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  Bobby wanted to tell the cop he was innocent, to sell Dex down the river and take a plea, to beg the hairy-eared store owner’s forgiveness. But no words came, his feet had grown roots like the trees around him, and his senses were as heightened as they’d been during the first rush of nicotine. Had there been so many birds before?

  The cop smiled in condescension and triumph, and Bobby blushed with anger. Titusville was full of meth addicts, lock bumpers, and check kiters, and Bobby was pretty sure Louise Templeton was running a trailer-park whorehouse three doors down from his home, yet the local peace officers had nothing better to do than hassle kids.

  Of course, his jacket already had three lines in it, and though as a juvenile he’d had it all written off because the courts called him an “at-risk youth,” bad habits had a way of coming back to bite you on the ass.

  “Don’t worry,” the cop said, reading the anxiety in Bobby’s eyes. “We just want to talk.”

  “I make charges,” the store owner said in his high-pitched, thickly accented voice. “I run fair trade.”

  The cop waved him back. “I’ll handle this. It’s only a misdemeanor, not a hanging offense.”

  It was the same smug crap the probation officer, the school counselor, and the principal all dished out. They’d poke around for some reason to explain the delinquent behavior, and though Bobby had only a passing knowledge of Freud, he’d picked up enough to feed the crap right back. Unhappy home, poverty, what they liked to call “an adjustment disorder,” and the likelihood of substance abuse became not reasons to whip his ass into shape, but excuses for screwing up. Not only was his troubled streak explainable, it was practically expected. And who was he to disappoint so many others who had such a deep interest in his future?

  The cop was close enough that Bobby could smell his aftershave, Old Spice or some other five-dollar-a-pint pisswater they sold at Walmart. The store owner’s pudgy fists were clenched, his dark face flushed with the anger of small-change violation. Hell, Dex could have paid for the smokes, that was no prob, Dex not only had a generous allowance but he was the biggest weed dealer at Titusville Middle School. He always had some spare jack in his pocket. But what the Dot Heads and the cops and the do-gooders didn’t understand was that stealing was just more fun.

  And Bobby had nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon than sit through a booking and a lecture and then Dad’s trip to bail his ass out of trouble again. Beat the hell out of X-box any day. And, he had to admit, an arrest would get him away from The Jangling Hole and the cold whispers and—

  “Aieeeeeee.”

  A scream ripped from the other side of the ridge, where the cop had chased Dex. It was followed almost immediately by a gunshot, the sharp report silencing the birds and riding up above the wind.

  The young cop’s face erupted in what might have been shock, but Bobby saw just a little pleasure in it. The cop was as bored as Bobby, and “Shots fired” was almost as good as “Officer down” when it came to law-enforcement hard-ons.

  The cop grappled with his holster and had his mean-looking piece in his hand by the time he brushed past Bobby and headed around the Hole. Bobby and the store owner were left looking at each other, neither knowing what to do.

  Bobby shrugged. “It was just some smokes, man.”

  The store owner stamped his foot and started jabbering a mile a minute in some exotic language, but he shut up quick when the second shot rang out.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Vernon Ray was nearly to the creek, wondering if it was safe to pop out onto the trail, when he heard the shot. Surely they wouldn’t shoot anybody for shoplifting, would they?

  Unless Dex had been packing. Dex McCallister had a bad rep to maintain, but his record was pretty clean. That had more to do with the bully’s instinct for self-preservation, as well as his dad’s lawyer, than it did criminal cunning. Vernon Ray was Dex’s pet target, but Bobby’s defense was worth all the “Batman and Supergirl” comments Dex dished out. Vernon Ray had to admit, nobody else at school picked on him these days, and though Dex still got in a little jab now and then, it was a better deal than have a hundred other goons riding his case. All because he was different.

  Just because . . . .

  Just because nothing.

  Now push had come to shove, and Vernon Ray could either be a piss ant little coward the way Bobby and Dex expected, or he could circle back out of the safety of the woods and see what had happened. He wasn’t up for bravery, the kind of action-movie horse dookie where the wimp suddenly overcame his inner nature out of loyalty, love, or just plain recklessness because it fit the plot. But maybe he’d have a cool story to tell his classmates, and if Dex did eat an appetizer of hot lead followed by a dirt sandwich, Vernon Ray could put a great spin on it.

  Even better, maybe Dex had shot one of the cops. Vernon Ray could get a lot more mileage out of that, put it out there as a Bonnie-and-Clyde story. Of course, inevitably he’d be cast as Bonnie, but better to live forever as a marred legend than to sit in the corner with his thumb in his mouth until the end of high school. A shooting was a much bigger attention-grabber than a bunch of ghosts that probably didn’t exist, and even his dad would want to know the gory details. Even if it was just for a week, there would be something in Titusville bigger than Stoneman’s Raid and Capt. Jefferson Davis’s brass balls.

  He was still weighing his options when the second shot rang out.

  Bobby?

  Vernon Ray wiped the sweat from his palms and began retracing his steps. The forest was in full flush, hung in that verdant phase of late autumn when the leaves screamed of death, and he had to push the pine and undergrowth away from his face. A scratch on his cheek stung with the promise of infection, and his chest heaved from exertion. But this wasn’t about him and his suffering. This was about buddies, the Three Musketeers, the Unholy Trinity, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, every little comic-book fantasy he’d ever concocted.

  Hell, it was about belonging. Bobby and Dex were the closest things he had to friends. Sure, his parents were still together, unlike practically every other kid in the eighth grade, but they might as well have mailed in their parental love like cereal box tops to Battle Creek, Michigan, for all the good it did him. So if Dex and Bobby needed him, he’d be there.

  And, truth be told, he was pretty damned ashamed about bolting and abandoning his best bud. An arrest on his record would earn him some props at school and a lecture from his dad, the Captain. Then again, inner nature was nature after all, and maybe you couldn’t really change the boy you were or the man you were bound to be. He was a chicken-tailed, limp-wristed little sissy like they all said.

  Dapples of sunlight made a crazy disco ball in the treetops overhead as he ran. A couple of sirens wailed up from the valley below, probably half of Titusville’s on-duty contingent cutting its way to Mulatto Mountain. Vernon Ray strained his ears for the crackle of cop walkie-talkies. No follow-up shots had been fired, suggesting that Dex probably hadn’t staged a dramatic “They’ll never take me alive” showdown. Dex would make a perfect subject for a Frank Miller graphic novel, the cautionary tale of a good boy gone wrong, assuming he hung around long enough to grow a personality and then was able to come back from the grave and seek vengeance.

  By the time Vernon Ray backtracked the quarter-mile uphill to The Jangling Hole, the old campsite had been abandoned. Maybe Bobby was already headed to the sheriff’s office, sitting in the back of a cruiser and cussing under his breath. They could charge him with being an accomplice or receiving stolen goods–if sucking down stinky, chemical-soaked tobacco counted as “receiving.” But even the clod-headed ex-jocks who populated the field of law enforcement were smart enough to know chasing juveniles was a thankless and fruitless chore that rarely led to conviction.

  A shout came from beyond the trees, maybe three hundred feet away. Dex must have stirred up the cops, provoked them, craving all the attention like a suicidal drama queen at a drag show. Sometimes it just didn
’t pay to hang out with a goon. But Vernon Ray would lose either way: a black mark on his record would help stifle the “sissy” label, but for sure Dad would bust his ass and Mom would go into one of her patented sulks.

  But the deal breaker was his buddies’ reactions. He was a little ashamed for running off like that, but instinct had taken over. It was probably too late for redemption, and Dex had a long memory for such things, but Bobby was a little more flexible. Bobby had been his best pal since daycare, when they’d snickered through Mrs. Underwood’s version of “Three Billy Goats Gruff,” or what Dex had called “Th’ee Billy Goats Gwuff,” at least until Lori Stansberry laughed at him and he bloodied her nose, after which Dex never mentioned that stupid old story again. Nor did any of his classmates.

  So Dex could sink or swim on his own, nobody had a problem with that, especially Dex, but Bobby—

  “Psst.”

  Vernon Ray looked around, peering under the heavy thatch of laurel, galax, and briars and across the jumbled shelves of gray granite. But he knew the sound hadn’t come from the forest. And the cops would have bellowed, not whispered. Vernon Ray whispered in return. “Bobby?”

  “In here.”

  Confederate Christ on a battle flag, was he really dumb enough to hide in the Hole?

  Vernon Ray squinted against the afternoon sun, which had reached a low-enough angle that it slanted through the canopy, throwing a mystical, ethereal light against the leaves. By contrast, the dark slit of the crevice was as foreboding as a woman’s womb. “Where’s the cops?”

  “I dunno. The other one took off after the second shot.”

  “Come on out of there,” Vernon Ray said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why the hell not?” Vernon Ray strained his ears, but all he heard was the caw of a solitary crow and the wind crawling low in the pines. He expected the cops to jump out from cover at any moment, or maybe the foreign store owner with his incessant, rapid-fire vexation. He couldn’t believe Bobby would corner himself like that. Maybe his pal was waiting it out, hoping to ride the darkness until sundown, then sneak down the mountain and head for home. A high price for a lousy cigarette.

  “You gotta see this,” Bobby said, and it sounded like he had moved deeper into the mouth of the tunnel, because the echo died with a stifled sigh and Vernon Ray had trouble hearing him.

  “I’m not going in there,” Vernon Ray said. “That’s the Hole, for crying out loud.”

  Bobby didn’t answer and Vernon Ray took a reluctant step closer. He was now maybe fifteen feet from the opening, closer than Bobby had been earlier when Dex had urged him to throw the stone. Even from that distance, he could smell the Stygian stench of the cave as its clammy, insidious air oozed around him and embraced him, pulling him closer.

  Depending on which version of the myth you believed, The Jangling Hole was either an inviting refuge or a sinister maw that would swallow all who entered. According to his dad, the Hole had been a Civil War hideout for deserters of both camps, a gang of raiders brought together by a schizophrenic Yankee colonel. In that cramped darkness, there was no room for conflict, as neither the Confederacy nor the Union stirred much loyalty among the isolated mountaineers, who had little use for government of any kind. Apparently no artifacts had ever been found there, so the legend was mostly written off as the wistful folly of those who found the past more alluring than the bloody, televised tempest of their own times. People like Capt. Davis.

  But lack of evidence had never killed a good legend. The cave had earned its name from reports of clinking tools and the jangling of knives against mess kits and canteens. Vernon Ray, who had read plenty of Weird War and Tales From The Crypt comics, figured the cave was as likely to be haunted as any other piece of ground, and Civil War battle sites were notorious for their paranormal activity.

  He’d been plenty curious, but never brave enough to enter. Until now.

  The thick air seeped from the cave’s mouth and blended with the healthy, green atmosphere of the forest. He wondered how Bobby could even breathe in there, much less move around without a flashlight.

  He raised his voice, figuring the risk of cops was lower than the risk of getting closer to the cave. “Hey, Bobby!”

  No answer. His pal had disappeared like Alice down the zombie rabbit hole.

  Okay, Straight-A Brain, give me something useful here besides algebra functions and the roster of Gettysburg commanders.

  He had a few choices. He could go find the cops, wherever they were, and report Bobby missing, which would leave Bobby hating his guts; he could high-tail it home and call Bobby’s dad, which would probably put Vernon Ray’s own ass in a sling; or he could go inside the cave—just a few feet—and summon his friend again.

  He was still undecided, though he’d edged another step closer to the narrow entrance, when he heard the soft patter of rain on leaves. That made no sense, for though the weather in the Blue Ridge mountains could change dramatically, sometimes delivering the worst of three different seasons in the same day, the sky was mostly clear at the moment. Yet another faint rumble rolled across the black dirt of the mountain, suggesting a thunderstorm on its way.

  Great. A few bolts of lightning at this altitude and I’m pretty much guaranteed to be trapped in the Hole with Bobby. Or zapped to Asgard and Odin’s throne.

  The pattering grew louder, and Vernon Ray looked up, expecting water droplets to splash in his eyes. But the air was dry and free of static, though cooling with the approach of sundown. The rumble swelled, taking on a resounding quality, but it was topped by a steady staccato. Now Vernon Ray placed the sound, though it had no place in this primal environment.

  The rattle of a snare drum.

  Often in the Civil War re-enactments, one of the counterfeit soldiers’ kids was decked out in a little uniform, round-topped kepi tilted low over the forehead, leather boots dusty and scuffed. The kid would either be the drummer boy or, less often, the flag bearer, since flags were heavier and slightly more dangerous in simulated battle. A flagstaff could dip and knock a foot soldier on the head or joust a cavalryman out of the saddle. But a drum—well, a drum was just plain cute.

  Not that the Captain had ever invited his son into the camp, or let him wear one of the miniature uniforms in the memorabilia collection. Years ago, they used to travel to the events together, though Vernon Ray and Mom were strictly spectators. From Manassas to Spotsylvania to Harpers Ferry to Marietta, they had kneeled in the shade eating picnic lunches while mock battles raged and a layer of black-powder smoke settled over the field. Though most re-enactments featured a civilian attachment in period clothing, the women in cumbersome hoop skirts and the children in knickers and ragged cotton blouses, Vernon Ray was soon consigned to being a spectator only, and eventually his dad stopped taking him along altogether.

  Vernon Ray had been jealous of those boys who actually got to participate, especially the drummers. Sometimes, an entire corps of boys, some of them with wrists barely as thick as their drumsticks, would stand in the morning sun and roll out marching cadences. When the action began, a few of them even got to die, flopping on the ground while carefully tossing their snares to the side or dragging themselves toward enemy lines as if sporting deep, imminently fatal wounds. Vernon Ray, who probably knew more Civil War history than all of them put together, had yet to put a boot on such hallowed territory.

  But he had taught himself how to roll out a snare cadence, his right wrist turned upward, his left wrist flexing gently. His sticks on the nylon skin made the same percussive rhythm as the one now welling from the cave. He knew the drill, and this was its beat.

  Somebody in the Hole was tapping out a marching tempo, and as far as Vernon Ray knew, Bobby had never touched a drum in his life.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Two shots. Them peckerwoods were at it again, poaching on the low backbone of land that ran up Mulatto Mountain. Hardy Eggers started for the shotgun in the closet, but then remembered two unfortunate details that
he’d done a decent job of burying over the last couple of months.

  One, the sheriff had pretty much warned him against hauling out the shotgun every time trouble showed up, ever since he’d run off that last batch of suits from Elkridge Landcorp, LLC. Hardy figured the initials stood for “lily-livered cowards,” but the legal documents probably spelled out some long-winded horse manure drummed up in a Yankee law school.

  Hardy hadn’t been aware that it was a crime to step out on the porch armed for protection when a bunch of squirrel-eyed strangers pulled up in a long, shiny Cadillac. The sheriff explained that such shenanigans constituted “communicating a threat,” which apparently trumped the trespassing charge Hardy could have sworn against the suits. To Hardy, it had simply been a case of marking territory and cutting the need for chatter. They wanted him to sell and he wouldn’t sell for a barn’s worth of gold bullion and a lifetime’s supply of Louise Templeton, not that he had much demand for her particular ware in his old age.

  Two, the upper side of the mountain was no longer in the Eggers family. Brother Tommy and sister Sue Ellen had sold off their portions of the family birthright to Budget Bill Willard, who built his fortune as a photographer with pictures on calendars, postcards, and the pages of “Southern Living” magazine. Budget Bill, who was second-generation local, parlayed his makeshift camera shop into a cottage industry and then had gone into land development. The stumpy, bald-headed peckerwood was known for his scenic shots of old-timey mountain farmsteads, but now he was using the money to bulldoze those very sites and turn them into second-home subdivisions for flatlanders who drove too slow and talked too fast.

  Hardy figured he was probably the only coot in Pickett County to see the irony in Budget Bill’s career trajectory; only a hypocrite would pretend to celebrate the thing he was actively destroying. But that was Budget Bill for you, and his type of crime was not only tolerated but written up big in the papers and showered with plaques from the Chamber of Commerce, like he was some sort of hero. Just went to show you could get away with murder as long as you did it with a camera or a bank note or a bulldozer instead of a gun.