Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 4

(1)

The silence between Vic and Ruger was thick as mud. Vic went back to his workbench and tried to concentrate on how many sticks of dynamite it would take to bring down the cellular phone relay tower. When he was done with that he had to go out and meet a candy maker he knew who was doing some work for him. Treats for Halloween night. There was a ton of other stuff needing attention, and Vic was feeling the pressure.

Ruger was in the recliner reading a battered old copy of Emily Gerard’s The Land Beyond the Forest. Someone had made extensive handwritten notes in the margin of every page.

Into the stony silence, Ruger murmured, “I’m getting hungry.”

Vic’s right finger paused over the Enter key on his calculator; his left hand twitched in the direction of the pistol lying on the table. “It’s still light out,” he said, not turning.

Ruger was quiet for a while, then very softly—so softly Vic barely heard him even though he straining to hear any sounds coming from that end of the cellar—the killer whispered, “Hungry.”

The word haunted the air in that dark cellar.

(2)

Weinstock rubbed his tired eyes. “How much of this does Val know?”

“She knows the backstory, the Massacre and that stuff. She knows my theories. I didn’t have time to tell her what happened down in the Hollow yesterday. Not after what she went through herself, still she has to know there’s something strange is happening. You know Val—she’s not stupid or given to hysterics. She knows what she saw last night when Boyd came after her. She kept shooting him and Boyd kept wading through the shots.”

“Not all of them, apparently.”

“No,” Crow agreed, “and let’s thank God for that. Apparently the one thing they can’t shake off is half a clip in the skull.”

“Important to remember,” Weinstock said, almost to himself. “Did either of you mention the…um…‘V-word’?”

“No, but before the ambulance guys took her she told me that she knew that Boyd was dead. She knew it when he was still on his feet and coming after her. Maybe she hasn’t put the name to it yet, but she knows.” He stared at the closed door as if he could already see Val. “I’m not sure if that’s going to make it easier or harder.”

“Seems to me that it should make it easier.”

Crow looked at Weinstock, and there was raw pain in his eyes. “Saul, Boyd didn’t just kill Mark…he bit him. Connie, too.”

Crow saw the meaning of that register on Weinstock’s face. “Holy God.”

“I think we have to tell her everything. She’s lost her entire family to this. She has a bigger stake in it than anyone. We have to be straight with her.”

At that moment there was a tap on the door and a nurse popped her head in. “Doctor? We’d like to bring Ms. Guthrie in, is that okay?”

Both men leapt to their feet as two orderlies wheeled Val in on a gurney. Her right eye and most of her head was turbaned in thick bandages, and most of the exposed flesh of her cheek, nose, and chin were puffy with dark red bruises. She was dressed in a white ER gown patterned with tiny cornflowers. She saw Crow and her eye widened, but before she could even say his name he’d pushed past the nurse and bent over her.

“Val!” Crow cried, shouldering past the orderlies. He bent to her, murmuring her name over and over again, kissing her forehead, her cheek, her lips. “Oh, baby! How are you?”

Val kissed him back, tears spilling from her eye. In a shattered voice she said, “Mark!” and then her voice disintegrated into sobs as he held her.

After a minute or so Weinstock gently pulled Crow away, and Val was transferred to the bed, hooked up to a fresh saline drip, and plugged into monitors. Weinstock shooed everyone but Crow out of the room. Polk appeared in the doorway, glaring at Crow.

“Hey, I thought I told you that you weren’t supposed to talk to my witness?”

Crow wheeled on him and was just about to tear into him when Weinstock stepped between them. “What’s the problem, Jim?”

Polk’s eyes narrowed on the doctor. “The problem, sir, is that I specifically told Crow that Valerie Guthrie was a witness and that no one was supposed to talk to her until—”

“Oh for God’s sake,” Weinstock snarled and pushed Polk out into the hall and pulled the door shut. “Not even you can be that thick, Jim. Or am I wrong about that? Are you that much of a blockhead?” Before Polk could answer, Weinstock plowed ahead. “Miss Guthrie is my patient and she is the victim of a crime. Crow is a deputy, last I heard, and until Sheriff Bernhardt himself revokes that designation, then I’ll continue to regard him as such. In the meantime, this is my goddamn hospital. If I hear one more word out of you I swear I’ll have security escort you off the premises and I will file formal chares of trespassing, harassment, and anything else I can get my good friend Judge Shermer to agree to. And I’ll be talking to Gus about this. Now get the hell out of my face before I ask Crow to bounce you off the walls just to make us all feel better.”

Polk was livid and his balled fists trembled at his sides. Crow shifted position to be within reach of Polk, hoping to God that the cop would take a swing. Bouncing him off the walls really would make him feel better.

“Crow…?” It was Val’s’ voice, faint through the closed door, but still an arrow in Crow’s heart.

Polk pointed a finger at Crow. “This isn’t over,” he said with a hiss.

“Yes it is,” Weinstock said, beating Crow to it. “It had better be or I promise you, Jim, that you will regret it. Don’t push me on this.”

Polk made a rude noise and turned away. He stalked down the hall under a cloud. The other two cops exchanged looks with each other and then looked at Weinstock.

“Do either of you have a problem with Crow being here?”

“No sir,” said the oldest of the two, “we surely don’t.”

Weinstock touched Crow on the arm. “I’ll leave you two alone. Don’t tax her, buddy, okay?” With a parting glare at the cops, the doctor stalked off. Both cops gave Crow a palms-out “no problem” gesture as Crow opened the door and went inside.

Crow sat on the edge of the bed and for a long time he and Val, finally alone, just clung together as she wept for her brother and Connie. Crow wept with her—even for Mark, whom he barely liked? Maybe. In part, certainly. Mark was an officious ass at times, but he had been a good guy at heart, and he’d suffered the same loss that Val had when Henry had been murdered; now he was dead, too. And Connie was a total innocent; life never gave her a chance. Crow ached for them both, and for the whole town.

It was half an hour later, after tears and more tears, after soft words and silent times, that he finally worked up the nerve to bring up the events of last night. When he saw the aching, weary grief in her eye he almost didn’t. He looked down at Val, touched the stain of tears on her cheek, and absently licked the tears from his finger.

“Val…honey…we need to talk about some stuff. I need to tell you some things, but first I need you tell me what happened last night. Are you up to this?”

In the space of a heartbeat the look in Val’s eye changed from wretched pain to an almost reptilian coldness. “It’s long past time that we talked about this. All night I’ve been thinking about this, Crow, needing to talk to you. God knows I had nothing else to do while they fussed around me. I’m pregnant, so they couldn’t give me sedatives. They wouldn’t let me see you, and that jackass Polk kept trying to ask me questions, so I just tuned him out and thought about what I saw.” Her grip was tightened like a vise on his wrist. “I wanted it to be straight in my head. I wanted to try and make some kind of sense out of what happened, put it together in my mind, try to be cold and clinical about it. I had time to think it through.” She took a breath and studied him. “You know I don’t believe most of that supernatural crap—zombies and hobgoblins and all. You’re into it, but you know that I never…I mean, I don’t—”

“It doesn’t matter, baby. I don’t believe most of it myself. A lot of this is just for fun. Spooky movies and Halloween dollars in America’s Haunted Holidayland.”

“Maybe…but what if it’s true?” She gave his arm a final squeeze and then let go, giving his wrist a defiant push as she did so. “What if a lot of it is true?”

There was such coldness in Val’s voice that it made Crow flinch.

“The papers always joke about Pine Deep being the most haunted town in America. It’s on all of our tourist pamphlets. We bank on it. So, you tell me…what if it’s true? What if we really are the most haunted town? There’s no other explanation for what we both saw here in the hospital two weeks ago, and what I saw last night. And no one is going to tell me I imagined it. Not unless they want their asses kicked, ’cause I’m not going to take any of that crap from anyone. I know what I saw. I know what happened.”

“I saw some things, too, baby,” he said, and told her about what happened down in Dark Hollow. As Val listened her face went paler, but the hunting hawk glare in her eye intensified.

“God,” she said. “So, we’re now looking at something that started when we were kids. You always believed it, and now I do, too. I’d say I’m sorry for doubting you, but I don’t think that really matters now, does it?”

“No, baby, it sure as hell doesn’t.”

“So where does it leave us? Vampires…and whatever the hell it was down in the Hollow. Would you call it a ghost? Griswold’s ghost?”

“I think so,” Crow said tentatively.

“I’m fighting so hard right now to stay solid, to not break apart, and I have to keep this as logical as possible because if I take one little step off the intellectual facts-and-figures plane I’m going to totally lose it.”

“Hey…Val…it’s okay. It’s over now, no one expects you to be a rock all the time.”

“No, it’s not okay, damn it! I can’t break down. Not until I know where this is all going, not until I understand what really happened to Mark and Connie and what it might mean. I have to hold it together.”

But those last words punched a hole in the dam and the pent-up tons of grief finally smashed through. From one second to the next Val’s face went from stern control to shattered grief and the tears burst from her and the sobs tore her from the inside out. She cried out her brother’s name and clawed Crow to her in her need to be sheltered, weeping brokenly against his chest as he held her.