by Jaye Wells
“Cotton Barrett, what have you done?” The old bat stepped into the street and approached him.
“God-Ah-Mighty, woman, leave me alone.”
He looked down at the pistol again. His fingers itched to pick it up, but then he got distracted by a stain on his jeans. He couldn’t remember where he slept last night, but he had a vague recollection of a bedroom with feather pillows. Either way, the stain on his pants sure looked a lot like blood. Now that he was looking, he realized his shirt was covered, too, and his arms and hands. Had he been butchering a hog?
“We’re gonna need you to come with us,” Deacon Fry said. “We’ll get you cleaned up and then we’re gonna have a nice long chat.”
He shook his head. “Not until you tell me where Rose is.”
Deacon Fry exchanged a look with Cotton’s mother-in-law. Granny Maypearl was the one who answered. “Rose is dead, Cotton. Remember?”
Electricity jolted his brain, like he’d stuck it in a light socket. His body stiffened and twitched as images flashed through his mind. He couldn’t make no sense of them because he kept seeing Rose inside a box.
“But no,” he forced the words out, “she’s alive. He promised.”
Deacon Fry asked slowly, “Who promised?”
Didn’t they know? Why was everyone being so peculiar? “Jack, of course.”
“Cotton,” Deacon Fry said, “Jack’s dead, too.”
Another shock attacked his brain a moment before the world went totally black again.
50
Moon Hollow Interlude
Spring always brought storms to Moon Hollow. When the rain fell, the whole mountain smelled of petrichor and wet pine. A clean spring rain was a baptism, washing away the death of winter so the springtime resurrection could begin. But the rains also brought lightning, which destroyed without remorse. Every Sunday during the stormy season, Deacon Fry preached about how turbulent times could bring unexpected blessings. Not all baptisms happened in water, he’d say. Sometimes fire could renew a soul, too.
The night of the failed Decoration, the sky was bone dry. The lightning came anyway, but not the blessings.
That evening, Ruby sat alone in the chapel. Deacon Fry had ordered her to stay put while he dealt with her daddy and called the sheriff again.
The pew’s edge dug into the backs of her thighs, and the road rash from her run-in with Junior Jessup both stung and throbbed at once. Being in the church brought her no comfort. With the echoes of her father’s screams standing in for the choir and the air all electric with his sins, the chapel felt downright menacing.
She could go. Nothing to stop her, really. She could just stand up, march down that aisle and out the front door. Then she could continue the route she’d been on earlier—the trail to the Promised Land beyond the trees and down the mountain.
Yet something kept her rear end rooted to that pew.
Something her daddy had said when he’d regained consciousness and they dragged him out of the street. “She’s comin’ home. My Rose is comin’ home.”
She couldn’t figure out how that idea got into his head. Oh, she knew he’d been drinking too much. More than too much. But drunk wasn’t the same thing as crazy, and he for damned sure was insane.
Daddy might be an angry man—she knew firsthand he absolutely was capable of violence—but she’d never seen him raise a hand against another man. No, he preferred to assert his dominance over women and children.
Besides, Daddy’s anger always struck like lightning—hot and fast. In order to kill the reverend, he would have had to sneak onto his property, get the shovel from the shed, break into the house, see the sleeping reverend, and make the decision to kill him.
Premeditated—was that the word?
Either way, it was planned, which both confirmed and rejected the insanity theory. But if her daddy really was that far gone, how in the world could he plan the murder out on his own?
The idea that someone might have influenced him banged around in her head for a moment, but she dismissed it. Since Mama’s death, he’d barely talked to his own family, and he’d pretty much avoided most everybody in town. Besides, who in Moon Hollow would want Reverend Peale dead? And, if someone really wanted him dead, why would they choose the town drunk?
No. She was just wishing for someone to blame. Someone who could be punished and whose family could carry the shame instead of Ruby and her sisters.
One thing was for sure, her daddy’s actions had just destroyed any option of leaving Sissy and Jinny in town when she left. She guessed that once the sheriff carted him off to jail, it would only be a matter of days before the town turned on her and the girls. But she couldn’t think about that yet.
The other reason she didn’t run away right that second was Granny’s worry about the Decoration. The old woman knew things beyond normal ken. And, while Daddy was passed out, Deacon Fry and Granny had turned on each other in front of God and everyone.
Granny said they needed to go through with the Decoration but he’d insisted that they could reschedule. As Granny laid out the reasons they needed to go ahead with it, it was clear all the adults were listening to her. Deacon Fry had seen it, too. After he’d ended the discussion and told Granny to go home, Ruby could have sworn the wind picked up and the leaves rustled a warning.
Or maybe, at that moment, Ruby had missed the mountain’s song so keenly, like a bird would miss its wings, that she’d imagined the wind and the leaves to escape the loneliness of her inner silence.
She closed her eyes and clasped her hands together. There, in God’s house, where the only songs ever sung were about sacrifice and blind faith, she bowed her head, as if in prayer. But she was not pleading with Deacon Fry’s God for help. He reminded her too much of her daddy on a bender, all vengeful and hungry to prove his power.
No, the prayer Ruby Barrett sent out was for her old friend Mountain, and Mountain’s children—River, Tree, and Wind. “Please talk to me again. Tell me what to do.”
The air crackled with so much energy that her hair raised on end. A bright flash lit up the blood in her eyelids. A split second later, a massive boom exploded. The entire church vibrated from the power of the lightning bolt and its immediate shout of thunder.
Heart pounding—or was it the echo of the thunder?—Ruby realized Mountain had answered her, but she still couldn’t understand the meaning of its angry song.
The speed limit in Moon Hollow was twenty according to the sign Peter flew by going fifty miles-per-hour.
After Cotton Barrett showed up covered in blood and was taken into the church, Peter had run down the hill and all the way to the cabin. Not an easy feat for a man with such a sedentary occupation, but what he lacked in physical fitness he made up for with motivation. He wanted to get the hell out of town as soon as possible. He’d packed everything the night before, so it was a simple matter to carry everything out to the car. He’d expected to share trunk space with Ruby’s things, but that whole plan had been shot to hell, hadn’t it?
They’d taken her off when they took Cotton into custody. By that point, Peter knew there was no use in trying to sneak her out of town. Even if he could manage to get into the church past the deacons that had been posted in front of each exit, he was no longer willing to get tangled in the mess of Ruby Barrett’s life.
When he’d originally offered to help her leave, it had been fueled by a rare flare up of heroism. He sort of liked the idea of playing knight in shining armor to the damsel in potential distress. But the instant the damsel’s father proved to be an actual murderer, Peter’s heroism had dried up faster than a puddle in the Sahara. It was all too messy, and he had no skin in the game. No responsibility to help; no reason to stay, either.
He paused with his hands on the open trunk and lowered his head. Despite his insistence that none of this was his problem, his conscience had other ideas. If he’d just driven her out of town that morning she’d already be free. Instead, she was locked in the church with no h
ope of parole.
He slammed the trunk. Not his problem. He’d gotten his story. Time to go.
Five minutes later, he sped through the deepening dusk toward town. There were lights on in a few of the buildings, but he didn’t see anyone on Main Street. He imagined them all huddled in their homes whispering about poor Reverend Peale and about how they always knew something was wrong with that Cotton Barrett.
He shook his head and pushed the whole thing out of his mind. In a few minutes, he’d be on the main road and on his way back to civilization. How long had it been since he had a decent internet connection or a cup of proper overpriced coffee like a real citizen of the world? He considered stopping in Big Stone Gap for the night, but rejected the idea. He wanted a lot of miles between him and Moon Hollow before he slept. Didn’t feel safe any closer.
The thought surprised him. Why wouldn’t he feel safe? Cotton was in custody and Reverend Peale’s death, while tragic, didn’t affect Peter beyond the normal pangs of regret one felt upon hearing of an acquaintance’s death. But unsafe? No, that was silly.
On the road beyond town, the trees on either side swayed in a strengthening breeze. He looked up, expecting clouds, but the sky was a clear indigo. Toward the east, the stars were waking up for their evening performance. He never saw many stars in Raleigh, but he wasn’t romantic enough to think he’d miss them when he got back to the city.
The road rose ahead of him, climbing toward the tree tunnel that would eventually lead out to the highway. He rolled down his window and let his elbow hang outside the opening. The night air, though windy, was warm. Through his rearview, the steeple of Christ the Redeemer’s warped spire scraped the sky, and, behind it, Cemetery Hill loomed like a dark secret.
Tempted by the atmosphere, he imagined himself a character in a movie. An indie, of course, about a stranger who’d come to a small mountain town and was leaving wiser than when he’d arrived. In his version of the story, he was leaving a hero. That’s why he preferred fiction to reality—endings were tidy and someone always got to be the hero.
The car finally reached the hill’s apex, where the paved road gave way to gravel and narrowed before snaking into the woods. Somewhere in the town behind him, an ear-splitting crack of thunder and a flash of bright interrupted his peaceful drive. He slammed the brakes and turned to look over his shoulder.
There were still no clouds in the sky. No raindrops fell. But he’d be damned if that hadn’t been the largest bolt of lightning he’d ever seen. A large plume of smoke rose above the spot on the hill where the cemetery stood.
Shaking his head, he turned back and eased his foot on the gas. No one was left on that hill to worry about.
The car continued toward the tunnel of trees. Through the window, the smell of ozone reached his nose. He reached down to turn on the radio for his road trip. The reception was almost nonexistent except for a couple of local AM stations that played non-stop religious programming. The familiar sensation of dangerous solitude overcame him. Just to have some noise to listen to, he left it on a station where a preacher was reading verses from the book of Revelation.
“But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”
Peter laughed out loud. “Ohhh, Lord, kum-bay-a,” he sang.
The car was less than fifty feet from the tunnel of trees. The preacher moved on to a new verse, but before Peter could register the message, a flash of light blinded him. His hands jerked on the steering wheel. The car swerved beneath him. He slammed his foot down to brake. The squealing of the tires was drowned out by a boom of thunder so loud that it echoed in his bones.
Still blind, he screamed, but it was more sensation than sound. The car continued its skid until, all at once, the nose tipped down and slammed into something immovable.
When his vision cleared, blood dripped into his eyes. After he wiped it away, he registered that his fender was planted in a giant crack. Groaning, he wiped the back of his hand across his eyes and touched his forehead. His fingertips encountered the gash that had opened when his forehead connected with the garage door opener to his house—no, Renee’s house— that no longer was good for anything except to cut gashes in his head.
“Fuck!”
Loud hissing interrupted his pity party. Steam billowed out from under the hood, which had crumpled from its impact into the gap in the road—a gap that hadn’t been there thirty seconds earlier. The fractured macadam still smoked from the heat of the lightning’s strike.
His head swam and stars danced in his vision as he groped for the door handle. But the door was trapped shut by rocks and asphalt.
The voice of the preacher cut through his shock. “Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter.”
He snorted more from bitterness than humor. “If I ever make it out of this fucking town, I’ll write whatever you want, God.” With that, he hauled his bruised body out the open window and fell to the ground. The stars overhead mocked him from the clear night sky.
As the thunder echoed outside, Deacon Fry paced in his office. On the sofa, Smythe and Earl Sharps sat on either side of Cotton. The latter bent over with his head in his hands while he sobbed like a woman. Before the lightning lit up the entire town, he had been hollerin’ and carrying on something fierce. Deacon Fry only had been able to make out every few words, but none of it had made a lick of sense, except the way he kept yelling out Rose’s name.
It was pitiful and it made him feel capable of violence. He did not want to feel pity for a murderer.
“You left a message for Sheriff Abernathy?” Smythe said in a low tone.
He stopped to stare at the man. “You heard me, didn’t you?”
Smythe shifted on the couch cushion, and his big ass forced a squeal out of the leather. “Sorry.”
“What are we gonna do if he don’t call back?” Sharps asked.
Deacon Fry turned away from their questions and walked to his desk. The phone sat there quiet and stubborn, like a woman planning to make someone pay. He didn’t answer Sharps’s question out loud, but inside he debated his options.
Reverend Peale’s body had been moved to the diner’s refrigerator after a shouting match with Edna. A rotation of men had been scheduled to sit guard through the night.
He’d considered loading Cotton into his Caddie and driving him direct over to the county jail. But it was a good forty-minute drive there and from the sound of the thunder he’d just heard they were in store for a massive gully washer. Not the best time to be out on winding mountain roads with a murderer. Plus, he didn’t like the idea of leaving the town alone without a leader.
He shook his head and blew out a long breath. He braced a hand on the desktop, and he willed Sheriff Abernathy to call.
“Uh—Deacon Fry?” Smythe said.
“What?” He turned his back on the traitor phone.
All three of the men on the couch were staring at something behind him. Smythe’s face was pale as a bleached bone. Sharps had gone green, like he’d eaten some of Sharon’s pork surprise casseroles. But Cotton, well, he looked . . . happy. His puffy eyelids and tear-stained cheeks paled in comparison to the broad smile that lifted up the corners of his mouth, as if someone had used fishhooks to raise them. Then there were those two glassy blue eyes that shone like a devout man on Judgment Day.
“Smythe?” he demanded.
Instead of answering out loud, Smythe raised a single finger to point toward the window behind the desk.
A frozen spot appeared between his shoulder blades, as if someone had poked him with dry ice. The rest of his body broke out into starchy flop-sweat.
He didn’t want to turn around, but as if compelled by an outside force, his body disobeyed his mind. As he spun, he saw the painting of John the Baptist, a photograph on his desk of h
e and Reverend Peale at a previous year’s Decoration, and the Bible that had belonged to his father. Some bone-deep knowledge told him none of these totems could protect him from what waited at the other end of his rotation.
There were no streetlights on that side of the building, between his office window and the woods, so at first, the large plane of glass appeared black as the midnight sky. Then his eyes were drawn to the white face pressed against the lower right pane.
His heart tried to climb right out of his chest, but his damned feet were useless.
The face didn’t move. The eyes watched him and a sickening smile exposed shadowy gaps in the teeth. What his eyes couldn’t make out, his memory filled in from his previous encounters with the demon.
“Wh—what the hell is that . . . is that Jack?” Smythe cried in a high-pitched voice.
The demon smiled wider, as if he’d heard the exclamation, but his eyes never left Deacon Fry.
A screeching sound came from the windows, where the demon scratched his dirty fingernails down the glass.
“Lord Jesus, protect us.” He wasn’t sure who had spoken. It might have been his own voice. He didn’t know anything for sure except fear.
A lightning strike lit up the sky like a giant flashbulb. The glare made the demon’s entire body visible. It had shunned clothing altogether, and its nudity seemed the greatest blasphemy so far. But even as he registered the horror of that, he saw the other things the light had revealed behind the demon.
Dozens of corpses shambled down Cemetery Hill.
Granny Maypearl considered not returning to town. If she rode out the night in her cabin with Jinny and Sissy, she could guarantee the future of their line, at least.
But even as the thought occurred to her, she dismissed it. Truth was, what was coming was as much her fault as it was anyone’s. After her fight with Rose, she’d been too stubborn to mend fences. But, fool that she was, she’d always thought she had plenty of time.
