High Lonesome Sound

by Jaye Wells

  She turned and looked back down the tunnel of pews toward the bright lights outside. Knowledge that came from her gut instead of her head told her that Granny Maypearl was out there somewhere with the shouting devil and her dead daddy, and that, if any of them were going to survive whatever was coming, she needed to be there, too.

  Instead of going out through the church’s front doors, she ran down the hall to a side exit. On her way, she grabbed the axe from the fire emergency box. She felt better with the weight in her hands, safer, but that part of her that had told her Daddy was outside also told her that normal weapons would not win this fight.

  Outside, the air was warm and dry despite the earlier lightning. The door dumped her out on the parking lot side of the church. Up ahead familiar trucks lined up side-by-side in the lot. She briefly considered trying to find keys and speed as fast as she could from town. Go get some help.

  That thought reminded her of what Bunk said about Peter’s earlier escape. Would he bother trying to find the sheriff? She dismissed that idea since he’d left before the real trouble had begun. She imagined him driving blissfully unaware down the winding mountain passes with the window down and the wind blowing through his hair. She hated him for his freedom, for having the choice.

  Which brought her back to the trucks. She realized she had a choice, too. Hadn’t she always? How many nights had she lain in her bed wishing someone would come along to save her, when she should have been saving herself. She’d had a hundred opportunities to go before now, but she’d never taken them. To leave now, when her sisters and her town needed her most felt like the coward’s choice.

  She came around the corner of the church building and stopped short.

  The being Deacon Fry kept calling “Jack” loomed on the hood of the deacon’s Cadillac. He had Jack’s build and voice, but his face was not right. It was bruised and rotten, like a piece of overripe fruit.

  She searched the faces of the dead-eyed beings around them for something familiar.

  She saw Daddy first. His head jutted at an unnatural angle and the side of his neck was a gaping wound. But it was the smile on his face that made her gasp. He’d never once in his living life ever looked that happy.

  The reason for his joy supported his weight. Mama’s dark hair was matted with leaves and her face—sweet Jesus—the face that had kissed Ruby every night before bed looked like some sort of blasphemy. Worms hung from holes in her once warm skin. The eyes that had looked at her with such love were now as emotionless as a shark’s.

  The scream began deep inside, down below her heart, and rose like steam from a boiling kettle up her throat before exploding from her mouth.

  59

  Peering Into The Well

  Deacon Fry

  The gun in Deacon Fry’s hand was a warm, reassuring weight. He stood as straight as he could, just like when he stood before his congregation and delivered the Lord’s good news. The demons before him had no interest in lessons from the Bible, but he had to believe that even evil responded to authority.

  “I’m here,” he announced, “let Sarah Jane go.” He couldn’t look directly at her or risk weakening his position. But he couldn’t block out her sobs or the way she kept chanting, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy” like a prayer.

  “Do you know why you’re here, Virgie?”

  Something in the pit of him—the deep, dark cave he kept covered up with prayer and good deeds—something shifted, an awakening. It was that infernal nickname. Could the demon read his mind?

  “No.” He forced the word out like a curse.

  Jack laughed, a low, ominous rumble that seemed to bounce off the hills and return to assault him all over again. When the humor died, the demon spat, “Liar.”

  He wanted to scream at the demon. How dare something so evil accuse him of sin? “You have me at a disadvantage, Jack.”

  Sarah Jane’s knees buckled, as if hearing the name confirmed what she’d already tried to deny. How could the boy she loved turn into this monster?

  A chuckle. “You keep calling me that name. Why?”

  A trick question. “Of course. That’s who you are—were, Jack Thompson.”

  The demon leapt off the car’s hood and landed without a sound on the sidewalk. “Then you are not just a sinner—you are also a fool.”

  Nothing made sense. None of it. His carefully constructed world of rules and disciplined living was crafted specifically to prevent this sort of chaos. Hadn’t he done everything right?

  Not everything.

  Hadn’t he been a good role model?

  Not always.

  Hadn’t he protected the people of this good town from their own immoral natures for decades?

  But not your own.

  The demon, who claimed not to be Jack, watched him. Those white eyes had begun to rot since the first time he’d seen it in the woods. The pupils shrank back in the sockets and the skin around had buckled until it was like looking into bottomless wells.

  Wells. The well. Oh God, the well.

  He couldn’t think about that now. Wouldn’t.

  “Why not?” the demon said. “Why not think about it?”

  He opened his mouth to answer before he realized that he hadn’t spoken those words out loud. The thing, the demon, the evil thing could read his mind. “I—I can’t.”

  That ruined mouth with its mealworm lips curved into a grotesque smile. “Sure, you can. Think back to that day fifty-seven years ago. Think about walking in the woods with Isaac.”

  That name entered his head and exploded behind his eyes. The concussion threw him back across the years to that cold winter morning by the river.

  60

  Revelation

  Winter, 57 years earlier

  The trees are so tall above him, and he’s reminded of the ceiling of the church, which seems to reach right up to heaven. Daddy’s always saying that the forest is like church, and that it’s a good place to talk to God.

  “Virgil! Wait up, Virgie!” Isaac’s voice comes from far behind him.

  “Dear Lord, please let my little brother learn not to be so annoying. Amen.” He continues farther into the woods without calling back.

  “Virgil!” Isaac’s voice grows more panicked each time. The cold air sharpens the sound.

  Good. Maybe he’ll get scared enough that he’ll learn to stop being such a pain in the rear.

  The wintry temperature has the river shuffling sluggishly along the bank. The first snow is expected any day now. He has a sudden, intense longing for the spring, and imagines what this will look like in April, when the dragonflies tap dance along the water’s surface. But today, the forest is so cold and quiet, it feels like he’s the only thing alive on the whole mountain.

  “Virgil!”

  Make that him and Isaac. Dumb crybaby Isaac who wets the bed and steals his baseball cards and rips them. Mama’s boy Isaac. God’s little blessing, she calls him. Why hadn’t he been enough to make her happy?

  One time, he overheard her and Daddy talking about how something was wrong in her belly so she’d never have another child and then the sound of her tears had cut right through his middle. And then Isaac had come along and you’d think he was the Messiah from all the celebrating and Praise the Lords they cried on the day he was born. Did anyone have a party when he came along?

  The riverbank squishes under his boots. The leather is wearing away on the side of his toes, allowing cold water to seep into his socks. Mama will lay them near the fire when he gets home. He wiggles his near-numb toes, imagining the moment later when he’ll slip the fire-toasty cotton on his feet.

  “Come on, Virgil! I’m cold!”

  He doesn’t respond. He knows he should. Not saying anything makes his chest tight, but he fights the urge to speak. It’s nice here all alone in the cold. At home, he has to share his room with the pest Isaac. He never even gets to be alone in the tiny bathroom because Isaac always decides he needs to go, too, and insists on standing in the doorway doing his p
ee-pee dance like a dumb little kid.

  He squats down on the bank. Closer to the river, the cold, clean scent of the water is stronger. He looks upstream and wonders where the water came from and where it’s headed. A sudden urge overcomes him to jump in the river and let it carry him along. He closes his eyes and imagines floating on his back with the tree limbs and steely gray sky speeding by overhead. He imagines Isaac reaching the riverbank miles behind him and crying because he suddenly realizes he was so annoying he forced his brother to jump in the river to escape. Mama would be so sad, then. She’d say, “Oh, if only I’d appreciated my darling Virgil more.” They’d all think he was dead, but he’d really be off on a grand adventure farther downstream. Maybe the water went all the way down to Florida and he could start a new life living on the beach. He’d never seen a beach, but if Isaac wouldn’t be there it had to be a pretty nice place.

  He opens his eyes again and stares down into the water. His reflection is broken up and wavy, as if someone broke a mirror and the pieces became liquid. For a terrible moment, he imagines this image is what he really looks like on the inside. But before he can dismiss the idea as silly, a flash of white on the bank catches his eye.

  The moth’s wings are white as the snow that soon will come to Moon Hollow. He stares at the open wings and tries to understand why he feels so unsettled by its presence. Then he realizes that he’s never seen an insect in the winter.

  He picks up a stick.

  “Virgil!”

  He presses the tip gently to one of the wings. The moth flails in the mud, too stuck to dislodge itself. He smiles and pokes it harder.

  “Virgil!” The call is growing closer now.

  Too fascinated to care, he pins one wing into the mud.

  A shadow passes over him, like a cloud blocking out the sun. But there is no sun that day. The sky is a steel blanket covering the moody ridges. He squints up from his project and sees no birds in the sky that might have caused the shadow. Yet the shadow seems to loom over him and with it comes a deep chill that seeps through his coat and sweater and even his skin, down to his bones.

  He turns slowly, not because he wants to, but because he has to. What his eyes see, his mind cannot understand. They ache, his eyes, like the time he ignored his teacher’s warning and looked directly at a solar eclipse. In that brief second of time, he’d actually seen pain. This is like that, except this time he feels fear, too.

  From inside a black hood, a too bright and too dark face of the being seems to be staring back at him, though he can see no eyes or really even a face. But he knows he is being watched, and somehow also that he is being judged.

  I am seeing the face of evil.

  The words do not register with any accompanying emotion, as if the simple truth of it is absolute and undeniable.

  Evil does not move. But he sees it. It makes no sound, yet he hears it. It makes no sense, but he understands.

  As if through a long tunnel, he hears the voice of his brother calling his name, but the sound is warped. Everything is warped.

  The static enters through his eyes and invades his head until his thoughts are a riot of black and white spots and a sound like a waterfall blocks out his hearing.

  It is already dark when he wakes. Pinpricks of frost stab at his cheeks. His lids flutter open. White flakes dance against the inky night sky. The snow is finally here.

  He blinks twice more. Something about the points of white against the black tickles the edges of his memory, but it’s elusive and he’s so tired and cold he gives up.

  Why is he alone in the woods at night?

  He sits up slowly. He trembles. The wet ground has pushed moisture into his clothes.

  Something solid presses into his side. His hand touches the familiar curving stone wall. He uses the wall to leverage himself upright. Squinting, he looks around, trying to confirm his location. Sure enough, he can just make out the warning sign bearing the name of the mining company and the large “caution.” The sign marks one of the abandoned mines that dot the mountain ridges around Moon Hollow. His daddy told him that he should never play near them holes because if he fell in there’d be no finding him again. He’d always obeyed the rule and he surely had never gone there in the dark. So why am I here now?

  He limps toward the sign and the opening of the old shaft. There’s a smell he doesn’t like here. It smells like dirty pennies and rotten leaves. Even snow that’s covering up everything and making it seems clean and brand new can’t erase that smell. He looks down at his hands. There’s something dark there. Something slick. He smells the pennies on his fingers, too. His knuckles are so sore he can barely bend them.

  Why am I here?

  He backs away from the opening, but his feet stumble over something on the ground. He bends down and picks up the thing that tripped him. It is a shoe. A small shoe.

  He knows that if he had a flashlight and he shined it into that shoe, he’d see the neatly written letters of his own last name in the sole. He knows because he’d worn these shoes until they’d pinched his toes and Mama was forced to go to town to buy him a new pair.

  Isaac had looked so proud to be stepping into his big brother’s old shoes.

  His vision swims and the bottom falls out from under his cold, damp feet.

  He walks for hours. It gives him time to cry and, once the tears have dried, it gives him time to think. Thinking helps him not feel so alone. It keeps his mind off the snow that rises an inch every hour.

  He still isn’t sure exactly what happened. The last thing he remembers clearly is the Evil appearing by the riverside and then the static. Flashes of sound and color— screams followed by dreadful silence and alarming flashes of red—break through, but when he focuses on them he starts crying again. So he thinks about what he will say. He repeats his story over and over until it feels like the truth. Until it is his new truth. The truth is important.

  The Bible says, “Thou shalt not bear false witness.”

  He did not witness what happened. He does not know anything except that Evil lives in the woods, and that he does not know where his brother went.

  Thou shalt not kill.

  He shivers, as if someone chose that moment to dance across his grave. He stops and looks up. There is something about the way the moon catches snowflakes and lights them from inside. The forest, which had been dark when he woke, now glows like the surface of the moon. Overhead, the trees raise their charred branches toward the sky, as if in prayer. He raises his arms, too, and makes his plea and his promise. When the voice tells him his penance, he does not hesitate. He walks to the nearest tree trunk and rhythmically strikes his forehead thirty times into the rough bark.

  Afterward, he wipes the blood from his eyes and whispers, “Thank you, Jesus.”

  Then he pushes himself on through the snow toward his parents, and his new life as an only child and the most devout citizen in all of Moon Hollow.

  61

  The Road Back

  Peter

  Gravel pinged off the truck’s undercarriage as he sped away from town. He refused to glance into the rearview mirror.

  His headlights illuminated only twenty feet at a time. He flipped the button to engage the brights, but the dark hills absorbed the extra light. His entire world became focused on that bright sliver cutting through the shadows.

  He told himself he’d left to find the sheriff, but he had no idea where to start looking. By the time he’d see another car much less the lights of the city the entire population of Moon Hollow would probably be—

  Never mind that.

  But he got one hell of a story, hadn’t he?

  It just needed an ending. Maybe he’d conjure a deus ex machina to swoop in at the last minute and save everyone. Maybe he’d make the handsome author the hero.

  The truck bounced over a dip in the road and its tires slammed down hard on the other side and skidded before grabbing asphalt again. The impact jarred him out of his daydream. There was no God in this ma
chine, and he was certainly no one’s hero.

  He was a coward.

  Something wasn’t right in Moon Hollow. He’d convinced himself that the problem was the angry mob headed toward the church when he left, but he couldn’t get rid of the image of Cotton Barrett in bloodstained clothes shuffling down the center of Main Street with a smile on his face. The gash on Peter’s forehead throbbed. Where had that lightning come from? Why was Granny Maypearl so scared when Deacon Fry decided to cancel to Decoration Day? No, something wasn’t right.

  He pressed his foot on the gas and took a curve too fast. The tires gripped the road and carried him safely around the bend. He needed to get far away. Once he was off that damned mountain he could find a motel and lock himself inside with a six-pack so he could drink away his urge to think about what was happening behind him.

  On second thought, no, he wouldn’t stop. He’d go back to Raleigh the more direct route, not through scenic Asheville but through Greensboro. If he kept his foot down on the gas he could make it in less than six hours—home before sunrise.

  For some reason the thought of the rising sun filled him with dread. No, he liked the dark. The shadows hid his shame.

  The headlights reached through the inky night, yearning like a hand out of a grave. It touched tree stumps and rocks and things that looked like bent human forms but couldn’t be because who would be out in the woods this late?

  He didn’t realized that the twin silver circles in the middle of the road weren’t coins but eyes until he was almost on top of the animal. His foot punched the brakes, but they protested and locked up.