They waited for over ten minutes, but John never came out. The congregation began singing in loud, loud voices. When Falconer’s voice boomed out, Billy felt his mother tremble. She took his hand and they began to walk into the darkness toward home.
13
“BILLY? SON, WAKE UP! Wake up, now!” He sat up in the darkness, rubbing his eyes. He could make out a vague figure standing over his bed, and he recognized his daddy’s voice. Billy had cried himself to sleep a few hours earlier, when his mother had told him that John was upset at them and might not come home for a while. Billy was puzzled, and didn’t understand what had gone wrong. The power of that young evangelist had drawn him to the stage, but when he’d confessed his sin everything had gone bad. Now, at least, his daddy had come home.
“I’m sorry,” Billy said. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Shhhh. We have to be quiet. We don’t want your mother to hear, do we?”
“Why not?”
“She’s alseep,” John said. “We don’t want to wake her up. This is just something between us two men. I want you to put on your shoes. No need to change clothes, your pajamas’ll do just fine. There’s something I want to show you. Hurry now, and be real quiet.”
There was something harsh about his father’s voice, but Billy put on his shoes as the man asked.
“Come on,” John said. “We’re going out for a walk. Just the two of us.”
“Can’t I turn on a light?”
“No. Open the front door for your daddy now, and remember to be quiet.”
Out in the humid night, crickets hummed in the woods. Billy followed his father’s shape in the darkness. They walked down the driveway and toward the main road. When Billy tried to take his father’s hand, John drew away and walked a little faster. He’s still mad at me, Billy thought.
“Didn’t I do right?” Billy asked—the same question he’d repeatedly asked his mother on that long walk home. “I wanted to confess my sin, like that preacher said to.”
“You did fine.” John slowed his pace. They were walking alongside the main road now, in the opposite direction from Hawthorne. “Just fine.”
“But then how come everybody got mad?” His father looked a lot taller than usual. “How come you wouldn’t go home with us?”
“I had my reasons.”
They walked on a bit further. The night sky was ablaze with stars. Billy was still sleepy, and he was puzzled as to where his father was taking him. John had started walking a few paces ahead of Billy, a little more out into the road. “Daddy?” Billy said. “When that boy looked at me, I…felt somethin’ funny inside me.”
“Funny? Like how?”
“I don’t know. I thought about it all the way home, and I told Momma about it too. It was kinda like the time I went into the Booker house. I didn’t really want to, but I felt like I had to. When I saw that boy’s face, I felt like I had to go up there, to be close to him. Why was that, Daddy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Momma says it was because he’s…” He paused, trying to recall the word. “Charis…charismatic. Somethin’ like that.”
John was silent for a moment. Then he abruptly stopped, his face lifted toward the darkness. Billy had never remembered him looking so big.
John said quietly, “Let’s cross the road here. What I want to show you is on the other side.”
“Yes sir.”
Billy followed his father. His eyes had began to droop, and he yawned.
The concrete trembled beneath his feet.
And from around a wooded curve thirty feet away came the dazzling headlights of a huge tractor-trailer rig, its high exhaust pipe spouting smoke, its diesel engine roaring.
Billy, caught in the center of the highway, was blinded and dazed; his legs were leaden, and he saw his father’s shape before him in the headlights.
Except it was no longer John Creekmore. It was a huge, massive beast of some kind—a seven-foot-tall, hulking monster. Its head swiveled, its sunken eyes burning dark red; Billy saw it looked like a wild boar, and the beast grinned as it whirled into dark mist before the headlights of the speeding truck.
The driver, who hadn’t slept for over twenty-four hours, only vaguely saw something dark in front of the truck. Then there was a boy in pajamas standing rooted in the middle of the road. With a cry of alarm, he hit the emergency brake and wildly swerved.
“Billy!” It was Ramona’s voice, calling from the distance.
The clarity of it snapped Billy into action; he leaped toward the roadside, losing one shoe, and tumbled down into a ditch as the truck’s wheels crushed past only inches away from him. He could feel the hot blast of the truck’s exhaust scorching his back, and then his face was pressed into dirt and weeds.
The truck screeched to a stop, leaving rubber for fifty feet. “You little fool!” the driver shouted. “What the hell’s wrong with you, boy?”
Billy didn’t answer. He lay curled up in the ditch, shaking, until his mother found him. “It was Daddy,” he whispered brokenly, as the truck driver continued to yell. “It was Daddy, but it wasn’t Daddy. He wanted me to die, Momma. He wanted me to get run over!”
Ramona held him while he sobbed, and told the driver to go on. Lord God! she thought. Has it started already? She stared into the darkness, knowing what had to be done to protect her son’s life.
14
EVENING WAS FALLING, AND still John hadn’t come home. Ramona sat on the porch swing, as she had for most of the day, working on a new piece of needlepoint in the lamplight and watching the highway for John’s car. The memory of what had happened last night still sent a tremor of terror through her. It had been in the house, she knew, and she hadn’t even heard it! It had tricked Billy, tried to kill him.
She felt an undercurrent of evil in the valley, running like silt in a stream. It had been in the Booker house the night of the violence; it had been in John’s eyes when he’d come home one night smelling of tar; and it had been in that revival meeting last night, laughing and kicking up its heels as sick people were told Satan was in them and that they should throw away their medicine. The idea that only sinners got sick was ludicrous to her, and yet those two—Falconer and the boy—were trading on that inhuman notion.
She’d realized from the very beginning, when she’d seen a lanky red-haired boy at a barn social and her heart had galloped away with her head, that John should know everything about her. Her mother had urged her to tell him, and several times she’d tried—but John hadn’t seemed to want to listen to any of it. Of course he’d found out after they were married. How could she have kept it from him? There were so many people, in little hamlets across Alabama, who’d heard the stories about her mother Rebekah. For the first few years, John had shown her a gentle, loving kindness—but then it had all changed.
She recalled the day over thirteen years ago when a man named Hank Crotty, from Sulligent, had come to see her, and John, though puzzled, had let him in. Crotty said he’d first gone to see Rebekah Fairmountain, but the old woman had sent him to Ramona with a message: It’s your turn now.
Her Mystery Walk called for her; how could she turn away?
Crotty’s brother had been killed in a hunting accident two months before. But—and Crotty’s face had gone dark with despair as John’s had gone pale—some part of the dead man kept trying to get home, back to his wife and children. Something kept knocking on the door in the dead of the night, trying to get in. Crotty had broken into tears and begged for her help.
And that was how John had been made to realize the truth of Ramona’s legacy: that in her Choctaw blood was the power to lay the dead to rest.
She’d waited alone at that house near Sulligent for two nights before the revenant came. It was first a small grayish blue light in the woods, and then as it approached the house it was a misty blue shape that took on the appearance of a man. Finally it was the outline of a man in a camouflage hunting jacket, his hands clasped to a hole in his belly. Ramon
a had stepped between the revenant and the house; it had abruptly stopped, shimmering in the darkness, and Ramona had felt its confusion and agony. It was the essence of a human being, trying desperately to cling to life, not realizing it could give up its pain and confusion and pass on to another, better place. Her mother had taught her what to do, and Ramona had spoken gently to it, calling its name, bringing it closer to her by sheer willpower. It trembled like a small child who sees a lighted doorway but fears traveling through a dark corridor to get there. The entrance was through Ramona, and she would have to take its terror and earthly emotions into her so it could pass on unencumbered.
Finally, after a long time of trying to make the revenant understand it could no longer exist in this world, it had swept toward her as if rushing into her arms. The sheer force of its agony staggered her backward. She felt the bullethole in her stomach, felt the awful yearning to touch wife and children, felt a hundred different emotions that had to be left behind, inside her.
And then she was alone in the dark, lying on the ground, sobbing and full of terror. But the revenant had gone, shedding its pain like a dead old skin.
For a long time, the pain stayed with her. She felt that bullet wound in a dozen nightmares. A package had come from her mother. In it was a needlepoint kit and a note: I heard you did mighty good. I’m proud of you. But this won’t be the last time. Remember I told you that once you’d done it, you’d have to handle the feelings that were left inside you? I recall you liked to sew as a little girl. Make me a pretty picture. I love you.
John had finally allowed himself to touch her again. But then the next caller came, and the next—and John had withdrawn into a scared chunk of ice. She’d been carefully watching Billy these last few years. He’d had his first contact with a revenant—a strong one, too, who’d needed his help badly. She hoped he’d be spared the ability to see the black aura, a power that hadn’t developed in her until she was in her late teens. To her, that was the worst of it: knowing who was going to die, and not being able to help.
Ramona looked up, catching her breath. A car’s headlights showed on the highway; the car turned in and started up toward the house. She rose unsteadily to her feet, clutching a porch post. It was Sheriff Bromley’s dark blue Pontiac.
Bromley stopped the car and got out. “Evenin’, Mrs. Creekmore,” he drawled, and walked toward the porch. He was a big man with a large, square jaw and a flat boxer’s nose; he wore a CAT cap, a tan shirt, and tan trousers that made his belly roll slightly over his belt. His only concession to the job was a utility belt holding a flashlight, a pair of handcuffs, and a .38 Special.
The screen door banged open and Billy, carrying the oil lamp he’d been reading a Hardy Boys book by, came running out of the house, expecting to see his father stepping out of the Olds. When he saw Sheriff Bromley he stopped as abruptly as if he’d run into a brick wall.
“Hi, Billy,” the sheriff said; there was a thin, uneasy smile on his face. He cleared his throat and returned his gaze to Ramona. “I…uh…was at the tent revival last night. I guess most of Hawthorne was. I’m sorry you were treated roughly, but…”
“Has anything happened to John?”
Bromley said, “No. Isn’t he here?” He worked his fingers into his belt loops and stared off into the darkness for a few seconds. “No, this isn’t about John. I just have to ask Billy a few questions.”
“Questions about what?”
He shifted uneasily.
“About Will Booker,” he said finally.
“Billy, set that lamp on the table here to give us more light. You heard the sheriff. Will you answer his questions truthfully?”
He nodded uneasily.
Bromley stepped closer to the porch. “I have to ask you these things, Billy. That don’t mean I want to.”
“It’s okay.”
“Well…just when was it that you went down into the Bookers’ basement?”
“The last part of April. I didn’t mean to go in there, I know it was private property, but…”
“Why did you decide to go down there in the first place?”
“I heard a…” He glanced at his mother, but she was staring out toward the highway, letting him handle this on his own. “I heard a tapping. Behind the basement door.”
“Did you go back there again, after you…saw what you said you saw?”
“Nosir. I couldn’t go back to that place again.”
Bromley looked into Billy’s eyes for a few seconds, then sighed and nodded. “I believe you, boy. Now can I speak to your momma alone for just a minute?”
Billy took his lamp, leaving hers burning on the wicker table, and went inside. Fireflies winked in the woods, a chorus of toads began burping down at the green pond. She waited for him to speak.
“After Dave Booker killed them,” Bromley said in a distant, wearied voice, “he stuffed Julie Ann’s body beneath a bed, and he locked Katy’s in a closet. It was…like he wanted to get rid of them, or pretend it hadn’t happened. We searched for Will all through that house, up in the woods, under the front porch, everywhere we could think of. We looked for bones in the furnace, got a diver to go down into the well behind the Booker place, even dragged Semmes Lake. We looked through that coal pile, too, but we…never dug up the floor underneath it.” He took his cap off and scratched his scalp. “That’s where Will was, all the time. His little body was…curled up in a croaker sack. Looked like he might have been beat to death with a shovel or somethin’, from the broken bones. Ah, this whole thing has been mighty shitty, ’scuse my French.” He worked the cap back down onto his head again. “Link Patterson, Cale Joiner, and me found Will this morning. I’ve had to handle some bad things in my time, but this is the…” He suddenly reached out and gripped a porch post, his knuckles whitening. “Mrs. Creekmore?” he said hoarsely, as if fighting emotions he knew a sheriff wasn’t supposed to show. “I’m so sorry about what happened to you last night. I should’ve…done something, I guess…”
“No need.”
“You…know what kind of things are said about you, don’t you? I’ve heard ’em too, but I never gave them no account.” His mouth worked, forming the words that were hard to find. “Are they true?”
She didn’t answer. She knew he wanted desperately to understand, to know the secrets in her mind, and for an instant she wanted to trust him because maybe—just maybe—there was within this bearish man the spark of his own Mystery Walk. But then the instant passed, and she knew she could never bring herself to trust anyone in Hawthorne ever again.
“I don’t believe in ghosts!” the sheriff said indignantly. “That’s just…fool’s talk! But can you answer me this? How did Billy know Will Booker was under that coal pile?” There was a long silence, broken only by the frogs and crickets. And then Bromley said, “Because he’s like you, isn’t he?”
Ramona’s chin lifted slightly. “Yes,” she said. “Like me.”
“He’s just a little boy! What…what in the name of Heaven is his life going to be like, if he’s cursed to see ghosts and… God knows what else!…”
“Is your business finished, sheriff?”
Bromley blinked uncertainly, feeling a raw power in her leveled stare. “Yes…except for one last thing. Jimmy Jed Falconer is a well respected and loved man in this county, and that son of his is a bona fide miracle worker. When you jump up and start yellin’ ‘Murder’ you’d best be standing on solid ground unless you want a slander suit slapped on you.”
“Slander? Isn’t that saying things that aren’t true? Then I’ve no need to worry, do I? Did that man, or someone from his Crusade, tell you to say that to me?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Just listen to what’s said. Now my business is finished.” He turned and stalked to his car, but paused with the door open. “You know things are never going to be the same for Billy ever again, don’t you?” He got into the car and backed off down the road.
Ramona waited until the sheriff’s car had gone, then took the l
amp and went inside. Billy was sitting in his father’s chair in the front room, his lamp and the Mystery of the Missing Chums on a table beside him. She knew that he must’ve heard everything said on the porch. “Sheriff Bromley found Will,” he said.
“Yes.”
“But how could it be Will if Will was already dead?”
“I don’t think it was Will as you knew him, Billy. I think it was…some part of Will that was scared and alone, and he’d been waiting for you to help him.”
Billy frowned, his jaw working. “Did I help him, Momma?”
“I don’t know. But I think that maybe you did; I think that he didn’t want to be left lying alone in that basement. Who would want to wake up in the dark, without anyone near to help them?”
Billy had thought about his next question for a long time, and now he had to force himself to ask it. “Is Will going to Heaven or Hell?”
“I think…he’s already spent enough time in Hell, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll make our supper now,” Ramona said, and touched the boy’s cheekbone. He was over his skittishness from the night before, but there were unanswered questions in his eyes. “I’ll heat up the vegetable broth and fix some corn muffins, how about that?”
“Isn’t Daddy ever comin’ home?”
“He’ll be home, sooner or later. But right now he’s scared. Do you understand that not everybody could’ve seen what was left of Will Booker, and very few could’ve helped him like you have?”
“I don’t know,” he said uncertainly, his face a patchwork of orange light and black shadows.
“I wish I could help you with all of it,” she said softly. She gripped his hand and held it. “God knows I do, but there are some things you have to find out on your own. But maybe…maybe your gram can help you in a way I can’t because there’s still so much I don’t understand myself…”
“Gram help me? How?”
“She can start you over at the beginning. She can reshape you and mold you, just like she molds those pieces she makes on her potter’s wheel. She did that for me, too, a long time ago, just as her daddy did for her. Your gram can teach you things that I can’t.”