Mystery Dance: Three Novels

by Scott Nicholson

  Julia put her hands over her face. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Walter grabbed her wrist and pulled one of her hands away from her face. “Listen here, damn it. I don’t know what I got myself into. I just might be heading for a bullet, for all I know. I walked through hell to drag you away from the devil and now we’re driving into who knows what. Don’t tell me I won’t understand.”

  Julia tried to look away from him, to the rolling hills, pastures dotted with barns, and stretches of woods that surrounded them. But she couldn’t escape the magnetism of his anger. She gathered air to speak.

  “They took the ring,” she managed to say.

  “Ring? You make it sound like some kind of elf quest or something.”

  “They gave me to Satan,” Julia said, finally shattering, her tears erupting. But the panic quickly faded, became something new, transmuted into a calm, cleansing anger like lead changed into gold by a philosopher’s stone. “My father gave me to the Creeps so they could cut me up as a blood sacrifice and have a party with my body. At least, I think that’s what happened.”

  It was Walter’s turn to look away.

  “My father disappeared that same night,” Julia continued, before Walter joined those who judged her a hopeless head case. “The police never solved the case. My injuries went on the record as trauma from trying to climb out my broken bedroom window. I spent the next ten years in foster care, going from home to home, trying to forget anything had ever happened. I got lucky for a teenaged foster kid, was adopted by a kind, well-to-do couple. They died in a car crash when I was nineteen, but left me enough money to finish college and not have to struggle to make ends meet.”

  Julia was surprised at herself because the story was falling out so easily. It had taken two years to tell Lance Danner that much about her past. Dr. Forrest had elicited such detail in a few months. Walter had drawn it out of her in two minutes, even after she’d promised herself not to tell him.

  “Maybe you’d better drive on,” Julia said.

  Walter nodded, seeming grateful at having something to divert his attention. He put the Jeep in gear and continued down the dirt road. The vehicle smelled of grease and gum, foam spilling from splits in the vinyl seats, the windshield grimy with bug guts.

  “I’d met Mitchell Austin during my freshman year, during a summer house party at my adoptive parents’ country club,” she said, realizing that refined world was totally different from Walter’s rural, working life. “I know, boring old coots who play croquet and drink, it sounds more like a prison sentence than a vacation. But Mitchell was–”

  She searched for the right word, fumbled over “pleasant,” “trustworthy,” and then found the most accurate one. “Reliable. He comforted me when my new parents were killed. He kept in touch while I finished college at Memphis State, and then asked me to marry him. That was about the time I started having my…little problems.”

  “Problems,” Walter said. Not questioning, but not judging, either.

  “Sleeplessness. Irritability. Forgetfulness. Fatigue alternating with periods of manic activity. Then it got worse. I broke out in a cold sweat when I was in cramped quarters or surrounded in a crowd. I’d have episodes of anxiety, when my heart rate doubled and my ears rang and I was afraid I’d never be able to take another breath.”

  Julia actually laughed. After all the give-and-take, the careful baiting, the strategic questioning of psychotherapy, she’d forgotten what it was like to just talk to somebody. Somebody real. She had so little left to lose that she had embraced this different kind of surrender.

  “Panic disorder,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the road. “Sort of like freaking out?”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “My wife started having that. Before she–”

  His wife. Who had walked off the face of the Earth one night, just as Julia’s father had done.

  Julia was going to ask about his wife, despite the sadness in his eyes, when Walter whipped the Jeep to the right. A police car was coming up the road toward them, silent but with its bar lights flashing.

  “Damn,” Walter said. “They’ve cut us off.”

  He steered the Jeep into an open hayfield. The Jeep bounced over the rugged terrain, Julia holding on, tools rattling in the back. She looked through the rear window and saw that the police car had stopped at the edge of the road.

  “Thank God they don’t have four-wheel drive,” said Walter.

  “Do you think the whole department’s in on it?”

  He shrugged, heading for a copse of trees on the far side of the meadow. “Doesn’t matter. Snead can put out an APB and get his people out in force.”

  They drove into the trees, and the police car was out of sight. The Jeep climbed a steep grade and, for one stomach-grabbing moment, Julia thought it was going to flip over. Then they crested the hill and reached the stream they had crossed minutes earlier, only now it was wider, the current slower.

  “They’ve probably blocked the highway,” Walter said. “But they don’t know the back country like I do. Hang on, and say a prayer or two if you know any.”

  He steered the Jeep into the water and headed upstream. The wheels fought over the damp rocks, but the water was only a few inches deep. “I learned this from Clint Eastwood,” Walter said with mock seriousness. “Except he used a horse.”

  “You’ll have to work on your wounded squint.”

  Walter flashed her a bad-guy glare that actually made her giggle, a crack in the stress that had a manic quality to it.

  “Gee, I really must be crazy,” Julia said. “Here we are, being chased by who-knows-how-many Creeps and cops, and you’re making goofy faces.”

  “It’s normal to be crazy,” Walter said. “If you’re not crazy, something’s wrong with you.”

  They drove about two hundred yards up the streambed until they came to a bridge. Walter veered onto the low bank. The highway was clear, and Walter gunned the engine, accelerating toward the east.

  “Where are we going now?” Julia asked.

  “Well, I think we can take our chances once we get out of Snead’s jurisdiction. He might trump up a resisting arrest charge or something, but I’d bet he won’t push it too far.”

  “You don’t know how badly he wants me.”

  “I’m starting to get an idea.”

  “Snead was a detective in Memphis. He worked my father’s disappearance. He was also in charge of several mutilation cases that were never solved. There was evidence of ritual activity.”

  “You mean Satan murders?”

  “You said it, I didn’t. A guy I work with at the Courier-Times thinks it’s happening here, too.”

  “That body they found in the river last week?”

  “Yeah. And what about that girl you said Hartley killed?”

  Walter’s hands were white from clenching the steering wheel. “There’s something I didn’t tell you. Something I’ve never told anybody.”

  Secrets. The asphalt hummed by underneath the Jeep. A few farmhouses stood off the road, with weathered barns and rusty tractor equipment.

  “My wife was pregnant when she disappeared.”

  “I’m sorry,” Julia said, realizing others had guessed the secret. “That must have been awful.”

  Walter rubbed at his eyes with one of his scarred hands. “I guess I should be over it by now. It’s been seven years.”

  Julia gently touched his arm. “You can’t escape the past. It lives inside you. You just have to let it out and make it harmless.”

  Jeez, now you’re starting to sound like Dr. Forrest yourself.

  Walter nodded as if he’d barely heard her. “The bones under your house…do you think those were human bones?”

  “If Hartley was into ritual sacrifices, he might have done it more than once. I don’t know how many times these Creeps think they have to please their idiotic Dark Master.”

  A pickup truck was in the oncoming lane, driven by a man in a green bas
eball cap. He waved as he passed. A goat was in the truck bed, chewing on the rope that tethered it to the tailgate. Julia stared at its curved horns, at the ragged beard and black eyes, until the truck went around the bend and out of sight.

  “We’re out of town limits now,” Walter said. “I guess they’ve probably got my house under surveillance, too. But I bet they don’t know that my cousin owns a piece of the mountains over this way.”

  “Do you think we’re safe?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not even sure what we’re running from.”

  Julia thought that Mitchell would have lied just then. Mitchell would have jutted his chin out and said, “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll take care of you.”

  Yeah, he tried to take care of me, all right. With his fists.

  They went three more miles down the winding road and came to a small gas station. Walter parked behind the building so the Jeep couldn’t be seen from the road. “I’ll put in a call to the sheriff’s office,” he said. “We should be able to tell pretty fast whether Snead’s got to them yet.”

  “The pay phone’s out front,” Julia said. “More people know you here. I’m just a nobody. Let me make the call.”

  Walter opened his mouth as if about to protest, and then nodded. “If you see anything strange, get back here quick.”

  “That’s what I had in mind,” she said, shouldering her purse. She climbed out of the Jeep, her leg muscles sore from tension. She walked stiffly to the pay phone, studying the flaking antique signs nailed to the front of the store. A man in overalls came out, nodded at her, and went back inside. Only one car was parked by the pumps, a big Chevy from the days when gas was cheap.

  Julia flipped through the phone book, glad that the pages hadn’t been ripped out. She found the listing, pushed coins into the slot, and dialed the number. A woman who sounded like she’d been awakened from a nap answered the phone. “Sheriff’s.”

  “Hello,” Julia said. “I’d like…I need to report some bones.”

  “Bones? Did you say ‘bones’?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What kind of bones?” The woman yawned.

  “I think they’re human.”

  “This ain’t one of them high school kids, is it? ‘Cause you’re going to go through this big long to-do and then I’m going to go, ‘So where is these bones?’ and then I bet you’re gonna go, ‘In the graveyard’ and then you’re gonna laugh like it was the funniest thing that ever was thought up.”

  “This isn’t a joke,” Julia said.

  “Sure, it ain’t. Okay, I’ll fall for it. Where is these bones?”

  “Under my house.”

  The woman laughed. “Under your house?”

  Julia chewed her thumb. The man in coveralls came to the window of the store and stared at her. “I’m Julia Stone and I live at–”

  “Stone? You’re the whore Judas Stone?”

  “What?” Invisible fingers clutched at her throat.

  “He owns you, whore, so give him what’s his.”

  Julia let the phone drop. She leaned against the phone box, her brain swimming and her chest tight with sudden panic. This was a big one, the inky tidal wave, the ocean roller coaster, the earthquake chasm beneath her feet.

  He owns you.

  The words raced through her head, in the dispatcher’s voice, in the low rumble she’d heard outside her window last night, in the menacing voice on the night of her Black Mass.

  Take this whore Judas Stone.

  She felt light, displaced, again outside herself, gasping for air.

  Run to the Jeep. Get out of here.

  Except–

  No matter where you go, you take it all with you. It’s part of you. And he OWNS you.

  She tried to relax, to begin the slow countdown from ten. But she couldn’t find ten, she couldn’t make balloons of her fingers, she couldn’t concentrate enough to let her mind stray. Only one person could help her now. She scrambled through her purse for more coins, thumbed down the receiver switch, and fed the phone as she punched up a well-remembered number.

  Dr. Forrest answered before the first ring ended. “Where are you, Julia?”

  “It has me.”

  “Relax, Julia. Breathe.”

  “I can’t.” Her heart was going to either explode or collapse upon itself.

  “You trust me, don’t you?”

  Julia leaned against the wall of the store. A car whisked by on the highway, but she didn’t bother to see if it was the police. “Why was Snead in your office?”

  “You asked him to be there, remember?” Dr. Forrest’s tone switched from concerned to chiding. “You called me last night.”

  “No, you called me.” Even as she said the words, Julia was no longer sure she believed them.

  “Julia, you need help. You need my help.”

  “You lied about the pentagram drawing.”

  “Julia, do you want to be healed?” Dangled like a treat before a scolded puppy.

  Julia hammered her fist against the wall of the store. “Healed of what?”

  “Healed of resisting. Let it out, let it possess you. He owns you, but you’ve been such a very bad girl. So very difficult.”

  Julia’s inhalation froze in her lungs. Numb tears filled her eyes.

  “Julia, we’ve all tried to help you. Lance, Lucius, your father, everyone. That’s all we’ve ever wanted, for you to embrace him. For you to become the whore Judas Stone.”

  Julia couldn’t pull the phone from her ear. In that horrible black moment, she realized that Dr. Forrest owned her just as Lance Danner had. All wanting her to remember that night. All making the monster real.

  “Julia?”

  “Yes.” The word hissed from her lips in a slow leak of air and soul.

  “Where are you now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We want to help you. He loves you, Julia.”

  “Julia?”

  That last voice hadn’t come from the phone. “Walter?”

  He ran to her, grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “Shhh. Just relax. It’s okay. They can’t get you here.”

  He took the phone from her hand and placed it on its hook. A door slammed shut. The man in the coveralls peered at them, twisting his mouth sideways. “You folks okay?”

  “Breathe,” Walter whispered. He called to the man, “She’s fine. Just had a dizzy spell.”

  The man nodded as if he didn’t believe them and went back inside.

  “Listen, Julia.” Walter’s face was so close she could feel his breath, could see the hundreds of flecks of brown and green and gold in his eyes. “You’re standing on the clouds, the sun is out, you’re laughing and playing. There’s a soft, golden light shimmering in the sky. You don’t have to be troubled. Open your heart and–”

  “That man–he’s probably calling the cops. He’s in on it. He’s one of them.”

  “Shhh. Look way off, where the mountains meet the sky. Up there where the clouds are. Be a mountain. Even the devil can’t break a mountain.”

  Julia looked at the thick folded clouds that hung over the ridge, and the strong and timeless slopes that fell away into a river valley. They can’t break a mountain. Silly, maybe, but it worked. Maybe Walter sensed she wasn’t ready for a leap of faith, and maybe his sales pitch for Jesus was waiting in the wings, but for now he was an anchor, as solid as his metaphorical mountain.

  When she could finally breathe again, Walter led her around the corner of the store and helped her into the Jeep before climbing into the driver’s seat.

  “He owns me,” Julia said.

  “Satan doesn’t own you.” Walter jammed the Jeep into gear and sped onto the highway, heading for the soft blue mountains ahead. “Not while I’m still alive.”

  As they roared away too slowly to lose the past, Julia wondered if, no matter the route they took, Satan was already the master of all her possible futures.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

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nbsp; The Jeep came to a stop in front of a weathered cabin. The cabin’s two small windows were separated by a gray door. A stone chimney leaned precariously from one end of the structure. The cedar shake roof was covered with moss, and the walls were made of thick, hand-hewn logs.

  The climb into the mountains had been a blur. All Julia remembered was the vehicle bouncing and roaring as Walter climbed into the hills, a mad kaleidoscope of autumn leaves overhead, and Walter’s occasionally reaching out to touch her arm. She had imagined hearing sirens and once thought she had seen Snead running between the trees alongside the old logging road.

  Julia looked out of the Jeep at the forest that surrounded the cabin. The dirt track dwindled to a footpath on the ridge behind the cabin. The surrounding mountains were lost in the mist, adding to Julia’s disorientation. The air had grown heavier with an imminent storm.

  “What do you think?” Walter asked.

  “Where are we?”

  “Ten miles past nowhere, at our hunting cabin. Been the family getaway for three generations. I don’t reckon our creepy friends will be able to find us here, at least not before we figure out our next move.”

  “They’d better not follow us,” Julia said. “It looks like we’ve run out of road.”

  “That just means we’re that much harder to find,” Walter said. He got out of the Jeep and came around to the passenger side. Julia was already out of the door before he reached her. She leaned against the Jeep until she was reasonably sure she’d regained her balance. The fresh pine-and-loam aroma of the woods cleared her head.

  “I’m sorry to drag you into this mess,” Julia said.

  “I was in this mess long before you came to town.”

  “I don’t have anything but my purse,” she said. “I don’t know if I can be much help snaring rabbits or whatever you mountain men do for food.”

  Walter laughed softly, as if the surrounding forest relaxed him. “If we get that bad off, there’s a couple of fishing poles inside. Got a few days’ worth of canned goods, too, and a backpack of stuff in the Jeep. Compared to running from the devil, starving to death is the least of our problems.”

  Walter unlocked the door and it swung inward with a groan of hinges. He stepped into the dark cabin while Julia studied the towering hardwoods. Walter emerged after half a minute. “It’s safe,” he said, glancing at the oppressive sky. “Come on in.”