The Right Hand of Evil

CHAPTER 18

How much farther?" Luke Roberts asked. Jared glanced around, uncertain where they were. When they left the school half an hour ago, he'd thought about going back to his house and following the same trail Scout had led him along in the early hours of the morning. But as they started out, he had the idea that he could find the trail just by heading east from the edge of town into the woods. As they made their way along the labyrinth of paths, though, everything started to look alike. A couple of times he'd caught Luke eyeing him suspiciously, and at one point could see that Luke was about to ask him if he even knew where he was.

Despite his uncertainty, Jared silenced him with a look, unwilling to admit that they might be lost. Then, fifteen minutes ago, they came to a place where two trails crossed, and he'd known.

This was it, he thought. This was the trail.

But how had he known?

He'd scanned the area carefully, looking for something that stood out, that he might have remembered from his predawn foray with Scout. But there was nothing. And besides, when he was here before, he'd made his way through the darkness with nothing but moonlight, just following where Scout led.

And yet he knew. This was the right trail.

"This way," he announced.

"Yeah, sure," Luke drawled, hitching up the jeans that threatened to slide off his hips. "This don't look any different than any of the…" His voice died away as Jared fixed him with the same look that had silenced him a few minutes earlier.

Now, though, Jared slowed.

Close.

They were very close.

Once again he scanned the forest, looking for any sign of a cabin. Off to the left, barely visible through the tangle of kudzu that was spreading everywhere, he could make out the glimmering of sunlight on water.

A lake. Had the cabin he'd seen early this morning been close to a lake? He didn't know.

"Ahead," he said softly. "It's right up ahead."

Luke's brows arched skeptically. "I don't know," he replied. "Maybe we oughta just go back to town and go get a Coke or somethin'."

But Jared was moving along the trail again. A slight breeze had come up, and he stopped. "You smell anything?" he asked, sniffing.

Luke shook his head. "Do I look like some kinda hound or something?"

That was it! The dogs he'd heard last night! He could smell them! "Come on," he said. "We're almost there."

Once again Luke hesitated, but in the end gave Jared no argument. Leading the way, Jared crept forward, waiting for the dogs to begin baying.

This afternoon, though, they were silent, and suddenly Jared knew why. If he could smell them, he was downwind. They couldn't smell him.

He came to a bend in the trail. Though there was still no tree or rock that he remembered, he knew that as soon as they rounded the bend, they would see the cabin huddled in the small clearing. And a moment later, there it was.

Now, in the bright sunlight, Jared could see the lake. It lay only a few yards beyond the cabin. The bank was low and muddy, and there were a couple of old wooden rowboats-so worn they didn't look as if they could even float-lying on the shore, tied uselessly to a tree with rotting cotton rope.

Curled up in the shade of the cabin were two dogs.

"That's it," Jared said softly. "You know who lives there?"

Luke said nothing, but Jared knew immediately that he'd seen this cabin before. "Come on," he said, his voice rising. "Tell me!"

"Jake Cumberland," Luke Roberts finally said. "This is his place."

"Who is he?" Jared pressed.

Luke's expression turned wary. "Just a trapper," he replied. "He's always lived out here."

Jared's eyes narrowed. "You're scared of him, aren't you?"

Luke paled, but shook his head.

"Bullshit," Jared said. "Tell me the truth."

"There's… stories," Luke admitted. "About his ma."

"What kind of stories?"

"She was supposed to be some kind of voodoo queen or something." Luke's eyes shifted away from Jared. "An' they say she worked for your uncle before she disappeared."

"Disappeared?" Jared repeated. "What do you mean, disappeared? You mean she just took off?"

Luke shrugged. "Nobody knows. Leastwise, nobody I ever talked to knows. But my ma says the last time anyone ever saw her was the night before your uncle hung himself." He reddened slightly. "My ma says she heard your uncle might have killed her. She says there was all kinds of talk about him and Jake's ma. Like maybe they were gettin' it on, and she was gonna tell. So he killed her." As Jared's fists clenched and his jaw tightened, Luke held up his hands. "Hey, don't get pissed at me. All I'm tellin' you is what I heard."

But Jared was no longer looking at Luke. His eyes were fixed on the cabin. It cowered in the humid afternoon heat like an exhausted, dying dog. Every one of its windows was cracked-several panes were missing entirely-and whatever paint the weathered boards might once have worn was long gone. There was a sagging front porch with no railing, and most of the roof was covered with corrugated metal, badly rusted by the Louisiana heat and rain.

Though he wasn't certain why, Jared knew the cabin was empty.

His eyes shifted from the cabin itself to the two hounds.

As if sensing his gaze, both dogs scrambled to their feet, tensing. As they caught sight of him, they went on point, tails held straight back, eyes fixed on him. As Jared took a step toward them, the wind shifted and the two dogs caught his scent.

He moved a step closer, and now the dogs lunged forward, the wail of their baying ripping the quiet of the afternoon.

"You nuts, Jared?" Luke Roberts demanded. "What if Jake's in there?"

"He's not," Jared said. "He's nowhere around here."

"How the hell do you know?" Luke asked, but Jared didn't bother to reply.

He moved closer to the two dogs, now struggling at the end of their chains, their teeth bared, their baying dropping to low snarls as they tried to get at him.

He stopped a foot beyond the reach of the nearest dog-the one whose chain was a foot or so shorter than the first, who leaped and thrashed as it struggled to get closer.

"You want me?" Jared asked, squatting low and extending his right hand out toward the snarling animal. "That what you want? You think you want a piece of me?"

The dog howled with rage and threw itself against its chain, lost its balance, and skidded in the mud the morning's rainstorm had left. Writhing for several seconds, it regained its footing and lunged at Jared once more.

Jared extended his fingers until they were within inches of the dog's snapping teeth. "That it?" he taunted. "That what you want?"

"Are you crazy?" Luke called. "If he gets loose-"

But Jared wasn't listening. "Try it," he whispered. "Go on, just try it. See what happens."

He darted his fingers out, and the dog's jaws snapped shut on them.

Luke howled as if he himself had been bitten. "Jesus!"

"Got a taste?" Jared whispered, his eyes fixed on the dog. Abruptly, the dog dropped back to cower on the ground. While the other animal continued its baying, still twisting to get at Jared, he reached down and put his fingers around the cowering dog's neck. "Not gonna do that again," he said softly. "Not ever gonna do that again!"

His fingers tightened around the animal's neck, and then he gave it a fast, hard jerk.

The animal screamed once, a high-pitched shriek of pain that was cut off as its neck snapped. It dropped back into the mud.

Luke stared mutely at the limp animal. "You killed him," he whispered.

Jared turned to look at him. "He bit me," he said, his voice reflecting no emotion. "What did you expect me to do, pat him on the head?"

The second dog, silent now, sniffed at its litter mate's lifeless corpse. Then it slunk back until it was huddled against the wall of the cabin.

Removing the chain from the dog's neck, Jared picked it up.

"What are you going to do with it?" Luke asked, his voice trembling.

Jared made no reply. Instead, he turned and carried the dead dog into Jake Cumberland's cabin.

The door closed behind him.

Jake Cumberland had been out on the lake most of the afternoon. The battered bucket that served him as a makeshift creel held half a dozen catfish-plenty for him and the two hounds. After he'd caught the last fish, about an hour ago, he thought about heading back home and taking the hounds out for a while. Check a few traps, maybe even do some hunting. But after being up most of last night, he felt tired; what his ma would have called bone-weary. It would've been okay if he'd slept through once he got home last night, but after the dogs had set to baying long before dawn, he'd been unable to get back to sleep. Just sort of lay there, trying to figure out what might have spooked them.

Probably just some critter, he'd told himself over and over again. A possum, maybe, or a 'coon. Except he'd known right away it wasn't a critter. The hounds had a different sound to them when they were on the scent of something they wanted to hunt. And this morning, when they jerked him awake with their first howl, he'd recognized it right away.

They were warning him.

That was why he'd lit the lantern and gone to the door.

He hadn't seen anybody.

Hadn't even heard anything.

But he'd still known someone was out there.

Out there, watching his cabin.

As he'd stood in the doorway, peering out into the darkness, trying to catch a glimpse of whoever was hiding in the night, he heard an echo of his ma's voice whispering to him when he was just a boy: "You can feel him, child. When he's around, you can feel him. And you gotta be careful, real careful. 'Cause he's stronger'n you, child. Never forget that. He's stronger." So even after the dogs finally quieted, Jake had stayed awake, the lantern turned low, waiting for the dawn to come. When the eastern sky began to brighten, he didn't go to bed, but instead set about his usual chores. He tidied up the cabin and fed the dogs. Checked the traps he'd baited the day before, then spent the hour when the thunderstorm tore through skinning and cleaning the three rabbits that were all the traps had produced.

Finally, after frying up some of the rabbit meat to tide him over till supper, he'd headed out in the rowboat, telling himself he was going fishing, but knowing he'd probably spend most of the afternoon just dozing in the sun. But he hadn't really dozed, because even in the daylight his ma's words kept rolling around in his head like the last few beans in a coffee can.

"When he's around, you can feel him."

Who'd she been talking about? When he was a little boy, he always figured it must have been Mr. Conway. But even back then, he'd never really been sure what his ma was talking about, because he never felt much of anything at all when he saw his ma's boss. Not until that night.

That last night, back when he was only a boy…

Jake woke up to the smell of smoke and the flicker of candlelight, and knew before he even saw her what his mama was doing.

Getting ready to work her magic.

That was what she called it-workin' her magic. "But don't you be tryin' it," she'd warned him the first time he'd awakened in the middle of the night and found her sitting at the little table in the corner of their cabin. "Little boys got no business with this kind of magic." She sent him back to bed that night, but he stayed awake, peeking at her from beneath the folds of the single thin blanket that was all he had to keep him warm, even on the coldest nights.

And ever since, whenever he awakened to find his mama hunched over the scarred table, her hair wrapped in the blue bandanna he himself had saved up to buy her for Christmas one year, he tried not even to stir in bed, so she wouldn't know he was awake. Tonight, though, he slipped out of the bed and went to stand by his mama, watching worriedly as she prepared the effigy.

That, he knew, was what it was called.

An effigy.

To him, it looked like nothing more than a doll-and not really a very good one-but his mama had explained to him that it wasn't really a doll. "With an effigy, you can make things happen to people," she'd told him. Now, as he watched her fingers stitch the material around the stuffing, he remembered what his teacher had said in school a few days ago.

"Sister says magic's wrong," he said worriedly. "She says if you try to work voodoo on people, you'll go to Hell."

His mama looked up from her work, her dark eyes glittering in the light of the single candle that illuminated the table. "Sister don't know everything."

Jake stared at the dead frog that lay on the table close by the effigy, its belly slit open all the way up to its mouth. "But I don't want you to go to Hell," he pressed, his voice quavering.

His mama reached out and laid a gentle hand on his head. "Don't you worry," she crooned. "I'm not goin' to Hell." Her eyes flicked toward the doll. "But that don't mean others won't. Now, you get on back to bed and go to sleep. You have to go to school in the morning."

Jake slid back under the blanket, but a few minutes later, when his mama went out into the night, he pulled on his clothes and followed after her.

First she went down to the edge of the lake and squatted down amongst the reeds that grew there, hiding the frogs and turtles Jake liked to hunt.

A low sound-exactly like the ones the frogs themselves made-rumbled from her throat, and she cast the carcass of the dead creature he'd seen on the kitchen table into the murky water. As ripples spread from the spot where she'd thrown the frog into the water, she stood up, muttering so softly that Jake couldn't make out the words. Then, carrying the effigy doll with her, she walked slowly through the night, pausing here and there to whisper a muttered prayer, break a twig from a bush, or pick up some object-once a feather, another time a pebble-from the path.

"All of them have magic," she'd explained to Jake one afternoon when they came across the clean-picked bones of a dead crow, and stooping down, she'd picked up the bones-even the beak and the feet-and slipped them into her pocket. "Every living thing has magic, and every dead thing, too. You just have to know how to use it." Tonight his mama had gathered so many things that Jake was sure she was planning to use the most powerful magic she knew.

As he followed her through the darkness, he remembered the words his teacher had spoken, meanwhile staring right at him, just like she knew what his mama did sometimes. "Christ is the Savior, and only through Christ can we be saved. All the rest is evil. All other paths lead only to Hell." As Jake followed his mama along the twisting paths, he silently prayed for her to turn around and lead him back to their little cabin. But then, after what seemed to him to be a very long time, they stepped out of the woods, and Jake knew where they were.

The huge house-the house where his mother worked every day, cleaning the floors and doing the laundry and cooking the meals and whatever else she was told-loomed before him, and it dawned on him what magic she was practicing tonight. As he cowered in the deep shadows by the carriage house, his mother stepped out into the light of the rising moon. She paced slowly, her head down, as if searching for something. Then, a soft chant welling up from somewhere deep inside her, she began circling, pacing around in an ever-tightening spiral until at last she was slowly spinning over a single spot.

Her spinning slowed further, then stopped. She lowered herself until she was sitting cross-legged on the ground. Her eyes fixing on one of the second-story windows, she began removing things from the deep pockets of her dress.

First came the effigy doll, which she lay before her, its head pointing toward the great house.

Then a knife, its blade glinting in the moonlight.

Some bones, picked clean of flesh, she laid in a circle around her.

Then came stones, and bits of moss. Some leaves, and a handful of dust.

She spread it all before her, her incantations growing ever louder, until it seemed to Jake they might summon up the dead from their very graves.

A light went on inside the house, a light that spilled out of the second-story window to catch his mother like a fly in a spider's web. A few minutes later a door opened and a man stepped out.

"Eulalie, is that you out there?"

Jake recognized the voice-it was George Conway. The man who owned the house.

The man his mama worked for.

When his mama didn't answer, George Conway left his house and came out into the yard. Then he was standing above Jake's mama, and the boy could see the anger in the man's face as he studied all the things Eulalie Cumberland had spread around her.

"Take your junk and go home, Eulalie," George Conway commanded.

Jake held his breath, waiting for his mama to grab all her things and scuttle away. But instead she lifted her face until her eyes fixed on Conway's. Then, her right hand outstretched, she pointed to the great house silhouetted against the night sky. "Evil," her voice intoned. "Evil everywhere. Evil in your house, and evil in you!" She held up the effigy doll then, and shook it in his face. "It's in here now. It's all in here." She snatched up the knife, holding it close to the doll. "Soon I'm cutting it out. Cutting it all out!"

George Conway glowered down at his mama. "Don't threaten me, Eulalie Cumberland. Don't you dare to threaten me."

Jake saw his mama's chest heave as she straightened up to face George Conway's rage. "Ain't a threat," she said, and though her voice was barely above a whisper, it carried perfectly through the stillness of the night. "I'm promisin' you. By the next moonrise, the evil will be gone from this place!" As she went back to muttering her incantations, George Conway turned away from her and strode toward the carriage house.

He'd been seen! Jake's heart pounded and his eyes searched the darkness for some means of escape. But the woods were too far away, and there was no other shelter to protect him. A frightened cry rose in his throat, but just as it was about to slip from his lips, Conway disappeared through a door into the building against which he was huddled.

Safe! He hadn't been seen at all; he was safe.

Still, Jake held his breath; any sound he made would betray him. After what seemed an eternity, George Conway reappeared, carrying something in his right hand.

As the man started back toward his mama, Jake finally let out his breath and took another.

"I'm telling you for the last time, Eulalie," he heard Conway say. "Go home."

But his mama didn't budge, and when George Conway used both his hands to raise the object above her head, Jake was certain he was going to smash her with it. But instead he tipped it, and water began to flow over his mama's head.

Another second went by, and then the acrid odor hit Jake's nostrils.

Not water.

Gasoline.

"Last chance, Eulalie," Jake heard George Conway say.

Jake's mama peered up at the man who loomed above her. "I ain't afraid of you, and I ain't afraid of what you been messin' with." As her incantations began again, the flare of a match illuminated the face of George Conway. The man gazed down at his mama for another second or two, then stepped back a pace.

With no change in his expression at all, George Conway tossed the match into the puddle of gasoline that surrounded Eulalie Cumberland. There was a strange whooshing sound as the gasoline exploded into flames, and George Conway stepped back two more paces as the first flash of heat struck him.

Jake's eyes widened in horror and his hands clamped over his mouth. He wanted to race forward, wanted to jerk his mama out of the fire, wanted to rescue her from the flames suddenly dancing around her, but his muscles wouldn't work.

As he stared numbly at the horrifying spectacle before him, he was vaguely aware of a hot wetness spreading through the crotch of his jeans. But even as he lost control of his bladder, he could do nothing to free himself from the paralysis that held him, couldn't even bring himself to tear his eyes away from the fire consuming his mother.

Eulalie Cumberland made no sound at all as her clothes caught fire and the flames began eating away at her flesh. Nor did she make any effort to save herself. But her hands reached out of the flames and closed on two of the objects she'd spread around her.

In her left hand she held the effigy doll, suspended from a noose she'd tied around its neck.

In her right hand she held the knife.

While Jake and George Conway watched her, she plunged the knife deep into the body of the doll, then jerked it downward. As the thin cotton from which she'd made the doll ripped open, the entrails of the frog poured forth from its belly.

The flames, higher now, engulfed her head, but still she held the doll high. The bloody guts hanging from its belly glimmered in the firelight, and as George Conway stared at them, his own eyes widening in terror, Eulalie Cumberland began to laugh.

It was an unearthly sound, erupting from her throat in peal after peal, and even after she finally pitched forward into the flames, her laughter still seemed to hang in the night air.

Jake, transfixed by the horror of watching his mother burn, trembled in the darkness as the flames died slowly away.

Even when the fire had finally burned itself out, he couldn't bring himself to leave. He watched from the shadows as George Conway disposed of the remains of his mama, wrapping them in a thick blanket, then disappearing back into the great dark house, carrying his burden with him.

All through the rest of the night, Jake Cumberland stayed by the carriage house.

He tried to tell himself that what he'd seen couldn't have happened, that it had to be some kind of terrible nightmare.

Pretty soon he'd wake up and be back home in the cabin, and his mama would be at the stove, frying up the grits she always fixed for breakfast.

Only when the sun finally crept over the horizon did Jake finally go home. He stayed in the cabin as long as he could, not coming out for three days and three nights. And when finally the sister came looking for him and asked him where his mother was, he didn't tell her what he'd seen that night.

He didn't tell anyone, ever.

But when he heard that they'd found George Conway the afternoon after his mother died, hanging from the magnolia tree behind his house, still clutching the knife he'd used to tear his own belly open, Jake heard something.

He heard his mama laughing.

He'd known right away why she was laughing. It was because even though Conway had killed her, she'd still won. But he'd still never understood what she meant when she talked about feeling the evil.

Not until last night when the hounds started up.

For the first time, he'd known exactly what his mama had meant.

He had felt something.

Something evil.

Something outside in the darkness, lurking somewhere just beyond the circle of yellow light cast by the lantern.

Usually, he would have turned the dogs loose, but not last night. Something held him back, something whispered to him to keep them inside the cabin.

This afternoon, though, when he'd left the cabin to take the little boat out, he chained them up outside-couldn't keep them inside all day long. But even as he'd tossed his fishing pole, bait, and bucket into the boat and shoved it out onto the water, he wondered if maybe he shouldn't put them back in the cabin.

Or maybe even take them along.

In the end he told himself that whatever had been skulking around the cabin last night was long gone. And in the bright light of the afternoon sun, he was pretty sure he'd just imagined it anyway. Probably just feeling jumpy after his own midnight outing. Not that he'd done anything wrong-in fact, he'd been doing that whole family a favor. If they had any smarts at all, they'd pack up and move themselves right back to wherever they came from. And there sure wasn't any way they'd know who it was nailed the cat skin on the back of their carriage house. Even if anyone suspected, they couldn't prove it.

No, he'd just been jumpy.

Finally letting himself relax for the first time since he'd opened his mother's trunk last night, Jake lay back on the bottom of the boat, holding his fishing pole loosely in his right hand, his feet propped up on the bench across the middle, his head resting comfortably in the bow. He tipped his straw hat down over his face and closed his eyes.

And then the dogs began baying.

Jake jerked bolt upright, recognizing the sound at once. It was his hounds that had set to wailing, no question about it-even from a mile, maybe two miles away-he could recognize the sound of his dogs. And they were letting out with the same howling they'd set up last night-not all excited, like when they caught the scent of a 'coon or a rabbit. Just like last night, they sounded mad.

Worried, and mad.

Jake reeled in his line, stowed the pole, and started rowing back toward shore. He'd been drifting quite a while, and the cabin looked to be nearly a mile away now, though the dogs' baying carried so clearly over the water they sounded like they weren't more than a couple hundred yards away.

He'd only pulled a few strokes on the oars when the baying died away. He stopped rowing; shipping the oars for a minute while he listened.

Nothing but a fish jumping off to the left, and the whining of a mosquito as it zeroed in on his neck. Then, just as he slapped at the mosquito, he heard it.

Jake knew what the sound meant the second he heard it. A high-pitched howl of pain, cut off so quickly that Jake knew exactly what had happened.

One of his dogs had died.

The mosquito forgotten, Jake lowered the oars back into the water and began pulling hard in a steady rhythm that sent the boat slicing through the water.

Twice he paused, feathering the oars over the lake's rippled surface as he listened, but it wasn't until he was within a few yards of the shore that he finally heard it.

A single dog-he was almost sure it was Lucky-was whimpering.

The boat slid up onto the beach, and Jake jumped out of the bow, pulling the craft out of the water until half of it rested in the hard-packed mud that formed the bank. Leaving everything in the boat, he hurried up to the cabin.

At first glance, nothing looked different. But then, when he got around to the back, he saw that he'd been right. Lucky was at the end of his chain, whimpering as he sniffed the ground around the end of the other chain.

Red was gone.

Jake strode forward and dropped down on one knee. "What happened, Lucky?" he asked. "What's been going on around here while I been gone?"

The dog whimpered eagerly, and wriggled under Jake's touch, but then went back to sniffing the ground around the end of Red's chain. Frowning, Jake picked up the chain and tested the clasp he'd attached to Red's collar.

Nothing wrong with it.

Nor was there any sign of the collar.

"Where is he, Lucky?" he asked. "Where'd he go?"

Snapping the chain off Lucky's collar, Jake stood up. "Find Red," he instructed softly. "Show me where he is."

The dog dashed around the corner of the cabin, and a moment later Jake found him sniffing and scratching at the door.

Mounting the porch, Jake hesitated. Why would Red be inside the cabin? If something had killed him-

Then he remembered. Not something. Someone. An icy chill came over Jake, but he crossed his sagging porch and opened the door to his house.

And there was Red.

The dog lay on the table, its belly slit, its entrails spilling over and hanging nearly to the floor.

At Jake's feet Lucky whined softly and pressed close.

"Oh, Jesus," Jake whispered. "Oh, Jesus Lord, who did this?" His stomach heaving, Jake moved closer, reached out and gently stroked the dog's muzzle, as if to comfort it. Then his eyes fell on the dog's right foreleg.

The paw was missing, severed neatly, leaving the leg to end in a bloody stump.

Too late, Jake thought.

It's already too late.