Mystery Walk Read online

“No. I have to be alone. You and Mr. Stanton can stay in the truck if you like.”

  Zachary paused for a moment, undecided, then he nodded and, bowed into the wind, started walking back to where Sam Stanton was blowing into his hands and stamping his feet. He turned back after a few paces, his face furrowed with concern. “I don’t… I don’t understand this, Mrs. Creekmore. I don’t understand how it could…keep on happening.”

  She didn’t answer. She was a dark form staring out into the distance, along the road where it curved beyond a stand of pines. Her coat tortured by the wind, she walked past the oak tree and stood motionlessly at the roadside. Zachary returned to the pickup and climbed in, shivering to his bones.

  Full dark covered the forest. Staring into the night through slitted eyes, Ramona had a sense of low-lying clouds running before the wind, just above the swaying treetops. All the world seemed in dark, tumultuous motion, but she had concentrated on rooting herself to the earth, on bending like a reed when the wind swept past so she wouldn’t be knocked off her feet. She could feel the Hangman’s Oak behind her, its old evil pulsating like a diseased heart. It would have to be cut down, the stump dug up like a rotten tooth, the crater salted. Above her its heavy branches stirred like the arms of a huge gray octopus. Dead leaves spun up from the ground and snapped at her cheeks.

  “Do you want some light?” Stanton shouted from the truck. When the woman didn’t even move, he glanced uneasily at Zachary and said, “I guess she don’t.” He fell into silence, wishing he’d brought along a snort of moonshine to keep warm and to keep from thinking about what moved along this road in the dead of night.

  Headlights glinted through the pines. Ramona’s eyes opened fully. The shape grew nearer; it was an old Packard with an ancient black man behind the wheel. The car slowed enough for the driver to get a good look at her, standing before the Hangman’s Oak, and then the car accelerated away. Ramona relaxed again. She had decided she would wait for as long as it took, even though she could feel the life within her aching for warmth. The child would have to grow up strong, she thought, and would have to get used to hardships.

  Almost three hours later, Stanton stirred and blew into his cupped hands. “What’s she doin’?” he asked, straining to see through the darkness.

  “Nothing,” the minister replied. “She’s still standing there. We were wrong to bring her out here, Sam. This whole thing is wrong.”

  “I don’t think it’s gonna happen tonight, parson. Maybe she’s scared it off.”

  “I just don’t know.” Zachary shook his head in awe and bewilderment; his dark brown eyes had gone softly despairing. “Maybe it’s all been talk—probably has been—but maybe…just maybe she can do something. Maybe if she believes she can, then…” He let his voice trail off. A few drops of cold rain spotted the windshield. Zachary’s palms were wet and clammy, and had been since they’d brought the woman out here. He had agreed to ask the woman for help after he’d heard the stories, but now he was truly afraid. There seemed nothing of God in what she could do—if she actually had done those things—and he felt marked with sin. He nodded. “All right. Let’s take her home.”

  They got out of the truck and approached her. The temperature had fallen again, and frequent drops of rain struck their faces. “Mrs. Creekmore?” Zachary called out. “You’ve got to give it up now!” Ramona didn’t move. “Mrs. Creekmore!” he shouted again, trying to outshout the blustering wind. And then he suddenly stopped where he was, because he thought he’d seen something flicker like blue fire on the road, just beyond the curve through the screen of dancing pines. He stared, unable to move.

  Ramona was stepping out into the road, between the oncoming thing and the Hangman’s Oak. Behind the minister, Stanton shouted, “I see it! My God, I see it!” Zachary could see roiling streaks of blue, but nothing of any definite shape. He shouted, “What is it? What do you see?” But by then Stanton was shocked speechless; the man made a soft moaning noise from deep in his throat and was almost pitched to one side by a freight-train roar of wind.

  Ramona could see it clearly. The pickup truck was outlined in blue flame; it was gliding soundlessly toward her, and as it neared she could make out the windshield wipers going full speed, and behind them the faces of a man and woman. The woman wore a bonnet, her face as round as an apple and beaming with anticipation of the dance. Suddenly the man’s brown, seamed face contorted in surprised pain, and his hands left the steering wheel to clasp his temples. Ramona stood at the road’s center, the blue-flaming headlights bearing steadily upon her.

  Stanton’s voice came out in a wild shout: “Get out of the way!”

  Ramona held her hands out toward the blue truck and said quietly, “No fear. No pain. Only peace and rest.” It seemed she could hear the engine now, and the tires shrieking as the truck slipped and veered across the road, picking up speed for its rendezvous with the Hangman’s Oak. The woman in her bonnet was reaching desperately for the wheel; beside her the man writhed, his mouth open in a soundless scream.

  “No fear,” Ramona said. The truck was less than ten feet away. “No pain. Only peace and rest. Let go. Let go. Let…” As the blue flame bore down on her she heard Stanton cry out in terror, and she felt a crushing pain in her head that must’ve been a blood vessel bursting in Joe Rawlings’s brain. She felt the woman’s confusion and horror. Her jaw clenched tight to hold back an agonized scream. And then the blue-burning pickup truck struck full-force into her.

  What Zachary and Stanton saw, they weren’t sure. Afterward, they never spoke of it between them. When that truck hit the woman it seemed to collapse like a balloon exploding, and it was all a hazy blue mist as it lengthened and seemed to soak right into her body like water into a sponge. Stanton saw details—the truck, the passengers’ faces—while Zachary was aware only of a presence, a swirl of blue mist, and the strange odor of burning rubber. They both saw Ramona Creekmore stagger backward, blue mist churning before her, and she gripped her head as if it were about to explode.

  Then it was gone; all of it, gone. The wind seethed like something darkly hideous that had been deprived of a plaything. But the blue-flaming pickup truck was burned into Sam Stanton’s eyes, and if he lived to be two hundred years old he’d never forget the sight of it disappearing into that witch-woman’s body.

  Ramona staggered out of the road and fell to her knees in the grass. For a long moment the two men were reluctant to move. Zachary heard himself whispering the Twenty-third Psalm, and then somehow he got his legs moving. Ramona groaned softly and rolled over on her back, her hands pressed to her stomach.

  Stanton came up behind Zachary as the minister bent over Ramona Creekmore. The woman’s face had gone gray, and there was blood on her lower lip where she’d bitten through. She clasped her stomach, looking up at the men with dazed and frightened eyes.

  Stanton felt as if he’d been slugged with a sledgehammer. “Sweet Jesus, parson!” he managed to say. “This woman’s about to have her baby!”

  ONE

  Hawthorne

  1

  STRUGGLING THROUGH HIS ARITHMETIC homework in the warm glow of the hearth, the dark-haired ten-year-old boy suddenly looked up at the window. He was aware that the soft crooning of the wind had stopped and a deep silence had filled the woods. He could see bare branches waving against a gray slice of sky, and a quiver of excitement coursed through him. He put aside his pencil, pad, and book—gladly—and then rose from where he’d been lying on the floor. Something was different, he knew; something had changed. He reached the window and stretched upward to peer out.

  At first nothing looked different, and he was mildly disappointed; all those numbers and additions and subtractions were rattling around in his head, clinking and clattering and making too much noise for him to think. But then his eyes widened, because he’d seen the first flurry of white flakes scatter down from the sky. His heart skipped a beat. “Daddy!” he said excitedly. “It’s snowing!”

  Reading his Bible i
n his chair before the fireplace, John Creekmore looked out the window and couldn’t suppress a grin. “Well, it sure is!” He leaned forward, just as amazed as his son. “Glory be, weatherman was right for once.” It rarely snowed this far south in Alabama; the last big snowfall he could recall was back in 1954, when Billy had been only three years old. That had been the winter they’d had to accept charity canned goods from the church, after the stone-scorching summer had burned the corn and bean crops to stunted cinders. Compared to that awful year, the last few crops had been real bounties, though John knew it was never a good thing to feel too blessed, because the Lord could easily take away what He had provided. At least they had enough to eat this year, and some money to see them through the rest of the winter. But now he was infected with Billy’s giddy excitement, and he stepped to the window to watch the flurries beside his son. “Might fall all night long,” he said. “Might be up to the roof by mornin’!”

  “Gosh!” Billy said, his light hazel eyes—so striking against the darker coloring he’d inherited from his mother—widening with pleasure and a bit of fear too; he could imagine them all getting very cold and hibernating like bears, snowed in until April when the flowers came out. “It won’t be that deep, will it?”

  John laughed and ruffled the boy’s curly, reddish brown hair. “Naw. Might not even stick. The way it’s comin’ down now, it’s just bein’ windblown.”

  Billy stood watching it fall for a moment more, then he shouted, “Momma!” and scuttled across the room, through a short hallway, and into the room where Ramona Creekmore sat propped up on pillows in bed, patiently mending a brown sweater she’d stitched for Billy as a Christmas present. It was less than a month since Christmas, and already Billy had worn the elbows out climbing trees and running wild in the woods. “Momma, it’s snowing outside!” he told her, pointing out the small window near her bed.

  “I told you those were snow clouds, didn’t I?” she said, and smiled at him. There were deep wrinkles around her eyes, and strands of gray in her hair. Though she was only thirty-four, the years had been hard on her, she had almost died of pneumonia just after Billy was born, and she’d never fully recovered. She stayed in the house most of the time, doing her intricate needlepoint, and drank homemade herbal potions to fight off chills and fevers. Her body had garnered weight from lack of exercise, but her face was still fine-boned and lovely but for the faint dark circles under her eyes; her hair was still long and lustrous, her Indian complexion giving her a false appearance of perfect health. “Coldest weather of the year is still ahead, long as those blackbirds perch in the trees,” she said, and returned to her work. It constantly amazed her how fast he was growing; clothes that fit him one month were the next ready to put back into the Hawthorne cycle of hand-me-downs.

  “Don’t you want to come see?”

  “I know what it looks like. It’s white.”

  It suddenly struck Billy that his mother didn’t like the cold or the snow. She coughed a lot at night sometimes, and through the thin wall he could hear his father trying to soothe her. “You don’t have to get up, then,” he said quickly. “It’s better if you stay right here.”

  John came up behind him and pressed a weathered hand against the boy’s shoulder. “Why don’t you bundle up and we’ll take a walk.”

  “Yes sir!” Billy grinned widely and hurried to the closet for his battered green hooded parka.

  John took his blue denim jacket with the sheepskin lining out of the closet; he slipped it on and then worked a black woolen cap onto his head. In the ten years that had passed, John Creekmore had grown lean and rugged, his wide shoulders stooped slightly from his seasonal labors in the field and the constant work of keeping the ramshackle cabin together through summer heatwave and winter frost. He was thirty-seven, but the lines in his face—as rough and straight as any furrow he’d ever plowed for a crop of corn—made him out to be at least ten years older; his lips were thin and usually set in a grim line, but he was quick to smile when the boy was around. There were those in Hawthorne who said that John Creekmore was a preacher who’d missed his calling, settling for earth instead of reaching toward Heaven, and they said that when angered or antagonized his steely blue gaze could drill holes through barn planking; but his eyes were always soft when he looked at his son. “I guess I’m ready,” he said. “Who wants to go walkin’?”

  “Me!” Billy crowed.

  “Time’s wastin’,” John said, and reached out to his son. They linked hands and John felt the immediate warm pleasure of contact with the boy. Billy was so alive, so alert and curious; some of his youth rubbed off on John when they could be together.

  They pushed through the plain pine door and the screen door and out into the cold gray afternoon. As their boots crunched on the frozen dirt road that connected the Creekmore property, all two acres of it, with the main highway, Billy could hear the soft hiss of the tiny snowflakes falling through the dense evergreens. They passed a small round pond, now muddy brown and veined with ice. A white mailbox dotted with .22 holes leaned toward the paved highway, and bore the legend J. CREEKMORE. They walked along the roadside, toward the main part of Hawthorne less than a mile ahead, as the snow fluctuated between flakes and sleet; John made sure the boy’s hood was up good and snug, and the cord tied securely beneath his chin.

  It had already been a hard winter with January not even half over yet. There had been several freezing rains, and a fierce hailstorm that had shattered windows all across Fayette County. But as sure as day followed night, John thought, spring would follow winter and the real work of farming would start again; there would be corn and beans, tomatoes and turnips to plant. A new scarecrow would have to be put out in the field, but in these troubled times it seemed that even the crows were willful and refused to be bluffed. He had lost much of his seed to birds and bugs in the last several plantings, and his corn had grown weak and stunted. This was good land, he thought, blessed by God; but it seemed that finally the earth was beginning to give out. He knew about rotation planting and nitrites and all kinds of chemical soil foods the county agent tried to sell him, but all those additives—except for plain old fertilizer, which was as basic as you could get—were violations of God’s plan. If your land was played out, so be it.

  But times were troubled everywhere, John thought. That Catholic was president now, the Communists were on the march again, and people were talking about going up into outer space. Many autumn and winter afternoons John ambled down to Curtis Peel’s barbershop, where the men played checkers in the warm wash of a potbellied stove and listened to the news from Fayette on the ancient Zenith radio. Most people, John was sure, would agree that these were the Final Days, and he could point to the Book of Revelations to show scoffers just exactly what evils would befall humanity in the next ten years or so—if the world lasted that long. Things were even troubled right here in the Hawthorne Baptist Church; Reverend Horton did his best, but there was no fire nor brimstone in his sermons, and worst of all he’d been seen over at the church in Dusktown helping the blacks with their potluck supper. Nobody liked to shake Horton’s hand anymore after the services were over.

  Billy’s gloved hand was thrust out, trying to catch snowflakes. He snagged one on a fingertip and had a second to examine it—tiny and as lacy as his mother’s Sunday tablecloth—before it vanished. She’d told him about the weather, and how it speaks in many voices when its moods change, but to hear it speak you have to be very quiet and listen. She had taught him to watch the beautiful pictures the clouds made, and to hear soft sounds in the forest that meant shy animals wandering near. His father had taught him how to gig for frogs and had bought him a slingshot to bring down squirrels, but he didn’t like the way they squeaked when they were hit.

  They were passing the small wood-frame houses outside Hawthorne’s single main street. Billy’s best friend, Will Booker, lived in a green house with white shutters just up the road; he had a little sister named Katy and a dog called Boo.
r />   There was a light scattering of snow on the road. A black pickup truck came crawling along the highway toward them, and when it reached them the driver’s window rolled down and Lee Sayre, who owned the hardware and feed store where John Creekmore worked on weekends, stuck his crewcut head out. “Hey there, John! Where you goin’?”

  “Just takin’ the boy for a walk. Say hello to Mr. Sayre, Billy.”

  “Hello, Mr. Sayre.”

  “Billy, you’re growin’ like a weed! Bet you’ll top six-four before you quit. How’d you like to be a football player?”

  “Yes sir, that’d be fine.”

  Sayre smiled. In his ruddy and slightly overfed face, Sayre’s eyes were as pale green as a jungle cat’s. “Got some news for you about Mr. Horton,” he said in a quieter tone of voice. “Seems he’s been doin’ more than socializin’ with his darky friends. We need to have a talk.”

  John grunted softly. Billy was entranced by the white puffs of exhaust that were billowing from the rear of Mr. Sayre’s truck. The tires had made dark lines in the faint white spread of the snow, and Billy wondered where the air came from that filled tires up.

  “Real soon,” Sayre said. “You come down to Peel’s tomorrow afternoon around four. And pass the word along.” Sayre waved to the boy and said cheerfully, “You take good care of your daddy now, Billy! Make sure he don’t get lost!”

  “I will!” Billy called back, but Mr. Sayre had already rolled up his window and the truck moved away along the road. Mr. Sayre was a nice man, Billy thought, but his eyes were scary. Once Billy had stood in the middle of the Ernest K. Kyle Softball Field on an April afternoon and watched a storm coming over the forested hills; he’d seen the black clouds rolling like a stampede of wild horses, and bolts of lightning had jabbed from clouds to earth. Lightning had struck very near, and the boom of thunder had shaken Billy to the soles of his battered Keds. Then he’d started running for home, but the rain had caught him and his father had given him a good whipping.