The Devil Walks in Mattingly (21 page)

“Devil ain’t a man,” Taylor said, “the devil’s
in
a man. Like he’s in you right now, tempting you to doubt despite the wonder I showed you. He was in that old man. In Charlie too. Charlie just wanted that money, and I had to back his play. That’s what friends do for friends. As I’d do for you.”

Lucy blinked. Her eyes softened. Taylor thought he’d just said something magical, but he didn’t know what.

“You’d do for me?” she asked.

“I would. You take that as you like. I won’t make you stay if leaving’s in your mind, and I cain’t make you believe. It takes time for a mind to sway to the unthinkable. But if you doubt me, you think on that Hole. That Hole’s all you need to know I speak the truth. Get back in that car if you want, lady. Go home to what life you lived. But know you will not cross this gate again if you do. The few who tried found themselves
wishing they hadn’t, and on that I’ll swear. Or you can come with me and help me find what came up outta this Holler. He’ll tell us where Kate Griffith is. Then you’ll see fine.”

Taylor stepped aside, clearing the way to Lucy’s car. He swept his arm out, almost shooing her way, and waited for her decision.

“She’s not a Griffith anymore,” Lucy said. “I know that much. She’s married.”

Taylor lowered his arm. “Who’d she wed?”

“The sheriff. His name’s Jake Barnett.”

Taylor’s flesh came alive in a series of quivering gooseflesh. He could almost feel his arteries widening, the blood rushing through his body in violent pumps, swooning him. Jake Barnett, he thought. Jake had wed Kate. And now the meaning behind everything that had happened in the last day came so pure and bright that Taylor attached a kind of beauty to it. He saw it as the hand of God, the very hand that had built Taylor’s cabin and breathed magic into Taylor’s binoculars and felled the tree that became the perch from which Taylor looked down on the town that had robbed him of all.

“I know why I had to wake that boy.” His voice was quiet, a whispered awe that barely reached Lucy’s ears. “It’s because of Jake. Jake and Kate both. To . . .
draw
them.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Lucy said.

“There’s things you know and things you don’t, lady, but those things will come. I’ll see to it. But you have to help me. You have to go back to town and find me Jake’s phone number. Charlie had a little phone he put in his pocket. I’ll need one of those too. But you have to do it right now.”

“Why?”

“Because whoever came up outta this Holler means to put an end to something, and he needs me to do it.”

“Are you going to hurt them?” Lucy asked.

Taylor said no. Lucy believed him. Much like Taylor had believed her when she’d said she couldn’t find Kate.

“Then I don’t have to go to town.” Lucy dug into her front pockets. A cell phone appeared from one, a slip of paper from the other. “I have Jake’s number right here.”

9

Despite everything that had happened—or maybe because of it—I was determined to make that night as peaceful and predictable as all the nights once were. I tucked Zach into bed as always, still said, “I love you, and I’m proud of you,” still smiled when Zach answered the same.

Yet it seemed even as I did and said those things that nothing had continued on as it once was. Zach may have peered back at me through the same eyes (one bright and healthy, the other black and swollen) as he had Friday night, but now there was a fear behind them. And he may have laid his head upon the same pillow as he had all those nights before, but this time I spied the orange tip of his cap gun poking out from the edge. Put there, I knew, in case the bad man came. Even the toy town on his bedroom floor had been altered with a handful of yellow twist ties wrapped around the Lego BP and Texaco. That sight broke my heart in a way nothing else did. I understood then that I couldn’t keep the world from my boy forever. There were dark things he’d have to encounter, secrets he would have to know. I could try to hide those things from him, could build up thick doors around him and lock them tight, but still the truth of the world he lived in and the blood coursing through him would seep through the cracks like a heavy rain.

I supposed much the same had happened to Eric Thayer’s brother. Jabber, he called himself. He’d been waiting at the BP when I arrived. It was a short meeting punctuated by long silences, an “I’m sorry” from me and a “Thank you” from him, there being little else that seemed proper to say. He’d wanted a box from under the counter inside, something he said would make Andy feel better. It was beyond me how a person could lose someone so close and still have room enough to mourn someone else, but I asked no questions. I simply went inside and fetched an old wooden box I’d never seen before, stepping around the red snow angels on the floor that had been scrubbed a dull pink by the county’s cleanup crew. I didn’t know if getting that box was the right thing to do. I didn’t much care.

I waited until bedtime to tell Kate all of this, hoping talk would keep me awake. But that well of exhaustion bubbled up in me again when I left Zach’s room, and Kate was already asleep. I crawled into bed and shook her, gently at first and then harder. Wanting Kate to wake up, wanting to tell her of Jabber and Andy’s box, willing even to speak of Justus. She mumbled and stretched out her hand.
I reach down for another stone and
turn, meaning to place it on the pile. On Phillip’s shattered
leg, perhaps, or to hide his bloody chest. But he isn’t lying at my feet, nor is he looking up to me from the riverbank. He sits instead atop the rockpile, a king surveying his realm. His sneakers rest upon the rocks, his hands on his bloody knees. The hood of Phillip’s sweatshirt is pulled tight. Only his broken glasses peer out.

You need to stop, Jake.

The sweat on my face glistens in the setting sun. My back cracks and pops as I straighten. Even here in the dream, I’m tired.

“Because I’m dead,” I tell him.

Yes.

“Because you’re coming back.”

Yes.

“I can’t,” I tell him. I bend again and lay the stone over Phillip’s shoes.

“I can’t stop,” and I think—I’ll have to bury Charlie next, because I killed him too.

You didn’t kill Charlie,
Phillip says.
And neither did I. Charlie killed Charlie. Can’t live like he did and expect to go on forever, can you?

I bend for the next stone and realize it’s the one I just laid. I look at Phillip’s shoes. He wriggles his toes and smiles. The worn canvas ripples with the movement.

See?
he says.
Do you know what hell is, Jake?

I don’t answer. I raise the stone in front of myself and hold it there as though covering my nakedness.

Repetition, Jake. Hell is repetition. It’s doing the same thing over and over and never changing anything. You cover me with rocks, I’m still here. You scream, no help comes. You run, but only back to this place. Do you see what your sins have wrought?

Phillip stands and steps down. I shudder when his shadow falls over me and drop the stone. There is a crunching sound as the rock topples down—twenty feet, as I judge it—and lands at the river’s edge. I feel Phillip’s icy hand slip into my own and the primal scream that touch kindles inside me.

But I do not scream because I know no help will come. And I do not run because this is hell and sin is a circle, and the faster you run away, the sooner you return to it again.

Phillip squeezes my hand.
I’d free you, Jake. He’s come and so have I, and you are a dead man just as Kate is a dead woman.

“No,” I beg. “Leave Kate alone. We were just kids—”

So was I. Do you remember, Jake. Do you remember true?

Before I can answer, the Hollow’s dead calm is torn by a deep thrum that shakes the trees. The river churns below us. The earth shudders and gives way. I’m thrown forward as the scream I’ve held tight is loosed. Phillip grips my hand and pulls me back.

Time to go, Jake. He’s coming. The only way out is through, but there’s power in believing. Do you hear me? There is power in believing.

The sun grows dim above us—orange to brown to blackish-gray, like an open sore staining the clouds. The thrum pulses in my ears. I feel it in my teeth. Trees uproot and fly skyward. Phillip releases me and I am sucked up. I reach for him, frantic, but Phillip steps back and lifts his fist to me. He says he’ll see me soon, because I’m a dead man and Kate is dead too, and I will remember. We all will remember. I hurtle toward the hole in the world and close my eyes
opened to the dark. My hand stretched up toward the ceiling, still reaching for Phillip. I lowered it to wake Kate and stopped when I heard that thrumming sound again. It was my cell phone vibrating. The word
Private
glowed on the screen.

I pushed the covers back—still not sure if I was asleep or not—and carried the phone down the hallway. Dreaming.
I’m dreaming,
I thought, because I couldn’t feel myself moving at all. I floated instead. Or was being pulled. Yes, now that I think about it, that’s what I felt. I was being pulled, and Phillip was doing the pulling. Right through the screen door and onto the porch.

I opened the phone and said, “This is Jake.”

“’Lo, Jake.”

The voice was gravelly and deep and wholly unfamiliar. I looked at the screen again. PRIVATE still shone.

“Who I got here?” I asked.

There came a sigh and, “Guess remembering was asking too much, Jake. Didn’t think you’d be one to forget so easy.”

The cool breeze against my skin helped wake me. I rubbed my eyes and gripped the wooden bannister on the porch, telling myself this was real, I was real.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m still half asleep. Tell me who this is?”

“I’m the man what’s waking your town, Jake.”

A thought forced its way through my tangled mind. My voice trembled when it spoke. No amount of bravery could keep it from doing so. “Taylor?”

“Winner winner chicken dinner,” came the reply. “Give that man a prize.”

“Where are you?”

“Now, Jake, you think I’m dense? No. An’ don’t bother trying to find me over this fancy deviltry I’m talking into, because that’s been fixed. I hear all it takes is touching a few buttons and you’re called
Private
. That means you cain’t trace me and we can talk proper. We got a lot to ruminate on, Jake. Our time’s come. Do you understand?”

“No,” I said. My voice was little more than a series of rattles in my throat. I took a deep breath to calm it. It didn’t work. “Tell me where you are, Taylor. I’ll send some boys to bring you down to the sheriff’s office. We can talk there.”

“Apologies, but no. I’m without Charlie now. You squirreled him away, that it? To befuddle me? That trick almost worked, Jake. As sure as the day, it almost did. But I got tricks too. Charlie weren’t the only one helping me. Got me a smart one.”

I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth. Hearing Taylor’s voice was bad enough. Knowing he was still free and had another accomplice was worse.

“Charlie’s dead, Taylor, and I put his dying square on you.
Eric Thayer’s too, plus the two men you hurt. You’ll ride the lightning straight to hell if this is your course. Your only chance at living’s to surrender and plead mercy.”

Taylor laughed. It was a shrill sound, like a crow cawing. “Living? I’m the
only
one living, Jake. Not like you. But I know that pain. I remember it well. We’ve had our troubles. I ain’t forgotten that even if you did. You saved me, Jake, so I’ll only warn. Just this once, mind you. Call off those county men. You do that tomorrow first thing, or your sins will find you out.”

“What sins?” I asked.

Silence. I had no idea what Taylor would say, but to me that pause was something intentional, like he was savoring the telling the way you savor a bite of food and roll it around in your mouth before you bite down.

“I know what you did that day in the Holler, Jake. To that boy.”

Waves of heat and tightness spread across my chest. The world folded over and engulfed me. There in the quiet darkness of my front porch, I dropped to my haunches.

“Now don’t get all worked up, Jake,” Taylor said. “It’s okay. I know it must pain. But I fancy the pain of ever’body in that town knowing what you did’d be worse. That right? You ain’t told your own boy, have you? You tell him what you did, Jake? You tell Kate?”

“How do you know of my family?” I asked. My grip on the phone was tight, my voice still shaking, but now it was anger rather than fear that colored my words.

“I see far, Jake. You call them mounties off. You do that, I’ll hold my tongue. I’ll let your secrets be your own. They’ll fester on your insides, but you’ll live on the outside. Ain’t that what matters to you in the end?”

I said nothing at first. My mind was too busy, my thoughts buzzing like a swarm of flies over something rotten. Because Taylor was right. God help me, he was.

“Where are you, Taylor?”

“Close, Jake. I always been close.”

I heard a click as the line went dead. I closed the phone and looked out over the blank night. The stars were out, tiny pricks of faraway white that shone over the mountains. I followed the bends and dips of the Blue Ridge until my eyes rested where Happy Hollow lay. Far away, the clock tower tolled.

I opened the phone. My trembling hands betrayed me twice, but I managed to punch in *69 on the third try. There was no number for me to dial. Just a few buttons, he’d said. That’s all it took to tame the deviltry. Because Taylor knew tricks too and he had a smart one to help him now.

I wanted to pray then. I wanted to beg for help and rescue. But I knew buried in that petition would be a subtle request to roll that snowball of lies a little farther down the steep hill my life had become, even if it would someday grow so big it destroyed everything.

I walked inside and eased the screen door closed, stared at all those fragile holes in the mesh, then closed the front door as well. My fingers touched the small switch on the knob. I clicked it, then fingered it again to make sure it’d been fully turned. I had never once locked that door. Not before bed, not leaving for work. There had been no need for such a thing. This was Mattingly, after all.