The Deadsong (17 page)

Andy nodded with the shears spread open. He held the shovel between his forearm and his potbelly so Jack could take it when the container hit the floor and the snake was loose.

“One…”

Andy huffed out short breaths as sweat began to bead up on his sunburned cheeks.

“Two…” Jack reached out and put a shaky hand on the plastic lid.
Better grab the shovel quick. Gotta be faster than it.

“Th––”

“Hello, boys.” The voice was familiar.

Jack jerked his head around to see the shape of a man cut out in the shadows by the back door. At his feet, a pool of other shapes.

And they were moving towards Jack and Andy.

“Mr. Pearson?” Andy said.

Ellis stepped out with his hands in his pockets. He was wearing a black canvas duster over a gray sweatshirt. “What’re you planning to do with those?”

The boys looked at their weapons and then back at Mr. Pearson. They began to shake as the shadowy shapes slithered closer and into the light.

There were about ten of them.

Jack and Andy began to back away. Their skin prickled into mounds of gooseflesh. Urine trickled from Andy’s pant leg and puddled up on the concrete.

“Everything’s gone to shit, boys. But I’d say this is your lucky day since I’ve had no problem with either of you.”

“Our…our sisters were––”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Ellis said, his eyes dark. “However, as much as I’ve liked you two…”

The snake on the table hurled its body against the side of the container. Then a second time. Then a third. The container inched over the corner of the table. The angry snake thrusted its weight again. And again.

Jack considered snatching the shovel from Andy and going to town on Mr. Pearson, but they were outnumbered.

“I can’t let you kill him,” Ellis finished, and then the hall filled with a thunderclap as the container smacked into the floor, setting the snake free. It curved silently up behind the boys. Andy pulled out a St. Christopher’s medallion from beneath his shirt and began rubbing it with his thumb.

Someone was pulling on the back door. Ellis had jammed a two-by-four in between the pull handles, but someone wanted in pretty bad. The force stopped. Whispering.

Ellis, the boys, and the snakes were watching the door. Ellis listened closely and heard Carl Motley sneeze a snot rocket. Time was short and he had business to take care of now that he had been seen, but…

Ellis turned a weary eye and forced a humorless smile. “I guess it’s your lucky day after all. Go.”

Jack and Andy looked at each other then back to Ellis.

“Go!” Ellis roared. The snakes charged at the boys until they found their strength. Jack and Andy hightailed it across the facility and burst out of the side doors.

When Motley and his crew got in, the place was empty. He crossed over to the empty Tupperware container and kicked a spray of nails in the air.

“It was here,” Smitty said, scratching his head. “That’s what I heard, Reverend.”

“Well it ain’t here now, is it?!” Motley screamed. “You damn fool!”

Margaret Oates walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“I heard him in here,” he said, looking at her. “It
is
Ellis.”

The three of them stood there in silence, lost.

Smitty stuttered “But, Reverend, what about… Well, Harley’s on his way over there to––”

“I know he is.” Motley was fuming. Harley Robinson was heading over to the Bartleby to take care of business there.
That’s okay. Let him take care of the college boy. He waltzed in here and stirred up everything anyway. We are justified and we shall be forgiven. And things were going just fine. Harley had found the shack. We were gonna kill this snake and then go burn the rest of em. Heavens-to-Betsy, could this get any worse?

Motley returned to reality and scanned the faces of his disciples. “We leave now. We go back to the church and wait for Harley. In the morning, we get supplies, and then tomorrow night, we follow Ellis Pearson and end this once and for all.”

Motley heard two deputies outside having a discussion about whether or not they should take some pictures of the snake for the tabloids. Their voices were getting louder as they approached the side door.

‘Strength for thy labor the Lord will provide.’

Smitty pointed to the back door. Motley nodded, and the three of them sprinted for it and were out by the time Deputies Bryant and Cooley walked in with a roll of duct tape and saw only the empty plastic container and the nails sprinkled about the floor.

CHAPTER
EIGHT
:
GETTING
OUT

1

The heat woke him up. Jared felt himself drenched with sweat. He cracked an eye and saw Gina resting her head on his chest.

He watched her breathe. Her lips were parted slightly.

They had slept through the night in the backseat and avoided all contact with everyone, but they had managed to forge a plan before passing out. It wasn’t a great one, but it was a pretty good start.

They would leave tonight. He would take Gina home to gather her things while he went to gather his own. Jared felt Mr. Pearson’s power over the snakes weaken as his own grew stronger, and the snakes had to either be destroyed or given to the one who should naturally carry on the devil’s work. Ellis Pearson would be out of the game soon enough regardless, and the only way to keep Thade appeased and out of Jared’s hair meant somehow turning them over to…

No, there’s no way that would work,
Jared thought,
but I can try.

He tapped Gina on the arm until she opened her electric blue eyes.

“It’s time,” he said.

She pulled herself off him and got out of the car and stretched, her back popping in the heat.

Jared twisted and popped his own back, fanning his shirt.

“Do you think Duke will be okay?” Gina asked.

“He’ll be fine. If I lived through it…” Jared pulled off his shirt and Gina gasped at the bite marks dotting his arms, chest, and back. “He will, too.”

“How did that happen?”

“After the incident at the McGraws’, I summoned them again and… tried to sever my connection with them.”

“Can you even do that?”

“Well, I had to try. I wanna get out of this mess. I got close but…well, this happened.”

Gina considered he might be going completely bonkers, but hell, was anything going on here that didn’t seem outrageously bizarre?

Jared put his shirt back on and added “Hurt like hell, though.”

Gina squeezed out a sound that vaguely resembled laughter.

He looked up at the sky. “It’s about mid-afternoon now. After I take you home, you have some time to do what you need to do. Meanwhile, I have some things of my own I have to take care of.”

“Like what?”

“I’d rather not say. Just be ready to go at nine o’clock tonight. If Dylan wants to come, great, but I’ll be at your house at nine o’clock sharp, so be ready. We’ll drive through the night and be in Shreveport by sun up. One of my dad’s Army friends has a house there. We can stay with him until we find our own place. There’s nothing else for us here.”

“Everything we’ve created here is cosmically wrong.”

“I wonder if God feels the same way about us.”

2

Sheriff Robertson showed up first. After laying eyes on the body, a moan crawled from his mouth, dragging over all that he saw.

Alan Blair was strung up in the tree, hanging from his feet, ripped open right down the middle like a doe. Blood was still oozing down his forearms. It dripped quietly onto the rust-colored maple leaves below his dangling fingers.

Plick. Plick. Plick.

Charlie Douglas had found him about seven-thirty that morning during his usual stroll along the highway. He had wandered beyond the tree line to relieve himself when he heard the sound and searched for the source…

Plick. Plick. Plick.

and called 9-1-1 from his cell phone once he found the young man hanging there, grossly opened up, his innards swaying in the morning breeze.

Ned had to turn away and put his head between his legs.

The sun rose as it did the day before. But today it would set with fewer souls roaming around this cursed town, this well-oiled machine in Arlo County called Hemming.

He stared out into the woods––those damn woods where everything evil seemed to hide and lay in wait. He wanted a cigarette more than anything. His wife made him quit once they got married, but now, that sweet nicotine fairy went buzzing around his ear and told him to ask Deputy Bryant for a cancer stick when he arrived––he smoked the cheap stuff aptly called ‘Chimneys’––and when the deputy arrived, that’s exactly what he did. Ned squatted on a fallen maple and smoked, waiting for the county medical examiner.

He was not a particularly religious fellow, but he wished he had a little religion right now. Some real God-fearing religion with a side of faith, hope, and love––the holy meat-and-three.

This horrifying display was enough to consider early retirement. He’d had enough, plain and simple. So far this week had been fat with death: Ashley Monroe, Susan Lubbock, Seth Willard, Brock Wilcox, Billy Lowell, Suzie Grafton, Corey Green, Rick Watts, Shirley Thompson, Wanda Phillips, Trudy Lightman, and Nick Messer all met the same fate. Duke Pearson was recovering at Durden Memorial, thank God, but Floyd Wiggins was still missing, and now Alan Blair was strung up like a deer just behind him, getting his picture made by a crime scene photographer.

3

Ellis Pearson kissed his wife gently, hopped down the concrete steps, and got into his wood-paneled station wagon. He adjusted the rearview then tilted it down to examine his reflection more closely. The man with graying hair on the other side of the glass spoke to him.
This is going way too far, Ellis.

He was in quite a predicament now. The danger he was in far exceeded his ability to create it. He had gotten out of bed that morning and barely had any control left. He tried to call them, but he had gotten no response. He searched with his mind, feeling out the usual channels where his reapers had forever responded promptly and with loyal obedience.

Nothing. His extra sense only groped through a void. The only thing he felt was that the snakes were no longer in their den.

Something very dark and very shady slid on its belly beneath the decaying façade of Hemming, and it was much scarier than the fear his snakes inflicted.  Generations of farmers, mill workers, schoolteachers, policemen, auto mechanics––all seated against a southern gothic conspiracy, as far as he was concerned. He concluded that all of those people who had welcomed him with open arms into the community, all of those friends, all of those colleagues, all of those kids whose lives he had helped change, all of them with hearts as black as a candle’s flaming core.

Those damn Sand Mountain shakers.

There were no good people left in this town, he thought. Just people. People who were on your case and ready to strike you down for doing or saying the wrong thing. Everyone was against him. In his mind, he had been doing a service. Granted, a very unusual service that had been bestowed upon him by his father, but Ellis had accepted his destiny and purpose many years ago.

You can’t try to rationalize or justify the things people do. They just do them, and you have to accept that. They’re people––just quacking,  chattering heads moving blindly through each passing day––and they’ll be the first and the last to tell you they’re not perfect.

Gee, sorry, I’m only human.

Save it for the wildcats.

Michelle waved at him through the decorative glass window cut into the front door. He grabbed a stainless steel coffee thermo from the passenger seat and opened it. He slid something out into the palm of his hand––a nickel-plated Derringer two-shot with a pearl grip. Amber streaks from the arc lamps on the other side of Lutton Street flashed across the barrel.

The gun was registered to his wife. He bought it for her after their bungalow had been burglarized last Christmas. With all the crazy kids and druggie lurking in the shadows, Ellis felt she'd be more at ease with something to protect herself in case the creatures of the night came knocking again.

They would come, but not for her. Not tonight.

Ellis gassed the wagon up Lutton Street and prepared to eliminate the monster he had created, and he wouldn’t need the snakes to do that.

4

After his father left, Duke sat on the edge of his bed looking at his scarred reflection in the mirror tacked on the back of his bedroom door. The swelling had gone down considerably since the attack, but the jagged laceration that ran from his cheek to his mouth seemed to grow the longer he stared at it.

Someone was at his window. He got to his feet and looked out and saw Jared behind the glass. Duke reluctantly let him in, but the personal resentment and anger were gone. If anything, he was ashamed of his behavior that escalated to the fight––the one that never happened. The one that led to him being attacked by dozens of those damn snakes he hated so much. It had been a close a call, he thought, that’s all.

He drove on through. Life goes on.

“I’m surprised to see you here,” Duke said. “What’s in the bag?”

“You might want to sit down. We don’t have much time.”

“If you came for an apology––”

“Just sit down. On the floor,” Jared told him. Duke obeyed.

Jared carefully put the gym bag on the floor and unzipped it. He pushed up his sleeves and rolled his eyes up at his buddy, hoping this would work.

“Here, I've got something for you. Look inside. Go on, it's okay.”

Duke scooted closer and slowly pulled open the flap. Gooseflesh had already broken out on Duke’s arms and neck.

“Don’t scream,” Jared warned.

When Duke saw the snakes, the scream caught in his throat and he couldn’t get it out even if he wanted to. They slid out onto the floor and moved around the mounds of dirty laundry piled up on the carpet.