Dead Man's Song

Chapter 23

(1)

“Hand me that trowel, honey?” Connie asked, holding out a gloved hand. She was kneeling on a rubber garden pad, her rump in the air, with her blond hair pushed up under a straw hat and a decorative smudge of potting soil on her cheek. Val handed her the trowel and watched as Connie set to work digging holes for some gardenias she’d had delivered from a greenhouse in Warrington. It was the first time since coming home that Connie had shown any real interest in doing something creative, and Val was taking it as a good sign. Last night Crow had arranged for Mark and Connie to go out for dinner and a show, and when they had gotten home there was just the faintest hint of something akin to romance between the two of them. Val thought that was even more hopeful. Maybe that was what it was going to take—real-world, ordinary stuff.

However, Connie wasn’t entirely rational. Val had patiently explained that this was the middle of October and that there was likely to be a frost soon and besides it was way too late in the year to be planting flowers, but Connie had patted her hand—actually patted her hand—and told her that whereas Val may known how to grow crops she didn’t really understand pretty stuff like flowers. Val had wisely shut up. It was better to sacrifice the gardenias than the moment. So far they had planted four trays of gardenias and three of marigolds. Val was amazed they had even found them this time of year, greenhouse or no. Connie was surrounding the front porch with colorful flowers and she was going about it with the single-minded relentlessness of a fanatic.

Diego had come up while they were still in the marigold phase and had even opened his mouth to say something, but Val had waved him off. Not wanting to call his boss crazy, Diego had just touched the brim of his hat, smiled, and melted back into the fields. The last of the late-season corn was being harvested and whole sections of the Guthrie farm were now bare.

“Is Mark going to be home for dinner tonight?” Val asked, trying to make it sound casual, but she could see the trowel falter for a moment.

“I think so,” Connie said with only the slightest hesitation and her trowel chopped into the dirt with a bit more force. “He has a Moose luncheon thingee and then he’ll be home.”

“Okay,” Val said. “Shall I cook?”

Connie laughed at that as if Val had just made a great joke, and Val had to grudgingly give her that point. Though she could rebuild the magneto on her 1973 FLH 1200 Electraglide Custom motorcycle or do a tranny job on John Deere 8030, she was no wizard in the kitchen. All thumbs and no sense of what went where. There were family stories about some of her classic dinners, including a brisket that everyone thought was tofu and pizza with cold tomato sauce and a runny crust. Val sighed.

When her cell phone rang she was delighted. It wouldn’t have mattered if it had been a telemarketer.

“Val? It’s Terry—is Crow there?”

“No, he’s out for the day,” she said as she stood up and dusted off the knees of her jeans and strolled out onto the front lawn.

“Val—he didn’t really go out there, did he?”

She turned and looked back at the house, saw that Connie, still on hands and knees, was staring off in the direction of the stand of trees near the barn. Val glanced that way, saw nothing, and didn’t think much about it. She often found Connie standing still, staring out a window or whatever. God only knew what she was seeing. What had Saul called it? Dissociative behavior?

“Val?”

“Yes,” she said at last. “They left a couple of hours ago.”

“Damn it!” Terry snapped, and abruptly hung up. Shocked, Val stared at the phone for several seconds before finally folding down the lid and putting it back into her pocket. “Asshole,” she murmured, and then remembered her promise to Sarah that she would bury the hatchet, but the memory of his rudeness stung her again and she repeated her comment. Frowning, she strolled back to the porch. Connie was standing now, her face still turned toward the barn.

“What’s up, Con? Is that fox back?”

At the sound of her voice Connie jumped, turned, and for a moment looked at Val as if she didn’t know who she was. Then she blinked and smiled self-consciously.

“My…I was a million miles away.” She glanced again at the barn. “I just saw the strangest thing….”

Val stiffened. “What?”

“You’ll think I’m crazy, but…I just saw a snow-white deer. A buck. You know, with all the horns? White as snow.”

Val took a few steps toward the barn, but there was nothing to see and the trees were too thin to hide a full-grown deer. She looked back at Connie.

“Isn’t that just strange?” Connie asked with an enigmatic smile.

“Yeah,” Val agreed. “Strange.”

(2)

It looked like a nest, with the bodies of the creatures tangled and clustered together with no thought of comfort. There were fourteen of them now, all pale and bloated, gorged and somnolent, huddled in the darkness of the basement, secure in the shadows. An onlooker would have thought they were all dead, a mass of murder victims whose bodies had been carelessly disposed of out of sight in that forgotten, half-collapsed house, but every once in a while one of the bloated bodies would turn or shift, the movement inspired by some red dream.

Last night there had only been nine of them, but the number had grown, as it would continue to grow; just as it grew for each of the nests scattered throughout the town. Last week there had been two, but now Adrian and Darien lay sprawled there in the secret, silent darkness, wrapped in each other’s arms, clutched together against the sleeping back of Dave Golub.

The bodies all slept on throughout the burning day. Once, just before noon, a bold and foolish rat scuttled into the basement, following the scent of spoiled meat and fresh blood. It minced down through the spiderwebs and shadows, driven by the nearness of food, hungry beyond caution. In its daring and hunger it came close to Adrian’s outflung hand. The fingers looked fat and pale and full of meat, and the sleeper looked oblivious. The rat considered for a moment and almost fled out of natural fear, but the demands of its belly overrode the logic of its instinct. It darted in toward the little finger, its yellow teeth bared for the bite…but the white hand flashed so fast the rat was a broken-necked corpse before it was even aware that it was in threat. It twitched once, twice, and then lay eternally still in the killing grip of the boy. Adrian’s eyelids never twitched, never opened, but he pulled the corpse close to his chest the way he once would have held a stuffed bear. Beyond the speed of his hand he made no other move. As the hours of the day wore on, he lay there with the dead rat clutched in his hand and a smile of hungry joy on his innocent face.

(3)

“Crow…you’re scaring the crap out of me, here. Why the hell didn’t you tell me this stuff before?”

“Would you have come down here if I had?”

“Hell, no! And I want to turn around and go back right now.”

“Why, do you think I lured you down here for some nefarious purpose?” Crow was smiling when he said it, then his smile faded. “Jesus Christ—you do think I lured you—”

“What am I supposed to think?” Newton shouted. “You talk me into coming down to the remotest place on planet-frickin’-Earth and then you tell me that Karl Ruger—who had never even been to Pine Deep before—used his last breath to give you a message from someone who’s been dead for thirty years…someone you also think is some kind of monster. What the hell am I supposed to think about that kind of thing?”

“Calm the hell down!” Crow yelled back, amping it up a notch. “And don’t get all paranoid on me. You wanted the whole story, right? Well, this is part of the story, and on that point—this isn’t just a story to me. I believe this stuff. All of it. I know that Griswold was a goddamn monster because I saw his goddamn monster face, all right? He killed my brother, he killed Val’s cousin, he killed Terry Wolfe’s sister, he killed a shitload of other people in this town, and he almost killed me. I know this and you don’t because you weren’t even there. As far as Ruger goes—I faced him down twice and he nearly killed me and my fiancée and our baby and I can’t just forget him or what he said!”

“Baby? What baby?”

That made Crow grind to a halt. He stopped, flushed and flustered and furious. He sputtered for a moment and then, just as loud, he yelled, “Val’s pregnant! You happy? She almost died and that means our baby would have died. You think I’d invent what Ruger said just to impress you?”

“Crow…shut up.” Newton said it quietly and it had the same effect as if he’d have belted Crow across the mouth. “Just dial it down, okay?”

He stood there, hands up palms-outward, facing Crow, who had clamped his mouth shut but was still glaring.

“I didn’t know that about Val.”

“Yeah, well, now you do.”

“Congratulations.”

“What?”

Newton held out his hand. “Congratulations.”

Crow stared at him for a long minute and then took the hand and shook it, looking totally puzzled by the right-angle change of direction.

“Now,” Newton said with a level voice, “look me in the eye, Crow, and tell me that you aren’t completely off your rocker, ’cause I have to admit that this is all a bit hard to take and right now I’m more scared of you than I am of these woods, and that’s saying something.”

“Why the hell are you scared of me?”

“Because you’re acting crazy and you have a gun.”

That made Crow gape; then he turned and walked in as wide a circle as the brush would allow, flapping his arms and shaking his head. He stopped and turned and looked at Newton from a dozen feet away, and he was smiling a great big rueful smile. “Yeah, I guess it sounds pretty crazy at that.”

“It’s a healthy sign to admit it,” Newton said hopefully.

“Oh, bite me.” He came back over. “Look, Newt, here’s the deal, I’ve told you almost everything now. So, am I crazy? No, or at least not in that way. But do I believe this stuff? Then, yeah, I do. I believe Griswold was a monster, I believe Ruger said what he said, and I believe one more thing, and if I tell you I don’t want you to go running off into the woods to escape the crazy man.”

“You could probably outrun me, anyway. Sure, love to hear what else you believe, ’cause as you know we sane people can’t get nearly enough of this stuff.”

“Yeah, cute, but don’t push it,” Crow said with a half-grin. “Okay, I’ve been working on a kind of theory about Griswold and Ruger. This should be right up your alley because I know you’re a big conspiracy-theory nut.”

“Pot calling the kettle black.”

“Whatever. Anyway, I told you Griswold had a crew of cronies back in the day. Vic, my dad, a few others. Ruger would have fit in with that crowd pretty well. Mean, vicious, and probably the same kind of asshole who would have a set of white robes in his closet. So maybe it wasn’t entirely an accident that Ruger happened to break down in this town. Maybe he was heading to Pine Deep.”

“Why?”

“Well, this is the part you’re not going to like.”

“I haven’t really liked any of it so far.”

Crow snorted. “I think maybe somehow Griswold called him here.”

“Yep, you’re right. I don’t like it. Shoot me if you’re going to, but you’re a fruitloop. You’re describing an episode of X-Files. You’re describing a Stephen King novel. This shit happens in stories and it happens in folklore, but this is the real world.”

Crow held his arms out to his side as if embracing the dark forest around them. “Newt, if this isn’t the sort of place where folklore gets its start, then I don’t know what is. We’re in the deep, dark woods near where a monster used to live, which in turn is in the center of a region that has had a reputation for hauntings going back three hundred years. If something like this was going to happen…wouldn’t it be likely to happen someplace like Pine Deep?”

Newton took out his canteen and sipped at it thoughtfully, eyeing Crow.

“I wanted to come down here,” Crow said, “because I need to solve the mystery of what Griswold was, and to prove to myself one way or another if there was a link between him and Ruger.”

Newton nodded slowly, but he said, “Isn’t that a lot to ask of a walk in the woods?”

“Not these woods,” Crow said.

Newton glanced around. Despite the early hour, the light was gray and stained and looked like the glow from a feeble bulb ready to burn out. Shadows seemed to lurk behind every tree, crouch in every hole, hang from the long bare fingers of each branch. The twisted undergrowth was snarled around the base of the towering pines and oaks, and most of the tree trunks bulged with disease. Not one single bird offered even a distant song to diffuse the tension in the air, and the wind played a slow dirge through the trees.

“You have just succeeded,” Newton said without humor, “in scaring the living shit out of me.”

Crow nodded. “Welcome to Dark Hollow.”

(4)

Dr. Saul Weinstock poured three fingers of Glenfiddich into a chunky tumbler, quickly drank down a mouthful, then took another, his eyes widening over the rim of the glass as he drank and the gasses burned his mouth. When he set the glass down he was gasping like someone who had just been hit in the solar plexus, and the glass was nearly empty. He poured more of the Scotch into the glass, but did not take another sip just yet. As he set the bottle down he raised his hands and stared at them, watching their palsied tremble. He could no more have performed surgery with those hands than he could hover in midair. He had been barely able to tie his shoes. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of one of his hands.

His office was brightly lit, and the door was securely locked. The windows were shut and shuttered, and against each pane he’d hung flowers whose scent perfumed the air with a harsh pungency. Weinstock found the air cloying, the smell oppressive, but each morning he replaced the flowers with fresh ones. On his desk, lying next to the tumbler was a gnarled lump of metal that gleamed with an angry potential. Weinstock reached for it, as he had a dozen times since locking himself in for the evening. He curled strong fingers around the butt and picked up the weapon, slipped his index finger into the trigger guard, and exerted gentle pressure on the trigger. The hammer trembled. Weinstock squeezed harder and the hammer eased silently back, poised with intent, and then leapt forward, striking the firing pin with decisive force.

There was an empty, hollow click.

Weinstock sighed and set the gun down. Then he opened his briefcase that lay on the side table. Inside was a crisp paper bag imprinted with the nameMARLEY’S METAL SMITHING—WE MAKE BEAUTY THAT LASTS! He opened the bag and removed a small drawstring bag and upended it over the blotter. Twenty-four lumps of smooth metal dropped and bounced and rolled across the green face of the blotter. He stared at them, and drank some more of the Scotch as he watched the way the light played off the copper jackets that enclosed the rounded chunks of purest silver.

Weinstock finished his glass of whiskey, his third in the last hour, and then picked up the pistol again, opened the cylinder, and as he fed the .44 slugs into the chambers, he murmured prayers he had learned as a child, his Hebrew faulty but his prayers in desperate earnest.

(5)

They kept walking through the shadowy forest, and for a while the brush thinned out and left them with a path that was easier to follow. Once in a while they would hear bird-song, but generally the place was quiet. The temperature, though, was rising as if they were nearing a hot spring, and the humidity rose with it. For several minutes they had walked in silence, each digesting their last conversation, but then Newton picked it up as if there had been no break.

“What kind of monster?”

Crow glanced at him. “What?”

“You said Gr—I mean he was some kind of monster. Exactly what did you mean by that? A serial killer? A psychopath?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have said it,” Crow said primly.

“A little late for that. So…when you say ‘monster’ you mean that he was some kind of real monster? Not that I buy any of that, but I’d like to hear what kind of a monster you think he was.”

“Answer your own question, Newt. The answer is right there in the facts I gave you.”

“What facts? You recognized him as the man who attacked you. Okay. You assume he was the one who killed all the other people, including your brother, Mayor Wolfe’s sister, and Val’s uncle. You assume that Oren Morse killed him because he felt indebted to Henry Guthrie, and because the first victims were fellow gentlemen of the road, to use the old expression. Those aren’t really facts. Mostly they’re suppositions.”

“Okay, get literal on me.” Crow used one hand to vault a fallen oak and then reached out to help Newton over. The path was still clear for about a quarter mile and then looked like it faded into shrubs again. “Let’s look at the circumstantial evidence, then.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the cattle on his farm. Remember what I said about him raising a herd of cattle?”

“Uh…right, the cattle he never sold. So what?”

“So, what happened to the cattle?”

“You mean, why did they die during the Black Harvest?”

“No, you ninny, what happened to them in the years before? He raised cattle, he bred cattle.”

“So, maybe he fancied himself a cowboy.”

“Cute. No, his herd, small as it was, changed size from season to season. Sometimes he had a lot, sometimes only a few dozen.”

“So what?”

“If he didn’t sell them, then what was happening to make the herd dwindle during the times when he didn’t have as many?”

“I don’t know, for Christ’s sake. Maybe he liked a lot of steaks.”

“No one eats that much beef. Not even Gus Bernhardt,” Crow said with a grin. He drew his machete to cut away some vines that blocked their way. “Plus, isn’t it odd that the killings of the people in Pine Deep only started after all of Griswold’s cattle had died off during the plague? Put those two facts together and you have a pretty odd pattern.”

“What…you think he was amusing himself by killing his cattle for years,” Newton said, “and then when they bit the dust, he started in on the local citizenry?”

“Something like that.”

Newton laughed. “Oh, come on! And people call me paranoid.”

“You explain it.”

“Why bother? Griswold probably really was selling off his cattle somewhere else.”

“People in town would have known.”

“How? Did you have twenty-four-hour surveillance on his property? Maybe he had a private arrangement with a meatpacking plant somewhere, just selling a couple here and there to supplement his income, or justify his image as a gentleman cattle rancher, Pennsylvania style.”

“We would have known,” Crow insisted stubbornly. “This is a small town, and it was a lot smaller back then. People know everyone else’s business. Besides, in order for a person to sell off cattle they have to pay taxes on the sale, and Griswold never once paid taxes on a single cow or bull, not once in ten years. I checked. The only records show the cattle he bought to replenish his herd. I still think that he was killing them off himself.”

“Hell, he wouldn’t be the first farmer to shy his taxes.” Shaking his head and smiling, Newton said, “But even if he wasn’t, why on earth would he kill them himself? What would be the point?”

“Maybe he liked it,” Crow said. “Or…maybe he needed to do it.”

Newton blinked. “Needed? For what? Some kind of religious voodoo thing?”

“There are other reasons for killing.”

“Such as?”

Crow cut away a thick vine, putting arm and shoulder into it so that the heavy machete blade sheared cleanly through it. His wrist and ribs had healed nicely and the exercise felt good. “For lack of a better term,” he said, “call it a primal need.”

“Primal need? That’s a weird choice of words.”

“It seems to fit.”

“Why? What makes you so sure, so certain of all this? You seem bound and determined to pin all that horror and all that crime on Griswold. Why?”

“For the same reason I already told you. When he dragged me out of the bushes, I saw his face.”

“Yeah, and you thought he looked like a monster. Come on, Crow, you were a terrified kid! Your brother had just been killed in a horrible and terrifying way. You almost certainly had nightmares the night before, and here it was, nighttime again. You were sitting in your yard, daydreaming, rocked by the loss of Billy, horrified by the other killings, too young to make any kind of sense of it all. Mix all that together and you have the perfect brew to warp a child’s perceptions of what he sees. Then someone tosses you into a bush and before you know it strong hands are pulling at you. You say that the face you saw was a monster’s face? Crow, with all that going on, how could you not have seen a monster?”

Newton sighed. “Look, I’m not trying to badger you, man, but try to see it objectively. All the evidence points to Oren Morse—none of it points to Griswold, except the cattle thing, and I could work up twenty good reasons for that. You were a little kid. Terrified, in shock, confused. What you saw was a man’s face, his features probably distorted by shadows and moonlight and the leaves of the bush. There are no monsters, man. Truth to tell, there are enough rotten, bloodthirsty sons-a-bitches in the human race without us needing any help from things that go bump in the night. That’s one of the reasons I don’t believe in the devil. If there’s a devil making people do it, or if there are demons possessing innocent folk and making them hurt other people, then it takes the culpability away from man himself. We have to be responsible for our own actions.”

He gave Crow a reassuring nod. “When you were nine, you couldn’t understand that any man, any human being, was capable of committing the horrors that were happening in town. You couldn’t accept that a man had done those things to your brother. For a kid, it’s much easier to believe in monsters—after all, monsters are supposed to do bad things, they’re evil by their nature, so there is no betrayal of human morality. Crow, you needed it to be a monster, and so it was.”

“You’re wrong,” Crow said simply. He stopped and slid the machete into its flat sheath and looked at Newton with humorless eyes. “There are monsters. I saw one. You make a really good argument, Newt, I’ll give you that. Very persuasive, eminently logical, but you are wrong. I know what I saw.”

“But—”

“It was pretty bright, despite being nighttime. It was two days past the peak of the full moon, there was a lot of light. I saw his face.”

“Griswold’s face?”

“Uh huh. Almost his face. Maybe in another couple of nights it would have been even more like his face. Maybe two days earlier it had been a lot less like his face—but on that night, it was somewhere between.”

“Between…what and what? You’re not making sense.”

Crow’s dark eyes glittered. “Between the face of a man,” he said softly, “and the face of a wolf.”

Newton opened his mouth to speak. Words utterly failed him.

Crow nodded. “Yep, that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you. There were two sets of murders, each spread out over a handful of days, separated by just less than a month. Both sets began just two days before the full moon and ended two days after.”

Newton still couldn’t manage the words.

“I think Ubel Griswold was a werewolf,” said Crow.