High Lonesome Sound

by Jaye Wells

  The truck skidded sideways toward the place where the road gave way to air and the air gave way to gravity. He might have screamed. He kept his foot glued to that brake pedal and cried out a prayer that only elder gods could understand. The shock of time slowing down. Noticing everything and nothing at once—the lights shining on the small bear, the sound of crunching gravel, the whack-a-mole thumping of his heart. He braced himself for oblivion, was sure that at any second those squealing tires would slide right off the road and carry him down the mountain to crash in the valley below.

  But oblivion never came. A plume of dust rose around Bunk’s old truck, blocking out the light and the dark, trapping Peter inside with his heart pounding like wild drums. He gulped air and chanted nonsense to calm himself.

  When the dust cleared, the bear he’d been trying to avoid hitting still sat in the center of the road. Even with all the racket, the thing still hadn’t moved. Despite its bravery, a bear that small could never survive on its own—especially if it made a habit of sitting its ass in the center of winding mountain roads in the dark.

  “Dumb animal,” he muttered, not really meaning it. He was glad he didn’t hit the cub. Of course he was. He could have done without the near-death experience, though. “Gonna get yourself killed.”

  The cub sat on its round bottom in the road, looking up at him with those unblinking nickel eyes.

  Peter froze. Now that the panic had subsided, he could remember what happened earlier that day, the argument between Junior and Ruby on Cemetery Hill. Junior accusing Ruby of releasing his bear, and her standing there looking like defiance personified.

  The truth slammed into Peter like a revelation. This was Ruby’s bear.

  He started to laugh, but the sound ended on a sob.

  When he stopped crying, he opened the door and went to collect the cub. The animal didn’t fight him, and settled into the truck’s bench, as if it belonged there. Peter put the old truck in Drive and turned it back toward Moon Hollow. The bear made a chuffing noise that sounded a lot like approval.

  62

  The River Song

  Granny Maypearl

  From her position on the street corner, crouching behind a trashcan, Granny Maypearl listened to the deacon’s story. She should have used the distraction to get to work on the proper rites, but once she realized what he was talking about she couldn’t help but listen. Despite her nausea at hearing the details of what had really happened to poor Isaac, she also felt oddly vindicated.

  She remembered that time like it was yesterday. Virgil had been three years behind her at school, but back then all the kids had been taught in the same small school building. Unlike the rest of their classmates, who cowered under Virgil’s bullying and accepted his story, she’d never believed his claims.

  They’d found him near sunrise on Cemetery Hill. All the men in town had spread out just after dark when the boys hadn’t returned. Granny, who, at the time, was called “Maypole” by the school bullies, remembered how her mother had gotten on the party line with all the other mothers to cluck like chickens about how the sky was falling. Wild theories had been tossed out. Her mother believed the boys had accidentally come across a bear’s den and disturbed an ornery mama bear from her winter’s nap. Other people thought maybe a mountain lion had gotten them or that they’d fallen in the river.

  When Virgil had returned with that terrible wound on his forehead that never quite healed right and a story about how he’d tripped and passed out, the fathers had gone back out in the woods to try to find poor Isaac. According to Virgil, the last time he’d seen his brother was down by the river.

  When daylight came, they discovered footprints down by the water’s edge—along with a single, small shoe and some blood mixed into the snow.

  The town went into mourning for months. Virgil was treated not as a hero, but as a martyr of sorts, which to Maypearl’s mind was far more dangerous.

  Not long after they’d held a memorial service for Isaac—a funeral wasn’t possible without the body—she’d gone out to the woods and down to the spot by the river. She’d sat on the bank for what felt like hours, listening to the river’s song. Usually the water greeted her with banjos and lively fiddles, the water’s traveling music. But that day, it was all violins and cellos in minor keys.

  It had taken longer than usual that day for the river to open up enough to sing its song, and when it did, Maypearl surely did wish it hadn’t. Rivers—or mountains for that matter—sang in emotions that, when heard by the right heart, had more meaning than words. And that day, the emotion lyrics were all about betrayal and mourning and unbearable memories of pain.

  Even though Maypearl had suspected Virgil hadn’t told the whole truth about what really happened with Isaac, she knew better than to manipulate the river’s song to mean what she wanted it to mean. After all, Isaac’s drowning could have been the source of the river’s dirge. So she sang a song of her own and sent it down the river for it to swirl among the eddies and find the river’s heart.

  The next time the river responded, the song wasn’t strings, but menacing percussion, crashing symbols—the river’s anger song. The song pounded like a savage heartbeat. She’d never felt fury that strong, chaotic and powerful, like a sudden thunderstorm. The worst part was the emotions arrived with a clear feeling that the vessel for all that rage had been Virgil Fry.

  When the waters fell blessedly silent again, she sat for a long time thinking about what she’d learned. The song’s terrible energy didn’t fit with the idea that Isaac had simply tripped and fallen into the river. At best, he was pushed. At worst, well—

  The worst wasn’t comprehensible.

  As much as she disliked Virgil Fry and his hordes of followers, she couldn’t believe he was directly responsible for Isaac’s death. She preferred to think that what happened here was a tragic accident.

  The other thing she realized was that the river hadn’t answered part of her question. She’d specifically asked it to reveal the location of Isaac’s little body. She wasn’t sure how she’d tell Reverend and Mrs. Fry if she found out, but she thought at least in this she could offer some comfort. She couldn’t imagine not being able to know for certain he was dead and always wondering if there was more they could have done. Some other place they could have looked.

  The river had never ignored one of her questions before. Deep down, she knew this meant that the river did not know where Isaac was, which meant he’d never fallen into the river at all.

  As the years passed, her copper bright suspicions about Virgil had patinated into general distrust. She didn’t know if he ever guessed that she knew he’d lied, but he’d done just about everything in his power to doom her to always be on the edges of Moon Hollow society. In the end, the joke was on him because she preferred life on the fringes. Meanwhile, the center of Moon Hollow, the man who railed against man’s sinful nature at his pulpit every Sunday, had committed the foulest sin possible.

  If she hadn’t been so horrified by the truth, she might have felt smug. Instead, she felt sad and scared.

  The dead had risen to punish the entire town for Deacon Fry’s sins.

  63

  Unburdened

  Deacon Fry

  For decades, Deacon Fry’s secret had weighed him down like a stowaway hiding behind his heart. The purge had been painful, yes, but now, he was alone in his own skin for the first time since that awful wintry night.

  He closed his eyes and tried to treasure the inner silence, but the demon who’d been vexing him for weeks was now lecturing him on sin.

  He was no fool. He was not an innocent man, but he was a penitent one, which was more than most people could say.

  He lifted a hand to touch the scar on his forehead. He’d stared at that puckered skin so many times over the years, not shying from its ugliness because it was proof of his atonement.

  “Are you listening?” Jack said.

  He opened his eyes and looked into the milky pupils of h
is enemy. With his soul laid bare on the steps of his beloved church, he felt invincible. They had a pact, he and God. It had been the good Lord who’d made sure Junior had a gun to place in his hands. It was the good Lord who made him admit his greatest sin as a sort of baptism that would allow him to rise victorious over the devils on his doorstep. Just like his great-granddaddy Alodius Fry, he would face down this evil and save his town. He just needed an opening.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  The demon paused, as if surprised by the lack of fear in his response. But like all devils, he was too proud to believe a mere man posed any threat to him. The demon’s hubris would be his downfall.

  “I have a question,” Deacon Fry said. “If you don’t mind.”

  The demon’s head tilted to the left, but he didn't say no.

  “Why now? After all this time, why am I being punished now?”

  The demon chuckled. “Justice has no statute of limitations, old man.”

  “I suppose not. But why are you my judge? Wasn’t I kind to you, Jack?” He tried to smile at the rotten face of the boy he’d once known. “Didn’t I help you get your job? Didn’t I give you my blessing to marry Sarah Jane once you had some money saved up?”

  “For a soul to ascend, the body must be buried with the proper rites.”

  “Jack had a proper funeral. I saw to it myself.”

  Instead of answering, the demon looked him deep in his eyes and showed him a series of images. Jack in the mines, looking impossibly young and out of place. The older miners playing a joke that got the boy turned around and lost. Him taking wrong turn after wrong turn. Tripping and falling down a side shaft. Heavy weight slamming into him. Red eyes in the dark. Pain, fear, and then nothing.

  When the images ceased, he shook off the lingering memory of Jack’s terror. “You—what?”

  The demon leaned forward and whispered, “When a soul is unleashed on a dark moon, it can take any shape it wants, brother.”

  A scream ripped through the air.

  The demon’s attention jerked away. Deacon Fry should have taken his shot. He should have emptied the chambers of that gun right into the demon’s black heart. But the word “brother” ricocheted through his skull, creating its own shrapnel. Brother.

  He blinked once, twice. Swallowed hard. Looked at the demon and, for the first time, saw through the scars and bruises, through the decay, and recognized the somber brown eyes that had always looked too old for his brother’s young face.

  “Isaac?”

  64

  Hopeless

  Ruby

  The scream came from deep inside Ruby, and as it rose, it gained momentum and so much power she couldn’t dream of stopping it. It was an awakening of sorts, that sound. It signaled the moment she could no longer pretend that everything was going to work out. That sort of optimism belonged to girls whose mamas baked cookies and didn’t have bruises on their cheekbones. It was for girls whose mamas were alive.

  Ruby’s mama wasn’t alive, but she was standing there, anyway. Her time underground had not been kind to her beauty. The bruises of living were gone, but decayed skin and milky pupils had taken their place. The pretty yellow dress Ruby had chosen for Mama to wear for her funeral was in tatters, a victim of the struggle to escape the coffin.

  Her daddy, also not alive, slumped against Mama’s side. The wound at his neck no longer bled freely, but it glistened red and angry in the moonlight.

  She couldn’t speak and she was all out of screams.

  “Ruby.” The voice that came out of that putrid mouth sounded like Rose Barrett was talking through a sewer pipe. “Ruby, darlin’, it’s Mama.”

  Ruby stumbled back with her hands raised. “No. N-no.”

  Her daddy’s head rolled back so he could look at her, too. His rapidly bluing skin contrasted with the yellow of his nicotine-stained teeth as he grinned at her. “She’s home, Ruby. Mama’s home. Just like we wanted.”

  “I didn’t want this. Not this.”

  Mama limped forward. “Come here, little one.”

  The wind picked up and brought with it the coffin liquor scent of the grave. Bile burned the back of her throat, but the rest of her froze.

  “Come to your mama and we’ll be a family again.” That voice crawled into her ears and skittered into her brain, where it burrowed into her gray matter. “We’ll be together forever, Rubybug.”

  She struggled to move, to run, anything. She’d had nightmares before where she’d been frozen in terror, but she never knew until then that real terror was so much worse. Real terror wasn’t one-dimensional. It attacked all the senses: the darkly sweet scent of death, the flavor of copper on her tongue, the sound of her pulse thrashing in her ears, the icy dread coating her skin, the sight of her corpse-parents lumbering toward her with deadly intent.

  Her knees gave out. If she’d had any hope left, it would have given out, too.

  She looked up past the heads of her mama and daddy to the crooked cross looming over them. She’d always found the warped symbol of Moon Hollow’s faith sort of whimsical, like something from a fairy tale. But right then, she saw it for what it really was—a symbol of abandonment. There was no God in Moon Hollow. Maybe there never was, but if He’d ever been there, He’d abandoned them long ago.

  “Ruby,” Mama sighed. She smiled, exposing blackened gums and gray teeth. The tatters of her yellow dress exposed swatches of gray flesh underneath.

  “Mama?” she whispered.

  “Yes, darlin’. Mama’s here. It’ll only hurt a little.”

  She closed her eyes and let herself believe it would be better to surrender.

  “Ruby!” The new voice sounded angry and afraid.

  She opened her eyes and looked around, but all she could see was that yellow dress and all that blood on her daddy’s shirt.

  “Ruby! God, no. Hold on, Rubybug!”

  “Stop her,” Mama said.

  Daddy turned with a growl, and as he moved it allowed her to see that Granny Maypearl was running across the street toward them. She had something in her right hand that was letting off plumes of smoke, and she hefted a large bag in her other.

  Mama drew closer to Ruby, blocking her view of Granny. “When we’re done,” Mama said, “we’ll go find Sissy and Jinny.”

  Ruby blinked. “Sissy and Jinny?”

  That rotten smile again. “We’ll be one big happy family. Forever.”

  A sound broke through the haze of fear and confusion. She saw her daddy moving toward her granny, who stood her ground on the sidewalk in front of the church. Holding her smudge stick high like the Statue of Liberty’s torch, she sang in a loud, clear voice. The words of her song didn’t sound like English. They sounded older than that, ancient, but even without recognizing them with her ears, Ruby knew them by heart.

  Pain bit into the flesh of her arm. She looked down to see her mama’s hand with its exposed bones clawing at her. “No singing,” she hissed. “No songs.”

  Granny’s voice got louder, and Daddy started groaning and writhing where he stood. The wind picked up and thunder boomed somewhere far off in the mountains.

  Ruby ripped her arm from Mama’s grasp. She stumbled forward two steps, but Granny held up a free hand to halt her advance.

  Daddy’s body was dancing in bizarre jerky movements that reminded Ruby of her mama’s death throes a month earlier. She looked at Mama, who had started moaning, as if to drown out the song.

  Most of the town had gathered on the front steps of the church, and surrounding them were more of the dead things—most of whom had been dead so long they were little more than skeletons dressed in rags. Deacon Fry was staring at the demon who looked like Jack Thompson, whose attention was on Granny Maypearl as she sang to Daddy.

  Time slowed. The words of Granny’s song dissolved into the wind that made Ruby’s hair whip around her face like a white flag. Her mama lunged at her, those milky eyes flaring. Granny Maypearl’s song reached its crescendo. Daddy’s body
convulsed once, twice before his body exploded into a cloud of ashes.

  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  The demon took three steps. Behind him, Deacon Fry pulled his hand from behind his back.

  An animal sound beside her, a blur of motion. Mama stumbled toward the ashes that used to be Cotton Barrett.

  It all happened at once.

  Ruby stumbled after her mama.

  A terrible explosion that could only be a gunshot ripped through the chaos.

  The bullet went through Jack’s body and continued its deadly trajectory right into another target.

  Mama raised her face to scream at the sky over Daddy’s ashes. A flash of blinding lights from the road, the screech of tires.

  The truck jumped the curb.

  Ruby ran to help the too still body on the sidewalk.

  The truck barreled right into Mama and kept going until it pinned her body between the fender and the marquee church sign, which read, “Christ the Redeemer Church: Jesus Loves You.”

  In the aftermath, the only sounds were the angry ticking of the truck’s engine, the hiss of steam from under the crumpled hood, and the hot sobs ripping from Ruby’s chest as she fell to her knees beside her wounded grandmother.

  65

  God Is A Bullet

  Deacon Fry

  The bullet. The bullet went right through—

  “Oh God, no.” Deacon Fry fell to his knees. “Please, no, no, no.”

  Chaos all around him. The women were crying and screaming. Bunk and Earl went to help Peter West out of the truck. But the good deacon’s attention was on the tragedy unfolding on the sidewalk, where Ruby knelt over her grandmother’s body.

  The demon—oh, good Lord, please don’t let that really be Isaac—watched the madness with a smile on his face. Only that ruined face he’d come to know and loathe was no longer that of Jack Thompson. Now, he was shorter and younger and the side of his head was a bloody crater.