The Deadsong (21 page)

Dylan felt the laces of a sneaker––

(gina)

patted a leg

(gina)

then a cold bare arm

(oh god gina please be okay)

as his mind sketched out the scene with gross horror – his sister twisted and mangled at the bottom of the stairs, head probably cracked open like a melon, eyes bulging – those bright blue eyes now the faded color of a November sky – but he couldn’t really be sure. The cellar was blacker than all the funeral attire in Hemming.

He was afraid, terribly afraid.

Something crashed above him, and the room got lighter. Jared was standing at the top of the stairs, silhouetted in a faint ambient glow. The doors were now open. Heavy rain stung at their skin.

Help. Must. Get. Help.

“Ughhh,” Gina grunted, “Dylan? Dylan?”

“Yeah, I’m right here,” Dylan said. What he saw was not the horrible image sketched in his mind. The railing had scraped her cheek on the way down and her knee was laid open by a step’s jagged edge. Other than that, she looked all right. But he couldn’t be absolutely sure. He needed more light.

“Hey, you all right?” Jared jogged down the stairs.

“My ass really hurts. My leg, too. My leg––” Gina tried to see it through the darkness. It ached and throbbed, but she was no baby, no wimp. She had played softball for three years and had come away with a little more than a bruise and a scar. Hell, she had a rich history with pain (they go way back), but the pain just below her knee was so great, she thought having her toenails ripped out with pliers might be less excruciating.

She tried to move her leg and felt the jagged twigs of bone grind together. She wailed miserably. It was definitely broken.

“Gina, you’re gonna be all right,” Jared said. He found her hand and gripped it tightly. “Just hang in there. We’re gonna get help. Okay?”

Gina nodded. She was finally getting her nerves under control. She squeezed Jared’s hand and emptied her lungs.

“I’ll go get a flashlight,” Dylan said, bolting up the stairs, “Stay with her, man. I’ll hurry.”

“You got it,” Jared shouted as Dylan vanished from view. He could see her face now. Moonlight peeked through a breaking cloud. It flickered through the rain, magnifying the details in her face, her skin glossy and wet.

“Helluva night, eh?” Gina laughed. She felt Jared squeeze her hand.

“This is one you’ll never forget,” he said, smiling. The way he said it didn’t comfort her like it should have. Either he was bitter about the cock-blocking circumstances brought on by the storm, or he was trying to be funny to soften the cruel reality that she was badly injured. Or maybe it was something else entirely. Either way, he was right. This was a night she expected to resonate for years to come.

It would.

But only for a few more minutes.

13

The skies lit up with columns of blue fire snaking through those clouds churning with rain and hail. An explosion of thunder split the air, the heavy bass thudding hard in his chest. Dylan ran with his head and shoulders slouched as though it might lessen his chances of getting struck and being fried to a crispy critter. He jumped the back steps and went inside.

He rummaged through the junk drawer in the kitchen pulling out twist-ties, empty matchbooks, handfuls of pens that no longer worked. He tripped over Fender’s water bowl, which clanked across the floor and spun like a top.

Lightning strobed again, freezing an image of the kitchen onto his retinas like a black and white snapshot. Another sonic boom shook the house. Things on shelves chattered. Some fell to the floor.

His hand found the flashlight and was about to jet out the back door when he heard a soft buzzing sound––a metallic hum like someone clicking an electric razor off and on. Gina’s cell phone inched across the table then paused, inched across the table then paused.

Dylan shot a glance at the back door then grabbed the phone and flipped it open.

Before he could say anything, his mom shouted with blistering speed “Gina my phone’s almost dead there’s a storm coming a big one get your brother and go down to the cellar right now do you hear me Gina say something my phone’s almost dead!”

“Mom, Mom, Mom, chill out,” he said, silencing her for a moment. “We’ve been out in the cellar. The storm’s let up a bit. I just came in for a flashlight. Gina fell down the stairs on the way back up––”

“Oh my God is she hurt? How did it happen? How bad is it? I’m on my way home now. I’m almost to the highway–”

“The light went out down there. I couldn’t see––”

“Dylan–”

“I’m going back down there. Gotta go,” he said.

“Tell her I love her and I’m coming,” she pleaded, “and tell her I’m sorry about Jared!”

Dylan stiffened. Confused. “What?”

Silence. “Oh me, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “She doesn’t know, does she? Do you?”

His mother had an insatiable appetite for gossip and would fit right in with Floyd Wiggins and the gang, but this wasn’t the time for it.

“Mom, can this wait? I really need to go see about Gina––”

“They found Jared Kemper’s body earlier tonight. Someone stole––”

There was a beep, and his mother’s voice was gone.

14

He didn’t hear her right. There had to be a mistake. Jared was out in the storm cellar with Gina, alive and well. He looked as healthy as a horse and happier than a pig in shit, completely unconcerned about the next fucking tornado about to rip the house into toothpicks.

Jared is a fairly common name. There were three, no, four, Jareds in Hemming that Dylan knew of. There were variations in the spelling, of course, but Jareds nonetheless.

Maybe his mother hadn’t even said “Jared” at all. He could have easily misheard her say “Jarrett”, “Jerry”, or “Gerald”, for that matter.

But he knew his mother had said Jared Kemper, as in the boy down in the cellar with his sister. If someone found his dead body, then why, oh why, is he down in the cellar with his sister?

Dylan pushed open the screen door and ran out into the storm. The rain sliced and pummeled his flesh as he reached for the handle that would lead him down, down to the underground chamber where all the fears and all the secrets spun into some terrible monster wearing Jared Kemper’s skin.

As he descended the stairs, he did the something he hadn’t done in a very long time.

He prayed.

15

She gripped his hand tighter. It was cold, icy. She could have been holding a slab of raw beef right out of the freezer.

“I hope Mom’s okay,” she said.

“Oh, your mom,” Jared said, “I wouldn’t worry about her. She’s gonna be just fine, baby girl. Just fine.”

The freezing matter in Gina’s hand seemed to spread throughout her body, numbing her, petrifying her like an ancient redwood.

“And you, you’re gonna be just fine, too. Migh-tee fine.”

And in that moment, she knew everything. Jared’s breath was fiery like the smell of the Pearson house, but stronger, more sulfuric and maddening. She saw the beast hiding behind those eyes, two glowing moonstones burning in an apocalyptic inferno. The beast grinned, bending Jared’s dead lips into a wry, humorless smile––the snake’s smile, the devil’s smile.

Thade’s smile.

She gasped and braced herself as Jared’s mouth opened revealing two eyes like polished brass. Below them, a forked tongue flicked out at her.

“Hey there, baby girl. My oh my, you sure have been fun! One of my favorites yet! Well, we better cut the shuckin and jivin and get busy!”

The snake wriggled out of Jared’s corpse and fell onto her chest. Fear ran like rats under her flesh and the horror was too much for her young mind to process but before she passed out, the damned scaly thing silently beamed:

“Pucker up, buttercup!”

16

When Dylan descended the stairs, he saw it happening. Blood sprayed from the soft pale flesh of her neck like wine erupting from a porcelain fountain. The snake had latched on just below her jaw, dangling there, thrusting its venom into her. He grabbed the shovel and slung the Thade-snake to the concrete and brought the rusted farm spoon down on it hard several times, decapitating it with a quick snap. The body writhed and wriggled around, its crimson head jerking and twitching even after Dylan had kicked it away.

Gina’s breath was shallow, but there. He dropped to his knees and put two fingers to her wrist like he was taught to do in health class. Her pulse, already a fast throbbing thing alive in her veins, began to slow. The black coagulating blood seeped out of her like tree sap.

Dylan pulled Gina’s cell phone from his pocket and tried to call out. No signal. He didn’t want to leave her again, not down here with those two bits of snake still moving and twitching. He grabbed a rag from a box close by and pressed it to her wound.

“Gina, hold this, please. Gina, I have to get outside and call… Gina?
GINA!
Can you hear me?
HEY!
Don’t you die on me!”

“Oh my God, Gina!” Linda ran down the steps with a small flashlight on her key ring, keys clattering as she descended. “I called 9-1-1 from a payphone, I assumed the worst, they’re sending an ambulance and––” She nearly fainted when she saw Jared’s body slumped and twisted on the floor. “Is that…”

Her words faded away.  There were no words to be said. As sirens approached––not warning sirens, but those signaling help was on the way––Dylan watched his sister fading away. Blood vessels had burst in her eyes, the blue irises now surrounded by a sea of scarlet. Dylan kept the rag tightly on Gina’s neck until paramedics arrived, but by then, air no longer passed from her lips.

16

Michelle Pearson watched the clock on her nightstand. It was well past midnight now, and her husband hadn’t come home yet. He had said he was going into Durden for some pain medicine. His rotator cuff had a small tear in it that gave him trouble sometime––he was too stubborn to see his doctor and she gave him hell for that––but Ellis had been gone for hours. Maybe he ran into someone he knew. Maybe a former student or perhaps a current one he actually liked and had stopped to have a friendly chat.

But that wasn’t like Ellis. If he saw a student in town, he’d turn and go the other way, even if they were a member of his hall-pass police.

She hadn’t heard anything out of Duke tonight. Perhaps he was still sleeping, recuperating. He normally came down for dinner even if he was sick, but maybe his appetite just hadn’t returned yet.

The front door opened. She sat up in bed and listened to the footfalls on the hardwoods. She went downstairs and saw the front door standing wide open.

“Ellis? Is that you, honey?” Michelle peered into the darkness of the living room, groping for the light switch.

“It’s just me, Mom.” Duke was silhouetted in the doorway.

“What are you doing there in the dark?”

“Look, Mom. Look what I can do now.”

Her eyes slowly adjusted, her mind and heart racing as she watched the floor come to life and roll towards her. She screamed, her blood plummeted from her brain and she fainted, falling to the floor with the glassy whites of her eyes fixed on the ceiling. The army of snakes pressed on. Slimy, shadowy ropes wriggled past Michelle’s limp body and across the hardwoods as Duke led them into the house.

CHAPTER
TEN
:
LOOSE
ENDS

1

The media came to Hemming in droves, dozens of news vans zoomed all over town, pointing their cameras and microphones at anything and everything because sensational stories were in abundance. Arlo County had experienced a rather impressive series of disasters over the past twenty-four hours. There had been a very serious outbreak of severe weather, which had obliterated thirty homes and businesses and had damaged countless others. A photo of the Billy Burger sign lying in the middle of the highway appeared on the front page of the Hemming Herald. The burger joint, which had been there since the early-eighties, was far beyond repair.

The Red Cross showed up the next day to help with the local clean-up efforts. Their first stop was the Starkweather farm.

The house had lost most of its shingles and some of its side panels, but the worst damage was to the front porch. A massive maple tree had fallen over and tore the awning and wraparound porch into pieces. A shutter that had once been attached outside Dylan’s bedroom window now lay near the mailbox. Debris peppered the yard: a plastic mop bucket, an eight-foot piece of plywood of unknown origin, books, dinnerware, a child’s pack-and-play.

A lady from the Hemming Herald was taking photos when Linda Starkweather drove up in a hail-battered Buick.

Dylan got out of the car and propped an arm on the door. “It’s like a bad dream.”

His mother nodded slowly, surveying the damage in broad, revealing daylight. “Maybe this is the end.”

“End of what?”

Linda walked around to the back door of the Buick and said “The reaping season. The nightmare. Everything. I hope this is over.”

Dylan nodded, believing it to be true. It was in the air, something whispered calmly in his ear and said everything would be normal from now on. On the way home from the hospital, Bobby Billings had given a rather shocking account of the past twenty-four hours and the deaths that had occurred within them. From what Dylan could understand, all parties involved in the Keeper mythos were now dead, including those who had unfortunately met their end as a result of it.

Sand Mountain Church had been reduced to ash and most of its congregation were found scattered among the smoldering structure, or what was left of it. One body still remained unidentified, and if Garrett had indeed been responsible for sending those shakers to hell, Dylan supposed that could have been him. Garrett hadn’t answered his phone this morning.

Ellis Pearson, Alan Blair, Jared Kemper, and those who’d been killed at the county fair, well, Prescott Funeral Home would be a very busy place over the next few days. Luckily everyone still had their closet full of black for the occasion.