Bad Juju: A Novel of Raw Terror (20 page)

 “Interesting.” Doc steepled his
hands in front of his face. “You doing okay, Luke? With what you had to do?”

“Killing Fate? I wish I hadn’t had
to do it, but I did. You play the hand you’re dealt, you know? No sense in
dwelling on it. It bothers the hell out of me now, but I guess I’ll get over
it.”

“You do that, Luke. I mean it. I
know how you take things to heart sometimes. And believe me, this is not
anything you want to take to heart. The quicker you put it behind you, the
better off you’ll be.”

“You know,” Luke said with a smile,
“I really do think you missed your calling. You shoulda been a headshrinker.
You would’ve made a damn good one.”

“No way. I couldn’t stand to listen
to other peoples’ problems all day, every day. I get enough of that just
hearing the complaints of patients getting their prescriptions filled. Lord
God, but folks love to talk about their ailments. Just about runs me crazy as
it is.”

“Just the same, I thank you for
dispensing sound advice. You’re a true friend.”

“Don’t you get maudlin on me,” Doc
said, feigning irritation.

“Hell, Doc, I don’t even know the
meaning of the word.” Luke grinned.

Doc chuckled, his eyes twinkling
with devilment. “It means lachrymose.”

“Uh huh.” Luke deadpanned him.

“Sentimental, mushy.”

“Every so often you just have to
whip it out and dust it off, don’t you? That highfalutin vocabulary of yours.”

“Use it or lose it,” said Doc.

Luke couldn’t keep the big smile
from his face as he once again remembered last night’s romp with Ree.  “Amen to
that,” he said.

“Luke, you old devil, are you
trying to tell me you—”

He held up his hand like a traffic
cop stopping traffic. “A gentleman doesn’t discuss such things.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. You
are
human after all.”

“More or less.”

“Maybe now you’ll be a little less
ornery.” Doc fiddled with his mustache like a sideshow barker.

“Don’t count on it.”

They finished their coffee. Doc
returned to his post, and Luke headed back to the antique shop, his mood
considerably brighter than the gloomy morning. Ree’s shop was still closed.
Where the hell was she? With growing apprehension, he got into his truck and
headed for her house.

***

“Cornelius? You sick, son?” Aunt
Mattie’s shrill voice was like an ice pick hammered into his skull. “It’s
nearly ten o’clock and you’re still in bed.”

Corny pushed the pillow off his
head and opened his eyes. The curtained window of his room was glowing with
weak, gray light. “I ain’t sick,” he mumbled, blinking his eyes at the pale glare.

“Well, don’t forget you’ve got to
clean out the gutters today. You sure you’re all right?”

“Yes ma’am. I’m just tired is all.
Durn nightmares kept me awake.”

“If you were having nightmares, you
couldn’t have been awake.”

He didn’t feel like arguing with
her, telling her that, yes, he could have wide-awake nightmares. He just didn’t
have the energy to set her straight. He yawned, making his ears pop.

“You missed breakfast,” his aunt
said, “but you can have a bowl of cereal before you get started on the gutters.
Weatherman says we’re in for some hard rain this afternoon, so you’ve got to
get the gutters done before the deluge.”

“Day-looj,” Corny echoed. It was
one of those words Aunt Mattie got from the Bible, he was pretty sure. One that
would stick in his head all day and repeat itself over and over, no matter how
sick of hearing it he might get. And if Whisperer took a liking to it and
started repeating it, he would be deluged to death by the end of the day—not
really
dead but worn out with the word. Some words were like that.

She picked up a pair of jeans off
the floor, folded them and draped them over the back of a chair. “I’ve got to
do my grocery shopping,” she told him, “so I won’t be here when you get up on
the roof, but Mr. Jones said he’ll keep an eye on you. You just let him know
when you’re fixing to go up the ladder.”

“Yes ma’am.” He knew his aunt
always worried about him whenever he had to climb a ladder, but Corny didn’t
see that there was any reason to worry. Just because he’d fallen off a ladder
that one time didn’t mean he would fall again. The parts of his brain that were
damaged affected some of his thinking and his memory, but there was nothing
wrong with his sense of balance. He’d been up on ladders dozens of times since
the accident and he’d never fallen again. If he wasn’t scared, why should his
aunt be? He liked climbing. Always had. He’d been climbing trees for almost as
long as he’d been walking. His dad had said he was a natural-born climber. And
he especially liked getting up on the roof of the two-story boarding house.
From up there you could see things you couldn’t see when you were down on the
ground. Everything looked different when you were way up there, looking down.
Cars passing on the street looked like big wind-up toys, and the other houses
on the block didn’t seem so big or fancy. A lot of folks looked down on Corny
and treated him like a retard, but when he was up on the roof or high in a
tree,
he
was the one looking down, seeing things in a way other folks
didn’t. And when he was way up high, nobody could look down on him. If it
sometimes got a little scary being up there, it was worth it.

 Aunt Mattie left the room and
Corny rolled out of bed and got dressed. He put on his oldest pair of jeans and
a faded blue T-shirt, then he slipped his feet into his good pair of sneakers
because you needed good traction when you were up on the slanting roof.

While he ate a bowl of corn flakes
at the kitchen table, he tried to remember the nightmares that had disturbed
his sleep last night. All he could remember was moving through thick darkness,
trying to find his way home. He thought something had been chasing him through
the dark, but he wasn’t sure. All he knew for sure was that he’d been afraid
something bad was going to catch him. If Whisperer knew what the dream was
about, Whisperer wasn’t saying. He hadn’t heard a peep out of Whisperer since
last night at the train yard.

“Good morning, Cornelius.” The deep
voice startled him and he dropped his spoon and looked up at the tall, thin man
with the piercing blue eyes.

“Morning,” he said to Rufus Tilley,
the book writer from Atlanta.

“You know where your aunt keeps the
coffee?”

Corny pointed at the cupboard
containing the big canister of coffee.

“Thanks,” said Mr. Tilley. “I’ve
got my own coffee machine, but I ran out of coffee. I have to have my caffeine
to get anything written, I’m afraid.”

Corny was naturally curious about
this man who kept to himself and never had much to say to others. He asked,
“You really writing a book?”

“Yes, I really am.” The man smiled.
Corny didn’t get the feeling that Rufus Tilley was looking down on him or
seeing a retard with those smart blue eyes.

“What’s it about?” he asked, hoping
he wasn’t being too nosy.

“Well, it’s about murder in Graves
County. It’s fiction, but it has a lot of truth in it. You understand that?”

Corny nodded. “I met a writer one
time. Over in Manchester. He was signing his books for people. I got one up in
my room. It’s a history book about railroads, but it’s got lots of good pictures
of trains in it. You wanna see it?”

“Maybe later. I’m pretty busy with
my writing right now.” Tilley opened the canister of coffee and poured some of
the fresh grounds into a cup. “You like trains, do you?”

“Yessir, I love trains. My daddy
was a railroad man. Till he got killed. I was gonna work for the railroad too,
but I had that accident and they didn’t want me after that.”

“That’s too bad. But you’re still a
railroad man in your heart, aren’t you?”

Corny thought about that for a
moment, then grinned and said, “I reckon I am.”

“What matters is what a man is in
his heart,” said Rufus Tilley. “That’s more important than what he does for
money. It’s what he is that counts.”

Corny nodded. His eyes watered a
little at the truth of what the man had said. He wiped a tear from the corner
of his left eye and looked down at his soggy corn flakes.

“Well, I’ll see you later,
Cornelius. Tell your aunt I’ll replace the coffee I borrowed.”

 “Okay. Uh, what’s the name of your
book?”

 “I’m calling it
Bloody Graves
.
Because the county has a long history of violence.”

Way in the back of Corny’s head,
Whisperer hissed:
Bloody Graves
.

Corny shuddered as though a window
had been thrown open upon a winter day. The room darkened around its edges.

***

The doctor wrote the discharge
order after seeing her early that morning, and Agnes was on her way home by
ten-thirty. Delbert was driving her in his rattletrap old Ford, and judging by
the way the boy smelled, he’d already worked up a good sweat this morning.

“You do what I told you?” she asked
him.

“Yes ma’am.  I was boiling the
water when Momma called me at your place and told me to come get you.”

“Humph. Your momma was too drunk to
come get me herself. She thinks I don’t know but I do. I could hear it in her
voice. Don’t you ever start drinking or you’ll end up just like her.”

“No ma’am. I won’t.”

“You put the head on to boil before
you left?”

“I sure did. I don’t think I’ll be
able to eat for a week after that. Just about made me sick.”

“Won’t hurt you none to miss a few
meals.”

He lit a cigarette, then turned on
the radio and found a Willie Nelson song.

“Turn that off,” she said. “I
cain’t have my head cluttered up with such as that. I have to be clearheaded to
do what I’m gonna do.”

“What
are
you gonna do,
Grandma?”

“Never you mind about that. But
when I start, you best be gone. I never done it before and I ain’t sure how it
will go. They’s a chance it could blow back on me, and on you if you’re close
by.”

“You gonna do some hoodoo, ain’t
ya?”

She scowled at him, but his eyes
were on the road ahead.

Delbert was in a talkative mood. He
said, “I tell you what’s the truth, I don’t get how that one peckerwood got the
drop on Fate and them. I woulda said he was ate up with the dumbass to even try
it. How in the world—”

“Two,” she said sharply. “They was
two of ’em. Luke Chaney’s the one killed Fate. Told me so hisself.”

“That sumbitch...”

“Said he tried to stop it, but
everybody knows he’s been looking to get Fate for the longest. He’ll reap what
he sowed. No two ways about it.”

“I sure hope so. I’ll kill him my
own self, come to that.”

“No. You stay out of this.” She
sighed, touching the knot on her forehead. “Now hush up and let me meditate.
Plenty of time for jaw-jacking later.”

Delbert was quiet for the rest of
the ride but when his grandmother’s house came into view, he said, “Damn! Oh
shit!”

Unable to see much without her
glasses, Agnes said, “What is it?”

“Police car’s parked in front of
the house. What if they find the head cooking? Oh, Jesus, what do we do now?”

“Just go on about your business.
They won’t find it. And if they do, we don’t know nothing about it. We ain’t
even been here. You hear?”

“Yes’m. But when they see the water
boiling, they’ll know somebody’s been here today.”

“Let me do the talking. You just
keep your mouth shut. Where are they? You see ’em?”

“Two of ’em just sitting in the
car. Like they’re waiting for us.”

“Good. Then maybe they ain’t seen
nothing yet. You just pull up in front of the house and help me up the steps.
And keep quiet.”

Before she was even out of the car,
the two policemen approached her, one of them saying, “How do, Miz Porch. Sorry
to trouble you at a time like this, but—”

“Then don’t,” she snapped, getting
to her feet and staring at the blurred khaki-colored shapes in front of her.
“Doctor says I’m not to be disturbed. And here you are already disturbing me
before I can even get to my front door.”

“Sorry, ma’am, but we’re still
looking for...Odell. His remains.”

“Odell ain’t lost.”

“You know where he is?” The
lawman’s voice was deep, yet gentle.

“Yes, I do. He’s laid out in his
bed. We was going to have a ceremony for him today. But since y’all killed the
rest of my family, I reckon there won’t be no ceremony.”

“No ma’am, we didn’t kill anybody.
What we’ll have to do is get the coroner out here to collect the body, then
he’ll turn the remains over to whichever funeral home you want and the family
can make the arrangements for a proper funeral.”

“Too late for that. My boy Fate
already embalmed him. He used to be a mortician and he used that old embalming
rig he hung onto.” In truth, Fate hadn’t been a mortician, but he’d worked in a
funeral home and learned how to flush out the blood with the preserving fluid.
But the cops didn’t need to know that.

“Is that right?” said the lawman
with the deep voice.

Delbert was at her elbow, breathing
heavily but supporting her weight. “Do what you got to,” she said. “Then get
off my land. You ain’t welcome here. And don’t go snooping around ’less you got
a search warrant. This family’s been violated enough by you town folks.”

Del escorted her upstairs to her
bedroom where she found her extra pair of glasses and put them on. It was good
to be able to see again, though the bifocals put pressure on the bruised bridge
of her nose. She sat on the edge of her bed. “Nothing to do now but wait till
they get Odell and clear out of here,” she said. “Then you can go home and I
can get down to business.”

“What you want me to do in the
meantime?” asked Delbert.