Heaven's Crooked Finger

by Hank Early

  “Are you sure about the date?”

  “Yeah. I memorized it.”

  “Thanks. I’m going to try to track down some of McCauley’s family and see if anyone recognizes the tattoo.”

  “There’s still something I need to tell you,” she said. “But again, if Shaw finds out I’ve been helping you . . .”

  “I get it. Don’t worry. If I have it my way, I’ll never speak to Shaw again, much less do anything that could hurt you with him.”

  She reached out and took my hand. “I know you wouldn’t.”

  “So what is it?” I asked.

  “You know how I said Shaw wanted me to work on old cases? Well, I spent the afternoon going through the files, and I found the perfect one. But when I took it to him, Shaw put the hammer down and quick.”

  “Which one was that?”

  She gave me a wicked little smile. “Allison DeWalt’s daughter, Jenny.”

  “Hot damn. What did you find?”

  She shook her head. “Very little. Patty and Wyatt DeWalt filed a report, but Allison never did, which meant it was an easy one to overlook. In fact, there’s no evidence in the file that anyone looked into it at all.”

  “Jesus. This whole county serves my father’s goddamned church.”

  “I’m beginning to think you’re right. When I took the file into Shaw’s office and told him I wanted to work on it, he tossed it in the trash.”

  “Christ. Hank Shaw is in this mess shoulder deep.”

  “Yeah, and get this—after he threw the file away, I went back and found another case.”

  “And?”

  “It was another missing girl. Her name was Millie Turner. All that was in the file was a report from the school about truancy and a report detailing an interview with her parents. I took that file into Shaw’s office. He looked it over and then told me no.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Said that one had already been solved. She ran off with her boyfriend.”

  “Doesn’t exactly sound solved.”

  “No. That’s what I thought too. Something else, though. I didn’t exactly follow Shaw’s directions on that one. I dug a little deeper. Looked up info on her family. They’ve been going to the Holy Flame for years.”

  “You think she left because of the church? Because of some threat of . . . whatever Baylee and Allison experienced?”

  “That’s exactly what I think. And if it’s true, if the church and the sheriff are in cahoots, what can we do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, it’s just you and me. Maybe we’re in over our heads.”

  I squeezed her hand. “Not true. We’ve also got Rufus.”

  She laughed softly. “The blind guy. Okay. That’s a comfort.”

  “Don’t forget Granny.”

  That made her laugh even more.

  “Hey, that woman would go to war for you.”

  “And you.”

  I nodded. “She’s already done it once.”

  Mary put her head on my shoulder. “I can see why.”

  It felt nice to be out in the night air, to feel Mary’s head on my shoulder, her hand wrapped tightly in mine. But it couldn’t happen. I’d already decided that much.

  “Mary . . .” I said.

  “Shut up. Don’t ruin the moment. We can talk about how you want to be alone another time. Right now, just close your damned mouth and enjoy this moment.”

  So I did.

  35

  The next morning, I met Crawford Middleton at his home in nearby Riley.

  He was waiting for me in the driveway wearing short pants, hiking boots, and thick knee-high athletic socks. Over each shoulder he’d slung a canteen. He passed one to me.

  “Jessamine thinks I’m meeting one of my hiking groups. She wouldn’t be happy if she knew I was taking you, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t ask you in.”

  “I understand,” I said. “Her policy is to stay out of Marcus affairs.”

  “That’s right. Says she’s lived here long enough to know better. I think she’s just getting a little paranoid.”

  “You ever been to the Holy Flame, Mr. Middleton?”

  “Nah. I don’t buy all that religious stuff, myself. No offense.”

  “None taken, but if you had ever been inside the church and seen one of my daddy’s services, you might appreciate your wife’s wisdom in such matters.”

  We drove over to Long Finger Mountain and parked on the side of the road near an old portable toilet somebody had abandoned a long time ago.

  “You up for this?” he said as I climbed out of his truck.

  “Sure. Why not.”

  “It’s a pretty stiff hike.”

  “I can handle it.” Or at least I hoped I could. I worked out regularly in North Carolina, but most of my running was on level ground. It had been a long time since I’d really done any serious mountains. But I figured if an old guy like Crawford could handle it, I’d better be able to.

  We’d only gone half a mile when I asked him to sit down for a rest.

  We sat on a large, flat stone on the side of the trail, if you could even call it a trail. It seemed almost as if we’d been randomly trekking through the woods. If he was following a path, I hadn’t yet seen it. Then I looked back down the mountain and saw the trail snaking through the trees and leveling off back down in the field of kudzu. It was definitely the same one that ran by the shack.

  It was all I needed. The hand belonged to McCauley. It had to. And he’d been on his way to see my father—or at least where he thought my father was—when he’d been killed.

  “Must be weird,” Crawford said.

  “What?”

  “Me taking you up to the place where I saw him. I mean, you probably think I’m crazy.”

  “I think I’m crazy too. You’re in good company.”

  He looked around, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he almost looked nervous, unsure of himself. “Maybe I didn’t see him.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, maybe it was just somebody else.”

  I shrugged. “I’d say it probably was, but why the change of heart? You seemed so sure the other day.”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t want to see you upset for no reason.”

  “I’m a big boy. How much farther?”

  He looked around at the dark trees, trying to judge. “Oh, we’re close enough as the crow flies, but unfortunately we’ll have to wind our way around hell and back to get there. Another two miles of walking, at least. I’ll know more when we get out from these trees and I can see better.”

  I lay back and closed my eyes, remembering the previous night’s gentle moment with Mary. A few short weeks ago, I wouldn’t have believed a moment like that could have been in my future. Even now, I was more than trepidatious about the small portion of intimacy we were beginning to share.

  “You ready?” Crawford said. “We don’t get a move on, we’ll risk losing the light on the way back.”

  “What? I thought you said it was only a couple more miles?”

  “That’s right, but the last mile is a doozy.”

  He helped me to my feet, and I was damned glad nobody else was around to see this old man absolutely wearing my ass out.

  * * *

  He hadn’t been lying about the last mile. As we covered it, he must have asked me six or seven times if I wanted to turn back. I swear he either was trying to dig at how out of shape I was or had just decided we were wasting our time. All the enthusiasm seemed to have drained right out of him.

  We emerged from the trees onto a steep rocky incline. It was grueling work, but despite his change in attitude, Crawford never faltered.

  When we finally crested the rise, I thought I glimpsed something to my left. It looked like a person, but when I turned my head for a better look, there was no one there. I wrote it off as another random Daddy sighting. My imagination. Or the snake venom still playing havoc with my brain.

&n
bsp; “All right,” Crawford said after a little bit. “See that rock formation?”

  How could I miss it? There were several gigantic shelves of granite laid on top of each other in cascading layers of varying shades of gray and tan. Most of the shelves were smooth and tan colored, but there was one jagged rock at the very top, giving the entire formation the vague semblance of a head wearing a rusted crown. There was a dark crevice between the two largest rocks, like the entrance to a cave.

  I recognized it from the photo McCauley had sent me. Daddy had been standing right in front of the crevice.

  “He was standing right there. Right in front of that little hole. See it there? Follow the brown rock at the top all the way down.”

  I nodded, too stunned to speak.

  “He was just standing there, looking sick as a dog, but he was alive.”

  “Right,” I said, finding my voice. “And what happened? Tell me again.”

  “He stepped back inside that hole when I saw him. Nobody else in my group saw it, so I couldn’t convince anyone to investigate. But I saw him, by God.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go in.”

  “I don’t know about that,” he said. “Those kinds of crevices ain’t always safe. Maybe we should turn back.”

  I ignored him and trudged on up. I hadn’t come this far to just take a look and go back. I wanted to investigate.

  When I looked back, he was following me, albeit reluctantly.

  We covered the last twenty yards to the opening of the crevice. As I neared, I saw the opening was deeper than it first appeared and was more of a tunnel leading off for some unknown distance.

  I pulled out the penlight I kept on my key chain and turned it on.

  “You coming?”

  “No, sir,” Crawford said. “I think I’ll wait out here. Like I said, it ain’t safe. I’d advise against you going in yourself.” His face looked strained, and for a second, I believed he was suffering a stroke, but then it cleared and he looked away.

  I shrugged. “Okay. I’ll be out in a minute or two.”

  “Be careful.”

  I nodded and walked inside, holding the penlight out in front of me.

  These were the moments that frightened me. Ronnie Thrash and his buddies were little more than chaff blown in the wind. This dark corridor, though, was something else.

  Upon entering, I immediately detected a smell. It was pine and clove and something more elusive, something like oil. It smelled like the old church. Like Daddy. I was no more than a few steps inside before I stopped to take a deep breath. To consider.

  I had to go on. There was no other option. I moved slowly, cautiously, one hand on the cool wall, the other hand holding the penlight. I followed its illumination deeper into the mountain, all the while aware the distance back to the entrance increased with each tentative step I took.

  The corridor was very narrow for a while, but eventually it seemed to widen out. I couldn’t see much with the penlight, just plain rock all around me. I half-expected to see some ominous graffiti etched in blood against the white stone. But there was nothing. Except the smell of Daddy.

  Eventually I became aware of two things: there was light somewhere far ahead of me, and somewhere behind me was the sound of what I believed to be footsteps.

  “Glad you decided to join me,” I called. “Keep on coming.” I held the penlight up. “Follow the light. And speaking of light, I see some more up ahead.” I tried to sound confident, but in truth I was frightened by the sound of the steps.

  The footsteps stopped at the sound of my voice. Maybe I’d just imagined them?

  Then I heard them a second time. Except now they were quicker, louder. And there was no doubt they were footsteps. Heavy. Close.

  “Crawford?”

  The steps continued. I heard breathing too and then tight-lipped laughter.

  I reached for my 9mm with my free hand. I shone the penlight into the darkness with my other hand.

  “I’ve got a gun,” I said.

  The laughter came again. I waved the light around, trying to see who it was, but all I saw were stone walls in every direction.

  The footsteps stopped.

  I decided I’d move toward the light that I’d seen in the distance. At least there, I could see who I was up against.

  I walked backward, not easy when you know your surroundings, damned hard in a dark, curvy tunnel, but I didn’t dare turn my back on the footsteps behind me.

  They came closer. More breathing. An actual grunt. I resisted the urge to just turn tail and run toward the light. But it would be unavoidable soon. Moving backward was slowing me down. My pursuer was gaining by leaps and bounds.

  I stopped again.

  “I’m going to shoot,” I said, trying to sound like I meant business even if I had my doubts about the futility of trying to fire inside a winding passage like this one.

  The footsteps fell silent.

  Someone exhaled softly. Whoever was following me was very close now, maybe just a few yards away.

  I raised the 9mm. “I’m warning you. Identify yourself or I’ll shoot.”

  The only sound was the low, pinched laugh.

  My finger twitched on the trigger. I knew a shot in this narrow tunnel would likely kill or maim whoever was following me or hit solid rock and ricochet back toward me. Not to mention what it might do to my ears. I decided to keep moving. If my pursuer came much closer, I’d be able to see his face. And the light had to be coming soon.

  I inched backward again.

  It felt like he was within a few yards. I began to move faster, trying to reach the light, which I could now feel on my neck and shoulders.

  In my haste, I stumbled. I landed hard on my back and dropped the 9mm. It slid across the rocks and out of the tunnel. I tried to turn over and scramble after it, but that was when someone jumped on me and shoved my face into the ground.

  I felt the barrel of a gun pointed at my head.

  A voice whispered in my ear, “I got a gun too, Earl. Now we’re going to do what I should have done a long time ago.”

  I turned to see my attacker and wasn’t at all surprised to see Choirboy on top of me, grinning. I was amazed to discover I felt relieved. Relieved it wasn’t Daddy or Lester.

  “Get up, Earl. Let me show you the legacy you missed out on.”

  He pulled me up and led me out into the blinding sun. I tried to locate my gun, but I couldn’t do anything but squint my eyes against the bright light.

  “Look around you,” he said.

  I blinked again and tried to open my eyes. What I saw made me do a double take. We seemed to be inside some kind of walled temple. All around us was smooth rock that rose anywhere from ten to twenty feet in the air. We stood in the middle of a circle, facing a crude stone altar consisting of a flat slab of rock laid across two large boulders. On the rock wall behind it, someone had hung a cross made out of deadwood. No fewer than three cottonmouths moved listlessly about in the sun.

  “I know he was here because I love him more than anyone else. I followed him to this spot so many times. I knew about the prayers he gave the snakes he kept up here. Ain’t that something? I knew about this, and his own boy didn’t.” He smiled at me and cocked his head to one side. “Now I get to do what your daddy never could do because he was so purehearted.”

  “And what’s that, Chester?”

  “I get to send you to hell.”

  I nodded.

  “You followed us? How did you know?”

  “God has been speaking to me, Earl. He’s told me you are a virus come home to infect us all. Now walk over there with that snake. That one there, the one near the altar.” He leveled the gun at me.

  I eased over to the snake, trying to locate my own gun. I saw it as I neared the suspiciously languorous creature. It was at least fifteen yards away. He’d put three bullets in me before I reached it. I turned my attention to the snake. I’d have to survive it.

  Somehow.

  A
n idea came to me, but it had very little chance of working. Still, I knew I had to try.

  “Closer,” he said. “I’m going to want you to pick it up.”

  I had a feeling that was coming, and as badly as I didn’t want to do that, I also believed it was my best chance for survival. After all, if Daddy had spent time with these snakes, they would be inured to humans. At least that was what I hoped.

  “You’re not even going to give me a chance to repent?” I said.

  “Your daddy said it was too late for you.”

  “My daddy, huh?”

  “That’s right. He speaks to God.”

  “What, God opened up the sky? Showed him a picture? What?”

  “He speaks. Your daddy listens. I done told you that.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “I think somebody is using you, Chester.”

  He jabbed the gun in my direction. “You’re a fool. Ain’t nobody using me but God above. Now pick it up, Earl. We’re going to put your life in the hands of God now. He spared you once, and all you did was spit in his face. You got hell coming now. Go on.”

  I turned and regarded the cottonmouth. It barely acknowledged my presence. I bent down, reaching both hands out. It turned an eye on me, an uncurious, nonchalant eye.

  I knew when it struck there would be no warning.

  I thought of Daddy, up in front of the church. I saw him sweating from his hairline all the way down to his round chin. I saw him holding the cottonmouth, the same one that had bitten me. As a kid, that had been the snake I feared the most because Daddy had picked it out for me, promised me to it, the way some fathers promise their daughters to future spouses. Daddy always grabbed it up without a care or thought, no single instant when you could see any sign of hesitation or doubt. Took it and caressed it, which always gave me a chill. He loved that snake because it was an evil so tangible, you could feel it. He loved that snake because it made his God, so frequently hidden from the senses of man, a real thing. A powerful thing. And the more powerful his God was, the more powerful my father was, the less he cared about consequences. And therein lay my father’s strength, his ability to do so well what so many other men would not even attempt.