The last member of the committee rose. It was Lon Randolph, owner of the local hardware store for as far back as anyone could remember. He perched his half-moon reading glasses on the edge of his nose and peered at some papers in his hand. He was the sole member of the entertainment subcommittee. In a way, Sam was relieved the mayor’s propensity for selecting the less obvious for some positions didn’t stop at sheriff.
“That company you recommended, Albertson’s Amusements, came back with a quote,” Lon said. “And, well, it’s under our budget.”
“Perfect,” the mayor said. “I knew it would be.”
“Well, sure. But this is a touch bigger setup than we’re used to having. There’s a Ferris wheel, bumper cars, a dozen carny games. Usually we just hire us a few little rides for the kiddies, while the parents attend the donkey judging and such—”
“And this year will be bigger and better,” the mayor said. “By extending the hours and adding some more exciting attractions, we’ll get the young and adventurous buying tickets all night.”
“Well now, I might can see that, but these lions and tigers them fellows have, now they—”
“Are caged and secure, and one hell of a draw,” the mayor interjected. “We’ll beat all previous attendance records.”
“But without them big cats, we wouldn’t need that helicopter, and then—”
“I’ll manage the finances, Lon,” the mayor said. “You just make sure the company gets those rides running by the time we open. Check?”
Lon shrugged and rolled his papers into a tube. “Check, I guess.”
“Spectacular,” the mayor said. “This will be the best Donkey Day ever, an event geared to the next generation. Big things for Moultrie, everyone. Have a great day.”
She exited like a red sirocco before anyone could react.
“Isn’t she a force of nature,” Bentley said.
“That’s one way of putting it,” Sam said. “I had no idea you were in Nashville. I’d have put you up to giving me a few more flying lessons.” Bentley had rented a civilian helicopter once and taken Sam for a ride.
“No offense,” Bentley said. “But the few minutes I put you at the controls were scarier than combat flying. You put the bad guys in jail and I’ll put the machines in the air.”
“I can do that.”
Bentley flashed a mischievous smile. “You know you’re one step above a rent-a-cop, in this one-donkey town.”
“And you’re one step above the Tilt-A-Whirl operator, up in your flying bucket of bolts,” Sam answered. “See you at the fairgrounds.”
“In all my flight-suited glory,” Bentley said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Laura parked in front of Chapman’s. It was the newest restaurant in town, just a shade upscale from chain-restaurant, casual dining. Good lighting, solid tables, steakcentric menu, a waitstaff in traditional white shirts and black pants. Waltersboro was triple Moultrie’s size and could support this kind of place.
As she walked to the front door, Laura second-guessed herself again about this meeting. The whole experience could go ten different ways of wrong.
She entered the restaurant, dyslexia pamphlets, a copy of Luther’s plan and notepad against her chest, a shield of professional education against any unprofessional ideas. The hostess approached her.
“I’m meeting someone,” Laura said. She glanced around the hostess’s shoulders to the half-filled room.
The hostess, a fresh-faced college kid, smiled. “You must be Ms. Locke. This way.”
Laura followed the girl as she race-walked across the restaurant to a round table in the corner. The thick, cushioned bench seat wrapped around the wall in a semicircle. Dalton sat at one end, phone to ear, with a portfolio of charts open on the table. He still wore a charcoal suit, creased with the day’s new wrinkles. He looked up and acknowledged Laura’s approach with an animated arch of his eyebrows and a smile.
Laura just caught him saying, “She’s here, I need to go,” as she got to the table. He hung up his phone, stood and offered his hand. She shook it.
“So glad you made it,” he said. He gestured to the portfolio. “Afraid I brought a little work for myself until you arrived. No rest for the wicked.”
The whole scene put Laura at ease. She wasn’t on a date. She was at a business appointment. She sat down.
A waitress flitted in and took her order for a Diet Coke. She noticed that Dalton already had one. No alcohol. Another good sign. Dalton closed his portfolio and set it aside.
“So, this is the first time anyone has mentioned a dyslexia diagnosis for Luther,” he began. Laura noticed that his tie really brought out the green in his eyes. “Tell me how he perceives the things we see normally.”
“Luther doesn’t process symbols the way we do,” she said. “I can’t tell you what he sees, but with training I can teach him how to see it the way we do.”
“This is a chemical problem?”
“No, it’s kind of a wiring thing. It’s often hereditary. Is there dyslexia in your family?”
“No, but it wouldn’t matter. We’re not biologically related.”
Laura winced at treading into an area more personal than she intended.
“It’s all right. I was Luther’s mother’s second husband. Husband number one had bailed out with no forwarding address and no interest in his child or paying child support. I couldn’t tell you if either side of the family had dyslexia.”
The waitress interrupted to take their order. When she left, Laura flipped open her planner.
“Here’s what would work for Luther,” she said.
Dalton slid around the curved bench seat and up next to Laura. A singular scent came with him, a subtle, fragrant cologne. He leaned in to see the page.
Laura had a slight mental stumble, and then refocused on the page.
“So, positive reinforcement is important,” she said. “I’ll give you a copy of what we’ll be doing each week, and you can follow up with practice at home.”
“Absolutely,” Dalton said.
They went through Laura’s plan, side by side. Dinner arrived and they talked through eating it. She learned that Luther’s mother died of a sudden heart attack, apparently some congenital defect had gone unnoticed. She felt for Luther. Considering that tragedy and Luther’s disability, it was no wonder the boy had behavioral problems at his previous school.
By evening’s end, she’d shared quite a bit with Dalton: her teaching history, her short tenure in Moultrie, and to her great surprise, her friendship. The depression that had reappeared after her fruitless call to Child Services lifted.
During the drive home, she basked in a kind of calm reverie, the afterglow of a connection she hadn’t experienced in a while. She and Dalton shared the common goal of doing what was best for Luther, but there was a more subtle connection, not overtly sexual, though he had handsome in spades. It was something deeper…
She gave her head a shake, like it was an Etch A Sketch that needed clearing. What was she, fifteen discovering boys for the first time? It had just been so long since anything like this had happened, since she’d felt…
Another head shake. A little focus on the road, she thought. She flipped on the radio and selected a news station. She wondered what was wrong with her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Laura turned the car off US 41 before she realized what she had done. She passed under the Galaxy Farm sign and parked where she had a hundred times before. The car’s headlights played down the gentle slope to the edge of the pond. She flipped them off, rolled down the windows and turned off the engine.
The radio cut off. The chirp of crickets surrounded her. The slightly stagnant smell of the pond rolled in, a smell she had first despised, then grown fond of as she associated it with sharing time with her spirit companions. To her left, the presence of the missing grand old house remained, as if the air had yet to expand and fill the void the vanished structure left behind.
She
didn’t know why she was here. Again. Her last visit on the first day at Moultrie Elementary had been a semiconscious decision. This time it was like she woke up and here she was, back where her whole Tennessee journey began.
Maybe she needed to get centered, to sort out the conflicting emotions the dinner with Dalton had inspired. She definitely felt like she needed to clear her head. Despite having passed on the alcohol tonight, she still felt a bit fuzzy.
The hairs on the back of her neck tingled. Her old Triple S spun up to speed and her heart skipped a beat.
“The girls!” She whispered it, as if a louder noise might break the fragile spell she felt being cast.
She stepped out of the car. Nothing stirred within the ruined foundation of the house. She scanned the water’s edge where she’d walked with the twin spirits. Empty. A psychic tug pulled her right, towards the barn.
She gripped the edge of the car’s roof. She hadn’t been in the barn since she almost died there. Getting out alive meant not having to go back inside.
Goose bumps crawled up her arms. She couldn’t hear it, but she could feel the call. A summons, no, a plea.
Perhaps it wasn’t the girls’ spirits returning, perhaps it was their mother, Sarah. She was the one who had traversed the crossing to save Laura’s life, and again to bring her girls home. Whoever it was, their call was reassuring, not threatening.
Laura went to the barn and grabbed the door handle. There was no need to lock it. Nothing inside warranted safeguarding, and the location’s reputation kept most people away. She pulled open the door and flicked on the light.
The police had stripped most of it clean as evidence, and she’d made no effort to have any of it returned. The bathtub was gone, the taxidermy tools. Scattered dry leaves littered the floor.
The traps were still here. The boxy cages designed for small mammals sat stacked in a corner. The heavy-duty ones, the circular, spring-loaded leg traps, hung several feet up on the wall. The closed, serrated steel edges looked like shut mechanical mouths. She was certain these were no longer legal. She wished the police had taken them along with the bathtub.
This barn was marked by death. The neighbor, Vern Pugh, probably died here. Laura watched Sheriff Mears die here. She watched her husband die here. That might be in dispute, since he was possessed by a demonic spirit at the time. But she had seen him one last time. In that split second between the demon’s fire disappearing from his eyes and the arrival of death’s glassy stare, her Doug had returned.
She thought about that fleeting look in his eyes and understood it for the first time, a mixture of horror and penitence. Doug hadn’t known what was on the other side of the door he opened, until the demon walked through and took him over. How could he?
She shook off the sentimental vision. Where was all this coming from? Does one meal with a man trigger all this?
The presence that drew her here was gone. She was certain it was Sarah. It no doubt took great energy to pierce the barrier between these realities, a much harder task without the draw of her children on this side. Laura appreciated Sarah’s efforts to do as much as she did.
Laura checked her watch. It was so late, and she needed to be at school tomorrow. She wondered what she was doing out here anyway. She walked out and rolled the door shut. She resolved to put a lock on it this weekend. In the daylight.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mädchen sat on her haunches on the Lees’ back porch. Coyotes howled in the distance, their mournful cries echoed in the night air. The German shepherd understood their calls for companionship, their voices crying out for the comfort of the pack. The beckoning wails stirred collective memories, instinctive responses to bound out into the darkness and run with her distant cousins.
But she had a pack here, the Lees, and a farm to patrol. The night was when intruders came. Foxes. Raccoons. Possums. Sometimes even people. Thousands of years of domestication overpowered millennia of instinct. She trotted off to the barn.
Dozens of scents begged for her attention: the chrysanthemums’ sweet floral fragrance, yesterday’s alluring fried chicken in the trash can, the peaty smell of the freshly spread garden compost. But Mädchen had a mission, and her patrol started at the barn.
She could smell the horses as she approached. Earthy. Musky. Calm. Not a drop of adrenaline, and the horses were skittish as hell. She’d seen them bolt at nothing more than a shift in the breeze. She imagined that they lolled in their stalls, content with whatever minor thoughts horses entertained. She made a lap around the barn. No change. She moved on.
The chicken coop reeked of ammonia’s fetid odor. She closed on the long, low white building. Two dozen hens rested inside, silently sleeping atop their roost poles. The Lees took eggs from the coop every morning, and the occasional chicken. The temptation to ravage the coop popped into Mädchen’s head now and again, but her sense of duty always overwhelmed it. She trotted over to the coop.
A new odor drifted in. Smoky. Like a forest fire burning through old, dead brush. Mädchen froze and lifted her snout in the air. She took deep breaths. Another scent was in the air as well, like rotten eggs. Old, rotten eggs.
The horses whinnied. Mädchen’s muscles tensed. She yelped and bolted back to the barn, seventy-five pounds of black-and-saddle Amazon in full defensive mode. She scrambled around the barn perimeter, sniffing for the source of the horse’s fear.
Field mice. Urine. Motor oil. Nothing new on the ground. The smoky smell was almost gone, just a vapor trail of it left in the air.
A horse whinnied again, louder. Hooves struck the sides of a stall like a thunderclap. A noise sounded from above. Mädchen cocked her head. Her ears swiveled to triangulate. There again, above the barn. It sounded like the flap of Mrs. Lee’s long leather coat in the wind.
Mädchen bared her teeth and growled. A dark shape fluttered in the sky above and moved towards the coop. She barked and pursued.
The great shape circled and passed over her. Huge wings flapped like parchment sails and sent down a wave of sickening scents. Sunbaked roadkill. Coppery, dried blood. Char. Sulphur. Hunger. Fury. Mädchen snapped at the dusky creature as it passed. It headed for the hogpen.
Mädchen barked twice to alert the Lees. She charged after the intruder. The hogpen reeked, the mud in the fenced area around the shed all fouled with the hog’s waste. The shed door disappeared for an instant, then reappeared as the creature’s black shadow passed across it. Mädchen leapt the hogpen fence in one great bound. She skidded to a halt in the slick ooze.
The hogs let loose a stream of guttural oinks and high-pitched squeals at the smell of the creature of death outside. The floorboards in the shed rumbled under the pounding hooves of the panicked hogs. Mädchen leapt to a defensive position at the front door. The air grew heavy with the rotten scent of a burned-out wasteland.
Huge talons pierced Mädchen’s back and gripped her spine. She yelped in pain and confusion. The creature lifted her off the ground. She twisted her head, snapped at the beast and caught nothing but air in the darkness. The creature squeezed and shattered Mädchen’s spine. Her back legs went limp. The creature threw her against the side of the shed. Her head hit first and the world went white, then black.
The scream of hogs and the smell of blood roused her moments later. The lower half of her body was numb. Shattered teeth on one side her jaw dug into her inner cheek. Blood pumped into her swelling abdomen and her head swam. She raised her muzzle from the mud of the pen. She looked at the shed.
The door was had been ripped from its hinges. The walls shook as hogs shrieked in pain. Then silence.
Mädchen’s vision blurred then focused. Something stirred in the darkness beyond the shed’s threshold. A misshapen, hairless head peered out, ghostly pale in the wan light. Blood dripped from its jaws. It shook its head and its elongated, pointed ears flapped against its skull. Its bony hand clutched three slick, red hearts.
Its black eyes locked on Mädchen. It smiled like a human, an evil, wic
ked smile that Mädchen knew from mean boys when she was a puppy. Bits of hog flesh speckled its pointy teeth. It crawled through the doorway, dragging its batlike wings behind it. Clear of the hogpen, it stood erect and spread its wings. In two great strides it stood over Mädchen.
A smell oozed from its skin that reminded Mädchen of spent gunpowder and hunting with Mr. Lee. The creature opened its mouth and hissed. It breath stank of blood and offal.
All bravery drained from the injured dog. She whimpered and urine sprayed down her twisted back legs. The creature reached down and clamped its claws around the dog’s neck. The talons pierced her skin like sharpened spear points and closed around her windpipe. Mädchen choked and the world went dark for the last time.
The creature yanked the dog’s head off her body like uncorking a bottle, then tossed it into the blood-soaked hog shed. The creature leapt into the air and with a mighty flap of its wings, disappeared into the enveloping darkness, hearts grasped like trophies.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“That should cover everything,” Mr. Wilcox said. He gathered up the insurance papers from the Mearses’ dining room table. Circular, rimless glasses and a round, bald head gave the middle-aged man a comical Muppet-like look, completely out of character with his somber profession. He slid an unaddressed envelope across the table to a woman in a black turtleneck sweater. The envelope’s embossed return address was for Tennessee Life and Casualty. “This claim should never have taken six months to process.”
Rhonda Mears stared down at the envelope. She could not touch it, certainly could not open it, and absolutely could not deposit the check inside. That would indicate some sort of acceptance, some sort of coming to grips with the fact that her husband was dead.
“The way the state authorities dragged the investigation out,” he continued, “we wondered if we would ever get the final paperwork to close the claim. I mean, we certainly knew your husband was killed in the line of duty. No doubt at all. We just needed the formality of the closed case, you see. Red tape and such.”
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