Keech pondered. “The curse must have led you down a different tunnel.”
“What’d you do then?” Nat asked.
“I got lost,” Cutter said. “I couldn’t see my own hands.”
“We must’ve wandered the cave a good hour,” Duck said. “You were in the dark the whole time?”
Cutter nodded. “Sometimes I heard noises and tried to track them. I think I even heard y’all at one point.”
“You should’ve called out.”
“I did for a spell, but then I heard a rumble. That shut me up.”
“The bear?” Duck asked.
“Yep. You know what happened next, I reckon.”
Keech had been keeping his eyes focused on the path. He saw something at the edge of the trail and stopped. He stepped closer. A few of the weeds had been bent. “Looks like someone’s been ahead of us. We must be on the right trail.”
They marched onward. After a sharp turn west, Keech called another halt as the fox trail slipped into a dense thicket. He dropped to one knee, searching for more evidence of passage, but there wasn’t even a hint of a broken stalk. Perhaps the secret traveler had realized his mistake with the weeds and squirreled the rest of his movement.
“We have to be careful,” Keech told the others. “Watch for an ambush.”
Soon the fox trail bent back to the north and the forest opened into a large field, a meadow of tall broomsedge that spread for hundreds of yards. In the distance, the land dropped steeply downhill. Keech studied the sky over the meadow. The crows had disappeared, but he could feel their presence the way a fella could feel a headache behind his eyes.
The gang moved with caution through the meadow. When they came to where the landscape dropped, they stopped and beheld the sight below with astonishment. The valley at the bottom was surrounded on three sides by a steep bluff carved out of grayish white stone, a trinity of high walls that resembled marble or—
“Bone,” Keech whispered to himself. “Beware the high ridge made of bone.”
The shape of the lowlands had a curved look as if formed by the shoe of God’s own horse, a divot stamped into the surrounding woodlands. Nestled inside the valley was a ghost town, a sprawling settlement overtaken by time and decay. The town looked as large as Big Timber, and yet not a single living thing stirred upon its streets.
Duck peeled off her hat. “Ain’t that a lonely sight!”
The tall wooden wheel of a gristmill was visible at the ruin’s western end, but where the waterwheel would have dipped into a stream, there was nothing but dried-up bedrock, encroached on by desolate forest. All around the town’s borders, Keech saw only thick hems of black locust trees, and realized with dismay that the forest engulfed the entire bowl of the valley, obscuring everything else past the settlement.
A gristmill. A waterless brook. He couldn’t shake the sudden feeling that he had seen such a village before. But then again, there were many settlements that looked exactly like it: dried up and discarded.
“I wonder what happened down there,” Cutter said.
“I reckon the Withers drove them out,” Keech said.
“The Withers?”
“As it was told, Bone Ridge was the graveyard where they buried the victims of a wasting disease called the Withers. They say the disease killed so many folks, the graveyard stretches on for miles.”
“Sounds like a bunch of nonsense,” Cutter said.
Nat turned to Keech. “Daylight’s burning. We should move.”
* * *
By the time they reached the ruins, the sky had faded to a deep purple. Full dark and a hunter’s moon would be upon them soon. At the village outskirts, there was no welcoming signboard, but there was a sign at the approach to the settlement’s main road, a miserably crooked placard that said POLK STREET.
As the gang shuffled up the old street, they regarded the devastation around them with a hushed reverence. From all appearances, the town had been a respectable outpost in its day, but many of its structures had either burned or collapsed. Weeds clogged the filthy alleyways, and the wooden sidewalks had long ago surrendered to the broomsedge that cluttered the valley floor.
Nat pointed to the town’s livery stable, one of the few buildings still intact on Polk Street. “We’ll hole up in there,” he said. “No one could see a campfire behind the main wall.”
A cold feeling of déjà vu swept over Keech when he saw the old stable.
“We could set a watch,” John Wesley said, his voice raspy. “I’ll sit first.”
“You’re still blue as a fish,” Cutter told the boy. “I’ll take first watch.”
“A couple hours’ rest wouldn’t hurt,” John Wesley conceded. “And it sure would be nice if we could eat something.”
As the gang settled into the stable, Keech searched around the street for some kind of food. He longed for Cutter’s pemmican, but the meat had run off with the horses. He settled for a heavy patch of blue chicory, still in its bloom, growing in one of the town’s wild alleys. After inspecting the plants and finding them healthy, he brought back a heaping handful. The group nibbled silently on the greens and petals.
“A bunch of weeds ain’t really what I had in mind,” John Wesley grumbled, but he scarfed down his portion all the same.
After the meal, Keech and Duck struck out across the ruins to gather firewood as Cutter kept watch over Polk Street. Nat stayed back at the livery stable to fashion John Wesley a dry straw bed.
Every stick and branch Keech collected was dark with moisture from the recent rains, but Duck boasted that Nat could get a fire burning even when the wind was high and the day was stormy.
“Maybe we can burn this,” she added, kicking at a large brown sign wedged in the mud in the middle of Polk Street.
Keech looked at the sign and felt his mouth go dry. It was the signboard that should have been standing at the town’s outskirts, but the valley’s high winds must have blown it up Polk Street. The message painted across the cracked wood read:
YOU HAVE ENNERED
THE VILLEGE OF SNOW
NO PICK POCKETS OR HORSE THIEVERS!
Keech dropped his firewood. “I’ve seen that sign before.” In a dream, he almost added, but the déjà vu was far too strong for him to believe it had merely come from fantasy.
He turned to Duck. “Tell your brother I’ll be a little longer coming back. I have something to check out.”
Duck scowled. “Keech Blackwood, you’re gonna get yourself in trouble.”
“I’ll be back in a flash.”
“Where in tarnation are you headed?”
“West of town, to have a peek at the woods past that old gristmill.”
“Don’t you dare go in those woods!” Duck warned. “You might get trapped again.”
Keech looked up and down the ravaged avenue. “I don’t think that’s gonna happen. I think Snow is part of a route we’re meant to investigate. Call it a hunch.”
* * *
Keeping to the shadows, Keech moved to the western edge of town, where Snow’s lonesome gristmill house stood upon a high foundation of stone.
He approached slowly and touched one of the paddles of the waterwheel. Flashes of Pa Abner’s face, younger, struck him as he did.
Keech looked beyond the millhouse and scanned the dense forest of ugly black locust trees that made a veritable wall around the town’s boundary. The trees were gnarled and bent, leaning back toward the house and the dried-up stream. Much like the trees on the other side of the Floodwood mountain, he couldn’t see ten feet beyond their wrinkled, thorny trunks.
Images of a path behind the mill flashed through his mind, more a feeling than a clear picture.
“West, past the millhouse,” Keech murmured aloud. “Has to be.”
He descended the dry riverbank, stepped across the barren stream bed, and pushed into the forest. Somewhere in the dark, a slew of wild dogs barked and bayed at the hunter’s moon. It was a desolate sound, full of omen, but he kept m
oving.
Bone Ridge Cemetery was close. Keech could feel a chilling menace creep upon him like the night itself. The feeling grew stronger when the land dipped like a washbowl and pitched him unexpectedly downhill. There was no choice but to pick up speed. Keech raced to the bottom of the short slope, unsure whether to feel panic or exhilaration. He ran through branches and moonlight; he ran through fear and fury. He slowed when he felt his boots scurry over flush earth. He tossed a quick glance behind him, but the old millhouse with its giant wheel was no longer visible.
He expected to see more thick woods ahead of him, an impossible wall of forest. Instead, the gnarled trees parted slightly to reveal a single, slender footpath.
At the end of the trail stood a black gate, at least fifteen feet high.
Keech’s heart pounded as he gazed at the entrance to Bone Ridge, the graveyard Pa Abner had called the Sullied Place.
The gate was made of twisted iron, its intricate bars coiled like strangling vines, converging at the top with dull spearhead points. The gate stood open, but only enough to allow a man to squeeze past, as if the last visitor had slipped out in a hurry and forgotten to seal the way. Beyond the gate, the broomsedge was so tall Keech couldn’t make out where the tombstones began.
A thick stone wall surrounded the graveyard, at least ten feet high on each side of the gate. The top of the wall was crumbled in places. Broken fieldstone littered the ground, as if a giant fist had tried to smash the wall in rage. All around the great partition—north, south, east, and west, from all appearances—stood a rugged, gnarled barricade of black locust trees, leaning toward the stone as though ravenous to enter the Bone Ridge yard.
Keech noticed a rusted metal sign hanging crooked from one of the spearheads. The sign simply read:
EXĪTE
The word meant nothing to him, but it still caused a strange, gray feeling to creep over him, like he had seen the word somewhere before.
“It’s Latin.”
The voice made him jump. Keech spun to face the footpath. Duck stood at the base of the hill. She held a makeshift torch made from an old broom handle.
“Duck! You scared the hair off me.”
The girl crossed the footpath. “I had a feeling you were gonna explore. I just couldn’t leave you to wander about unprotected.”
“It’s dangerous out here.”
“Exactly. You oughta have your neck wrung for wandering about alone.”
Keech smirked. “You sound like my Granny Nell.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. Where’d you get that torch?”
“Nat had started a fire. I used some burlap wraps to hold the flame. I told Nat you was still out finding wood. Lucky for you he’s distracted by John Wesley or he’d be out here scolding you.”
Keech shrugged, then pointed to the rusted sign. “What does that mean?”
Duck shone her torchlight on it. “Back in the Middle Ages, folks who lost family to the Black Death would scrawl that word over the doorways of the dead as a warning.” She gave Keech a dismal look. “It means ‘Get out.’”
Heavy clouds rolled over the full moon, leaving no illumination at the moment other than Duck’s yellow torch flame. Keech examined the sky, but the firelight blinded him. If the crows were flying overhead, they were impossible to see. Frowning, he put a hand on Duck’s shoulder.
“This is the place. Bone Ridge. Go round up the others, bring them straight here. If John Wesley’s too weak, tell him to stay and rest. Tell them the Char Stone is here.”
Duck winced at the mention of the Stone. “I’m scared to find it, Keech. Our fathers went out of their way to hide it, and we’re gonna go dig it up? That seems unwise.”
Her words sparked a memory of Tommy Claymore, back in the Swift Hollow glade. The Stone is life, the thrall had said. If resurrected fiends like Bad Whiskey Nelson were the product of the Char Stone’s magic, then there indeed was much to be frightened of. He could hardly imagine what dark purposes the Reverend Rose planned for the Stone.
“Our fathers wanted to protect it,” Keech said. “We have to dig it up to keep it out of Bad Whiskey’s hands. Besides, the Reverend Rose knows it’s here. We can’t just leave it. We have no choice. Now go fetch the others.”
After she crossed to the base of the hill, Duck paused to look at him. Torchlight shone upon her small face, and Keech caught a glimpse of the real Duck. Not the ten-year-old child Nat wanted to shield, but the fierce, dauntless individual who had been raised by an Enforcer.
Then she headed up the hill and left Keech, once again, alone.
Shuddering, he stood before the tall rusted gate. The clouds parted, liberating the red hues of the hunter’s moon. He gazed at the sign in Latin—Get out.
Steeling himself, Keech entered Bone Ridge, where the victims of the Withers awaited.
CHAPTER 24
THE REUNION
The sheer size of the old boneyard astounded him. Hundreds of grave markers spread across a vast land of hills and gorges, most of which lay covered in broomsedge. Everywhere Keech looked, his eyes fell upon a gray stone slab, or a wooden tablet, or a cross formed with dry sticks and old twine—markers interrupted only by the occasional statue of a cloaked woman or an angel with stony wings unfurled.
Beware the high ridge made of bone, he thought glumly. All those who enter turn to stone.
A smell of ancient rot simmered across the graves, as if the stink of the Withers was too heavy for the wind to sweep off. Perhaps the plague had lingered. All over the boneyard, shovels and pickaxes littered the ground, giving Keech the impression that family members and loved ones had fled quickly from the place.
Mindful of his flanks, Keech stepped away from the gate and deep into the chaotic rows of graves. He read the names and dates written across a few of the headstones. The death year was the same for all of them—1832, the year of the outbreak. His stomach churned at the thought of so many people perishing at the same time.
Still reading headstones, Keech stumbled over a patch of weedy, sunken graves. He staggered back when he realized where he was standing. It was terrible luck to walk on someone’s resting place.
He held his breath, as the superstition called for, but then he noticed a name on one of the tombstones he had trampled and loosed a gasp. Keech eased closer to inspect the stone and realized his stroke of bad luck couldn’t be worse.
The etching on the granite read:
ABRAHAM NELL
Loving Provider
1794–1832
The grave he’d just walked across belonged to Granny Nell’s husband.
On top of deeply offending Mr. Abraham, Keech couldn’t begin to think about the punishment Granny would have inflicted, had she been alive to find out. There would be dishes to clean, shutters to whitewash, floors to mop. A host of horrible chores for days on end, all for upsetting poor Mr. Abraham’s eternal rest.
Then Keech’s eyes dropped to the inscription below Mr. Abraham’s name and death date—a message engraved downward and sideways to bear the shape of a cross. The tombstone instructed:
WATCH
THERE
FORE
FOR YE KNOW NOT WHAT HOUR
YOUR
LORD
DOTH
COME
A tremor of recognition rocked Keech in his boots.
He was looking at Matthew 24:42, the fourth set of numbers in Pa Abner’s telegram.
Closing his eyes, Keech let his memory drift back to his first reading of the letter. He visualized the ride with Sam to Big Timber, the conversation at Copperhead Rock. Although he had never been great with memorization—that had been Sam’s talent—he found that he was able to recall each letter, each number, the way Pa Abner had written it:
N E
39 3:1.
52 5:2.
26 7:25.
40 24:42.
A C
He and Sam had figured the code was a warning, a signal to Nat and Duck’s father. A war
ning that never would have reached Noah Embry anyway, considering he’d been killed back in September by Big Ben, another member of the Gita-Skog.
But if the code was supposed to be a warning, why engrave the Scripture from Matthew 24:42 on Abraham Nell’s tombstone?
“I’ve missed something,” Keech whispered. “Help me find the answer, Pa.”
His eyes still closed, he moved his mind back to the hour before the ride to Big Timber, when he and Pa had talked in the study. He saw the silver charm in Pa’s hand, the narrow lock on the oak chest. He saw the charm slide into the keyhole, and heard the click of the ancient lock. He saw the letter in Pa’s hands, sealed shut with scarlet wax.
Realization struck Keech like a fist to the gut.
The letter was never intended to be a warning. It had been sealed and locked away long before Bad Whiskey had shown up. Years before.
“Which means we never broke the code, not the way it was intended,” Keech said, his pulse rushing again.
What was Pa’s old proverb? If you look hard enough, you might find two ways to look at a thing.
A door opened in Keech’s mind and a new answer stepped over the threshold. Perhaps the letter was not a warning, but a set of coordinates, a direct path to the Char Stone. Perhaps each of the other Scriptures belonged to engravings on three other graves.
No sooner did the revelation come than a whisper floated to Keech’s ears, softer than a touch of silk.
“Hello, son.”
Keech spun on one boot heel, his hands clenching into fists. What he saw made him lose his balance. He tumbled backward onto his rump, right on top of Abraham Nell’s grave. His palms sank into loose dirt, but he barely noticed.
Pa Abner stood before him, back from the dead.
Keech choked back a cry as the figure lurched forward and the details of his face emerged in the moonlight. Pa Abner looked like a monster, his thick gray beard marbled with dried blood, his eyes clouded white. His face held the same color of death Keech had seen on Bad Whiskey’s ghouls back at the Home.
That one-eyed murderer had turned Pa into a thrall.
Legends of the Lost Causes Page 20
