Authors: Jonathan Maberry
Eventually even Crow’s pace faltered and he stopped and leaned his back against a hemlock tree; he dragged his forearm across his face and examined the dark stains of perspiration on the sleeve. His chest was heaving, though he looked less like someone who was exhausted from exertion than someone from whom breath had been robbed by illness. His skin color was bad and his dark eyes looked faintly feverish as he sucked at the air like a gaffed fish.
“Jesus,” he breathed raggedly as he unclipped his canteen and took a long pull, “this is like fighting your way through a jungle. Never seen such dense brush.” Crow wiped his face again. “Man, I’m sweating like a pig.”
“Pigs don’t sweat,” said Newton distractedly as he looked around at the high walls of shadow that climbed the steep sides of the hill.
Crow shrugged. “They would if they were down here.”
There was a squawk from the branches of the hemlock and Crow looked up to be a half-dozen ragged black birds clutching to the bare branches. Mostly female crows with their blue, green, and purple iridescent wings, and one fat albino male that was a sickly ash-gray. The jury of birds watched them with black intelligent eyes, and the albino squawked again, softly.
“Tell me something,” said Newton, finally reaching for the canteen. “How come you never tried to come down here before? I mean…why now?”
Not taking his eyes off the birds, Crow said, “Thought about it a million times. Even drove out here twice, once got as far as the top of the pitch, and chickened out.”
“You looked like you wanted to bug out today, when we were about to start down.”
Crow looked at him, and though he laughed there was little humor in it. More of a nervous chuckle. “I came close, Newt. If I’d been alone—well, let’s just say that Mike could have used some help at the store and I would have been fine believing that’s why I turned around and went back to town.”
“But you didn’t. I find it hard to believe that you feel safer with me here.” Newton said, and when he saw Crow’s lip twitch, he said, “Yeah, it’s okay to laugh at that.”
“Nah, it’s not that I need someone to protect me and hold my hand…it’s just that I think I would have felt too ashamed to cop out with someone watching.”
“You hardly know me. What would it matter if I knew that you copped out?”
Crow flicked him an appraising glance. “It’s not that you specifically knew, it’s that anyone would know.” He sighed and took another hit from the canteen. “I’m the guy who killed Karl Ruger. I can’t pussy out of climbing down a hill to visit a haunted house.”
“Who’d think that?”
“Me. Oh, and don’t give me that look, buddy boy, ’cause it’s no great revelation that we have to believe in our own hype sometimes.” He nodded toward the northeast. “Let’s get moving.”
“Well…I’m no psychologist, that’s for sure,” Newton said after they’d gone a dozen yards, “but I think you’re being way too hard on yourself.”
“I have a lot of personal work to do regarding my feelings about the guy who used to live down here. I’ve got enough personal baggage to open a luggage store, believe me.”
“I know, you told—”
“Newt, ol’ buddy, I’ve only told you part of it, and I’ve got to work up the nerve to tell you the rest.” Crow gestured as if trying to grab the right words out of the air. “I’ve got to prove to myself that my fears and superstitions are as silly as Val insists they are. You see, she doesn’t believe most of the stuff I believe. Oh, don’t get me wrong, she believes that
he
was the killer all those years ago, but she thinks it ended there and then.”
“And you don’t?”
“And I don’t.” Crow shrugged. He tried to make it look lazy, offhand, even careless, and failed. “You see, it doesn’t matter which of us is right, it just matters that I get this shit sorted out up here.” He tapped his temple with a finger. “Besides, there’s this old samurai axiom about facing your fears. If you’re afraid of ghosts, sleep in a graveyard.”
“Very pithy. So, are you afraid of ghosts?”
“Mostly, no.” Sweat trickled down Crow’s cheeks. “Sometimes, yes.”
“One ghost in particular? Ubel Griswold’s ghost?” asked Newton.
Crow stopped and turned, but for a moment just looked up above Newton’s head at the leafless branches of the tall, black trees. “I would appreciate it,” he said with exaggerated calmness, “if you would refrain from using that name while we’re here.”
Newton laughed. “Oh, come on! You’re not going to tell me you’re afraid of saying his name?” The reporter studied him. “You’re…serious.”
“As a heart attack.”
“Then you’re scared, is that it? This isn’t just an AA self-realization exercise, is it?”
Crow looked all the way up to where sunlight dazzled the very tips of the trees, a pure light that did not have the reach to warm the shadow-darkened valley. “Newt, ol’ buddy, I am so freaking scared right now I could cry. For two pins I’d run all the way back up the hill, get back in my car, and drive to the first bar I could find and drink it dry. That’s how scared I am.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you.”
“Why not? I’m just an ordinary guy, you know, not Captain Amazing.”
“Even so…You took on Karl Ruger. You have all those black belts.”
“Doesn’t mean jack. Karl Ruger was just a man. This is…
him
, you dig? This is my nightmare for thirty years. This is the reason I started drinking, the reason I sometimes want a drink so bad I get the shivers and shakes and want to scream. This is the reason sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night so terrified that I want to eat my gun just to stop from seeing his face every time I close my eyes. You don’t understand, and I hope to God that you never do, but what’s out there, the thing that used to live out there, was a monster. Don’t you get that? It was a
monster
! Not a man, not even an animal, but something unnatural, something that killed my brother, man. It ripped his throat out and tore his head off and…and…” Crow stopped and turned away, breathing hard, fists clenched at his sides. He drew in a long, steadying breath and tried it again. “You’re right, I’m out here just to get some kind of Twelve Step closure. Newt, I’m out here to try and save my own sanity.”
“Crow, I—”
“Hush. Just listen, man,” Crow said and they started walking again, slowly, side by side. “I’m out here to try and exorcise some of my personal demons, and I have to admit that I brought you along as kind of a witness. Maybe I need to prove to myself that I really did this. Who knows, maybe it’ll make a good sidebar for your feature. Maybe when we get out there all we’ll find is some moldering sticks that used to be a house and nothing else. Man, that would be so nice! But I needed to come out here, out to
his
house, just to see where he lived, to walk the earth he walked on, to touch things that he might have touched.”
“But…why?”
Crow drew in a deep breath and held it and Newton could see that he was steeling himself for something. What he finally said was, “Because I think Ubel Griswold might still be here.”
“What?”
“Yeah. How crazy does that sound? Now, you want to hear the really crazy shit?”
“I’m thinking no.”
“Want to know what Karl Ruger said just before he died?”
“Not anymore. I think I’d rather climb back up that hill and find that bar you were talking about.”
Crow stepped close and Newton could smell his sweat. “Right before he died…with his last breath, Ruger pulled me close and whispered ‘Ubel Griswold sends his regards.’” He stepped back. “What do you think of that?”
Newton was very aware of the gun at Crow’s hip and the machete in its sheath. He was aware of the stories he heard about how tough and dangerous Crow was. He was aware of his own heart hammering away in his chest. He was wondering what his chances were if he just turned and ran. The black forest around him was immense.
(1)
“Hand me that trowel, honey?” Connie asked, holding out a gloved hand. She was kneeling on a rubber garden pad, her rump in the air, with her blond hair pushed up under a straw hat and a decorative smudge of potting soil on her cheek. Val handed her the trowel and watched as Connie set to work digging holes for some gardenias she’d had delivered from a greenhouse in Warrington. It was the first time since coming home that Connie had shown any real interest in doing something creative, and Val was taking it as a good sign. Last night Crow had arranged for Mark and Connie to go out for dinner and a show, and when they had gotten home there was just the faintest hint of something akin to romance between the two of them. Val thought that was even more hopeful. Maybe that was what it was going to take—real-world, ordinary stuff.
However, Connie wasn’t entirely rational. Val had patiently explained that this was the middle of October and that there was likely to be a frost soon and besides it was way too late in the year to be planting flowers, but Connie had patted her hand—actually patted her hand—and told her that whereas Val may known how to grow crops she didn’t really understand pretty stuff like flowers. Val had wisely shut up. It was better to sacrifice the gardenias than the moment. So far they had planted four trays of gardenias and three of marigolds. Val was amazed they had even found them this time of year, greenhouse or no. Connie was surrounding the front porch with colorful flowers and she was going about it with the single-minded relentlessness of a fanatic.
Diego had come up while they were still in the marigold phase and had even opened his mouth to say something, but Val had waved him off. Not wanting to call his boss crazy, Diego had just touched the brim of his hat, smiled, and melted back into the fields. The last of the late-season corn was being harvested and whole sections of the Guthrie farm were now bare.
“Is Mark going to be home for dinner tonight?” Val asked, trying to make it sound casual, but she could see the trowel falter for a moment.
“I think so,” Connie said with only the slightest hesitation and her trowel chopped into the dirt with a bit more force. “He has a Moose luncheon thingee and then he’ll be home.”
“Okay,” Val said. “Shall I cook?”
Connie laughed at that as if Val had just made a great joke, and Val had to grudgingly give her that point. Though she could rebuild the magneto on her 1973 FLH 1200 Electraglide Custom motorcycle or do a tranny job on John Deere 8030, she was no wizard in the kitchen. All thumbs and no sense of what went where. There were family stories about some of her classic dinners, including a brisket that everyone thought was tofu and pizza with cold tomato sauce and a runny crust. Val sighed.
When her cell phone rang she was delighted. It wouldn’t have mattered if it had been a telemarketer.
“Val? It’s Terry—is Crow there?”
“No, he’s out for the day,” she said as she stood up and dusted off the knees of her jeans and strolled out onto the front lawn.
“Val—he didn’t really go out
there
, did he?”
She turned and looked back at the house, saw that Connie, still on hands and knees, was staring off in the direction of the stand of trees near the barn. Val glanced that way, saw nothing, and didn’t think much about it. She often found Connie standing still, staring out a window or whatever. God only knew what she was seeing. What had Saul called it? Dissociative behavior?
“Val?”
“Yes,” she said at last. “They left a couple of hours ago.”
“Damn it!” Terry snapped, and abruptly hung up. Shocked, Val stared at the phone for several seconds before finally folding down the lid and putting it back into her pocket. “Asshole,” she murmured, and then remembered her promise to Sarah that she would bury the hatchet, but the memory of his rudeness stung her again and she repeated her comment. Frowning, she strolled back to the porch. Connie was standing now, her face still turned toward the barn.
“What’s up, Con? Is that fox back?”
At the sound of her voice Connie jumped, turned, and for a moment looked at Val as if she didn’t know who she was. Then she blinked and smiled self-consciously.
“My…I was a million miles away.” She glanced again at the barn. “I just saw the strangest thing….”
Val stiffened. “What?”
“You’ll think I’m crazy, but…I just saw a snow-white deer. A buck. You know, with all the horns? White as snow.”
Val took a few steps toward the barn, but there was nothing to see and the trees were too thin to hide a full-grown deer. She looked back at Connie.
“Isn’t that just strange?” Connie asked with an enigmatic smile.
“Yeah,” Val agreed. “Strange.”
(2)
It looked like a nest, with the bodies of the creatures tangled and clustered together with no thought of comfort. There were fourteen of them now, all pale and bloated, gorged and somnolent, huddled in the darkness of the basement, secure in the shadows. An onlooker would have thought they were all dead, a mass of murder victims whose bodies had been carelessly disposed of out of sight in that forgotten, half-collapsed house, but every once in a while one of the bloated bodies would turn or shift, the movement inspired by some red dream.
Last night there had only been nine of them, but the number had grown, as it would continue to grow; just as it grew for each of the nests scattered throughout the town. Last week there had been two, but now Adrian and Darien lay sprawled there in the secret, silent darkness, wrapped in each other’s arms, clutched together against the sleeping back of Dave Golub.
The bodies all slept on throughout the burning day. Once, just before noon, a bold and foolish rat scuttled into the basement, following the scent of spoiled meat and fresh blood. It minced down through the spiderwebs and shadows, driven by the nearness of food, hungry beyond caution. In its daring and hunger it came close to Adrian’s outflung hand. The fingers looked fat and pale and full of meat, and the sleeper looked oblivious. The rat considered for a moment and almost fled out of natural fear, but the demands of its belly overrode the logic of its instinct. It darted in toward the little finger, its yellow teeth bared for the bite…but the white hand flashed so fast the rat was a broken-necked corpse before it was even aware that it was in threat. It twitched once, twice, and then lay eternally still in the killing grip of the boy. Adrian’s eyelids never twitched, never opened, but he pulled the corpse close to his chest the way he once would have held a stuffed bear. Beyond the speed of his hand he made no other move. As the hours of the day wore on, he lay there with the dead rat clutched in his hand and a smile of hungry joy on his innocent face.
(3)
“Crow…you’re scaring the crap out of me, here. Why the hell didn’t you tell me this stuff before?”
“Would you have come down here if I had?”
“Hell, no! And I want to turn around and go back right now.”
“Why, do you think I lured you down here for some nefarious purpose?” Crow was smiling when he said it, then his smile faded. “Jesus Christ—you
do
think I lured you—”
“What am I supposed to think?” Newton shouted. “You talk me into coming down to the remotest place on planet-frickin’-Earth and then you tell me that Karl Ruger—who had never even been to Pine Deep before—used his last breath to give you a message from someone who’s been dead for thirty years…someone you also think is some kind of monster. What the hell am I supposed to think about that kind of thing?”
“Calm the hell down!” Crow yelled back, amping it up a notch. “And don’t get all paranoid on me. You wanted the whole story, right? Well, this is part of the story, and on that point—this isn’t just a story to me. I
believe
this stuff. All of it. I know that Griswold was a goddamn monster because I saw his goddamn monster face, all right? He killed my brother, he killed Val’s cousin, he killed Terry Wolfe’s sister, he killed a shitload of other people in this town, and he
almost
killed me. I know this and you don’t because you weren’t even there. As far as Ruger goes—I faced him down twice and he nearly killed me and my fiancée
and
our baby and I can’t just forget him or what he said!”
“Baby? What baby?”
That made Crow grind to a halt. He stopped, flushed and flustered and furious. He sputtered for a moment and then, just as loud, he yelled, “Val’s pregnant! You happy? She almost died and that means our baby would have died. You think I’d invent what Ruger said just to impress you?”
“Crow…shut up.” Newton said it quietly and it had the same effect as if he’d have belted Crow across the mouth. “Just dial it down, okay?”
He stood there, hands up palms-outward, facing Crow, who had clamped his mouth shut but was still glaring.
“I didn’t know that about Val.”
“Yeah, well, now you do.”
“Congratulations.”
“What?”
Newton held out his hand. “Congratulations.”
Crow stared at him for a long minute and then took the hand and shook it, looking totally puzzled by the right-angle change of direction.
“Now,” Newton said with a level voice, “look me in the eye, Crow, and tell me that you aren’t completely off your rocker, ’cause I have to admit that this is all a bit hard to take and right now I’m more scared of you than I am of these woods, and that’s saying something.”
“Why the hell are you scared of me?”
“Because you’re acting crazy and you have a gun.”
That made Crow gape; then he turned and walked in as wide a circle as the brush would allow, flapping his arms and shaking his head. He stopped and turned and looked at Newton from a dozen feet away, and he was smiling a great big rueful smile. “Yeah, I guess it sounds pretty crazy at that.”
“It’s a healthy sign to admit it,” Newton said hopefully.
“Oh, bite me.” He came back over. “Look, Newt, here’s the deal, I’ve told you almost everything now. So, am I crazy? No, or at least not in that way. But do I believe this stuff? Then, yeah, I do. I believe Griswold was a monster, I believe Ruger said what he said, and I believe one more thing, and if I tell you I don’t want you to go running off into the woods to escape the crazy man.”
“You could probably outrun me, anyway. Sure, love to hear what else you believe, ’cause as you know we sane people can’t get nearly enough of this stuff.”
“Yeah, cute, but don’t push it,” Crow said with a half-grin. “Okay, I’ve been working on a kind of theory about Griswold and Ruger. This should be right up your alley because I know you’re a big conspiracy-theory nut.”
“Pot calling the kettle black.”
“Whatever. Anyway, I told you Griswold had a crew of cronies back in the day. Vic, my dad, a few others. Ruger would have fit in with that crowd pretty well. Mean, vicious, and probably the same kind of asshole who would have a set of white robes in his closet. So maybe it wasn’t entirely an accident that Ruger happened to break down in this town. Maybe he was heading to Pine Deep.”
“Why?”
“Well, this is the part you’re not going to like.”
“I haven’t really liked any of it so far.”
Crow snorted. “I think maybe somehow Griswold called him here.”
“Yep, you’re right. I don’t like it. Shoot me if you’re going to, but you’re a fruitloop. You’re describing an episode of
X-Files
. You’re describing a Stephen King novel. This shit happens in stories and it happens in folklore, but this is the real world.”
Crow held his arms out to his side as if embracing the dark forest around them. “Newt, if this isn’t the sort of place where folklore gets its start, then I don’t know what is. We’re in the deep, dark woods near where a monster used to live, which in turn is in the center of a region that has had a reputation for hauntings going back three hundred years. If something like this was going to happen…wouldn’t it be likely to happen someplace like Pine Deep?”
Newton took out his canteen and sipped at it thoughtfully, eyeing Crow.
“I wanted to come down here,” Crow said, “because I need to solve the mystery of what Griswold was, and to prove to myself one way or another if there was a link between him and Ruger.”
Newton nodded slowly, but he said, “Isn’t that a lot to ask of a walk in the woods?”
“Not
these
woods,” Crow said.
Newton glanced around. Despite the early hour, the light was gray and stained and looked like the glow from a feeble bulb ready to burn out. Shadows seemed to lurk behind every tree, crouch in every hole, hang from the long bare fingers of each branch. The twisted undergrowth was snarled around the base of the towering pines and oaks, and most of the tree trunks bulged with disease. Not one single bird offered even a distant song to diffuse the tension in the air, and the wind played a slow dirge through the trees.
“You have just succeeded,” Newton said without humor, “in scaring the living shit out of me.”
Crow nodded. “Welcome to Dark Hollow.”
(4)
Dr. Saul Weinstock poured three fingers of Glenfiddich into a chunky tumbler, quickly drank down a mouthful, then took another, his eyes widening over the rim of the glass as he drank and the gasses burned his mouth. When he set the glass down he was gasping like someone who had just been hit in the solar plexus, and the glass was nearly empty. He poured more of the Scotch into the glass, but did not take another sip just yet. As he set the bottle down he raised his hands and stared at them, watching their palsied tremble. He could no more have performed surgery with those hands than he could hover in midair. He had been barely able to tie his shoes. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of one of his hands.
His office was brightly lit, and the door was securely locked. The windows were shut and shuttered, and against each pane he’d hung flowers whose scent perfumed the air with a harsh pungency. Weinstock found the air cloying, the smell oppressive, but each morning he replaced the flowers with fresh ones. On his desk, lying next to the tumbler was a gnarled lump of metal that gleamed with an angry potential. Weinstock reached for it, as he had a dozen times since locking himself in for the evening. He curled strong fingers around the butt and picked up the weapon, slipped his index finger into the trigger guard, and exerted gentle pressure on the trigger. The hammer trembled. Weinstock squeezed harder and the hammer eased silently back, poised with intent, and then leapt forward, striking the firing pin with decisive force.