Littlefield

by Scott Nicholson

  The cave is sealed off. Nobody can come up from the dark.

  Especially not dead soldiers.

  Bobby’s hand slipped off his arm and Vernon Ray was unmoored, drifting in a morass that pressed against him on all sides, a sour molasses that clogged his nose and throat. The cave mouth not only looked farther away but smaller, as if he were looking down the fat end of a telescope. The forest beyond, suggested only by swathes of green and gold, had taken on the aspect of fantasy, as if this cloaked realm were the reality and all else a dream. The snare drum rattled, the reverberation booming like a cannonade.

  Claustrophobia. Sure, that made sense.

  Anxiety was distorting his perception. The snare was nothing more than the pounding of his heart. The cave shut off all noise from outside, creating an isolation tank of almost total sensory deprivation.

  “Bobby?” Vernon Ray took two steps toward the mouth of the cave, only he must have gotten turned around in the dark, because the mouth of the cave was now behind him. Had he gone deeper into the cave instead of leaving it?

  He flailed his arms in the dark, reaching for Bobby. He didn’t care if his friend thought he was a faggot, he didn’t even care if he bumped into Bobby’s butt, all he wanted to do was hug the only anchor of sanity left in the black and smothering abyss. His hand made contact and he clawed at Bobby’s shirt.

  Bobby clamped down on his wrist, squeezing hard, and Vernon Ray yelped. Bobby yanked him off balance—and deeper into the cave—and Vernon Ray tried to plant his feet, but the Earth beneath him was ebony butter and he skied forward, slapping and tearing at Bobby’s hand. When had Bobby gotten so strong?

  The ratta-tat rose and filled the cavity, penetrated Vernon Ray’s ears and rolled around the arc of his skull. The thunderous drumming was so loud that it would surely trigger an avalanche. And Vernon Ray would be trapped in this sepulcher of stone and slime, buried with the soldiers, doomed to forever march to the beat of a deceased drummer.

  But he wouldn’t die alone. He would be with Bobby, and in the dark, with time against them and no one to ever find out, who knew what might happen?

  Except Bobby’s grip was fierce, like thick and cold handcuffs girding his flesh, roping him deeper into the bowels of the world and closer to the drummer.

  “Bobby, the other way.” Vernon Ray leaned back, throwing all his weight as resistance, but still Bobby dragged him forward into an unknown antechamber of hell. But the preachers said hell was hot, a place where sinners and homosexuals and liars and boys who had bad thoughts all burned for an eternity. If so, and surely plenty of others had been fed to the eternal flames over the centuries (he wasn’t alone in that, too, was he?), then why was the cave so cold?

  The drumming became a cacophony, roaring in a mad range of tones and timbres. Or maybe it was the winds of the underworld rushing through some unseen open door. Vernon Ray twisted his neck, yearning for a last glimpse of the safe and sunlit world.

  The silhouette of a man was framed in the cave mouth. A cop had found them. They’d be safe after all.

  “Help!” Vernon Ray shouted, competing with the drums, yanking against Bobby, the pack of matches damp and crumpled in his palm. They could blame it all on Dex. The cops would fall for that easy. It would all be okay now, sane and normal and brightly lit.

  But the man showed no sign of entering the cave and Bobby wasn’t letting loose. Vernon Ray slid another five feet deeper into darkness, digging his heels against the mud. Surely they’d reach the back of the cave soon, the place where the ceiling had collapsed and stacked the granite in an impossible jumble.

  And then what would happen? Would Bobby continue dragging him down, through the narrow cracks in the rock, to the cavity where the bones of the soldiers lay?

  Ratta-tatta-tat. What if the percussion was made by bones, skeletal fingers beating an insane rhythm against rock?

  Where was the cop? Weren’t they supposed to risk their lives to protect the innocent? Didn’t the cop watch “NYPD Blue” or “T.J. Hooker” or even “The Andy Griffith Show”?

  Vernon Ray, the last kid picked in sandlot football games, the part-time right fielder on his Little League team, the reigning chess camp of eighth grade, couldn’t count on brute strength, and his brains were pummeled by the snare cadence. He was reduced to blubbering Bobby’s name over and over until it came out as “Buh-buh-buh,” and to his horror he found his syllables had fallen in synch with the snare.

  In the fifth grade, Vernon Ray had gotten into a fight with Whizzer Buchanan, a goon from across the county. Well, it hadn’t really been a fight, more of a Close Encounter of the Turd Kind. Whizzer had set aside his skateboard to go behind a tree and live up to his nickname, and Vernon Ray had picked up the abandoned skateboard and spun its wheels. He wasn’t going to steal it or anything; he was too chicken to board even if he’d owned one.

  Whizzer had snuck up behind him, grabbed him, and threatened to smack the skateboard across his lips. Vernon Ray had pretended to go slack for just an instant, in a sissy fainting spell, and when Whizzer relaxed his grip, Vernon Ray had wriggled and yanked at the same time. The movement had surprised the goon, whose strength-and-size advantage was not only negated but worked against him. As Vernon Ray pirouetted away, Whizzer fell to the ground, smacking his own face on the board. By the time Whizzer regained his wits (both of them, Vernon Ray had smirked in the aftermath), his quarry was long gone.

  Vernon Ray tried the same maneuver now, flattening his feet so that he slid in the mud while simultaneously leaning forward, falling toward Bobby. It was like skating on owl grease. He lost his balance and slammed into the dank mud. Up close, the floor of the cave smelled like rainy-day dogs, black powder, and rotted canvas.

  Bobby stayed right with him through the fall, the meat lasso tightening. Vernon Ray slapped at his friend’s hand, and then clawed at it, the flesh peeling away like peach skin beneath his fingernails. Bobby didn’t utter a peep, not that Vernon Ray could have heard him over the swelling ratta-tatta-tat.

  When had Bobby gotten so goddamned strong?

  Vernon Ray tried a variation of the Great-Whizzer-Escape, springing forward from his knees, but all he did was propel himself deeper in the cave, banging his shins against rocks. Bobby was playing him like a sport fish, reeling him not toward shore but into a drowning black lagoon.

  Where was that Christ-forsaken robocop?

  Whatever gleam of light had trickled down the kaleidoscopic tube of stone and dirt was now stifled, like a reptilian eye blinking shut. Had they turned a bend? Worked through the fallen stone of the cave-in? The drum line now roared to thunder, threatening another landslide.

  And he’d be trapped in here with . . . .

  Bobby? The dead troops, unsung heroes whose common grave bore no marker? Or the Little Drummer Boy from Hell, pounding pounding pounding until Vernon Ray’s skull exploded and his brains scattered like grapeshot.

  He had one more trick up his well-gripped sleeve, and it was less a conscious flop than a mild seizure of panic. He wriggled his elbows as if he were doing the funky chicken, at the same time driving his palms together in one smack of sick applause. The skin lasso loosened, and Vernon Ray scrambled backwards, bumping into something unseen and mushy, and a bat brushed his face—not another hand, certainly not a third hand—but by then Vernon Ray was clawing his way toward the warmer air, and now light suffused him, a bruised balm at first and then a solid gob of yellow-white.

  And there was the silhouette, the cop at the mouth of the cave, and Vernon Ray was ready to confess to every unsolved crime in the Pickett County log book, just as long as the bars were thick and the cot warm and he could see each wall.

  He stumbled, staggered, headless-funky-chicken-strutted his way toward the light, and he reached out his arms like a punk rocker diving into the front row, going for the cop. Faggot or not, he was ready to hug the hell out of the man, cling to the cop until they had to scrape him off with a shovel. Because the cop was solid, warm meat,
not like the cold, dead things behind him . . . .

  As he fell, he realized the ratta-tatta-tat had died, though its echo rolled around the curved bone of his skull like a metal ball on a roulette wheel.

  “Dude, what were you doing in there?”

  Didn’t sound like a cop. Vernon looked up from the grass, squinting against the red death of day. “Bobby?”

  “Been waiting here five minutes. Didn’t you hear me yelling?”

  “I was . . . .”

  Vernon Ray looked at his hand. It clutched a scrap of ragged gray wool.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “What you boys doing on private property?” Hardy Eggers stepped from the concealment of the underbrush and tried to look like a crotchety bastard, the kind who would grab a nurse’s ass at the old folks’ home and pretend he had Alzheimer’s to get away with it. After the uphill hike, he had the heavy-breathing part down cold.

  He didn’t recognize the boys, but they didn’t bolt when he challenged them. The runty one had the vacant-eyed stare of a videogame addict, or maybe he’d been snorting model airplane glue or sucking on wacky weed. The other boy was a little taller and better built, and his face pinched in a sullen expression as if he were used to getting his ass chewed. They were both blond and could pass for brothers.

  “Nothing,” the tall one said.

  “What’s your names?”

  “I’m Bobby and this is Vernon Ray.”

  “Don’t he talk?”

  Vernon Ray gazed off into the woods as if naked elephants were parading among the trees. Bobby put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “He just had a scare.”

  Shit. They went into the goddamned hole. Stupid kids.

  At least they made it back out.

  But it looks like maybe the runt, like Donnie, left a little bit of himself in there.

  “You boys hear the shots?” Hardy didn’t know how long he could pretend to be menacing. He wished he’d carried his shotgun, because the weapon would have added to the picture of the addled hillbilly, but he figured his white stubble and filthy long john shirt were enough of a prop if he played it right.

  Bobby nodded. “The cops ran through the woods. We hid in the cave because we were afraid somebody would shoot us.”

  “You look familiar. Who’s your daddy?”

  “Elmer. Elmer Eldreth.”

  “Eldreth, huh? He work in construction?”

  “Plumbing contractor.” The boy’s face tightened. “We need to be getting home. Our moms are going to be worried.”

  “I know your daddy,” Hardy said. “If I see you boys snooping around up here again, he’ll be hearing about it.”

  Bobby didn’t blink. “Are you with the developers?”

  “No. This land’s been in my family since King George. Got it in a land grant.”

  “I heard some Florida dipwads bought it. You don’t look like you’re from Florida.”

  Goddamned brats these days. Don’t they teach ‘em not to talk back to their elders?

  Vernon Ray wasn’t doing any kind of talking, but for the first time he snapped out of his daze, looking at his hand. He was holding something Hardy couldn’t make out.

  “Don’t get smart with me,” Hardy said, approaching the pair. “I’m friends with the sheriff.”

  “You’re trespassing the same as we are.”

  “You got no business messing around up here. You could break your necks and nobody would even hear you scream.”

  “Don’t worry,” Bobby said. “We know all the spooky stories. It’s just a bunch of trees and rocks to me. I don’t give a crap if they bulldoze it flat and paint ‘Save Our Planet’ in mile-long letters. Come on, Vernon Ray. Let’s get out of here before this geezer has a stroke.”

  As Bobby led Vernon Ray down to the hill toward the trail, Hardy went to the edge of the Hole and peered inside. Even from ten feet away, the odor of old sulfur and sin oozed out like the belch of a long black snake. Maybe the boys had seen something they would tell their friends, and hopefully it wouldn’t make the little turds dare each other to come back. Hardy felt an obligation to keep people away, sort of a self-appointed guardian of the gate. But the gate was about to be busted open by Bill Willard’s big-money investment team and Hardy couldn’t do a thing about it except pray.

  Hardy cocked an ear. Sometimes it sounded like breathing, which he could chalk up to the wind slipping between cracks in the stone. Sometimes it sounded like a deep and faint heartbeat, like when the doctor put the stethoscope to Pearl’s swollen belly and let him listen to the life inside. Other times, it was the rumble of a nightmare train rolling up from the depths of Hell. Now it resembled the drone of an International Harvester reaping hay, chugging black air and chewing up whatever the ground had to offer.

  Except the noise wasn’t coming from the Hole.

  The kids were out of sight, so Hardy figured he’d put a little distance from himself and the oily throat of the cave. He’d been inside the place as a kid, several times, it was practically a rite of passage in these parts, but he’d never stayed for more than a minute and each time he’d emerged with the feeling that he’d donned a second skin, a black film that even a plunge in the creek couldn’t wash clean.

  Anyone who stood too long looking into that place, or listening to the mad music of the Earth’s hidden secrets, would end up like Bennie Hartley, who’d been found lying half in the Hole, stone dead from a heart attack, his legs lying in the shadows as if he hadn’t quite reached the sunlight in time.

  Hardy circled the rocky knob that housed the cave, expecting to meet up with the sheriff. The rumbling engine grew louder, a thing of the real world and not some confabulation of a superstitious mountaineer. A vehicle was droning up the path on the west side of the mountain, moving through the woods where construction crews had carved the first dark stretch of road into the slope. The vehicle was big and slow, cracking saplings, the engine hiccupping as it powered over stumps and rocks.

  Hardy moved between the tangles of rhododendron. The sheriff must have already cleared the scene, meaning Hardy would have to hoof it all the way back home without benefit of a lift. That meant nobody had been shot; otherwise, the place would have been crawling with rescue personnel and sirens would fill the valley below.

  Unless the monster climbing Mulatto Mountain is some newfangled kind of emergency vehicle, sucking down taxpayer diesel.

  It rolled out of a stand of underbrush 100 feet below Hardy, its black crash grill pocked with broken branches. The customized silver Humvee rode five feet off the ground, sitting on tires that were fatter than a killing-season sow. The SUV was girded with roll bars, looking more like a cage designed to hold a rabid rhinoceros than a mode of conveyance. The windshield was tinted, but there was only one man in Titusville who would dare operate such a shitty and showy hunk of rubber and steel.

  The Humvee roared into a stretch of grassland, a bald where the high winds kept trees from taking root. In the vehicle’s wake, the vegetation had been flattened and Hardy could see almost to the end of the newly graveled access road. Looked like Phase II of the Mulatto Mountain rehabilitation project was well underway.

  Hardy raised a hand to the tinted driver’s-side window. It descended and Bill Willard’s round face broke into a grin. If his skin were shaded just a little more toward orange, he’d have made a dandy Halloween jack-o-lantern. As it was, he flashed jagged teeth that even the best in modern dental care couldn’t shape up and set square. Though the teeth were white, the eyes above them were every bit as black as the inside of a pumpkin, or the Jangling Hole for that matter.

  “You Eggerses are all the same,” Bill said. “Can’t let it go. You’re all pissed because your property got chopped up and sold off over the years. But if your ancestors hadn’t liked screwing so much, there wouldn’t have been so many heirs.”

  Hardy didn’t have an answer to that, because it was true. An Eggers male would stick his pecker into just about anything, as attested by his own Jewish-C
herokee bloodline. Some claimed it was a good thing that goats and sheep couldn’t take human seed, or there might be some little four-legged Eggerses running around. But Hardy had nothing to say on that subject, either.

  “I heard about the ruckus,” Hardy said. “A man’s got an obligation to keep an eye on his neighbor’s property.”

  Bill gunned the engine once, as if in defiance of high gas prices compliments of gutless politicians and endless war, and killed the ignition. “That’s more of Littlefield’s talk,” Bill said. “He’s as jumpy as a frog on a hotplate.”

  Hardy nodded at Bill’s contrived colloquialism, the kind of backwoods buffoonery he considered folksy wisdom. Thought it made him one of the gang, but instead it only showed the man was trying way too hard. He’d buy Arveleta Perkins’s chow chow at the farmer’s market and pretend like he actually ate the mess, whereas only tourists and college hippies were dumb enough to buy the green mash of pickled onions, tomatillas, radishes, and cucumbers.

  “The sheriff’s a good man,” Hardy said, keeping the defensiveness out of his voice. No use disputing Bill, because the baldheaded money-grabber never lost an argument. Like any man, he was wrong about half the time, but he mistook surrender for weakness, whereas any fool knew that sometimes it was better to run like hell and live to fight another day. Then again, Bill owned about five percent of Pickett County and it didn’t look like the bank was foreclosing anytime soon.

  “Sheriff out to be enforcing these ‘No trespassing’ signs,” Bill said, the grin staying in place to add, “I’m just joking, but I don’t have to be.”

  “Nobody wants any trouble up here.”

  “Yeah, I know. We did that dance. The North Carolina Historical Society didn’t find one trace of Kirk’s Raiders, and all the do-gooders at Westridge University didn’t find a damned thing, either. Just some stories that make the rounds every Halloween when folks want to scare their kids into good behavior.”