"Christ," Tom said, "don't go trying to connect this with the other killings! Believe me, nobody would commit murder like that."
"I don't know if it's murder," Charlie said quietly. "But I do know that it's all part and parcel, whether you like it or not. What killed Martha Sipling and Sam Hershey and the Warfel boy and maybe even your father . . . and what knocked down the playhouse and the gift shop . . . it's all part of the same thing. And I'm tired of it."
"You're leaving?" Laura asked.
"No. But I'm going to do something about it."
"Do something?" Tom said. "No offense, Charlie. I know you mean well, but what can you do that the police haven't been able to?"
"Something." He smiled and picked up his soup spoon. "In fact, I've already started."
"What do you mean?" Laura asked.
"You'll see. I'm not quite ready to tell you yet, but you'll know when the time comes."
Tom felt annoyed. "Under the circumstances, I hardly think this is the time for secrecy. After all that's happened, all the . . . deaths, you're playing games?"
"I'm not playing games, Tom, believe me. I'm deadly serious. But I don't want to tell you right now."
"When then?"
"Next Tuesday." Charlie took a swallow of soup. "There'll be someone I want you to meet. You too, Laura. Tuesday evening."
"Who is it?" Tom asked persistently. "An investigator?"
"Of a sort," Charlie said with a weak smile. "Of a sort."
There are the realms on which the crescent beams, the monstrous many-headed gods of India, the Chinaman's heathenism, the African's devil-rites. These are, to a large extent, principalities and powers of darkness with which our religion has never been brought into collision, save at trivial and far separated points, and in these cases the attack has never been made in strength.
—Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp
By the following Tuesday a great many changes had occurred in Dreamthorp. The population had diminished by another thirty-two percent, the remaining run of the Dreamthorp Playhouse and the Dreamthorp Music Festival were cancelled, and all public buildings, including the Hall of Culture and the Ice Cream Shoppe, were temporarily closed until some cause could be found to explain the structural failures that seemed to be plaguing them.
Residents were likewise reluctant to enter other buildings that had been built in the same decade, such as the general store and the post office. Indeed, Mrs. Purviance elected to take what she termed early retirement rather than remain in the ramshackle but charming building in which she had spent most of her life.
Engineers were consulted, and they came and saw and concurred that there was nothing whatsoever wrong with the wood of the buildings or with their construction. Geologists brought their instruments and made measurements, only to find that the land upon which Dreamthorp was built was as sound as Gibraltar. No explanation was found or given for the breakage of the pillars of the gift shop or the floor of the Ice Cream Shoppe's deck, just as no explanation had been found or given for the collapse of the playhouse. There were only theories, most of them absurd and unvoiced.
In the back of her mind, Laura Stark had her own absurd theory that consisted of Gilbert Rodman still being alive and somehow responsible for all that had happened in Dreamthorp. She knew that he was not alive, and that even if he were there was no way he could have been responsible for the bizarre and seemingly inexplicable occurrences that tormented the town.
Still, Gilbert Rodman had seemed to her such a force, such an unrelieved concentration of evil, that in the nights she did not sleep with Tom, she could imagine, just before she dropped off to sleep, that his contagion was spreading, like ink on a tissue, across the country, coming to rest there, next to her, in the darkness of Dreamthorp.
It certainly was an absurd notion, she told herself when the sun was shining once again, when she was in her office surrounded by her friends and associates, when she was with Tom, talking quietly, holding him, making love, and loving him. But she learned that the absurdity of that notion seemed easy to accept next to the theories of Grover Kraybill.
Kraybill was sitting on the front porch with Charlie Lewis when Laura and Tom arrived at Charlie's cottage on Tuesday night. He was wearing a long-sleeved tan shirt that looked too warm for the weather, a loose-fitting pair of gray pants, and leather work boots, and was smoking a dark-burled pipe with a stem of transparent blue plastic. His clean-shaven face was mapped with wrinkles, and a shock of hair, blindingly white, crowned his head. He stared at Tom and Laura from behind wire frame bifocals, and Laura thought that although the man must have been in his seventies, his eyes were even older.
"Laura, Tom, this is Grover Kraybill," Charlie said. "Laura Stark and Tom Brewer."
Grover Kraybill took his pipe from his mouth and nodded. "Glad to meet you," he said in a tenor voice as worn as his face. The voice was strongly laced with the flat "Dutch" accent, the remnant of the Pennsylvania German dialect so prevalent in the farming communities of south-central Pennsylvania. "Mr. Lewis told me a lot about you."
Tom and Laura sat across from the two older men. "Well, he's told us absolutely nothing about you," Tom said with a smile.
"Mr. Kraybill is . . ." Charlie hesitated. "Well, he's sort of an occult investigator."
"Call me what I am, Mr. Lewis," Kraybill said. "A powwow man. I ain't ashamed of it."
"A powwow man?" Laura asked, trying to keep any mockery out of her tone. She could see Tom's spine stiffen, his face grow stern.
"That's right, Miss Stark," Kraybill said.
"A witch doctor," Tom said, frowning. "You brought in a witch doctor, Charlie?"
Charlie sighed. "You see why I didn't want to tell you about this before. I didn't need the grief. Look, Tom, Mr. Kraybill is no witch doctor. Powwow is—"
"Of all people, Charlie, you're the one I'd least expect to fall for something like this."
"Tom, I haven't fallen for anything—"
"How much is he charging for his services, Charlie?"
"I'm not charging a penny," Kraybill said calmly. "I don't need Mr. Lewis's money and I don't need yours. I get enough social security from the government, and barter my services for food mostly. I never charge anyone nothing. They give me what they think my service is worth. And in a case like this, I don't want no money for it. There's something bad here needs to be got rid of. If I can help, that's payment enough."
The man was so self-controlled that Laura believed him instantly, although she had doubts about his effectiveness against whatever it was that was besetting Dreamthorp.
"All right," Tom said, holding up his hands placatingly. "If I've misread your intentions, I'm sorry. It's just that I put very little faith in the kind of thing you . . . represent. You're talking magic here, right?"
Kraybill puffed on his pipe and nodded. "It's possible."
"And that's where you and I differ," Tom said. "I don't think it is possible."
"Mr. Brewer," Kraybill said softly, taking out his pipe and setting it on the side table, "if you had seen what I have seen, and lived through what I have lived through, you might not be so doubtful. Powwow has been passed down through my family for almost two hundred years now. My mother's mother was a Hohman."
"I don't get the point," Tom said.
"Hohman," Charlie said. "John George Hohman wrote the first powwow book."
"I thought all that stuff was down South."
Charlie shook his head. "I've told you to pay more attention to local history. Hohman lived near Reading, right here in Pennsylvania. Powwows, or The Long-Lost Friend, his book, was published there in 1820. I have a copy—out of historical interest, of course," Charlie clarified.
"And he taught one of his sons, and that son taught one of his, and so on down the years," Kraybill said, "until it reached my grandma, then my mother, and finally me."
"That's all well and good, but what does a Pennsylvania Dutch folk art have to do with what's been going on here in Dreamthorp? And more
to the point, what can you do to stop it?"
"Well, for one thing, I think I know what's been causing it," Kraybill said. He stated it with no apparent satisfaction, but merely as a fact.
"You do, huh?" Tom was becoming sarcastic, and it made Laura uncomfortable.
"Tom," she said quietly, "we can at least listen."
Tom gave a small snort of exasperation. "Okay, fine, I'll listen. So what has been causing all our problems, Mr. Kraybill?"
Kraybill breathed deeply and put his head back so that he was staring at the narrow, flat boards of the porch ceiling. "I believe that it's a spirit," he said.
Tom shook his head in disbelief. "Somehow I expected you to say something like that. So what are you going to do, channel an Indian spirit guide to tell it to go away and stop bothering us?" He turned to Charlie and laughed bitterly. "This guy doesn't belong here, Charlie, he belongs on Phil Donahue."
"I saw those fellas on Phil Donahue," Kraybill said. He did not seem agitated or at all defensive. "They were frauds."
"Oh, you could tell?" Tom said, baiting him. "Like knows like?"
"Truth knows lies, Mr. Brewer. When a man starts charging two hundred dollars an hour, you can be pretty sure that his main concern isn't with the spiritual."
"And yours is."
"Yes, it is." Kraybill picked up his pipe and looked at it. "Mr. Lewis tells me you're a woodcarver."
"That's right."
"What you think about wood?"
"What do I think about it? What do you mean?"
"Why do you use wood and not something else?"
"Well . . . wood is different."
"Because it was alive once?"
Laura saw Tom look narrowly at Kraybill. "Yes, that's right. It has a pattern to it."
"Like a life has a pattern. A pattern you can see. Like a living thing. Which, of course, it is."
"Look," Tom said, "why all this talk about wood?"
"Because that's where the spirit lives. What the spirit possesses."
Tom looked at Kraybill dumbly for a moment. "Wood? You're talking about a wood spirit? Like a nature spirit of some kind?"
Kraybill puffed his pipe into smoky life. "I sure am. It's plain to see."
"Maybe you'd like to clarify for those of us a little less knowledgeable about the—what shall I call them, the black arts?—than yourself."
"I'd be happy to, Mr. Brewer. But the black arts aren't anything I practice. Powwow is good magic, healing magic, nothing more. It's achieved through prayer mostly."
"All right, I'm sorry," Tom said, and Laura thought that he really was. "It's just that I really don't believe in . . ." He paused.
"In any religion at all?" Kraybill finished for him. "I can understand that, especially after what Mr. Lewis here tells me you've been through in the past year or so. It's hard to hold on to faith when it seems that God has no mercy. But he does, Mr. Brewer. He truly does, whether he's a god of the Christians or the Hindus or the Buddhists or the American Indians."
Tom finally smiled. "Forgive me, but I'm a little surprised to hear that you're so . . . polytheistic."
"Oh no, I believe in one God all right, but he's the God of everybody. Powwow has prayers from many different faiths. After all, the very name 'powwow' comes from the Indians. The healing powers of the shamans were a lot like Hohman's remedies and spells."
Kraybill sucked on his pipe, but Laura saw no smoke come from the creased corners of his mouth. He held up the pipe and gestured to the porch railing. "May I?" he asked Charlie.
"Use the ash can there," Charlie said, pointing to a little fire bucket filled with sand that stood against the porch wall. "It's so dry up here we have to be careful of sparks."
Kraybill knocked out his pipe, then removed a pouch of Union Leader from his voluminous shirt pocket, packed tobacco into the pipe bowl, and ignited it. Blue smoke once more filled the hot, dry air. "Anyways," he said, leaning back, "listen to my reasons and see if they make sense to you. Treat them like you'd treat evidence if you heard it in a courtroom and you were on the jury. Then judge."
Tom nodded. "Seems fair enough. But I'm a tough juror."
"I'm sure you are, and even though Miss Stark isn't saying much, I can see she doesn't believe too."
At first, Laura felt embarrassed, but a second later realized that anyone would feel doubtful about the theory Kraybill had proposed. "It's rather hard to believe," she said by way of explanation.
"Let me try and convince you," Kraybill said. "Now the deaths, even though they may not appear to at first glance, show a pattern. Let's take them one by one. First of all was the playhouse falling down. Then the Thatcher man."
"Thatcher?" Laura asked.
"The old fellow down on Fuller Street who fell down his stairs," Charlie explained.
"But that was an accident, wasn't it?" Tom said. "A loose board."
"Then Mrs. Sipling," Kraybill went on. "Then Mr. Hershey. Then . . . I'msorry, Mr. Brewer, your son. And your father. Following that, the little boy in the Ice Cream Shoppe, and the two people on the porch."
"We know all that," Tom said.
"Sure you do," Kraybill replied patiently, "but you don't know who's responsible."
"And you do?"
The old Man nodded. "The wood. The spirit in the wood."
"Oh Christ," Tom said, laughing.
"The playhouse was first," Kraybill continued imperturbably. "The pillars were all wooden, they all split without anything being wrong with them. Mr. Lewis told me how it happened. Then, less than a week later, Mr. Thatcher falls to his death because of a loose wooden board on his steps. Mrs. Sipling's crushed by the lid of a wooden chest. Mr. Hershey is found beaten by branches, dead on a tree."
Kraybill sighed and spoke in a softer tone. "Next is your son. But we don't need an explanation, because we know how he was killed. But then comes the death of your father, once again from wood—the wooden carving. A few weeks later the boy falls through the wooden floorboards and is killed by their sharp, broken edges in a way nobody can explain. And finally, last weekend, the two fiddlers are crushed by wooden columns that have no business falling." Kraybill shook his head. "These aren't cases of murder, they're cases of magic. Or murder by magic, maybe."
"Wait a minute," Tom said, and Laura was surprised to hear the wonder in his voice, as though he refused to let himself believe it but did just the same. "You're talking about . . . sentient wood?"
"Maybe," Kraybill said. "But not sentient in and of itself. Occupied by something."
"Possession," Laura said.
Kraybill nodded. "Sure. Wood doesn't jump up and do murder on its own."
"Wood doesn't jump up and do murder, period," Laura said. She didn't know why she suddenly felt so angry, but suspected that it might have something to do with the look on Tom's face, a look of acceptance and a trace of what might be wild joy, something that frightened her, that she had not seen on his features before.
"Wood is a living thing, Miss Stark. Mr. Brewer knows that. He also knows the kind of power that can be in it, if I'm not mistaken."
Laura looked at Tom for support, but he only nodded. "Yeah," he said softly. "It's . . . that's true."
"Well, you'll all forgive me," Laura said, "if I say that this all sounds like bullshit to me. Sure, wood's a living thing, but when a tree's cut down and made into something, it's dead. And it doesn't come to life again."
Tom looked at her sharply, as if she'd just given him irrefutable proof of the nonexistence of Santa Claus. He started to say something, but Kraybill cut in. "I know it sounds hard to believe, Miss Stark. But tell me, do you believe that people have souls?"
Her upbringing had been firmly religious, and, in spite of the harsh realities of her life, she did believe that much. "Yes," she told Kraybill reluctantly.
"If a man, then why not an animal? If an animal, why not all living things? The ancients believed that trees were living and knowing creatures. They believed trees had souls and could feel pain.
Many even worshipped trees. The Golden Bough tells of lots of things like that. And something else too." Kraybill closed his eyes, took his pipe from his mouth, and quoted from memory: "'How serious that worship was informer times may be gathered from the ferocious penalty appointed by the old German laws for such as dared to peel the bark of a standing tree. The culprit's navel was to be cut out and nailed to the part of the tree which he had peeled, and he was to be driven round and round the tree till all his guts were wound about its trunk.'"
Kraybill opened his eyes and replaced the pipe in the corner of his mouth.
"Good Christ," Tom whispered.
Kraybill nodded. "The same thing that happened to Mr. Hershey."
Laura's cheeks felt flushed. "All that proves is that whoever killed Sam Hershey had read The Golden Bough."
"It might also prove," Kraybill said, "that whatever killed Mr. Hershey was living The Golden Bough."
"It's preposterous."
"Miss Stark, there's more than one possibility. There are also stories of the souls of men inhabiting trees. This could be something like that. Or maybe a natural spirit. There's also the chance this wood, for some reason we can't guess, might be open to some other force."
"Like what?" Laura asked.
Kraybill shrugged. "Who can say?"
"You know, Mr. Kraybill," Laura said, "you really do sound like one of these channelers—full of theories with nothing to base them on but folklore and superstitions."
"You're wrong, Miss Stark. These channel people believe in friendly spirits that can give cheap—or not so cheap—advice. But I deal with the truth. There's nothing friendly about whatever's come into the wood of Dreamthorp. Only evil is here—something with a terrible purpose." For a moment, Kraybill sucked at the sweetness of his pipe, then went on. "It may be the same kind of thing that was in a house up in Potter County a few years ago. A spiritual malignancy, you'd call it. The house burned down along with whatever evil possessed it. At least they think it did. And I say that because you can never be sure of those things. They're like cancers. You cut it out and you think it's gone, but maybe something's survived and keeps growing until it's stronger than it ever was before."
Dreamthorp Page 26
