Littlefield

by Scott Nicholson

  “I hear it, too,” Vernon Ray said.

  “Ratta-tatta-tat?”

  “You got it.”

  Bobby lifted the camera, ready for action. “Showtime.”

  The rolling thunder of drumbeats was muffled at first, echoing from deep within the Hole, oozing forward as if testing the resistance of air.

  “Rolling out reveille,” Vernon Ray said, sweeping the clearing with the binoculars. “Time for the troops to fall in.”

  Bobby heard the scuffing of fallen leaves before he saw the man. At least, he was big enough to be a man, a few inches over six feet and filled out, though his arms seemed a little scrawny. Maybe the overalls exaggerated the effect, but there was a childlike quality to the man’s movements, as if he had only recently learned to walk.

  “It’s one of them,” Vernon Ray whispered.

  “No, I don’t think so. He looks a little too real.”

  “Something’s off about him.”

  Bobby wanted say that everybody was a little off, especially V-Ray, but he was too intent on following the man’s movements. His wobbly steps were carrying him straight toward the Hole, though the way he cocked his head made it appear he was listening for instead of looking for his destination.

  “Dude, that’s Hardy Egger’s boy,” Bobby said. Donnie Eggers had attained some urban-legend status himself, as few people had ever actually seen him. The story of a mute, senile, drooling lunatic locked away in the old farmhouse was juicy enough to launch a hundred variations.

  Some told it that Donnie was the lone survivor of a summer-camp serial killer and didn’t have enough marbles left to tell the cops the killer’s identity. Others chalked it up to a weird red church over in Whispering Pines where some people had died. Vernon Ray had looked on the Internet but a Google search for “Donnie Eggers” had yielded hundreds of Web pages about Donnie Osmond, chicken hatcheries, and genealogical records of people who had died long before George Washington had dropped his trousers to the King.

  “I thought they never let him out of the house.”

  “Look how he’s walking. Like a spaz.”

  “He’s following the sound of the drum.”

  “Creepy.” Bobby clicked a picture of Donnie, figuring he would get a little attention for providing proof of the man’s existence. He checked the photo and found it was blurred, but before he could aim the camera again, Vernon Ray elbowed him.

  “Holy molars, Batman,” Vernon Ray said.

  Coming through the trees behind Donnie, marching in a ragged line, were a half-dozen soldiers. They reminded Bobby of the re-enactments his dad participated in, except these guys looked worn and haggard, as if they had been in a real war for years instead of a pretend one for a weekend. Bringing up the rear was a man in an overgrown felt cowboy hat, a scabbard dangling from his belt.

  “They don’t look like ghosts,” Bobby said.

  “Of course not. They’re actualized.”

  “Do what?”

  “They’ve become real.”

  Bobby clicked a couple of pictures, not stopping to check them lest he miss a good shot. Donnie was nearly to the Hole now, and the drum roll swelled into a cavernous echo. “Then they should show up on the digital, right?”

  “Something should. Ectopic matter, maybe, or ether.”

  “They’re headed for the Hole.”

  “And taking the Eggers boy with them. Just like they tried to take me.”

  It sounded weird to call Donnie Eggers a “boy,” but despite his size there was a definite boyish innocence about him. Or maybe his imbecility brought a lack of motor control that made him appear vulnerable and fragile.

  Bobby lowered the camera. “Damn. Think we ought to save him? He probably doesn’t know what he’s doing if he’s out of his mind.”

  “What can we do? These are ghosts, for Christsakes.”

  “Go get the cops.”

  “And then what?”

  Donnie’s halting steps led him to the mouth of the cave, where he stood swaying and blinking into the darkness. The snare reveille rattled out of the stone tunnel and filled the forest. The weary, slump-shouldered troops narrowed the distance and were approaching Donnie when the drum fell silent. The soldiers stood hunched in place, at raggedy parade rest, with only the bearded man with the scabbard moving, taking brisk but discordant steps to the front of the line.

  “I don’t think the cops will do a damn bit of good,” Vernon Ray said.

  “Well, if they’re solid, they can be shot and killed,” Bobby said.

  “I don’t think it works like that. They’re already dead, remember?”

  “So we just watch while they do a ghost version of throwing a virgin sacrifice into a volcano?”

  “Well, there’s one other option. That bearded creep must be the colonel.”

  “Colonel Kirk?”

  “The leader.”

  The man with the scabbard—Colonel Creep, Bobby decided—stopped in front of Donnie, but Donnie stared at the ground, swaying back and forth as if the snare were still rattling out its rhythm. Through the zoom of the lens, the colonel’s eyes looked like black, miniature versions of the Jangling Hole.

  Bobby looked at his friend, running down the many other options besides the one he knew Vernon Ray would offer. “We can shut our mouths and pretend nothing ever happened. We can say we got photos but have no idea what happened to the Eggers boy. We can say we thought they were Civil War re-enactors.”

  “I know what it’s like in the Hole. If they take him in there, he’ll never come out.”

  “Christ.”

  “Yeah. We can’t let that happen.”

  Bobby sighed, reluctant to lose the Karen Greene hero-worship fantasy. Or possibly his life, for that matter. “Well, at least we won’t have to worry about becoming grown-ups.”

  “You want to do it, or me?”

  “Which way you running?”

  “You’re faster than me, so you head across the ridge. When they follow, I’ll grab Donnie and drag him away.”

  “What if they don’t all chase me, or if more of them come out of the Hole?”

  “Nobody lives forever.”

  “Except them.”

  Donnie still hadn’t looked at Colonel Creep. The other soldiers sagged like handless puppets, waiting to be snapped into action. The air was charged with expectation, as if the static were building for a thunderbolt. Bobby let the camera dangle from the strap around his neck and stood up, emerging from the concealment of the laurels.

  He cupped his hands to his mouth. “Up here, you dirty Connecticut Yankee dogs.”

  Donnie was the first to turn his head, followed by the bearded colonel. Shaking, Bobby lifted his middle finger and shot the ghost a bird, wondering if the universal hand signal for “Screw you” had been in vogue in the 1860s.

  Vernon Ray waited in the thicket, peering through the binoculars.

  “What’s he doing?” Bobby asked.

  “Darn. Better duck.”

  The soldiers, without speaking, had turned their attention toward Bobby, some of them raising their rifles. Bobby wondered if the ghostly musket balls and minis had any power in the real world, and decided despite his bravado about not growing up, he was in no rush to get killed.

  For one thing, he still had a few gaps in his Spiderman collection to fill, and for another, he was going to kiss Karen Greene before the eighth grade was over. And one more notion ran under the others: if he died, then maybe his ghost would be stuck on Mulatto Mountain, too, conscripted to an endless darkness with the cold company of Colonel Creep’s Raiders.

  He dodged behind a massive gnarled oak just as thunder erupted. Lead balls ripped though the leaves over his head, answering his question about the reality of ghost bullets. The soldiers scattered and headed up the slope toward him, their feet making no noise as they passed over the carpet of dead, dry leaves.

  Bobby cupped his hands and yelled. “What now, Ghostbuster?”

  “Run for it,” Verno
n Ray said.

  “Which way?”

  “Both.”

  “Great plan.” Another volley sounded, and Bobby peered around the oak to check the positions of the approaching soldiers. Two stood in the clearing by the cave, smoke rising from their rifles. One was reloading.

  Good thing they’re using breech loaders instead of semiautomatics, or I’d be Swiss cheese.

  Donnie finally looked up, though Bobby couldn’t make out his expression, and the colonel drew his sword from its dull brass scabbard and pointed it toward Bobby in another universal “Screw you” signal.

  So much for Vernon Ray’s plan of “Divide and conquer.” Time for Plan B: Get the hell out of Dodge.

  Bobby broke from cover and scrambled across the ridge, the protruding granite boulders giving him cover. He wondered if the sheriff’s deputy had known he was shooting at ghosts yesterday. Since cops were trained to be good shots, it probably proved that ghosts couldn’t be killed. On the other hand, ghosts seemed not only able and willing to kill the living, but took the mission pretty seriously. After all, Kirk’s Raiders had spent a century and a half stewing on their resentments.

  An explosion of powder sounded. Something pinged off a nearby boulder, throwing rock chips in the air.

  Bobby stayed low and kept running, dancing between rocks and trees the way he dodged tacklers on the gridiron, the camera bouncing off his rib cage, the dying green smell of autumn forest mixed with the rot of loam. Another shot echoed through the trees. He wondered if Vernon Ray had enough sense to run away, then realized they were almost recreating yesterday’s chase, only this time it was dead soldiers and not the law that was after them.

  Breathing hard, he reached the highest point of the ridge, where storm-sheared hickory trees stood in jagged brown lines. A low branch thwacked him across the cheek, nearly knocking him off his feet. He rubbed the stinging flesh and hurried onward. He was about to descend the slope, figuring to curl around the rocky promontory and wait for Vernon Ray at the bottom of the mountain, when he heard a loud, low rumble.

  Too loud for rifles.

  Cannon? A hundred snare drums?

  He slowed and squinted at the sky. Cloudy, but not dark enough for thunder.

  Bobby found a rocky, rain-cut gully and scooted down it, sliding in the black mud. The mechanical chugging grew louder. The gulley opened onto a clearing of cut trees and an open, level gash of brown soil.

  Two dump trucks and a logging truck were parked along one edge of a rough dirt road, and a bulldozer was parked in the clearing, black smoke rising from its smokestack. Bobby waved his arms and ran toward the man in the baseball cap who was revving the noisy, stinky diesel engine.

  The man didn’t see Bobby at first, and Bobby climbed onto the dozer’s thick steel tread. He grabbed the dozer operator’s shirt and the man spun in surprise, nearly knocking Bobby from the bulldozer. “What?” the man shouted.

  “Ghosts,” Bobby said, knowing it sounded like a bratty prank, but too shocked to tell anything but the simplest truth.

  “Go?” the man yelled.

  “They got somebody,” Bobby said, pointing toward the ridge.

  The man’s face was blotched and his eyes bloodshot. His breath smelled of beer and onions. His eyebrows furrowed in anger and he yanked down the throttle, quieting the engine to a deep throb. “What you talking about?”

  “They got my friend.”

  “Who got him?”

  “Ghosts. From the Jangling Hole.”

  The man’s face scrunched again, but he must have seen the fear and panic in Bobby’s eyes. “Who are you?”

  Bobby was again too shaken to lie. “Bobby Eldreth.”

  “The plumber’s kid?”

  Bobby nodded.

  “What you doing out here? Don’t you know this is private land?”

  “We came to see the ghosts.”

  “That’s just stories they make up for kids on Halloween.”

  “I saw them. And they’re taking away the Eggers boy. They’re taking him into the Hole.”

  The man fidgeted with the throttle. “You been smoking something?”

  “No, sir. You got to help.”

  “I don’t know what you seen. But the Eggers boy ain’t got enough letters in his soup bowl to spell ‘C-A-T,’ much less wander this far from home. I got work to do.”

  “Please.”

  The man’s mouth twisted in a “Hell with it” mime then he shut the engine down. The diesel engine chugged, chuffed, and died, acrid exhaust hanging in the air. Bobby hopped off the dozer and waited for the man to climb down.

  Bobby turned and found the soldiers had tracked him down. Or maybe they’d simply materialized in the clearing.

  Because this is their mountain and they don’t like trespassers.

  They circled Bobby and the bulldozer operator, their rifles leveled. They were close enough that Bobby could see the tarnished insignia on their uniforms and the moth holes in their filthy jackets.

  “What in God’s name?” the man whispered.

  “Like I said.”

  “It’s them dress-up boys for Stoneman’s.”

  The man stepped toward the closest soldier, who sighted down his barrel and thumbed back the flintlock.

  “I think they want you to stop,” Bobby said.

  “No way,” he said, continuing. “Nobody points a gun at me and gets away with it. Even if it’s a pretend gun.”

  The soldier pulled the trigger and the flintlock struck, igniting the powder charge and propelling a lead ball into the man’s face. Bone crunched and a red spray jumped from the back of the man’s head, his cap flying off from the blow. A few drops of blood hit Bobby, and he saw other soldiers were aiming their weapons.

  The bulldozer operator’s head, which had snapped backward on impact, now lolled forward as his knees collapsed. He flopped face-first as if making a snow angel in the mud of the road bed.

  Bobby put his hands over his eyes, figuring the next volley would rip him to shreds, expecting his life to flash before his eyes. But all he saw was Karen Greene and his sneering dad and Vernon Ray’s Bambi eyes and a scene from Shrek where Donkey first realizes he can fly. Some life. He listened for the click of a trigger, wondering if he would die before he heard the shot.

  He wondered how his dad would take it, and whether Will would sell his comic collection. Would Karen cry? He was wondering about the photos on his camera–maybe a little fame after his death–when he realized he’d been wondering for too many seconds.

  What’s taking so long?

  He uncovered one eye and blinked.

  Nothing.

  The soldiers were gone.

  The man from the bulldozer lay on his belly, a pool of thick red spreading from his shattered skull.

  After a minute, the birds began chirping again in the high treetops.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Come give me a hand, squirt,” Elmer said, knocking on the door to his sons’ room.

  The Schlitz 40s had clubbed his head but good and the last thing he needed was little Bobby adding to the headache. Sunday afternoons were for sitting on the couch and watching NASCAR, but Vernell had ragged him so hard about Dolly’s Dollhouse that he’d promised to fix the leaking sewer pipe under the trailer.

  It wasn’t like he’d even copped a feel, and the closest dancer to his table was a used-up warhorse whose tits drooped like cold balloons. He could have sworn that when she clamped her thighs around the brass pole and spun, dust had floated into the air and her skin had chafed like rusty brakes. So even if he didn’t feel any particular need to make amends for that sin, he’d rather wallow in shit under the trailer than put up with shit inside the house.

  The space beneath the trailer was only three feet high, and while Elmer could slither through the septic mud and find the leak, he needed Bobby to fetch the proper lengths of pipe, carry tools, and do all the wriggling in and out.

  Elmer pounded on the door harder. He wasn’t surprised Je
rrell was nowhere around, because Jerrell had a job and his own wheels and was banging babes all over town. His real son, a real man. While Bobby, the bastard blonde, was probably polishing the old bone to pictures of those big-titted superbabes in the comic books.

  Could be worse, could be a flaming fag like Jeff’s boy.

  His face broke into a triumphant grin. Jeff could kick his ass in bowling, boss him around in the Civil War games, and draw twice the income, but when it came to raising them right, Elmer had the heating-and-AC man beat all to hell.

  Elmer gave the door one more hard blow with the bottom fist. “Bobby, get your ass out here.”

  He tried the door handle. Locked. Elmer could shove the flimsy door in, but then Vernell would give him shit about that, too, and he’d spend the rest of the evening replacing it, and the money would come out of his beer kitty.

  Elmer went down the hall and through the living room, where Vernell sat on a sofa drying her fingernail polish. Elmer never understood how a woman could fix on one thing and block out everything else in the world. When Vernell dried her fingernails, that was all she did. If some corporation could figure out how to channel that empty happiness on her face, then preachers, barkeeps, and shrinks would all go out of business.

  “Where’s Bobby?” she asked, as if she’d missed the tom-tom job he’d done on the bedroom door.

  “Little idiot didn’t answer,” Elmer said.

  “Stubborn,” she said. “Gets it from your side of the family.”

  Elmer ducked his head back in the door, but didn’t catch her face in time to see if she was jerking him around. Pushing the little secret in his face. If he had the damned money to spare, he’d send the cuckold-spawn for DNA testing and then Vernell could bounce her ass out onto the street and start walking. “At least my side can cook.”

  “He might have sneaked off with Vernon Ray,” she offered.

  “Well, he didn’t come through the house.”

  “Maybe he got up before we did. You was snoring so loud an elephant parade could have wandered down the hall without us knowing.”