The Piper's Graveyard: A Small-Town Cult Horror Thriller Suspense

by Ben Farthing

  “Not before I find my sister.”

  “Out of my office!” he snarled. Although the old man’s bones were probably brittle with eighty years of decay, and his skin was spotty with age, he filled the order with power and authority.

  Cessy didn’t need the last word. She went back down the hallway.

  He’d flipped out the moment she said she’d poke around. There was something he didn’t want her to know.

  That could mean terrible things for Kate, if Sheriff Miller was hiding something. But his outrage didn’t mean something awful had happened. Cessy took solace in knowing that the old man’s 1950s views on scandal meant that he’d probably hide adultery with as much vigor as he would hide murder.

  Not murder. There’d been no murder.

  Cessy squashed that idea.

  She walked back through the foyer, giving Betty a brief wave. Betty had turned the radio back up.

  “Aiding and abetting an enemy is called treason. Don’t talk to her. Don’t answer her questions.”

  Cessy stopped. “Who is this? On the radio?”

  Betty glanced down the hallway. “Sounds like Sheriff Miller would like you to leave.”

  “What’s his name? Where is he?”

  “Lockler,” said Betty. “I don’t know where he’s broadcasting from. The old station offices closed years ago. Now if you don’t leave, I have to put up with Reggie’s grumpiness the rest of the day.”

  Cessy thanked her and left.

  A rogue radio show? It likely didn’t matter. Whoever had called her from Kate’s phone had the radio on. That’s all. She had other avenues to investigate first.

  Sheriff Miller had given her more information than he’d realized. His claim that the State closed the road was easily verified.

  Which Cessy intended to do on the way to Gordon Wilder’s house.

  13

  Cessy pointed her 4Runner west on Main Street, towards Gordon Wilder’s side of town. Her tires rumbled and cracked over the decaying asphalt.

  The dirty brick buildings of downtown gave way to boarded-up houses on the edge of town, and then to open, overgrown lots as Main Street turned back into Mud River Road. She passed the junkyard and a closed gas station. A small herd of beef cows watched her from a fenced-off hillside. Above them, Black Gold Peak hid half the sky. The abandoned coal mine within made it a dead sentinel over a dead town.

  Cessy called the West Virginia Department of Transportation hotline, navigated a menu until she typed in Hamlin’s zip code, and listened to the robotic voice list out road closures.

  Mud River Road was not among them.

  It was satisfying, proving to herself that Sheriff Miller lied. But knowing that he was lying about why the town was blocked off didn’t get her any closer to Kate. It only raised more questions.

  Before she went any further, she made herself text Landis again. “I’m in Hamlin. My folks won’t believe Kate’s missing. Sheriff claims the state closed the roads, but the State says otherwise.”

  Landis responded quickly. “Glad you made it. Want me to call the State about the road? Could just be a paperwork issue.”

  “Yeah, go ahead.”

  “Will do. Keep checking in.”

  Cessy set aside her phone.

  Ulton Ridge Road was a right turn ahead. On the corner, a sinkhole had swallowed a small farm house.

  Cessy pulled over to look at it. She got out of the car, walked uphill to the white picket fence. The fence was untouched. The sinkhole had swallowed the house but barely any of the surrounding yard.

  Cessy leaned over the freshly-painted pickets.

  Wind blew, kicking up a scent of sour garbage. The junkyard was far behind her and nestled behind a hill. This smell was from the sinkhole.

  Seeding grass surrounded the hole, waved in the wind. A round wall of dirt and roots where the ground had fallen.

  The house sat crumpled in the hole like a brass shell in a revolver’s magazine.

  Its brick chimney had fallen to lean against the wall of the sinkhole. Dirt and rocks littered the roof’s black asphalt shingles. The roof itself was split across the middle. The front of the house had sunk deeper than the back, ripping the old building down the middle as it collapsed.

  Through the split, Cessy saw a bedroom. Water stained walls, a bed half covered in dirt.

  A toppled wardrobe, solid wood. Around it, a copper stain on the carpet.

  Cessy craned her neck to see deeper into the bedroom. She couldn’t spot the far wall.

  The sour scent of garbage grew stronger. Cessy forced back a gag.

  Instead of crumbled drywall and bare studs, Cessy saw dirt hidden in shadow. As if a tunnel pierced the bedroom, or the bedroom had fallen into a tunnel.

  A truck drove by behind her.

  She turned to watch, expecting them to slow and gawk with her. The engine noise increased even as the truck grew farther away. Whoever it was, they were gunning it towards the closed-off road out of town.

  Cessy turned back to the house. She climbed over the fence, holding onto it behind her to lean over the sinkhole.

  Down in the hole, a pile of car tires, and what she was pretty sure was a transmission.

  She pieced things together.

  An underground river had diverted to flow under the house, forming a tunnel. The occupants had been working with heavy car parts in the basement. The weight was too much.

  That’s what she’d report if there were no experts to hand it off to.

  But it didn’t look like anyone had inspected it, expert or otherwise.

  There was no yellow tape to mark off the house. No sign that any belonging had been recovered.

  Cessy had never known the people who lived here when she was a teenager. An elderly couple who kept sheep, who had to be long dead. Who had lived here when it collapsed? Had they been inside?

  She walked the ledge inside the fence, looking in at different angles. All she saw was another destroyed bedroom.

  Whoever owned it must have let their insurance lapse, otherwise it would already be on its way to being rebuilt. Unless the road closure was delaying the adjusters.

  Even then, why hadn’t the town blocked off the obvious danger?

  Cessy took photos with her phone. A habit from her days as a first-on-the-scene officer, but right now, just to document proof that she really was seeing something so uncommon.

  Sinkholes didn’t just happen. Cave systems were common in this corner of Appalachia, but usually in mountainsides; not down in the middle of a valley. She wasn’t satisfied with her theory of underground rivers and basement car tinkering.

  Cessy climbed back over the fence.

  Hamlin was falling apart in more ways than one.

  She got back in her car, and headed north on Ulton Ridge Road.

  14

  In front of her, Goat’s Jaunt was the low, northwestern barrier, keeping the outside world out of Hamlin. Its ridge met with Black Gold Peak.

  Cessy peered up at the higher mountain. Thick trees covered it from base to top. Somewhere near the peak, Valerie hid in her shed. The poor librarian’s break with reality disturbed Cessy. But she couldn’t blame her. There was something weird going on in Hamlin. Mom and Dad were refusing to accept that Kate was here, or they were lying about it. Sheriff Miller had lied about why the road was closed. A phantom radio show filled the airwaves with hate.

  If Valerie’s mind had been ready to hop off the reality train, Hamlin had plenty of stops.

  Cessy obviously couldn’t trust Sheriff Miller enough to tell him about Valerie’s hiding spot. She’d stop by Valerie’s parents later, to feel out the situation before letting them know where their daughter was. But for right now, she needed to prioritize finding Kate.

  The road that led to Ulton Ridge branched at the base of Goat’s Jaunt. To the left, the neighborhood. To the right, a quick trip up the valley between the two mountains, to a parking lot for hikers. Trails led up to both peaks. There was even a paved loo
p trail where moms pushed strollers.

  That’s probably where Mom was talking about when she said she’d seen Jackson walking the trails. Assuming she hadn’t completely made that up.

  Cessy jerked the wheel to the right at the last minute.

  She’d talk to Gordon later. So far, the sheriff and her own parents hadn’t taken her seriously enough. She couldn’t expect Jackson’s father to say “oh sure, my son lured Kate here to try to seduce her; they’re hiding in the basement right now.” No, the better option was to go where Jackson had been seen. Allegedly.

  And after all night in the car, followed by a few hours’ sleep in a cramped twin bed, it’d be nice to stretch her legs.

  The road entered the forest to turn sharply, cutting her off from the open valley below, and then ended in a gravel lot.

  A blue minivan sat in the corner. Its back tire was flat.

  Cessy parked and got out of the car. The undergrowth here was thick. It’d take a machete to wander into the greenbrier thorns, young pines, and dark jade rhododendron bushes.

  A wooden map stand, devoid of any maps, stood between two trailheads. The paved loop to the right, and the dirt path up the mountains to the left.

  Cessy approached the minivan.

  A Pennsylvania license plate. Someone visiting from out of town.

  Or a rental car.

  Cessy’s breath caught. She cupped her hands and looked into the front seat. A stack of papers on the passenger’s seat. Rental contracts.

  And there in the center console, an insulated coffee mug with a yellow and red coat of arms, the word “Gryffindor” across the bottom. Kate’s Hogwarts house.

  A low moan grew in Cessy’s throat to pour out in a stream of, “Nonononono.”

  Cessy had wanted to believe that she’d been mistaken. Kate wouldn’t have really come home to see Jackson.

  But now she was staring at proof.

  Kate was in Hamlin.

  Cessy broke the front window. The shattering glass was a flat sound in this parking lot walled in by tight undergrowth.

  She inspected the rental paperwork. Kate had rented the van over a week ago.

  Cessy ran through the possibilities. Kate had come straight here, to this trailhead parking lot, where she met Jackson. Then they drove off together.

  That didn’t ring true. If they were going to run off together, why meet in a blocked-off town?

  So maybe Kate had gone for a hike to clear her mind, come back to a flat tire, and called someone to pick her up. Not Mom or Dad, unless they were lying about having seen her. Not Jackson, unless Dad was lying about him being missing. Which he almost definitely was.

  Cessy crumpled the paperwork. She hated dishonest witnesses.

  If Jackson had picked up Kate, Jackson’s dad was the closest thing to a lead.

  So Gordon was her next stop.

  Cessy headed for her truck, then paused, thinking of domestic violence crime scenes she’d never unsee.

  What if no one picked up Kate? What if she was up these trails somewhere?

  A spark of hope fought for space amidst Cessy’s fear. What if Kate had just got here? What if she was hiking, and hadn’t even realized her tire was flat?

  Cessy would have a hell of a time explaining the broken window.

  Before she went to question Gordon, Cessy would hike the trails.

  Her thoughts ricocheted between the hope of finding her sister hiking, and the horror of finding proof that Jackson was “vermin.”

  15

  Between the dirt trail up the mountainside, and the paved loop trail, Cessy chose the paved trail first.

  Kate loved to escape to nature, but her work kept her at a desk most of the day, and she didn’t unwind through exercise. The shorter trail was more likely.

  Cessy walked it at a brisk pace. Birds sang and crickets chirped. Squirrels crunched through the bed of dead leaves that underlaid the entirety of the forest. The black asphalt intruded on the greens and brownish grays of the woods. The trail constantly veered right, a slow loop, always promising something around the corner, only delivering more empty asphalt.

  It took twelve minutes to complete the mile loop. No signs of Kate. No broken paths into the consuming undergrowth to indicate anyone had hiked off trail. Or been dragged off trail.

  Cessy ignored that train of thought for now.

  There was still the chance that Kate had gone up the dirt trail, optimistic about the strenuousness of the hike.

  Cessy went to her truck to chug the remnants of a water bottle from last night. It tasted stale like chilly plastic.

  She checked her watch. 1:20. Practically the whole day left. Plenty of time to walk the trail, and still have time to visit Gordon. Maybe she’d find Kate strolling back down the mountain. Or maybe she’d find Jackson, if Mom’s claim to have seen him wasn’t an impulsive lie.

  The trail wound back and forth for three miles up to Black Gold Peak. Somewhere along the way, it branched into another trail that climbed Goat’s Jaunt, and another that explored farther north, loosely paralleling the fire access road she’d driven last night.

  Cessy started her climb, distracting herself from what she might find by mentally reviewing past cases.

  She stepped over roots and rocks. Avoided little gullies that formed when rainwater used the trail as a temporary stream. Branches scratched at her arms. This trail wasn’t as well-maintained as the paved loop. The forest fought to regain control.

  Her quads burned after ten minutes of brisk uphill walking. She jogged three times a week, but none of her routes were relentless uphill switchbacks.

  She tried to estimate how far she’d gone. Felt like a full mile, but with the incline making it tough, she guessed it was more like half or three-quarters.

  She hadn’t seen any evidence of someone forging their own trail into the woods.

  In fact, Cessy remembered hiking these trails as a teenager. She would bring a bagged a lunch, and find a place off the trail to sit and enjoy being alone in nature. But now, the undergrowth was too thick for even that. It should be thicker in some places, sparser in others. Instead, the bushes and vines held fast, consistent walls on either side of the tight trail.

  Maybe the mine had been damaging vegetation growth, and each decade the mine remained dead, the forest grew more wild.

  Cessy decided to walk another twenty minutes.

  Seventeen minutes later, quads aching and lungs burning, Cessy spotted something neon pink on the ground, ahead in the elbow of a switchback.

  She trotted up for a closer look.

  It was a pink baseball cap. A single rip through the brim left stiff fabric hanging loose. The rest of the hat--white mesh, pink fabric--was in perfect shape, except for a handful of dead pine needles woven through the mesh.

  Cessy tried to remember whether Kate owned a pink hat. She wore a red Nationals hat the last time they’d attended a game, but usually she kept her hair in a messy bun.

  This hat more likely belonged to a local fitness enthusiast running the trails, who got her hat caught in a branch.

  Cessy looked up into the trees. There wasn’t a stiff branch here that could have caught the hat. Maybe an unlucky thorn.

  She could hear Detective Landis scolding her. “Read the evidence. Don’t massage it into saying what you want.”

  If Kate’s rental van was in the trailhead lot, it was likely that this hat belonged to her. Cessy hadn’t memorized her sister’s wardrobe.

  This was the place to search.

  Something caught Cessy’s eye. On the underside of a thick oak branch, thirty feet above, dark specs wriggled. A patch as big as her hand, a shadowy warbling against the brownish gray of the tree bark.

  Wind blew, pushed a lower branch in front of her view. It died down, and the leafy branch returned to its place. Cessy expected the wriggling darkness to disappear, but it was still there.

  She stepped closer, careful not to step directly underneath in case something fell. She couldn’
t see clearly enough to make out what she was seeing, although she was fairly certain it was a swarm of insects. Ants, maybe, although she’d have expected to be able to see legs and pincers and antennae. And although the swarm covered the bark entirely, it appeared to be a single layer of insects--no crawling atop each other.

  A fly buzzed by, and Cessy realized the swarm on the tree was silent. She considered climbing for a closer look, but the thought of getting close repulsed her.

  A spec looped out from the swarm, glided over a patch of moss, and returned. It moved like a boatman beetle.

  They were too far above to see clearly, whether they were insects or holes. Cessy pulled the brake on that train of thought. She couldn’t let Valerie’s delusions confuse her.

  Cessy’s ankle and foot still itched where she’d been bit or stung in her old bedroom.

  Maybe Mom accidentally carried home some infestation.

  Cessy stepped a generous distance away from the swarm to look around. She didn’t need to solve Hamlin’s pest problems. She needed to find Kate.

  Cessy picked up the ripped pink hat. On closer inspection, the rip through the brim was clean. Only a few threads hung loose. It looked like someone had taken a pair of scissors to it, except the cut took sharp curves through the white, stiff fabric.

  Cessy had to assume it was Kate’s. Maybe she’d left the trail, and hung the hat to be a neon pink trail marker to find her way back.

  She looked around, but undergrowth limited her vision. She’d be a one-woman search party--gradually extending loops through the woods, around one central spot.

  In thick woods, stepping off the trail was a quick way to get lost. Cessy looked up, found three distinct trees close to the trail, and memorized them.

  Then she pushed through a tight copse of young pines, trunks as thick as her thumb. Sticky sap rubbed onto her exposed cheeks and arms. The smell reminded her of Pat’s cologne, which she’d spilled the night she kicked him out.

  She climbed up the steep mountain. Her quads burned. Switchbacks had been a blessing; hiking straight up the mountain was killer on her legs.