McFall Page 26

  “Howdy, Sheriff,” Stepford said. He looked hungover, and Littlefield wondered if the man had drifted into harder drugs like meth or Oxycontin. He cradled his stomach as if he had a bellyache, and Littlefield could have sworn his shirt was bulging as if wads of wet fabric had been shoved inside. The man smelled like rancid sausage.

  “Hello, Stepford. I see nobody’s come out to fix that broken window yet.”

  “Been real busy.” Stepford nodded to the raised hood of his Plymouth Duster. “I gotta keep it all tied together if I want to keep motoring.”

  “Do you mind if I take a walk through the woods yonder?”

  “Ain’t my woods no more.”

  “I know, but it’s the neighborly thing to ask.”

  Stepford lifted a hand to wave him on, and his shirt bulged even more grotesquely. “If you come across my hounds, send ‘em home for supper.”

  “I’ll do that. You haven’t seen Sweeney Buchanan around, have you?”

  “Not since his brother died. You ever figure out why he burned up in the church?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “You ain’t figured out much of nothing, have you?”

  Littlefield held the man’s gaze, but he wasn’t sure anybody was home behind those dead, dark eyes. The old Stepford had been fueled by cunning and defiance, but the man in front of him didn’t seem to give a damn one way or another. Maybe McFall’s buyout had changed him. Maybe he’d contemplated a world beyond Barkersville and found it just as pointless, only with higher taxes and gas prices.

  Littlefield headed up the trail, feeling Stepford’s gaze on him as he climbed to the edge of the forest. He glanced back at him. For just a moment, he saw a torn heap of raw meat piled high on the porch, glistening red with bits of white bone showing here and there.

  The sheriff fumbled with the holster strap on his sidearm, his knees nearly buckling, but then the vision reassembled and it was only Stepford.

  The sun … in my eyes.

  “Something eating you, Sheriff?” Stepford called out to him, putting a cigarette in his mouth.

  “Did Cole Buchanan say anything about going back to the church and finishing the job?”

  “Last time I saw Cole, he was knocking on my door in the middle of the night.”

  “Oh, yeah? When was that?”

  “Last night.” Stepford lit his cigarette and exhaled a long gray stream of smoke. “No way in hell was I gonna let him in, though. What kind of manners is that?”

  For one horrible moment, Littlefield pictured Cole’s charred corpse rapping on the door, flecks of scorched flesh falling from him in the dark.

  He heard Cindy’s voice in his head, telling him he was making excuses, selectively winnowing evidence to reach his own desired conclusions regardless of the truth. He was willing to accept a supernatural explanation for the recent deaths—in fact, that had been his first instinct—but such a case could never be tried in a court of law.

  But he was helpless in the realm of the dead. He’d failed repeatedly there. At least with Sweeney, he could bring a murder charge and deliver a small measure of justice. It was one thing he could control in a world that was rapidly vanishing beneath his feet and opening onto a bottomless black pit.

  The cool forest was a welcome reprieve from the humid June air. In the weeks since Littlefield had last walked this trail, the canopy had filled out more, and sumac and Virginia Creeper had extended their grip along the loam and humus of the leafy floor. Littlefield reached the fence and headed toward the summit, using the satellite imaging map to guide him to the intersection where McFall’s land bordered the parcels he’d purchased from Stepford and the Buchanan heirs. Sweeney didn’t have a car and had never learned to drive, and he didn’t have the mental capacity to plot a sophisticated escape, so Littlefield was betting the suspect was hiding out in the woods where he’d grown up. Just like crooks usually robbed the store where they bought their beer instead of a store outside the neighborhood. But he also figured that Sweeney wouldn’t have a gun—otherwise he would have used it instead of the pipe wrench to murder Cole.

  After a hike of twenty minutes, during which the terrain grew rockier and steeper, Littlefield veered off the trail and followed the ridgeline. He had maybe three hours of daylight left, and he wasn’t sure his trembling legs would hold out that long. He leaned against a tree to catch his breath, taking off his hat and slinging sweat from the band. The birds had fallen silent with his passage. He’d been scuffing up leaves as he walked, making too much noise, but stealth would have hindered the amount of ground he was able to cover. He hadn’t thought about what he’d do if he found Sweeney, but he’d probably take him into custody on a charge of criminal trespassing until he got back the results of the blood test. It was risky because the ACLU would have an army of lawyers crawling up his backside, but he could likely hold Sweeney in the county jail for a least a week. That would be enough time to—

  A shadow moved at the periphery of his vision, among a copse of poplar and silver birch.

  Littlefield planted his hat on his head and crouched low, jogging toward it, trying to keep his boots lighter than the fifty-pound boulders they seemed.

  He saw the shadow again, and then a glimpse of gray fabric. He broke into a sprint, his lungs burning. The figure was now about thirty yards ahead, but Littlefield was gaining.

  Looks too short to be Sweeney.

  “Stop,” Littlefield shouted. He dug at his holster, pulling his revolver. But it wasn’t like he was going to shoot. He slid the gun back onto his hip and dashed between the trees, low limbs slapping at his face.

  The person giggled, and the sound was high-pitched.

  A girl? Or a murderous lunatic?

  Littlefield stumbled over a root and fell to his knees. By the time he scrambled up from the mud, the figure had vanished into the thick foliage. Littlefield listened for a moment, but he heard no footfalls. Then the giggle came again.

  From behind him.

  He turned, and the boy in gray stood twenty feet away, his soiled cap sitting askew on his tousled head. The Confederate Army uniform he’d been wearing when he’d disappeared was filthy and ragged, the toe of one leather boot yawning open.

  “Vernon Ray?” Littlefield whispered.

  Had the boy been hiding out here since he’d vanished on Mulatto Mountain all those years ago? Had he been kidnapped? But that didn’t make sense. He would be older now, probably eighteen. This boy—

  Vernon Ray’s eyes faded to empty black wells as the skin of his face stretched tightly around his skull. The uniform grew limp, as if hanging on a rack of bones, and one skeletal hand flipped to the bill of the cap in a salute. The giggle came again and the boy turned and ran.

  Littlefield was frozen in place, afraid he was cracking up. He accepted ghosts as a reality of his turf, something endemic and even natural to these ancient mountains. But why did he seem to have such an intimate relationship to them? Was madness somehow contagious?

  He recalled something he’d once heard: No matter where you go, you carry your demons with you.

  But the boy had looked solid enough—at least, the uniform had. And if he could grab a piece of that fabric, he’d have tangible proof of the encounter.

  He willed his legs into motion, flailing awkwardly after the boy. He stuck up his arm to ward off a low-hanging branch and the movement caused him to slip. As he tumbled down the ravine, that mirthless laughter came again.

  Littlefield picked himself up, mud caked on his hands and feet, a leaf sticking to one cheek, and tracked the laughter as best he could as the sound moved between the trees. He drew his gun again. Even though it would be useless against a ghost, it gave him a little courage.

  He climbed back up the bank, crawled over rotted and moss-covered deadfall, and squinted into the gloom. Whatever sun had leaked through the canopy had now faded with the onset of evening. Soon it would be too dark to see.

  And Littlefield would be alone in the dark.

 
; But maybe not alone enough.

  Squatting to peer beneath the branches, he saw a figure in the dusk. Except this time it wasn’t Vernon Ray.

  Samuel?

  His heart squeezed with the sight of his little brother standing there, eyes bulging and hollow, limbs scrawny, looking the same as he had on the night he’d broken his neck at the red church.

  Littlefield stepped forward, wanting to scream, wanting to apologize, wanting to die, too, but then the shadows shifted and it was no longer Samuel.

  It was Larkin McFall.

  “May I help you?” McFall said. He was dressed in a green T-shirt, khaki shoes, and hiking boots, a canteen slung over his shoulder.

  Littlefield licked his lips, wheezing for breath. “The boy … did you see him?”

  McFall looked around. “Looks like it’s just you and me.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Walking around my land. Is that legal, or are you going to shoot me?”

  Littlefield looked down at the revolver in his hand. He lowered the weapon but didn’t holster it. “I’m looking for Sweeney Buchanan.”

  “I assume you have a search warrant?”

  “Damn it, McFall, you’re the one that put me onto him. With that little story about the bloody wrench.”

  “Believe me, I want you to find Sweeney Buchanan more than anyone. He’s a danger to my project and my reputation. Who would buy a lot in a development where hillbilly lunatic killers are running wild in the woods?”

  “Help me find him, then. You know this land better than I do.”

  “Sure, Sheriff. I can help you out. But I’ll have to ask a favor in return.” McFall seemed to merge with the shadows as the forest grew darker, as if he was part of the untamed landscape.

  “I’m not in a position to negotiate when it comes to murder charges.” Littlefield’s breathing had returned to normal, but his heart was galloping.

  “I’ll give you Sweeney if you stay on as sheriff,” McFall said. “My sheriff.”

  “What are you talking about?” Littlefield didn’t like the way the man’s eyes grew brighter against the darkness, as if they were generating their own light from within.

  “What are you going to do without your badge? Who are you, Sheriff, if you’re not sheriff? Take away your gun, and you’re nothing but a long list of failures. But I can bring them back. Your sergeant Sheila Storie. Darnell Absher. Vernon Ray Davis. Your brother Samuel. All of your dead.”

  Littlefield lifted his revolver and pointed it at McFall.

  One bullet. Out here in the middle of nowhere. Everybody would blame Sweeney. And even if they didn’t, even if I got caught, to hell with it. At least it would be over.

  “I want you out of my jurisdiction,” Littlefield said. “Out of my life.”

  “You don’t have a life, Sheriff.” McFall held out his arms. “And this jurisdiction is now mine.”

  Littlefield ached to pull the trigger, to commit one final failure, but he had just enough doubt remaining that he couldn’t do it. Innocent until proven guilty.

  Or maybe he was just a coward, fleeing the ghosts of his past.

  He shoved his revolver into its holster and headed back toward where he thought the trail lay. Tomorrow he would resume his search for Sweeney—on his own—but tonight he craved the sanity and safety of civilization.

  The giggle followed him home.

  EPISODE SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  “McFall ought to just burn this place down,” Bobby said.

  “That didn’t work out so hot the last time, remember?” Ronnie said. The old Buchanan place was sweltering, even with the boards ripped from the windows and the door standing open. It was the first of July, and humid air had seeped into the moldering contents of the building. Amid the musty piles of newspapers and books they’d found the dried-out husks of opossums and rats, nothing left but leathery skins over brittle bones.

  Bobby shoved a stack of magazines into a cardboard box. “I don’t know why McFall asked us to go through all this junk anyway.”

  Ronnie was working a little more slowly, taking time to examine all the oddities and read from the old newspapers. The ancient copies of Life, Time, and The Saturday Evening Post were shot through with silverfish and crumbling with water damage. “Maybe he thinks we’ll find something valuable,” Ronnie said. “You’ve heard those stories about people finding copies of letters from Abraham Lincoln or shoeboxes full of old baseball cards.”

  “No way.” Bobby sniffed and wiped his nose. “There’s nothing in this dump but allergies.”

  “I’m surprised the sheriff didn’t declare it a crime scene.” Ronnie rubbed his hands on the legs of his jeans, but the mildew and dust seemed to have seeped into his pores.

  “McFall isn’t going to press assault charges. And the sheriff said it was probably animal blood. Sweeney’s crazy, but he doesn’t seem like the killing kind.” Bobby heaved the box of magazines onto his shoulder. “Well, this ought to fill up the truck. I’m taking a break. Come on and get some sunshine.”

  “Be out in a minute.”

  Ronnie hadn’t told Bobby about trying to quit his job. Reality had set in shortly after he’d confronted McFall at Barkersville Baptist Church. As his mom had pointed out, not only would his dad be pissed but nobody else in town would hire him because almost everyone worked for McFall or his business partners. Ronnie wouldn’t be able to afford college without the summer income. Even losing a few weeks of pay would be a disaster. When he went to work the next day as if nothing had happened, McFall didn’t say a word—he merely smiled and nodded.

  As if he never doubted I’d show.

  The house seemed preternaturally quiet to Ronnie, like a library of the forgotten past. McFall’s bulldozers would soon erase all signs of Sweeney Buchanan’s obsessions. The thought made Ronnie sad. Even though most of the artifacts were damaged, at least Sweeney had found some purpose in life.

  Like leaving weird messages on the walls.

  As if his thoughts had summoned the sound, something clattered to the floor on the other side of the wall. Inside the bedroom.

  “Bobby?”

  His friend was probably playing a joke. He must have snuck around the side of the house and crawled in through the window. Bobby’s sense of humor had grown morbid since his accident. He’d get a kick out of spooking Ronnie.

  But two could play that game. Ronnie plucked a loose sheet of newsprint from the wall and used it to pick up one of the desiccated opossum corpses by the tail. It swung back and forth between his fingers like a pendulum. He could already picture it: When he opened the door and Bobby jumped him, he’d fling the dead animal right into his face.

  Even though the doors and windows were all open, the building’s interior was somehow still dim. When Ronnie left the living room a chill settled upon him, as if he’d walked into a cave. The imagined prank felt silly now, but he was determined to carry it through. He couldn’t let Bobby think he was chicken.

  The clatter came again, and Ronnie wondered if Bobby was messing with Sweeney’s bizarre bone collection. Ronnie paused at the door, which was already cracked open. He couldn’t see any shadows of movement, so he waited for a moment, breathing softly through his nose. When the clatter came again, he kneed the door wide and stepped inside, the animal corpse raised.

  A man crouched in the dark corner of the filthy room, his identity concealed at first glance. It definitely wasn’t Bobby. The man was too small and thin, and he was wearing hardly any clothes. Ronnie’s first thought was that Sweeney had returned, but Sweeney had been jittery and wild, and this person was just huddled there, his head down, unmoving.

  “Hello?” Ronnie’s throat was clogged with dust and fear.

  Brett Summers unfolded himself and emerged into the light by the bed, his dead eyes—as black as the bottom of the Blackburn River—staring at the pages arranged on the wall that spelled out “Summers End.” He was far more solid than he’d been on the
bridge that foggy night. He was pale, his translucent flesh speckled with drops of water, and he was wearing only his socks and underwear, just as he’d been found when his cold corpse was fished out of the water. Ronnie dropped the dead opossum and took a step back.

  The bedroom door slammed shut behind him, and Bobby’s laugh echoed in the hallway. Ronnie tried the antique handle, but his hand was slick with sweat and he couldn’t get a grip. He pounded on the door. “Bobby! Lemme out!”

  When he looked back over his shoulder, he saw Brett approaching him—not walking but gliding, as if he were surfing on a few inches of air. Dark spots of water collected on the floor beneath him, the only sound in the room the soft plop plop plop of the drops. Ronnie twisted the handle but it didn’t budge. Bobby had to be holding it.

  “Lemme out!” Ronnie repeated. His friend just laughed on the other side of the door.

  Brett was only a few feet away now. He seemed to glimmer the closer he got, as if his body was refracting the sunlight from the window. He looked like milk turning into cheese, and Ronnie wondered what would happen if he slammed into him and made a run for the window. But the frigid gaze of those eyes kept his muscles locked in place.

  The most horrible thing was Brett’s expression. He was smirking, just like when he’d dared Bobby to jump off the bridge, only now his lips were swollen and purple. The odor that rose off of him—corruption and mud and stagnant water and an ancient, reptilian stench—was so repellent that Ronnie flinched.

  Gliding closer still, Brett reached for Ronnie’s face with one grub-white arm. Closing his eyes, Ronnie started to pray, but his mind was racing too much to string together anything more coherent than Pleeeeeeease God, save me. He felt the cold radiating off the ghostly limb as it passed within inches of his cheek, and then there was a moist, squeaking sound against the wood of the door.

  Ronnie blinked his eyes open once, only to shut them just as quickly when Brett’s hollow gaze stared back at him from mere inches away. Then he submitted to prayer until the squeaking noises had subsided. After the permeating cold eased he opened his eyes. Brett—or the thing that had been Brett—was gone. Ronnie’s legs were cotton by then; he felt like he was about to fold like a rag doll.