by Ronald Kelly
The visitor said nothing. He simply stood there in the shadows and stared at the elderly shopkeeper.
Edwin frowned. He took a couple of steps forward, peering into the gloom. The fellow was tall and broad-shouldered, and was clad in an Army dress uniform. It had been years since Edwin had seen anyone decked out in military duds, particularly in Harmony.
“Uh, do I know you?” he asked.
The soldier nodded. “Yes,” he said in a hauntingly familiar voice. “But not as well as I would have liked.”
Edwin felt a jolt of cold dread shoot through him. He reached out and held onto a wire rack of potato chips to steady himself. “Who are you?” he asked hoarsely.
Slowly, the man stepped out of the shadows, into the dim glow of the counter light. His face was strong and tanned, his eyes clover green, and his dark hair was shaved close to the scalp in a military crew cut.
Edwin sharply sucked in a breath and took a stumbling step backward. “No!” he said, shaking his head.
“It’s me, Papa,” said the visitor. He walked toward the old man, holding his cap in his huge hands. “Your son, Aaron.”
Edwin felt the strength drain from his legs. His heart began to race as the impossibility of what was taking place sank into his sluggish mind. “But it can’t be! You’re… oh, dear God in heaven, you’re dead!”
“It was a mistake, Papa,” explained Aaron Hill, that familiar country boy grin splitting his ruddy face. “They thought I was dead, but I wasn’t. Somebody else got mistaken for me. I was captured by the Viet Cong and held prisoner all these years. I just now got home.”
The elderly man struggled with what he was being told, attempting to judge whether it was fact or fiction. “But if that’s what happened, why wasn’t I told? Why wasn’t I notified by someone?”
“I made them promise not to,” said Aaron approaching his father. “I wanted it to be a surprise, Papa.”
Edwin didn’t quite know what to say. He felt his heart begin to settle down as hope began to conquer the horrible loss he had experienced for over forty years. To call the sudden resurrection of his only son a surprise was a gross understatement.
“It’s a miracle,” he muttered. Dazed, he let go of the chip rack and started toward his son.
“Yes, it is,” said Aaron. The strapping soldier dropped his cap on the floor and raised his arms. “Papa – “ he faltered, his eyes brimming with tears.
A joy unlike any Edwin hill had ever felt filled the old man. Tears of happiness bloomed in his own eyes as the distance between the two closed and, soon, they were in each other’s arms. Edwin closed his eyes, thankful that he one he was embracing was solid. He wasn’t a ghost or a figment of Edwin’s inebriated imagination, that was for sure.
“I love you, Papa,” sobbed Aaron, nestling his face against the old man’s starched white shirt.
A pang of soulful relief swelled in Edwin’s age-weakened heart. “Oh, I love you, too, son,” he moaned, hugging the big man closer. “I’ve always loved you.”
Aaron Hill clutched his father tightly and nodded silently. The gesture told the elderly man that his son had known that all along, even though he had never actually came right out and said so.
The blissful reunion lasted a few moments more. Then it abruptly went horribly wrong.
Edwin felt a dampness soak through the material of his shirt. At first, he thought it was merely his son’s happy tears. Then the dankness grew heavier and warmer. Moisture trickled across the old man’s shoulder, soaking the shirt all the way down his back to the waistband of his britches.
“What in tarnation – ?” he asked, pulling away. As he did so, he glanced down at the floor and saw a thick pool of stark red blood forming around his and Aaron’s feet.
Edwin’s heartbeat began to quicken again. Although he didn’t want to, he knew he had to look into his son’s face and see what the nature of the bleeding might be. Slowly, he raised his head and stared at the things he had been fooled into believing was his son.
Most of Aaron’s face was gone, as if having been blown away by the concussion of an enemy mortar. All that remained above his neck was a jagged fragment of jawbone, topped by a slender slice of face on the left side. Only one of the boy’s eyes remained intact and it stared sightlessly at him, dull and totally devoid of life. Tatters of torn flesh clung loosely to the splintered bone, while jagged shards of dark shrapnel protruded from amid the gleaming viscera, an ugly reminder of just how hellish war could truly be.
Edwin screamed and stumbled backward, his face growing pale with shock. “No!” he wailed, witnessing the horrible devastation that Aaron’s sealed casket had concealed during that funeral service so very long ago.
The dead soldier walked toward him, arms outstretched. “I love you,” the thing rasped, blood bubbling thickly in its windpipe. The jawbone moved sluggishly with each word, expelling a couple of loose teeth from their cracked sockets. The teeth dropped to the floor and crackled across the hardwood boards. One landed on the toe of Edwin’s patent leather shoe.
“Stay away!” screamed Edwin, feeling his left arm begin to throb with each jerk of his rising pulse. “Stay the hell away from me!”
“But… I love you!” pleaded the headless corpse, anxious for another embrace. A much more lasting embrace. “I love you, Papa!”
Edwin Hill took a couple more steps toward the back of the store, then succumbed to a burst of agony that totally engulfed the left side of his body. His arm and shoulder grew rigid and he dropped to the floor, hitting hard on his ancient knees. Edwin attempted to regulate his breathing and calm down, but the hideous apparition that approached him made it impossible to do so. He fell to his side, clutching his left arm tight enough to draw blood beneath the sleeve. His heart thundered crazily beneath his breastbone, gaining in speed, refusing to slow down. It felt as though someone were attempting to batter their way through the wall of his chest with a sledge hammer, from the inside out.
The elderly man closed his eyes, grimacing as bolts of debilitating pain coursed through every inch of his ninety-eight-year-old body. He lay there, breathing raggedly for a moment, hoping that the awful specter of his slaughtered son would fade away. But it didn’t. Past the roaring in his ears, Edwin could hear the sound of footsteps draw closer, until they finally stopped no more than a yard away from where he lay.
He expected the thing to speak again, to tell him that it loved him in that gurgling, blood-engorged voice. Instead, a snickering laugh filled his ears. A laugh full of contempt and sadistic pleasure. The laugh of someone who truly enjoyed the agony Edwin was experiencing.
Edwin opened his eyes, expecting to see the crisp uniform pants and shiny black shoes of the headless soldier. Instead, he saw only black trousers and mud-encrusted work boots with heavy rubber soles and rawhide laces. With great effort, the old man craned his neck, turning his face upward.
Standing over him was a tall, lanky man wearing a black t-shirt with dancing skeletons across the front, a black frockcoat, and a dusty top hat. Edwin stared into the man’s leering face. It was a different face from the one he had known ninety years ago; disturbingly similar, but not precisely the same. The glint of evil was there, however, gleaming deep from within those dark, smiling eyes. The same sparkle of sheer wickedness that had glared back at them from the seat of a medicine show wagon one windy autumn night an eternity ago.
“You!” he managed to croak, his jaw trembling. “It is you, isn’t it?”
Augustus Leech simply smiled down at him, his eyes twinkling with sick amusement. “I couldn’t come back to Harmony without visiting my old friend Edwin,” he said. “So, how have you been doing all these years? Have you thought of me often or did you stash me away in that dark closet you call a conscience, along with all your other skeletons?”
Edwin could only gape at the man, caught between the agony that gripped him and the mortification of having Leech – or a startling incarnation of him – standing only a few feet away.
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“Speaking of skeletons, how did you like ol’ Aaron?” he asked with a sly grin. “A real hoot, wasn’t he? That was how he looked when the medics found him in that rice paddy at Khe Sanh, you know. His head all burst open like that. Looked like a rotten melon left out in the hot sun.”
“No,” groaned Edwin feebly.
“Oh, yes, dear fellow,” insisted Leech. “And another thing. He hated you. He utterly despised you from the day he was born until the day those gooks blew his head off. Even if you would have told him that you loved him, he would have spat in your face. Your only son loathed you, Edwin Hill. He cursed the earth you walked on.”
Hot tears spilled from the old man’s eyes as another explosion of agony wracked his chest. Slowly, he reached for his shirt pocket. But when his fingers dipped inside, he found that it was empty.
Leech hunkered down beside him and laughed. “Is this what you’re looking for?” he asked, holding a prescription vial between his thumb and forefinger. It was Edwin’s heart medicine.
Edwin’s mouth worked wordlessly, like a fish smothering in the open air. He reached out with a trembling hand, but the man in the stovepipe hat held it mere inches from his fingers.
“You know, I would be more than happy to give this to you, Edwin,” he said teasingly. “But I’m afraid you’ve been a naughty boy. You were intending to tell your friend Jasper about what took place all those years ago down in that backwoods hollow.” His dark brows arched in amusement. “What do you folks call it? Hell Hollow? How appropriate. In fact, much more appropriate than you could ever imagine.”
“My medicine,” whispered Edwin, feeling darkness begin to close around him. “Please.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Leech, sticking the plastic vial into his coat pocket. “You see, you simply must be punished for allowing your conscience be your guide, instead of your spineless fears. Believe me, under different circumstances I would have no objection to your telling Mr. McLeod everything; how you chased me down, ran me over the edge of that hollow, and then shot me down in cold blood. But if you were to do that, the element of surprise would be totally lost. He would undoubtedly alert the good citizens of Harmony and, before long, all my plans would be futile. They would likely band together and treat me in the same rude manner you and those vigilantes treated me.”
“Your plans?” croaked Edwin. “What the hell have you come back for?”
“You expect me to say ‘vengeance’, don’t you?” countered Leech. “Revenge for that night long ago. Well, I must admit, that does play a significant part in the scheme of things. But my motivation is much more complex than that, I’m afraid. You see, I’m doing this for the sheer joy of it. Just for fun. That’s all.”
“And that’s why you murdered those people ninety years ago?” asked the storekeeper. “Because it gave you pleasure?”
“See… you understand me much better than you thought,” he replied. He moved in closer, until his face was no more than a few inches from Edwin’s. “Did you really think I was satisfied by poisoning only a dozen adults and children? If so, you are sorely mistaken. I wanted you all. Every last soul in Harmony. I’d done it before, you know. Stricken entire communities with the help of my infamous elixir; poured that dark potion down their gullible throats and inflicted countless agonies upon both their bodies and minds. Before they died, they begged for mercy and, when it failed to come, they turned their backs on God. They cursed His name… as I intended they do. That made it much more easy. For the Master to step in and claim what was rightfully his.”
“The Master?” asked Edwin.
A malicious smile curled across Leech’s whiskered face. “I believe we both know who I’m referring to.” The tall man pulled a pocket watch from his breast pocket – a watch bearing the face of a leering devil on its ornate lid – and appraised the time. “Well, I must be running along. It was nice chatting with you, but I do have much to do in preparation. I wouldn’t want to disappoint the good folks of Harmony. I wouldn’t want them to think that I have forgotten this hospitable village after all these years.”
Edwin Hill suddenly got an inkling of what the man’s sinister intentions might be. “Damn you to hell, you son of a bitch!” he growled weakly.
Augustus Leech turned as he was walking toward the front door. “I recollect promising you the same thing once,” he said. “And, take it from me… I always keep my promises.”
After Leech had departed, Edwin laid in the darkness, the pain in his chest waning until only a dull numbness remained. He knew that he must get to a phone and call Jasper; warn him about the disaster to come. But he was helpless to do so. Every ounce of strength and willpower had been wrung from his body by his chaotic heart.
All he could do was lay there on the hard boards of the floor and allow darkness to claim him, just as Doctor Leech would claim the souls of Harmony, both for his own wicked pleasure and for the benefit of the one he so loyally served.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
Bright and early the next morning, Keith and the others met on the front porch of Chuck Adkins’ house.
The city boy hopped off Blue Fury when he reached the driveway and pushed the bike the rest of the way across the dewy grass of the yard. Rusty, Chuck, and Maggie had already congregated around the porch swing, talking excitedly.
“What’s happening, dudes?” Keith asked, although he already knew what had them wound up.
Rusty grinned as his cousin climbed the porch steps. “Yeah, like you have to ask! Well, did it happen for you, too?”
Keith recalled the night on the rainy streets of a crime-ridden city. He could almost smell the salt air of the waterfront, as well as feel the heaviness of the .45 automatic cradled beneath his armpit. He couldn’t help but smile to himself. “Yeah, it did. Just like that guy in the hollow promised.”
“See? Didn’t I tell you?” said Maggie, bouncing on the seat of the hardwood swing so forcefully that she sent it swaying back and forth. “Those cards were for real. They were some kind of magic!”
“Now hold on for a minute,” said Keith, sitting down in a ladder-backed rocking chair and propping his feet on the ledge of a porch post. “The jury’s still out on this mumbo-jumbo stuff, at least in my opinion. Could be we just dreamed what we did because we secretly wanted to. Those cards Doctor Leech gave us just stirred up our imaginations, that’s all.”
“Aw, I should’ve known you’d still be a doubting Thomas, even after it panned out,” said Chuck, irritated at the city boy’s skepticism. “I don’t know about you, but my dream was just as real as if I’d actually been there. It wasn’t just some stupid dream like I usually have. I could even smell and feel in this one.” He remembered how the right side of his head had been a little sore when he awoke that morning, in the same exact spot where the Mauser bullet had glanced off his combat helmet in the dream.
“Mine was like that, too,” said Maggie. “I can still smell the sawdust and cotton candy.”
“And I can still taste that buttermilk, too,” proclaimed Rusty.
Chuck cut amused eyes his way. “Buttermilk?”
“Never mind,” said Rusty. “The point is, these dreams were so blamed real, it wasn’t like we were dreaming at all. It was like we were really there, in the flesh. Shoot, I woke up with my lips as dry as a cicada husk from riding through that desert half the night.”
“You guys are warped to the max!” snorted Keith. “It wasn’t that real!”
“Don’t lie to us, Keith,” said Maggie, looking upset. “Tell us about your dream. After you remember it all, I bet you’ll change your mind.”
Keith raised his Ray-Bans until they were perched on the top of his head. “Swear you won’t laugh?”
“Scout’s honor,” said Rusty, raising his hand in the classic salute.
Keith proceeded to tell them about his journey to a city of tall skyscrapers, bustling streets, and an undercurrent of crime and corruption. He told them of his role as a hard-nosed police detectiv
e in search of the elusive Big Man, as well as his encounter with Lester the Stoolie and his gunfight with the two gangsters. As he laid out every detail of his dream, Keith couldn’t help but feel as though part of him was still there, continuing to live out the day to day routine of Detective Bishop.
After he was finished, the other three took turns describing their dreams. Rusty told of his life as a U.S. marshal and his gunfight in the Canton City saloon. Maggie recounted her experience as a world-famous high wire acrobat, the star attraction for Circus Magnificent and the idol of thousands of spectators. Chuck told them of his mission behind enemy lines in the role of Sergeant Adkins, as well as his raid on the German machine gun nest with the help of the unstoppable Warchair.
“Admit it, Keith,” said Chuck after he had finished. “It was pretty real, wasn’t it? I mean, have you ever had a dream like that before? One with that much clarity and detail?”
“No, I can’t say that I have,” agreed the boy.
“Then you’re willing to eat crow and admit that those cards Leech gave us were for real?” asked Maggie.
Keith shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Well, shit fire and save matches!” said Rusty. “I can’t believe he actually admitted he was wrong. Better call Time Magazine. They’ll want to save their cover for this one!”
“Aw, bite me!” snapped Keith, sliding his shades back over his eyes with a nod of his head. “I’m big enough to admit when I am wrong.”
“Yeah, after we finally convinced you,” said Chuck. He looked over at Rusty. “Man, you’ve got one stubborn cousin there.”
“Don’t I know it,” said the farm boy.
“I heard it was a McLeod trait,” said Keith with a sly grin. “Like sleeping under the porch with the hound dogs or wiping your butt with dried corn cobs instead of toilet paper.”
“I suggest you shut your mouth up right quick, if you don’t want me to wipe your butt with the toe of my shoe,” snapped his cousin.
