Stoneskin's Revenge (9 page)

Of course, she
was
good, she knew that without being told. Or at least she was when it counted, like when Mama told her to eat everything on her plate and she could have an extra dessert—that was what Robert had been referring to. She wasn't
always
good, though; she knew that, too. But she was careful not to get caught at it—at least not by Mama. That was easy enough to do, too, when Mama was mooning and cooing over her latest beau. Then it was simply a matter of staying out of the way and doing what she was told (which often enough
was
“Stay out of the way like a good girl,” or, “Allison, honey, could you stay in your room for a while?” or, “Allison, baby, me and Robert're goin' to a movie, so you mind your brother like a good girl, okay?”).

And she'd nod
yes
and then go right on and do what she wanted to, because she knew that Brother Don couldn't do anything to her no matter what she did, on account of the fact that she knew Brother Don had plenty of secrets of his own—like those magazines he'd hidden under his bed until he'd moved 'em to his and Mike's treehouse (or that's where she
thought
they were; that was one place even she didn't dare violate). Or what he did while he was looking at those same magazines in the bathroom, or some of the things she'd heard him and Mike mention about looking in a certain young lady's window down the road, which just happened to be about the time there were rumors of Peeping Toms (she thought that was the term) in the neighborhood.

Yeah, Don Larry Scott might be a lean and hungry fourteen, but he sure wasn't lord of the manor. At least not when nine-year-old Allison Jane didn't want him to be.

He was staring at her now, too: or glaring, rather: aiming a mixture of scorn and envy at his younger sister that was only slightly less virulent than he fixed on Robert, whom he cautiously admired, but did not want to encourage in the art of Allison flattery, even when it made Mama happy.

That was the key these days: make Mama happy.

And that's what Allison was good at.

Mama chose that moment to lay a hand on Robert's before gazing wistfully at her only daughter. “She's been mighty sweet these days,” Mama said. “Mighty sweet indeed.”

Don rolled his eyes and started to say something but puffed his cheeks instead, which Allison thought made him look even more like a chipmunk than he usually did. Margo—that was her best friend, Amy's, older sister—said he was cute, but Allison didn't think so. Least he wasn't as cute as she was: no curly blond hair (his was dark brown and sort of spiky-burry), no bright blue eyes (his were greenish-gray). The only thing he had over her, she figured, was long black eyelashes. Or that's what she'd heard Margo say one time: “That boy's got the prettiest eyes I ever seen. I wish I had eyelashes like that.” To which someone had replied that yeah, it was a pity poor little Allison was so blond, 'cause it made her eyelashes go invisible. Mama had told her she could wear mascara when she was eleven. Allison couldn't wait.

“Can I be excused?” Don asked as soon as decorum allowed.

“Sure,” Mama said absently. “But just remember it's your turn to do dishes.”

“Maaaaa!”

“Now don't argue, Don Larry, you know I can't trust Allison with my good china. It's supposed to go to her when she gets married. Suppose she dropped a piece? It'd break her heart.”

“Sure would,” Allison affirmed triumphantly, and Don Larry knew he was stuck. He was usually stuck now, 'cause anytime it was her turn and Mama wasn't around, she'd just threaten to mention a thing or two, and good old Don'd take over. She'd have to start being a little cleverer, though; 'cause Don had lately taken to arranging to be elsewhere when dish-washing time rolled around, and Allison knew she couldn't delay too long. Having two sneaky kids in one family was a problem. But at least, of the two, she was the best.

“I'm goin' over to Mike's to game in a little while,”

Don told Mama. “And we're goin' campin' later, don't forget.”

“Then you'd better hurry up with them dishes,” Mama told him back, with a shake of her hair (which gesture Allison had taken to imitating lately, which made Don so mad he could spit when she did it to him).

“Can
I
be excused?” Allison asked primly. “I don't think I want any dessert right now.”

“Yeah, run on,” Robert chuckled, dismissing her with a wave of a freckled hand.

And that's just what Allison Scott did. She ran right to her room and changed out of the white-and-pink sundress Mama had made her wear to lunch 'cause there was special company, and into her red shorts and the blue-and-yellow Simpsons T-shirt and her little white Reeboks. And as soon as she heard the door to the den close at one end of the hall and the dishes start rattling and clinking at the other, she was making a beeline for the front door.

She paused with her hand on the knob and stood on tiptoes to peer through the peephole.

She was about to do something bad—something
really
bad. She was going to go play in the woods. But not the oak woods behind her house; that was her brother's domain, and besides, that way eventually turned into swamp, and that kind of scared her. No, she was going to play in the nice pine woods right beyond the railroad tracks. She had a playhouse there: a collection of boxes within a grid-work of carefully laid out pebbles. Trouble was, she couldn't get there very often, and didn't dare stay there very long when she did, because Don didn't know about it yet, and if he ever found out, she'd lose one of her prime advantages over him.

But there was still the thrill of the forbidden, though Mama had not, in fact, lately said she couldn't go there, just not to go outside the reach of her voice. That that admonition conveniently superseded the much more ancient one not to cross the road, and Lord knows not to play on the tracks beyond, was not lost on her. If she got caught, she'd just plead ignorance of the law (that was a phrase she'd learned from Robert, who was morning shift commander in the Whidden Police Department).

One final glance toward the back of the house, one final check to see that the coast was clear, and Allison slipped outside. She had already started to run across to the nearest of the fifteen loblolly pines that dotted the wide expanse of newly mown yard (another thing teenage brothers were good for), when something brought her up short.

She stopped in her tracks and stared, brow wrinkling in perplexity. The yard ended a short way farther on, where it ran up against the dusty yellow-white length of the upstart logging road that meandered past the new ranch house Daddy had built Mama when she was five. Beyond it was a fringe of weeds, and beyond them the slight elevation that carried the Georgia Pacific on down to Brunswick. She knew its habits quite well: once in the morning going west through Whidden with a burden of ragged tree trunks, and then east again in the afternoon, laden with rolls of newsprint and other paper products. Even on Sunday.

Beyond the tracks were the woods that were Allison's destination, but what had stopped her cold was that, while the coast had most certainly been clear earlier, it definitely wasn't now.

For as Allison slipped around to the road side of her pine tree, she saw somebody come hobbling down the tracks from the west. An old woman, it looked like, probably
real
old, though Allison couldn't see enough of her face to tell. But the way the poor old thing was walking—sort of hitching along like she had a limp, or maybe like her feet were too heavy; and the way she was all bent over with almost a hump on her back seemed to indicate that was the case. And the clothes more or less clinched it, for the woman wore a grayish-tan shawl flipped over her head like a hood and trailing over her arms and back, largely obscuring the long, shapeless dress beneath it. Allison found this curious not only for itself, but because it didn't jibe with the oppressive south Georgia June heat. But she just couldn't imagine that poor old woman wearing shorts and a T-shirt like her mama did when she didn't have company. The old woman looked dirty, too; and Allison
was sure she could see bits of leaves and twigs sticking out of the ragged fabric.

Maybe she shouldn't go play in the forest after all; maybe the old woman would be there. Maybe the old woman was a witch who would eat her up.

Except that was silly, and if Don Larry knew she even considered things like that, he'd make fun of her for days, and that settled it. Soon as the coast was clear, she'd run right on over.

As soon as the coast
was
clear, 'cause it was taking the old biddy a
long time
to make her way down the tracks. Allison watched her, as if hypnotized, and realized she'd nearly dozed off just following the methodical step-and-hitch that was the rhythm of the crone's progress. It was almost like every step made the ground vibrate—which made Allison's eyes tingle in turn, kinda like they did when she got sleepy, but it was the middle of the day and she wanted to play, and didn't like that at all.

The woman didn't seem to have noticed her, though; didn't seem to notice
anything
as she moved with slow precision from Allison's right line of sight to her left. Eventually she passed from view behind a screen of oleander, and Allison breathed a sigh of relief and concluded her dash for the road. She'd be okay, she knew: the old woman was gone, and if she crossed the tracks quickly and silently, as she knew she could, she'd be at her playhouse in no time. It was kind of to the west, anyway. And the old woman had been heading east.

In fact, when Allison dashed across the tracks and entered the woods, she was nowhere in sight.

Chapter VII: Off the Beaten Path

(east of Whidden, Georgia—early afternoon)

Calvin was practically beside himself with irritation when he awoke. The sun was shining square on his face (which is probably what had roused him to start with), and a gritty-eyed squint in its direction through the froth of live-oak leaves indicated that it was clearly afternoon—which meant he had slept rather more than twelve hours. Time he had certainly not planned to let slip by.

“Damn,” he grumbled under his breath, as he rummaged through his meager gear in search of breakfast, then remembered the Vision Quest and checked himself abruptly, wondering if he should continue his fast. Good sense won out, though: he had
sought
his vision and failed, and while some sort of threat was evidently still laying for him, and he still ought to be on his best behavior as far as things like lying went, it was not necessarily wise to confront…whatever it was…half sick from starvation. Besides, the fasting was to help sunder soul and body, not weaken that body when the actual trial began. With that bit of rationalization giving him a degree of comfort, he broke out a stick of beef jerky and began gnawing it reflectively. He did not, however, make coffee.

By the time he had got himself cleaned up and his camp in order, his course of action was clear. He would go into town (he needed to anyway, since if there
was
trouble brewing it would be a good idea to know what goods and services were available), and once there, he'd ring up Dave and Sandy and alert them both to his situation. He hadn't a clue
what
he'd tell Dave, of course, only that he should beware, but he had a pretty good idea what his conversation with Sandy would be about, which was basically everything that had happened to him in the past three days. It occurred to him, though, that she might already know most of the story, since while he wasn't reachable by phone, Dave was, and she might very well have wrung a detailed briefing out of him when Calvin proved unavailable. But still, it would be awfully good to talk to her, and he
had
promised her a call and not delivered—though that was not, strictly speaking, his fault.

He was just making final preparations for his departure—checking the fires for embers, and secreting his bow inside the trunk of a nearby hollow tree—when his eyes fell on the copy of the
Savannah Morning News
he had bought yesterday and never got around to perusing. The article that had drawn his interest then jumped out at him once more: JACKSON COUNTY WOMAN FOUND DEAD UNDER MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES. Now, as then, it intrigued him, not merely because he had recently
been
in Jackson County (and of course, there was also the slightly sensational use of
mysterious
),
but also because Jackson County was a long way from Savannah, and thus small happenings there were not likely to make the front page unless it was a slow day for news—or unless it was not, in fact, a small happening.

An impatient grunt, because he really did need to get his ass in gear, and Calvin flopped against his tree and scanned the article.

His hair stood on end as he read it. Not only had one Evelyn Mercer been found dead outside her trailer, but that selfsame trailer was apparently right off Lebanon Road, only a mile or two from where Calvin and his friends had camped on their way from Sandy's to Stone Mountain the Sunday night just past. As for the “mysterious circumstances,” they remained frustratingly obscure. All Calvin could piece together from the article's oblique language was that the woman had risen early to fix breakfast for her husband, stepped outside to feed the chickens, and simply not come back in. Her husband had found her in the yard hours later, with the chickens pecking at her body. There were a few veiled references to mutilation (“The body, dressed in a housecoat over a T-shirt, appeared to have been tampered with in an unconventional manner, resulting in unconfirmed reports of possible removal of some viscera. When questioned, the local coroner had no comment,” was the way the paper put it), but nothing really concrete. The rest of the article was a brief bio of the late Ms. Mercer and the usual rejoinder about further information being withheld pending investigation. There was no actual mention of murder, though that was certainly implied, and was what the dead woman's husband was quoted in print as suspecting. Bizarre stuff, all right.