“She heard there were bodies. She said there was a cave—”
“Shit.”
“She has a camera crew, sir. They’re filming me right now.”
“All right, listen.” Lee surveyed the command center. “I’m sending two more men your way. You keep those reporters on the state road. No one gets in.”
“There’s just the one reporter, sir—”
“Shut the hell up, son. Where there’s one, there’ll be more coming.” Hanging up the phone, Lee shoved it into a pocket, then tracked down two uniformed officers he trusted. “Come with me.” They fell in behind, and Lee banged on the top of Clyde Hunt’s car. The city cop rose into the heat, and the deputy wasted no time. “Who did you tell?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t bullshit me, Clyde. Who did you call?”
“State police. FBI.”
“This is my jurisdiction. They won’t come without a call from my office.”
“True, but now they’re waiting for it. They’re gearing up.”
“Goddamn it. Who else?”
“Reporters.”
“Which ones.”
“All of them.”
Lee nodded at last, angry with himself. He should have kept Hunt close, should have seen it coming. “All right, Clyde. I understand why you did it. I’m not happy, but I get it. You—” He pointed at the two deputies. “—get him off my crime scene, then stay out there with McGreevy and keep everyone else out. Nobody gets in. Not even the state police. Not unless you call me first.”
He turned away, but Hunt wasn’t finished.
“People are watching, Tom. Keep your people in check.”
Hunt was right, and Lee knew it. For a man as hard as Willard Cline, a lot of people had loved him, and they were worked up now. It was the way he’d died. His face. That goddamn cave. Taking the church steps, he surveyed the map tacked up on the wall inside. Thirteen teams were on foot in the swamp. Nineteen patrol cars worked back roads around Hush Arbor. Two helicopters were in the air.
“Any word yet?”
A female deputy worked the radio from a camp table they’d set up in the corner. “Lot of interference out there. Not everyone’s in touch.”
“What’s the longest gap?”
She threw out some names and times. Ninety minutes for two of the teams. For another, multiple hours had passed. That was bad. Teams were to check in at the top of every hour. “Anything good?” Lee asked.
“Hang on.”
She pressed a hand against the headphones she wore, then keyed the microphone. “Chopper Two, say again, please.” A pause. “Roger. Stand by.” She stripped off the headphones, twisting in the chair. “Ask me your question again.”
“Anything good?” Lee asked.
“Chopper Two just found his house.”
Lee took the microphone. “Put it on speaker.” She flipped the switch, and static rolled onto the dial. “Chopper Two, can you confirm location?”
“Roger, Dispatch. Stand by.” A second passed; then the pilot gave the coordinates. “There’s a clearing. We’re setting down.”
“Signs of movement?”
“There’s something—”
“Is it Merrimon?”
“What the hell is that?”
“Chopper Two—”
“Stand by, Dispatch.” Static. “Jamie, you seeing this?”
“Chopper Two—”
“Stand by! Stand by! Jesus Christ. Sweet Jesus—”
Lee heard a scream, then static. “What just happened?” He handed over the microphone. “Get them back.”
She tried for two full minutes. “Nothing. I’m sorry.”
“Shit.” Lee went outside, staring northward. “No, no, no. You. Come here.” A deputy came to his side. “Give me a boost.”
“Really?”
“Now, damn it.”
Another deputy came over, and two of them boosted Lee high enough to clamber onto the church roof. It was metal and steep, but he climbed to its peak, and stopped there, breathing hard. To the north, smoke rose.
A great boil of it.
A hard, black plume.
* * *
Finding the wreckage was a foregone conclusion. They had the coordinates, the pillar of smoke. When they reached the site, everyone was sweaty and filthy, their faces streaked with blood from the switchgrass and brambles. “Oh my God.” Wreckage littered the clearing. Even the cabin was burning. “How many men?” Lee asked.
“Just the pilot and a spotter.” The radio operator was at Lee’s side. She’d insisted. “Ravenwood had the stick—”
“The spotter?”
“Jamie Kimmel.”
“Ah shit.” Ravenwood was sixty-three years old, a veteran. Kimmel was just a kid. “All right, people. Spread out.”
They moved into the clearing, keeping their distance from the hottest parts of the fire. It looked as if the helicopter had struck the upper branches of a single tree, then cartwheeled past it, breaking apart on impact and slamming into the cabin. The tree still burned. The fuselage was charred and gutted. Flames guttered on the inside.
Lee saw the pilot from thirty feet out, still strapped in and smoldering. The spotter was on the ground fifty feet away, half his body blistered and burned.
“Jamie!”
The radio operator dropped at the wounded man’s side, and Lee remembered only then that they’d been dating for a while. “Medic!”
The medic was a retired deputy and almost seventy years old, but he’d been a corpsman in Vietnam, and hadn’t lost a step. He worked hard and fast, stabilizing the boy as best he could, prepping a syringe of morphine.
“I need to talk to him first.”
“He’s in a lot of pain, Captain.”
“I understand that.”
“For God’s sake,” the girlfriend cried. “Give him the morphine! Get the other helicopter in here!”
“Jensen.” Lee glanced at one of his deputies, then dipped his head toward the radio operator. “Please.”
Jensen did his best to calm the moment, but emotions burned as hot as the fire. The second helicopter was en route back to town—Lee’s call. Until he knew what caused the crash, he couldn’t risk other lives or other aircraft. He asked the medic, “Can the boy hear me?”
“He won’t want to talk.”
Lee leaned over the boy. One eye was blistered shut. “Can you hear me, son?” A nod. Tears on the boy’s face. “What happened here?”
Kimmel tried to speak, but the words died in his throat. He swallowed; tried again. “There was no tree,” he said.
“What?”
“There was a blur. We were coming in—”
“A blur?”
“There was no tree at all,” he said. “There was no tree at all, and then there was.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Johnny took the steps to Verdine’s porch with more caution than the last time. He felt the years behind them, his family and hers, hanged men and the Hush.
“So,” she said. “This is a fine picture.”
“We don’t intend to stay long.”
She stepped aside to make room. Leon hung back, but Cree and Jack followed Johnny up. “Creola,” she said, then glanced at Jack and dismissed him. “Does your mother know you’ve come?”
“Let’s leave her out of this,” Cree said.
“A wise choice for one so young. Come. Sit.” She motioned them to chairs on the porch. “Leon, don’t stand out there like a bump on a log. We need another chair.” When they were seated, she reached for an old transistor radio that sat on the railing, antennae extended. “You’ve been busy, haven’t you?” She dialed up the power, and they listened to local radio coverage of the gathering storm. Rumors swirled of dead policemen and a mass grave. Reporters were being held at bay. Further rumor spoke of manhunts in the swamp, and of potential FBI involvement. “Wait for it,” she said.
Two minutes later, the reporter mentioned Johnny’s name.
> “Why are you smiling?” Johnny asked.
“Because knowledge is power, and you lack the knowledge you need. Because you require my help, and it’s time, at last, I ask for something in return.”
“I don’t need anybody’s help.”
She turned on the radio again. In thirty seconds, Johnny’s name was mentioned twice more. Facing potential murder charges, local resident Johnny Merrimon is the subject of this very intense search.… Turning the knob again, Verdine rocked, and in the silence waited.
“What do you want?” Johnny asked.
“For you to walk with me.” She rose, leaning on a cane, and Johnny walked beside her in the yard. “Tell me about your latest dreams.”
“Who says I’m dreaming?”
She laughed quietly, still walking. “I’ve known dreams and dreamers for a hundred years. Don’t lie to me, son. You dreamed of John and Aina. I see it on your face, and in the way you look at Cree. How far did the dream take you? The hanging tree? The baby?”
“The baby lived?” he asked.
“Your great-grandfather.”
Emotion welled up in Johnny’s chest, so unexpected and strong, he had to look away. “How do you know these things?”
“All my people knew the stories. They dreamed themselves or spoke to those who did. A few dreamed more than once, and most of those poor souls fled the swamp or lost themselves in the darkness. That’s the most common dream for my people, the closeness and damp, the rich, black earth.”
“What about Cree?”
“Cree is the last of her kind. She dreams her own dreams.”
“Dreams of Aina.”
“She’s a direct descendant, mother to daughter. You see how they are the same?”
Cree stood alone at the rail, watching them. She looked the same as Aina, small and narrow-waisted. She stood the same, held her head the same. “She hates me,” Johnny said.
“Do you blame her?”
“She wants to kill me.”
“You or John Merrimon?”
Johnny closed his eyes. “What do you know about the cave?”
“I know there are truths you must discover for yourself.”
“You mean another dream.” She looked away, pursing her lips. “I just want my life back, my normal life.”
“There is no ‘normal’ in the Hush. There is only story and magic.”
“There is no magic.”
“Don’t play with me, boy. I know truths you can’t dream of, stories of sacrifice and love and horrors that will make your hair turn white. I’ve walked beside the great dreamers, and seen what rises in the night. No magic! Please. You have the stink of it all over you.”
“What do you want from me, Verdine?”
“Your dreams. Haven’t I been clear?”
“What about Cree? She’s your family.”
“Cree cannot dream this dream. Only you can. Only a descendant of John Merrimon.”
* * *
They put a pillow on the floor because Johnny could never sleep in something as soft as a feather bed. Jack was beside himself. “Johnny-man. What the hell are you doing here? Seriously.”
“Just keep an eye out, will you?”
“For what?”
Johnny didn’t have an answer. He was too long from the Hush to know the thoughts or reasons behind Verdine’s request. She’d said Cree could see only through Aina’s eyes, as he could dream only through John’s. Logically, that made sense.
Logic …
Johnny’s lips twisted at the thought.
“The hell are you smiling at?” Jack demanded.
“Just don’t go anywhere.”
“Are you ready, young Merrimon?”
Johnny looked up at the old woman. Beyond her, Leon leaned against the wall, frowning. Cree was bitterly unhappy, but Verdine didn’t care, and neither did Johnny. They’d closed the blinds. The cabin was dim and still. “What am I looking for?”
“Aina. I want to know where she’s buried.”
“How do I do that?”
“Do you remember her face?”
“Yes.”
“Picture it in blackness.” The old woman drew smoke; handed the cigarette down. “Picture open eyes and dirt falling.”
* * *
Sleep for Johnny did not come easily or quickly, Verdine’s special cigarette notwithstanding. Eyes were on his face, and Johnny felt them the way any man would. “This isn’t working.”
“It will. Just breathe.”
Johnny tried for an hour, then imagined a curtain around him, a black cloth that rose beyond the ceiling.
The pillow was soft.
The floor was not hard.
For another hour there was stillness in the cabin; then Johnny twitched once and bolted up screaming. Jack tried to hold him down, but could not. Leon added his weight, but Johnny fought and clawed, and drew blood. He was choking and half-crushed, so he fought like a dying man.
He was not himself.
He was.
He screamed until something tore, and in the darkness he was blind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Luana Freemantle felt forgotten and used up and pointless. It was not a new sensation. She sat on the sofa and flipped from one channel to the next. Not every station was talking about it, but three of them were.
… Official police sources are characteristically tight-lipped, but it’s impossible to miss the feverish level of activity here on the northern edge of Raven County.…
Behind the reporter, an ambulance rushed by, lights spinning. Police cars followed it. In the distance, a plume of smoke rose.
… While dangerous to speculate, sources close to the sheriff’s department indicate that multiple bodies have been recovered. Of unusual significance is the apparent age of some of the remains. With no official statement from authorities, we can only speculate as to the veracity of these claims, but the sheer volume of police indicates that something large is, indeed, happening. I’ve counted no less than twenty official vehicles in the past hour as men and material move ceaselessly into this vast tract of wilderness.…
Luana turned it off, thinking of her daughter. Before Cree, the future had been like a shiny dime far out on an empty road. She’d thought it would be so easy to walk out there and pick it up, but the dime never came any closer. She’d thought boys might take her there, and when they could not, she’d decided that men might be better suited. Somewhere along that road, she’d dropped Cree like an afterthought.
Maybe a kid would be fun.
Maybe that would keep her man close.
Four husbands later, Luana understood the painful truth. There was no dime on that road, and there never had been. Closing her eyes, she thought of her daughter. Only Cree had the shine now, and she’d run away from home, drawn to whatever place the dreams took her. She’d be in the Hush or with Verdine. Maybe she was one of those bodies found dead in a cave. Luana chewed on how Verdine had stolen Cree away with her talk of dreams and Aina and choice. There was no choice! How many had gone crazy from the dreams? How many had killed themselves? That old bitch had her own agenda, and it was a dark damn business. Would she risk Cree to get what she wanted? Of course she would. It’s why she’d been driven out in the first place, that selfishness and greed, that heedlessness.
“And what about you, Luana Freemantle? Have you been any less selfish?”
That was an ugly question, but Luana tried to face it straight on. She’d been hungry for that shiny dime. She’d chased it blindly, and in her tireless pursuit of it had sent her only daughter back to life in the Hush. Had the old women lived, Cree would have been there still. Luana admitted that guilt. She breathed it in, then considered the pistol in her lap and rose with it in her hand.
It was time to put her child before herself.
Time, at last, to be a mother.
CHAPTER FORTY
Johnny rose up kicking and screaming. “Get away! Get the hell off!” He found his feet like a punch-drunk fight
er. “Damn it. God … damn—”
“Johnny—”
“No,” he said. “Just stay the hell away.” His hands found a hard plank wall, and he pressed his face into the wood. He saw the grain of it, and beads of sweat on the edge of his nose. “What the hell just happened?”
“I don’t know, man. You tell me.”
Jack dashed blood from his nose; pressed it with a handkerchief. Leon had a gash on his cheek, a swollen lip. Cree’s hand was at her chest, and only Verdine seemed calm. “What did you see? Tell me quickly.”
“Nothing—”
“Don’t lie.”
“I saw nothing,” Johnny said. “I was in the dirt—”
“No, you weren’t.”
“I was. I can taste it.”
“No!” The old woman drove her cane into the floorboards with such force, it was like a shot. “You cannot have had that dream! It is born of Aina’s pain, her suffering!” Verdine looked at Cree. “What do you have to say about this?”
“I…”
“Speak, child!”
“I wanted him to feel what I felt, what Aina felt. I was pushing. I wanted him to suffer.”
“Why?” Johnny asked.
“Because John Merrimon is the one who buried her alive.”
“That wasn’t me.”
“Yet I see you in the dreams. I see you both.”
Verdine shook her head. “None of this is possible. We dream of our people. He dreams of his.”
“Screw all of this,” Johnny said.
“Johnny, wait—”
But Johnny pushed past his friend and went outside. His chest ached from dreams of choking. The rest of him hurt from Leon and Jack. No one had been soft or gentle. Johnny was bruised and bleeding. He knelt at the creek and splashed water on his face. Air moved down his throat; it came back out. Hurt as he was, nothing real had changed.
He wanted answers.
That meant he had to risk the dark again.
* * *
Johnny made it different this time. “I want everybody out.”
Ten minutes had passed since he knelt at the creek, yet everyone looked the same. They stood in the same places, as if rooted. “Johnny, come on, man.”
“You, too, Jack. Outside.” Johnny turned to Cree. “If I wake up in a grave, I’ll blame you for it.”