Devil's Oven

by Laura Benedict

  Raised east of the Piedmont, not far from the lowcountry, he was wary of the mountains. He never could understand why Lila had changed her mind about coming back after they had been married a couple of years. They had made a life here, but he felt the presence of the mountains too fiercely. Their shadows smothered him. He had to get away from time to time, with or without Lila.

  There was no clear path ahead. The creature—the man, whatever the hell he was—had been enormous, Lila tiny in his arms. It was unbelievable to Bud that he hadn’t busted a visible swath through the trees as he ran. How could any human run so fast?

  Judging that he was plenty far enough away from the house, he called out for Lila. He stood still for a moment, listening. The sound of a dog barking was all that came back to him.

  It had been his idea to demand that the troopers get a K-9 unit onto the mountain to track Lila, but they hadn’t jumped on it. What were they waiting for?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Tripp woke to the drone of an engine. A small plane? No, a deeper sound. A helicopter was crawling across the sky, above Devil’s Oven. Where was it going? Sometimes he forgot there was a world beyond the mountain.

  He opened his eyes.

  He was stretched over the couch in his living room, the cashmere throw that Lila had bought to match the couch laid neatly over him. Remembering the woods and the bloody visions, he pushed off the throw and tried to get up. But the pain in his head was like a wall that kept him down, and he fell back with a groan.

  “Don’t.”

  Soft fingertips gently pressured his temples, and the sharpest edge of the pain melted away. Jolene. The girl in his dream. Also Jolene.

  I remember the woman. The dead man’s eyes. The taste of his hair on my tongue.

  “I’m going to throw up,” Tripp said.

  Jolene quickly stepped away. The small plastic trashcan from the bathroom sat beside the couch as though she had known what was going to happen. He felt her watching as he leaned forward to hold on to the can’s sides. He retched again and again, tasting bile, but nothing came. His body was in more chaos than it had been when he chugged a half-pint of tequila on a dare, back when he was training in the forestry program. He should have had his stomach pumped that night, but they had been forty miles from the nearest phone or hospital, and he’d just had to sweat it out.

  When the heaving stopped and his breath returned, he sat back.

  Jolene had retreated to the other side of the coffee table. Wise move. Whatever she had stirred up inside of him wasn’t letting go easily.

  It whispered inside his head: Again. Kill her again.

  He shook his head, trying to dislodge the voice.

  Now she came close and knelt in front of him just like she had at the cabin site, but this time her presence repelled him.

  “Nobody knows when it takes hold of them. I promise you aren’t the first,” she said.

  “Get out of my house,” he said. “I don’t know who or what you are, but you need to get the hell away from me.”

  “It has you,” she said. “And the man who was dead. The man who killed Claude.”

  When he laughed, it sounded so natural, so right to his ears. She was batshit crazy, this girl. He had screwed her and she had done something to him. Maybe her crazy had rubbed off. Crazy people were poison. He knew that well enough from the reprobate behavior he saw when the tourists and the meth heads came around. No wonder Lila didn’t like her.

  “Come on,” he said. “You’re just screwing with me because you’re jealous of Lila. You’re just a piece of stripper ass from over the mountain looking to get some of what she’s got.”

  He waited for her to answer and was satisfied when she didn’t even bother to deny it. Was that some kind of pity in her eyes? Pity from some little girl who had drugged him, then tried to make it seem like he was the crazy one? Fat chance.

  “Let me guess. You’ve been messing around with Bud,” he said, talking faster and faster. “You think you’re going to get him away from Lila and he’ll buy you all the flashy shit you girls like? Playing the whore with him, hoping it’ll turn into Christmas.”

  The pain in his head roared back, but he stood anyway. She looked small there on the floor below him. Lying bitch. She had made him unfaithful to Lila.

  “He has Lila and she’s going to die,” she said. “Just like my brother. Just like my father.”

  “Shut up,” he said. He wanted to kick her.

  She wrapped a hand around his right leg as though she had read his mind. “Stop. Please,” she said. “It’s not you who wants to hurt me. Please, please listen.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  At the same moment that Tripp had opened his eyes, Lila opened hers. But she squeezed them shut again on seeing the man’s face above her, his dead eyes reflecting the tease of sunlight leaking into the cave. In the next second, she felt the jab between her legs. She screamed loud and long, wanting to wrap herself safely in the sound. Maybe if she could make the sound last forever, time would disappear.

  She would disappear.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “My mother changed in a day,” Jolene said. “She became someone else. I saw it. My father saw it, too.”

  Tripp watched her face for signs of lies—the tell, they called it back in his law enforcement classes. She had told him she was born on Devil’s Oven over a hundred years earlier. Bullshit. No one lived that long. There were rumors of white oaks on Devil’s Oven that had been growing for twice that long, but he had never seen them, and he knew every inch of the mountain.

  The screaming in his head had a voice now. She lies, it told him. She thinks she’s an angel. Does she look like an angel to you? Look at those tits. Pretending to be a little girl with tits like that. She’s an abomination!

  Maybe he was as bullshit crazy as she was, but he kept himself present enough to listen to her. She’d said something had happened to Lila. It didn’t matter to him if Lila was at home with Bud. He just wanted her to be safe. But he was having trouble focusing on Jolene’s words because the voice was scratching at the back of his brain, like an animal trying to get to the other side of a closed door. How long would it be before it demanded to be let in? Would he have to let it in?

  “She wouldn’t nurse the baby for more than a couple minutes at a time,” Jolene said. “He screamed and screamed and I had to take him from her because she would just stop talking, stop looking at him. Like he wasn’t even there.” Her voice was agitated. The face she showed him was that of the young girl he had seen fleeing through the woods, her hair flying behind her, threatening to tangle itself on the low-hanging branches she passed. Even from far above her, he had been able to smell her fear.

  Far above her. He couldn’t expel the images she had put in his mind. He didn’t want them, damn it. He wanted to grab her and shake her and make her stop lying. He squeezed his fists tight, willing himself not to hurt her.

  “Why are you telling me this? You’re telling me I screwed a corpse? A corpse that comes back every so often to ruin people’s lives?” he said. “I don’t know what bullshit you pulled on me, but it stops now.”

  The voice had a sound like the hiss of burning coals: The little slut drove her mother mad. Her own mother!

  “You saw,” she said. “You saw what she did to them!”

  “I saw what you wanted me to see,” he said.

  “Have you ever watched a child die?”

  How many animals had Tripp seen, their lifeblood feeding the dirt? Injured bucks, fawns dying quietly from shock. Bodies from the last two plane crashes, dead already. Was Lila already dead? If he had to, he would kill this girl—this liar—to find out.

  “I begged my father to dig up the money he kept buried in the woods, and go down and buy a milk cow so the baby could live.” She looked down at the floor like she was ashamed. “At least for a while.”

  “You’re screwing with me,” he said. “Drugs. You gave me something. It was at the di
ner, wasn’t it?”

  “Believe whatever you want,” she said, tears nearly choking her words. “What you saw was as real as you are. But there’s something else here. It’s kept me here, kept me safe. It’s not like the other. It’s not like the thing that destroyed my mother, killed my family.” She tried to touch him, but he jerked away as though she had burned him.

  “Get away from me,” he said.

  Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I live. And then I don’t,” she said. “You saw it. You saw me.”

  “I had a goddamn dream,” he said. “You drugged me and I had a goddamn dream.” Lila. Lila. He had to stop being angry. He had to find out about Lila. He closed his eyes a moment to get a grip.

  “Living it was like a dream,” she said. “I could see it in her even before she did it. All around her was black. Black like she was already dead. As black as the stupid crow.”

  Here, she looked at him, accusing. So if she was any kind of angel—even he had thought she was, seeing her up on the stage, bathed in light—she wasn’t a true one. She had no real compassion. But he wasn’t going to let her know she was getting to him.

  Ask the slut what she let her father do to her. Ask her who the baby really belonged to. Make her tell you how they shared a bed. All of them.

  The voice was trying to distract him. He tried to focus on Lila, but he couldn’t hold her face in his mind. It kept slipping away. “You know, it doesn’t matter what you did to me, or anybody else,” he said. “You know something about Lila, and I don’t give a flying shit if a talking raccoon told you what’s going on.” He pushed his face into hers. “You’re going to tell me.”

  If she felt threatened, she didn’t show it.

  Dead. Lila could be dead.

  She’s going to let your woman die, her eyes open to the snow and rain and my children, the insects. Just like her father. Just like her brother. Just like Ivy Luttrell’s father. She did that. The slut did that!

  Her shoulders dropped. She finally looked defeated. “I didn’t stop my mother. And I didn’t stop Ivy’s father, either. I was a coward. I had two chances,” she said. “Two chances to change things.” Her voice trailed off.

  She stared, taking all of him in. “All around you,” she said.

  The voice was louder now, and he could feel the scratching at the back of his brain intensifying.

  “The darkness—it’s all around you,” she said. “You’re going to let it in.”

  The answer screamed in his brain, but he wouldn’t speak.

  “You can kill me and bury me on the mountain. You can go on and kill your Lila—which you will do—if that creature doesn’t kill her first. But I’ll come back,” she said. “I can’t help it. I always do.”

  Tripp hit her across the cheek with the flat of his hand. She didn’t flinch.

  “You’ll be gone, Tripp. You’ll die. She’ll die,” she said. “Haven’t you done enough to her already?”

  The scratching quieted some. He’d seen how afraid Lila had been up on the mountain the morning he chased her through the woods. All he had wanted was to be with her the way they were meant to be. Was she really in danger from him?

  He knew the answer

  “We can help her,” Jolene said. “We can help her and no one else has to die.” Now she pressed his hand. Her palm and fingers were warm. Real. He felt the thing inside his brain jump, lunging one more time at the door of his resolve. He started to pull away from her again, and the thing seemed to get stronger, but Jolene held on tight.

  Tripp squeezed his eyes shut, witnessing the battle inside. It wasn’t the bird itself inside him. Whatever it was, it was putrid. Cruel. Desperate to live. The strength in Jolene’s hand was overpowering it, driving it back. It snarled, clinging to him. He knew he had to make a choice. He thought of the blackness suffocating Lila. Tripp laid his other hand on top of Jolene’s. The scratching thing backed away, its oily protrusions retreating from the pathways it had made in his brain. The voice was quiet.

  Tripp opened his eyes. Jolene’s soft eyes looked back at him. They both knew the thing wasn’t gone completely, but it was enough. For now.

  Jolene looked tired, and so young. In that moment, he felt more sorry for her than he did for himself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Dwight pressed the Answer button on his phone earpiece, barely pausing as he stacked bar towels and aprons on a kitchen rack. “Twilight Club,” he said.

  “Hey there, buddy.” The call disconnected, but he knew the voice well enough. A car door slammed out back.

  Shit. He shoved a pile of aprons onto the shelf and hustled out of the kitchen.

  His first thought was to grab the coach gun from behind the bar, but he hesitated, hoping he was mistaken about the call and who it might be. Maybe it was a wrong number. Maybe he was just jumpy, what with the cash in the supply closet and Claude Dixon’s murder, and the two girls who had already called in sick for the night. He hadn’t been able to reach Charity or Jolene to see if they could work, either. Charity almost always was willing to pitch in. She was the most professional dancer he had on the call sheet.

  By the time the kitchen door buzzer rang, Dwight was tucking the 9mm from the office safe into the back waistband of his jeans. He shook out the hem of his loose Leon Redbone T-shirt to make sure it covered. The video screen monitoring the kitchen door showed a man there, his back to the camera. But Dwight knew him by the hunch of his meaty shoulders and the way he dropped his spent cigarette, stubbed it out, and picked the burned end away before putting the used filter in his pocket.

  Pat was always very tidy.

  Dwight would’ve liked to relax, knowing that Pat had come all the way from up north to see him, but he knew this visit was nothing to relax about.

  • • •

  I’m worried about you, D,” Pat said. “When I see your brother at Knights meetings, I seem to know more about what’s going on with you than he does.”

  “You’re the one doesn’t look too good,” Dwight said, pouring daiquiri mix into a shaker filled with ice and two shots of rum. They didn’t speak while he shook the drink and strained it into the glass.

  “Since when do you drink at lunchtime?” Dwight tried to keep his real worry out of his voice.

  “Same shit, different day,” Pat said. “Only more of it than usual.” He sipped the daiquiri and flicked his tongue over his lips, tasting. Then he drank it down.

  Dwight watched, surprised he could see Pat’s Adam’s apple working in his fleshy neck.

  “Nice,” Pat said. “You always could make a decent drink.”

  Dwight waited while Pat dabbed at his mouth with the cocktail napkin, folded it, and put it in the empty glass.

  “What I need to know is why you’re doing me wrong, Dwight. Making my life hard.” He sighed, as though emphasizing what a shame it was. “I’ve got a wife for that.” He kept his voice friendly. They were indeed friends.

  “How is Marie?” Dwight said. He had the money Pat was after. Most of it, anyway. If Bud showed up while they were negotiating, there might be a problem. But if he could keep Pat reminded of their friendship, Pat was likely to settle for the fifty grand. For now. It felt good to be shooting the shit with him, just like they did when they had worked together at the same bar before Pat met Marie.

  “Expensive as ever,” Pat said, smiling at the mention of her name. It touched Dwight’s heart to see that true love could stay true.

  “She did that teeth-whitening thing they do with lights at the dentist. Cost me three hundred bucks, but she looks like a movie star.” He plucked a few nuts from a nearby bowl and popped them into his mouth. “You should try it.”

  “Yeah, probably,” Dwight said. He didn’t like people giving him shit about his teeth. Even Pat.

  “So, where’s your boss?” Pat said, looking around the empty bar. “Time for me to meet him. I didn’t come here to this hell hole to bring you a box of Yummy pies.”

  “You always were a selfis
h bastard,” Dwight said.

  • • •

  Pat followed him down the back hallway.

  “So, this Bud didn’t mention anything about someone coming down to see him a couple weeks ago? I’ve never met the Anthony guy, but I hear he’s pretty hard to miss,” Pat said.

  “Bud usually tells me everything,” Dwight said. “Must be the stress of the situation made him uptight. He’s a good guy. An honorable man.”

  Behind him, Pat snorted. “Yeah, what a guy,” he said. “Putting a friend like you in this kind of position. Messes with our relationship, you know? I hate that, man.”

  Pat’s words touched Dwight. He stumbled in his response, tried to laugh it off.

  “Yeah, I’m everybody’s sweetheart,” he said. “I got a whole harem of admirers here in Bugtussle. I’m a G.D. pushover.”

  “You’re such a shit,” Pat said. “I never should’ve let you talk me into this deal. And I definitely should’ve asked them to send down someone else to follow up on this Anthony. They’re looking for more than money, Dwight. You don’t know how it is. Things are tight.”

  Dwight unlocked the supply closet door. He turned back to Pat. The dark circles beneath his friend’s eyes were mushroom gray, and he had put on forty pounds since they had last seen each other. Sad. Pat looked seriously stressed. Maybe he should’ve made his daiquiri a double.

  “You did me a solid,” Dwight said. “We’ll get this straightened out.”

  He gave Pat a smile of genuine gratitude. Maybe they weren’t screwed after all. It meant a lot that Pat was on his side. When it was all over, he would have to tell Bud what a good guy Pat had been. He turned back to the closet to dig out the briefcase.