of a pop tune.

  Gina got to her feet and found herself moving towards the stairs.

  “What’re you doing?” Jared asked.

  “I’m just going up to have a look,” Gina said, feeling blindly for the wooden steps. She winced as a splinter jabbed into the soft flesh of her palm.

  “Gina?” Dylan listened to her gentle footfalls on boards that creaked and groaned with each careful step.

  “I think it’s let up enough to––”

  She screamed. Then a cascade of terrible banging, like huge fists pounding on a castle door. Gina smacked into the concrete floor hard, her left thigh and ass throbbing, something trickling from her knee to her groin, something wet and warm. It was on her face, too.

  Blood, she thought. She licked the corners of her mouth––the salty, metallic taste of a penny. It was blood all right.

  Jared and Dylan called out to her, their hands searching.

  Dylan felt the laces of a sneaker––

  (gina)

  patted a leg

  (gina)

  then a cold bare arm

  (oh god gina please be okay)

  as his mind sketched out the scene with gross horror – his sister twisted and mangled at the bottom of the stairs, head probably cracked open like a melon, eyes bulging – those bright blue eyes now the faded color of a November sky – but he couldn’t really be sure. The cellar was blacker than all the funeral attire in Hemming.

  He was afraid, terribly afraid.

  Something crashed above him, and the room got lighter. Jared was standing at the top of the stairs, silhouetted in a faint ambient glow. The doors were now open. Heavy rain stung at their skin.

  Help. Must. Get. Help.

  “Ughhh,” Gina grunted, “Dylan? Dylan?”

  “Yeah, I’m right here,” Dylan said. What he saw was not the horrible image sketched in his mind. The railing had scraped her cheek on the way down and her knee was laid open by a step’s jagged edge. Other than that, she looked all right. But he couldn’t be absolutely sure. He needed more light.

  “Hey, you all right?” Jared jogged down the stairs.

  “My ass really hurts. My leg, too. My leg––” Gina tried to see it through the darkness. It ached and throbbed, but she was no baby, no wimp. She had played softball for three years and had come away with a little more than a bruise and a scar. Hell, she had a rich history with pain (they go way back), but the pain just below her knee was so great, she thought having her toenails ripped out with pliers might be less excruciating.

  She tried to move her leg and felt the jagged twigs of bone grind together. She wailed miserably. It was definitely broken.

  “Gina, you’re gonna be all right,” Jared said. He found her hand and gripped it tightly. “Just hang in there. We’re gonna get help. Okay?”

  Gina nodded. She was finally getting her nerves under control. She squeezed Jared’s hand and emptied her lungs.

  “I’ll go get a flashlight,” Dylan said, bolting up the stairs, “Stay with her, man. I’ll hurry.”

  “You got it,” Jared shouted as Dylan vanished from view. He could see her face now. Moonlight peeked through a breaking cloud. It flickered through the rain, magnifying the details in her face, her skin glossy and wet.

  “Helluva night, eh?” Gina laughed. She felt Jared squeeze her hand.

  “This is one you’ll never forget,” he said, smiling. The way he said it didn’t comfort her like it should have. Either he was bitter about the cock-blocking circumstances brought on by the storm, or he was trying to be funny to soften the cruel reality that she was badly injured. Or maybe it was something else entirely. Either way, he was right. This was a night she expected to resonate for years to come.

  It would.

  But only for a few more minutes.

  13

  The skies lit up with columns of blue fire snaking through those clouds churning with rain and hail. An explosion of thunder split the air, the heavy bass thudding hard in his chest. Dylan ran with his head and shoulders slouched as though it might lessen his chances of getting struck and being fried to a crispy critter. He jumped the back steps and went inside.

  He rummaged through the junk drawer in the kitchen pulling out twist-ties, empty matchbooks, handfuls of pens that no longer worked. He tripped over Fender’s water bowl, which clanked across the floor and spun like a top.

  Lightning strobed again, freezing an image of the kitchen onto his retinas like a black and white snapshot. Another sonic boom shook the house. Things on shelves chattered. Some fell to the floor.

  His hand found the flashlight and was about to jet out the back door when he heard a soft buzzing sound––a metallic hum like someone clicking an electric razor off and on. Gina’s cell phone inched across the table then paused, inched across the table then paused.

  Dylan shot a glance at the back door then grabbed the phone and flipped it open.

  Before he could say anything, his mom shouted with blistering speed “Gina my phone’s almost dead there’s a storm coming a big one get your brother and go down to the cellar right now do you hear me Gina say something my phone’s almost dead!”

  “Mom, Mom, Mom, chill out,” he said, silencing her for a moment. “We’ve been out in the cellar. The storm’s let up a bit. I just came in for a flashlight. Gina fell down the stairs on the way back up––”

  “Oh my God is she hurt? How did it happen? How bad is it? I’m on my way home now. I’m almost to the highway–”

  “The light went out down there. I couldn’t see––”

  “Dylan–”

  “I’m going back down there. Gotta go,” he said.

  “Tell her I love her and I’m coming,” she pleaded, “and tell her I’m sorry about Jared!”

  Dylan stiffened. Confused. “What?”

  Silence. “Oh me, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “She doesn’t know, does she? Do you?”

  His mother had an insatiable appetite for gossip and would fit right in with Floyd Wiggins and the gang, but this wasn’t the time for it.

  “Mom, can this wait? I really need to go see about Gina––”

  “They found Jared Kemper’s body earlier tonight. Someone stole––”

  There was a beep, and his mother’s voice was gone.

  14

  He didn’t hear her right. There had to be a mistake. Jared was out in the storm cellar with Gina, alive and well. He looked as healthy as a horse and happier than a pig in shit, completely unconcerned about the next fucking tornado about to rip the house into toothpicks.

  Jared is a fairly common name. There were three, no, four, Jareds in Hemming that Dylan knew of. There were variations in the spelling, of course, but Jareds nonetheless.

  Maybe his mother hadn’t even said “Jared” at all. He could have easily misheard her say “Jarrett”, “Jerry”, or “Gerald”, for that matter.

  But he knew his mother had said Jared Kemper, as in the boy down in the cellar
with his sister. If someone found his dead body, then why, oh why, is he down in the cellar with his sister?

  Dylan pushed open the screen door and ran out into the storm. The rain sliced and pummeled his flesh as he reached for the handle that would lead him down, down to the underground chamber where all the fears and all the secrets spun into some terrible monster wearing Jared Kemper’s skin.

  As he descended the stairs, he did the something he hadn’t done in a very long time.

  He prayed.

  15

  She gripped his hand tighter. It was cold, icy. She could have been holding a slab of raw beef right out of the freezer.

  “I hope Mom’s okay,” she said.

  “Oh, your mom,” Jared said, “I wouldn’t worry about her. She’s gonna be just fine, baby girl. Just fine.”

  The freezing matter in Gina’s hand seemed to spread throughout her body, numbing her, petrifying her like an ancient redwood.

  “And you, you’re gonna be just fine, too. Migh-tee fine.”

  And in that moment, she knew everything. Jared’s breath was fiery like the smell of the Pearson house, but stronger, more sulfuric and maddening. She saw the beast hiding behind those eyes, two glowing moonstones burning in an apocalyptic inferno. The beast grinned, bending Jared’s dead lips into a wry, humorless smile––the snake’s smile, the devil’s smile.

  Thade’s smile.

  She gasped and braced herself as Jared’s mouth opened revealing two eyes like polished brass. Below them, a forked tongue flicked out at her.

  “Hey there, baby girl. My oh my, you sure have been fun! One of my favorites yet! Well, we better cut the shuckin and jivin and get busy!”

  The snake wriggled out of Jared’s corpse and fell onto her chest. Fear ran like rats under her flesh and the horror was too much for her young mind to process but before she passed out, the damned scaly thing silently beamed:

  “Pucker up, buttercup!”

  16

  When Dylan descended the stairs, he saw it happening. Blood sprayed from the soft pale flesh of her neck like wine erupting from a porcelain fountain. The snake had latched on just below her jaw, dangling there, thrusting its venom into her. He grabbed the shovel and slung the Thade-snake to the concrete and brought the rusted farm spoon down on it hard several times, decapitating it with a quick snap. The body writhed and wriggled around, its crimson head jerking and twitching even after Dylan had kicked it away.