The Devil Walks in Mattingly (20 page)

“What happened?” Kate asked. She moved from the doorway and took the first step down.

Lucy matched it with a step away. Her eyes blinked and blinked again. She licked her lips as though thirsty.

“Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine.” Lucy nodded so hard and with a speed that convinced Kate that everything wasn’t. She held the newspaper up in one hand. The other ran through what was left of her hair and stopped at a bald patch just above her left ear. “I just read this. It can’t be true.”

Kate took another step down. Lucy watched but didn’t move.

“That’s what we’re all thinking, but I guess all the thinking in the world can’t change things. You didn’t know?”

Lucy shook her head. “Where is everyone?”

“Hiding, mostly. Scared out of their minds by what the paper says. Don’t let that bother you, Lucy. You can’t take what Trevor Morgan writes as anything near truth. Why don’t you come in?”

Kate took the rest of the steps, meaning to guide Lucy into the office, but her closeness sent Lucy backward off the sidewalk and into the street. Zach took a step toward his mother, unsure of the situation. His arm cocked back, ready. Kate looked at him. That he held only an old tennis ball rather than Bessie didn’t seem to matter.

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Lucy said. “I really don’t know you, Mrs. Barnett. First you come in my house, now you’re trying to get me inside. I’m just gonna go.” She took another step back. “I don’t think I like you very much.”

“Hey,” Zach said. He wound his arm and stretched it out behind him. “
Everybody
likes my momma.”

“Zach,” Kate said, hushing him. She looked at Lucy and said, “Wait. Okay? Just wait.” She didn’t move, thinking that even a step away would be enough to send Lucy running. At that moment, all Kate wanted to do was keep her there. She didn’t know what had happened to this little girl, but something had. Something horrible. “You don’t have to come
inside. I’m just gonna go over and sit on the steps, okay? You can stay right there if you want. I won’t move an inch. You just look like you could use someone to talk to, Lucy. That’s all.”

Lucy said nothing. Kate turned her head and stepped slow and easy, the way a person would walk so as not to spook an animal. Zach eyed her and moved closer, putting himself between them.

Kate touched his shoulders and said, “Why don’t you go throw your ball against the wall for a bit, Zach. Me and Lucy need a word.”

Zach didn’t nod but he stepped away, keeping the strange girl square in his sights. He walked the ten feet or so to the long blank wall on the other side of the steps. His tosses were slow and deliberate. Each time the ball bounced back, he caught it and glanced at Lucy.

“You didn’t see anything from your house last night?” Kate asked.

Lucy said no. Her expression was flat and still, like frozen water. Kate remembered the smile Lucy had offered the day before from the Seekins’s living room sofa and how it had unsettled her. Now Kate wished she could see that grin once more.

“I should have checked on you last night, after everything,” Kate said. “It was all just so sudden. Timmy got hurt and Jake had to leave. I had to get here and call the state police. I should have thought of you up there all alone in that big old house, right there where those two men were. I’m sorry, Lucy.”

A sound escaped Lucy’s mouth that was midway between gasp and snort. She shook her head. “Your brother got beat up, and you’re apologizing to me?”

“No one likes being alone,” Kate said. “You were alone.”

Lucy took a step closer to the curb. Zach caught the tennis ball and took a step closer to them both.

“I wasn’t,” Lucy said. “Alone, I mean. How’s your brother?”

“A little banged up, but otherwise okay. Gas station will be closed for a couple days. Andy’s too.”

“You said I can’t believe everything in the paper. Did a boy really get killed?”

Kate stole a quick look at Zach. Zach was quicker and had already turned away. “Unfortunately that’s one thing Trevor got right. His name was Eric Thayer.”

Lucy took another step. Both feet on the sidewalk now, though Kate noticed Lucy’s toes were pointed away toward the street. Everything about this scene upset Kate, but nothing bothered her more than seeing those feet turned to run. It made her feel like a bully. Like a monster.

“Which one killed him?” Lucy asked.

Kate cocked her head to the side, not understanding. “Does that matter?”

“I don’t know. I guess it would make me feel better knowing the one who killed him was the one who died here last night and not the one who got away.”

“Well, in my mind they both killed Eric. They both put Andy in the hospital. They both hurt my brother. I’d say the rest of the town believes the same. One of them’s not our problem anymore. It’s the other who’s got everybody scared.” Kate pointed to the newspaper. “Also the one’s got Trevor talking like a revival preacher.”

Lucy held the paper up. “Charlie Givens died of fright. Is that true?”

“Charlie Givens died of a heart attack, nothing more,” Kate said. “Don’t let that nonsense scare you, Lucy. Jake’s got the
county police all over this town. They’ll get Taylor Hathcock. Just a matter of time.”

That didn’t seem to bring as much relief to Lucy’s face as Kate expected. Zach eased a bit more to his right and tossed his ball against the bricks.

“Taylor Hathcock,” Lucy said. “Is he from around here?”

“No. Jake thinks he’s from Camden. Charlie Givens was from there.”

“So you never saw them before?”

“Me?” Kate pointed to her chest. “No, honey. Camden folk and Mattingly folk generally agree the mountain between us is there for a reason. We don’t mix well.”

“You’re sure?” Lucy asked. “You told me you help people. Maybe you helped Taylor and forgot.”

“I don’t forget the people I help,” Kate said, and she thought,
If you doubt that, I have a notebook full of names to prove it
. “They’re criminals. Why in the world would I know someone like that?”

Lucy seemed to consider that. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t understand.”

“I think we’re supposed to be disgusted and mad and hurt, but I don’t think we’re supposed to understand. I think if we did, we’d be less human than we are.”

Lucy stepped forward. She was so close that Kate could reach out and touch her, but she didn’t dare. Zach moved back to the steps.

Kate said, “Tell me what happened to you last night, Lucy.”

Lucy looked down to her shorts and legs. Felt her hair. “I got in a fight with my father. Guess I cut my hair to get even. He left again. He always leaves, it’s his job. I went to a party after that. Guess things got a little out of hand. I wasn’t home when everything . . . happened.”

“When’s your daddy coming home?”

“Wednesday.”

“Well, until then, if you’d feel safer staying somewhere else—”

“No,” Lucy said. “I’ll be fine.”

“Mayor Wallis is calling a town meeting tomorrow night, just to get the facts out and calm people down. It’d do you some good to come. Might put your fears to rest.”

Lucy nodded. “Maybe.”

Kate thought they were done then, at least for now. Lucy stepped off the curb and back into the street, then turned around with the newspaper in her hand. “Have you ever thought there was another world out there?” she asked. “A better one?”

“You mean like heaven?” Zach asked.

“No. Maybe.” Lucy looked at Kate. “I mean, have you ever gotten the feeling that everything’s . . . broken? Like the more you try to put the pieces back, the more you realize they won’t fit together again?”

Kate offered her a tired smile. “You have no idea, Lucy. No idea at all.”

She closed her arms around Zach and thought of the night before. She thought of the tears she spilled at Phillip’s grave and how the dark had closed in around her. She thought of her notebook. They were pieces, both. Fragments Kate had spent twenty years trying to fasten together in the hope those two broken halves could make a whole. For a moment as brief and silent as heat lightning, she thought back to that day behind the high school bleachers. She remembered Phillip’s face and how his eyes had sparkled as she’d taken his hand. And there on a quiet street with Lucy and Zach, Kate felt the veil between worlds begin to thin.

It was only for a moment, nothing more. Just long enough to feel breath upon her shoulder and hear the soft whisper of her name uttered by a voice she’d never forgotten.

8

Taylor had remained near the rusty gate all this time, hiding in a thick copse of pine and writing in his book. He didn’t want to remain there, so close to the world. Yet he’d been reluctant to go back to the cabin too, afraid for Lucy to make the long walk back alone.

The sun had been high when he watched her pull away and head to town. Now the moon took its place. Taylor’s body had not run free in those long hours between, but his mind had. As the day wore on, his thoughts followed a meandering trail that dipped and turned through the thorny places inside him, casting doubt where a slim hope had been until Taylor became convinced that Lucy Seekins would not return. She’d been caught, maybe. Or she was lost. Either seemed likely. The one remaining explanation (and try as he might, Taylor could not help but consider this the most likely of all) was that she had simply fled. Dwelling on that thought was like toppling the first in a long line of carefully laid dominoes and being unable to prevent the consequences—Lucy had run, which fell into Lucy finding the sheriff, which fell into her telling the town of the dream and the Hole, on down the line, one after the other, until the last domino had been struck and Taylor was left with only the certainty that the whole town of Mattingly was on its way to usurp his kingdom. A panic as black as the night flooded him. That feeling only increased when the wind carried the steady whine of Lucy’s engine. Taylor saw headlights
like demon eyes coming down the narrow way. The car stopped at the gate. The headlights stayed on. A door opened. Shut.

Then, “Taylor?”

Lucy stared into the dark. Taylor crept close, easing himself from the pines near the gate.

“Who’s with you, lady?” he asked. “You mean to betray me?”

“No. Nobody’s with me. Where are you?”

“Where I am don’t matter. Where you been does. Sent you away hours ago.”

“I went by my house,” Lucy said. She stood on her tiptoes, trying to pinpoint his whispers. “Then I went to town like you asked. Come out, Taylor. You’re scaring me.”

Taylor did, though only after a long pause that was meant to show the lady who was in charge. He rose just outside the gate, scaring her in the process, and peered at the car’s empty seats.

“You’re alone,” he said. “You found no one bearing shoes?”

“Everybody wears shoes, Taylor, and none of them leave footprints in concrete. Whatever you’re looking for, I doubt we’ll find it. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe you’re not supposed to find whatever it is. Maybe it’s supposed to find you.”

Taylor hadn’t thought of that, though he’d never admit it. This lady was a smart one. “Charlie?”

“He got arrested,” Lucy said. Her eyes caught the moonlight and flickered. She looked at her feet. “I don’t know what happened after that, but he’s dead.”

“What say?”

She couldn’t look at him. Instead, Lucy reached out and laced her fingers through Taylor’s own. “I’m so sorry, Taylor.”

“Charlie’s dead?”

She nodded and flinched as though bracing herself for the sadness that would come. But it was more bewilderment that crossed Taylor’s aged and cracked face. Because Charlie
couldn’t die. No one died in the dream. They either woke up or they kept right on dreaming, and Charlie couldn’t be awake at all because Taylor was the only one who could do that and he hadn’t and so what happened and why was everything suddenly so hard to figure?

“Taylor?” Lucy asked. She squeezed his hand and leaned in, laying her head on his chest. Taylor’s long beard rubbed against her cheek. “What are you going to do? They’re after you. There’s county police everywhere. They know your name.”

“Let them look all they want,” Taylor said. “Won’t nobody come to this Holler. You sure Charlie’s gone?”

“Yes.”

“But you saw no proof?”

“No. I guess they’d already taken him away.”

Taylor smiled. No proof.

“What about Kate Griffith? Did you find her?”

Lucy buried her head deeper into him. She said nothing. Taylor was about to ask her again when she finally spoke.

“I didn’t find her. I haven’t been in Mattingly long, Taylor. I don’t know a lot of people, and nobody was out for me to ask. Everybody’s scared. It’s all in the paper. I know what happened last night. A boy got killed. Did you do that?”

“You assume it was me?” Taylor asked. “Charlie was there too. Don’t go thinking you know a story because you’ve been told a chapter.”

He had not lied with that answer, but nor did Taylor believe he had told the truth. And he understood Lucy felt much the same when she pulled herself away from him.

“I don’t know if you did it or Charlie,” she said, “but I want you to know I didn’t come back because of you. I came back for what you showed me in the woods.”

Those words should have riled him, but Taylor accepted
what Lucy said without a word. Charlie was gone. Taylor didn’t care why Lucy came back, only that she had.

He kept her close and said, “’Twas me that Woke that boy.”

Lucy stepped away. Taylor tried to hold on to her but couldn’t. She shook her hand from his.

“It was you?” she asked. “You killed him?”

“I
Woke
him.”

“By killing him.”

“By
Waking
him.”

“Fine, then,” Lucy said. “You woke him by
stabbing
him.”

Taylor took a step toward her. “How you get out of a dream, lady? You wake up. You wake up, and you ain’t
there
no more. That boy, he’s gone now. I saw his heart and couldn’t stomach it. That old man wanted to keep him right on suffering, but I couldn’t abide by it. You see?”

Lucy looked as though she didn’t see at all. “Everybody’s saying you’re the devil.”