AFTER (19 page)

Cassie wailed and dropped to her knees beside the boy's bed. Despite her facade of faith and strength, she lifted her hands to the rafters and cried like a baby. Tears streamed down her face as she clutched at her dying son. "Lord have mercy on my poor baby!" she pleaded.

Jubal stepped forward and put his hand on her heaving shoulder. "Sweetheart…"

She pulled away, as though something unholy had touched her. "So what's bitten him?" she demanded. Cassie watched, horrified, as the red-mirrored eye shifted toward the sound of her voice. "Tell me, Jubal… what will he become?"

The farmer could only stand there. He had no answer with which to ease her mind.

"No!" shrieked Lenora. Her long fingers clawed at her face, drawing blood. "Not him!" She backed into a far corner, then slid slowly to the floor. "Not him
too
!"

Jubal sat down heavily in a kitchen chair. He stared at the chaos around him, two sobbing, shrieking women and one silent and comatose boy.

And, at that moment, he knew that his family, once happy and strong, was slowly dying, as if from a slow and creeping poison.

The next time Jubal roused from a sound sleep, the gray light of dawn was arching through the cracks of the shutters.

He jumped as someone gently shook him. "What is it?"

Cassie was standing before him. Her scornful expression had softened, changing into one of dark melancholy. "You'd best go looking for Lenora. She's gone."

Jubal sat up and looked toward the door. The bar was still securely in place. "How?"

Cassie motioned to the corner where Lenora had vented her anguish hours before. She had pried several of the sturdy oaken floorboards loose… something that should have only been possible with a claw hammer and pry bar. Yet she had done it… with her bare hands.

"She waited till we were worn out and asleep," his wife told him. "I think that Goodman boy came for her."

Jubal stood up and dressed hurriedly. "They'll be heading for the valley."

Cassie watched as he pulled on his work boots, put on his hat, and, walking over to the far wall, yanked the shotgun from the chinking between the logs. When the barrels dropped, a baby snake – left over from last night's attack – fell from the left chamber and writhed upon the floor, tiny fangs snapping with contempt. Jubal grumbled and brought the
buttplate
of the gun down upon the winged serpent. He didn't dare try doing the little bastard in with the sole of his boot.

Silently, Cassie went to the cupboard and loaded Jubal's knapsack with leftover cornbread, a small jar of pickled quail eggs, and a canteen she dipped up from a bucket of spring water. She walked over and handed it to him. "Take care where you walk."

"Thanks," he said. Jubal walked over to Seth's bed. In the glow of a kerosene lamp, he examined his son. The boy looked no better than he had several hours before. To tell the truth, he looked much worse. His skin held an ashy grayness and running sores had sprouted up the crooked column of his neck and across his scalp. Just looking at him, one might have mistaken his condition for radiation sickness… if it hadn't been for that confounded eye.

Jubal went to the bureau, took a handful of shotgun shells from the top drawer, and deposited them in his pocket. He removed the beam from the door and stepped out onto the porch. The man looked back to see his wife standing in the middle of the room. She looked smaller and frailer than he had ever remembered.

"I'm sorry for not telling you about the boy," he said.

Cassie nodded. "And I should've told you about Lenora earlier. I reckon that makes us even."

Jubal walked across the porch, making sure there were no lingering snakes about. "Well, I'd best be going."

"I've seen how that boy looks at Lenora," she told him. "First chance he gets, he'll talk her into laying with him. You mustn't let that happen."

Jubal nodded. "I'll pepper his ass with buckshot. That'll break him out of the mood."

He was down the steps and halfway across the yard, when Cassie called out again. "Remember, Jubal… she's still our daughter, no matter what she's becoming. Please, don't kill her."

He turned and stared her flat in the face. "I can't guarantee that."

Tears bloomed in Cassie's eyes and rolled down her cheeks. "I know."

Before the pain and grief of his wife's expression could engulf him, Jubal turned and walked off into the early morning mist.

He took a narrow footpath that led from the ridge, westward down the face of the mountain. From a rocky slope, he could see the jagged points of pine and fir piercing the foggy vapor that clung high amid the
Smokies
so early in the morning. As he progressed along the trail, he descended into the mist. He had once found comfort in walking along the fog-shrouded trails. But now Jubal knew that there was danger around every bend, concealed in each clump of thicket, behind each jutting boulder.

A mile or so down the face of the mountain, Jubal paused to take a sip of water from the canteen. He ducked behind a heavy deadfall when he heard something making its way noisily through the underbrush. Unseen, he watched as something black and bristly waddled its way through the briars and bramble. From the looks of it, it had once been a porcupine. Its broad face was now bear-like and its quills were barbed like fishhooks, pert near eighteen inches long.

Soon, he was on his way again. As the steep face of the mountainside eased into rolling foothills, Jubal found himself walking along a winding stretch of freshwater stream. A long, pebbled sandbar cut directly through the center of the creek bed. He took it as a walkway, to avoid picking his way through the heavy brush on either side. Tall ferns, almost prehistoric in nature, grew plentiful along the banks, as well as thick mats of green moss and stringy groves of weeping willow.

Jubal was a good quarter mile down the creek bed, when something snagged his sore ankle. He winched in pain and cried out. When he glanced down, he found that one of the leafed vines of a tall willow tree had reached out and grabbed him. "Damned tree!" he snapped. Jubal took a Buck knife from a sheath on his belt and cleaved the willow branch in half. A shrill piercing scream cut through his ears, then, abruptly, a dozen other vines were shooting toward him, clutching at his arms and legs.

Quickly, he tried to avoid the angry willow, but he was much too slow. The tree bent nimbly, entrapping him. The edges of the slender leaves were like those of the cornstalks, their corners as sharp as the edge of a razor blade. He cussed as they sliced past the material of his flannel shirt and the heavy denim of his jeans. He met their slashing attack with one of his own. His hunting knife separated the slender coils, parting them, drawing screams.

He was nearly beyond their reach, when one particularly long branch lashed out and wrapped around his throat. Black specks danced before his eyes as the leafy strand tightened around his neck, pulling taut, choking him. But that wasn't all. Jubal suddenly found himself lifted bodily off his feet. The willow's branch began to lift him, kicking and struggling, toward the top of the tree and a gaping, salivating crack in the uppermost peak of the trunk. As Jubal slowly dangled there, like a condemned man at the end of a hangman's noose, he saw row upon row of jagged wooden teeth within the willow's gullet. They gnashed hungrily, eagerly.

Jubal looked down to see that he was a good fifteen feet above the rocky channel of the creek bed. It would be a hard fall – high enough to break bones – but he knew he had to chance it. He reached above him and sawed at the sinewy vine. It finally parted with an anguished wail.

The farmer found himself flailing through mid-air, the hard ground rushing toward him. He tried to pitch his weight forward and managed to land halfway across a soft bed of moss. His other half, shoulders and head, landed in the coldwater stream, striking sharply against sandstone and flint.

"Hellfire and damnation!" cursed Jubal. Shakily, he rose to his feet, feeling a mite dizzy. He put a hand to the back of his head. The palm came away coated with blood. Tenderly, he prodded and probed, but determined that he had escaped a concussion. All he had suffered from his fall was a few cuts and abrasions.

He left that spot in the branch, putting as much distance between himself and the willow grove as possible. Soon, he found the footpath again and continued on his way.

It was mid-afternoon when Jubal came upon a clearing in the woods. Sunshine peeked through the leaves of a massive oak, dappling the clover and wildflowers with patterns of shadow and light. His heart pounded with a mixture of indignation and rage as he spotted a blanket rolled out beneath the tree. Beside it lay the jeans, shirt, and drawers of a man. On the other side were the garments of a girl. A pink blouse, black skirt, and white cotton panties. Jubal recognized them as belonging to his daughter.

The folds of the blanket were rumpled and askew. At one point, a dark oval of fresh blood stained the fabric.

At that moment, Eddie Goodman's pale white ass was the furthermost thing from Jubal's mind. If the boy had been standing before him at that instant, he would have probably shot him dead on the spot.

Jubal was about to leave, when he noticed a mound of freshly turned earth a few yards away. Curious, he walked over and found a naked foot protruding from the soil.

Tossing the shotgun aside, Jubal got down on his hands and knees. He clawed at the earth, afraid that it was his daughter that lay in the shallow grave, but knowing in the back of his mind that it wasn't.

It wasn't long before Jubal had unearthed enough to identify the remains as those of Eddie Goodman. The partially
devoured
remains, that was.

Something had torn out most of the boy's abdomen, feasting on his innards before concealing him in rich, dark sod.

Jubal rose to his feet, afraid. "Lenora!" he called out. "Girl, where are you?"

He received no response at first. Then a voice replied.

"Papa."

Muffled.

"I'm here."

Beneath the ground.

Jubal looked down, just as the clover surged upward. Raw earth boiled through the greenery and, with it, a pair of pale white hands laced with black fur. The fingers were twelve inches in length and tipped with curved nails the strength and color of gunmetal.

He stumbled backward as the hands grasped at him, searching. "Papa, where are you?" came the voice again, nearly obscured by dirt and stone.

Jubal scrambled across the clearing and found his shotgun. He stood and watched, horrified, as the mound of earth moved toward him, leaving a winding tunnel in its wake. "Lenora?" he croaked in disbelief.

It stopped at his feet. "It's so warm and cozy down here, Papa," she told him. "And I have friends. Oh, so many friends."

Jubal watched as the mound opened and Lenora appeared from the depths of a dark tunnel. Her pale body was covered with a coat of fine black hair and her teeth were jagged and sharp. At first he thought that her eyes had rolled back into her head until only the whites showed, but that was not the case. She had taken on the characteristics of the critter that had bitten her in the flowerbed. She was as blind as a mole.

"Oh, God… Lenora," was all that Jubal could say.

The girl smiled. Dark soil spilled from her open mouth, along with earthworms and fat white grubs. "I belong here, Papa," she said. "You were wrong. There is a better place."

Tears stung his eyes as he thumbed back the twin hammers of his double-barrel shotgun. "
Lordy
Mercy, child, I'm sorry…"

A hurt expression crossed Lenora's face as she heard the metallic clicks of the gun. "No, Papa… please."

Jubal lowered the shotgun, even as Lenora began to retreat into her earthen den. "I love you, daughter," he told her.

Then he fired.

That night, Jubal found it hard to sleep.

His thoughts kept returning to the awful thing he had done down in the foothills. After killing his own daughter, he had pulled her gunshot carcass from the mole hill and, along with the remains of Eddie Goodman, built a funeral pyre with dry brush and set it aflame. He had refrained from doing the simple thing and reburying them. There was too much of a chance of some animal or insect feeding upon their bodies and becoming… what? Something half human? The thought horrified him to no end.

Jubal had stood there and stared into the crackling flames. An urge had crossed his mind at one point… to dive into the fire himself and end it all. But he had Cassie and the boy to live for.

He thought about that as he lay awake in the darkness. The journey back to Hayes Ridge was the longest he had ever made in the forty-six years of his life. When he reached the cabin, he had found Cassie waiting for him. They hadn't exchanged words as he mounted the front porch. They simply fell into each other's arms and cried. He remembered burying his face in her shoulder. She had bathed while he was away, smelling of lye soap and powder.

It was a hard thing, lying there in the night, knowing you had murdered and disposed of your own child. The Burn had melted away the veneer of decency and goodness that had once divided the civilized from the uncivilized. In that
clovered
clearing in the foothills, Jubal knew he had crossed that awful line and joined the ranks of the latter.