Name of the Devil (6 page)

D
EPUTY
B
ALDWIN IS
a scared man. Holed up in his house behind the wire fence, he refuses to speak to me. His fifteen-year-old daughter who gave her name as Kris, green eyed and filled with teenage skepticism of all things adult, walks across the overgrown yard to tell me her daddy ain't coming out.

The house is surrounded by crooked oak trees, rusted cars and rows of what look like solar panels waiting to be put on roofs. The building itself is neatly kept. Two brand-new chairs sit on the empty porch. It has the look of a home where the wife takes care of everything inside, while the husband neglects everything outside.

The girl approaches the fence, staring down at her phone and texting. She's beyond bored with running interference between the visiting investigators and their questions for her dad. “He says he's got nothing more to say.”

“Okay. What do you have to say?” I ask.

She looks up at me with a serious expression. Just as her body is outgrowing the summer's jean shorts and halter top, her mind is forming its own opinions on matters around here. “I think everyone has gone bug crazy.”

There's only a hint of West Virginia in her voice, despite the slang; her diction sounds more like that of a girl on a CW drama than of some hick who never stepped more than a mile outside of town.

“Crazy?”

“Everyone is hiding away and saying prayers and stuff. Not much point. That didn't do much for Reverend Curtis and those folks. The news is just as bad. People calling Hawkton a ‘hellmouth.' Stupid.” The last words roll off her tongue with contempt. I spot a flash of gold near the tip.

“People are confused and scared because of what happened at the church.”

“No reason to act like this.” Kris tilts her head toward the house. The breeze catches one of her long blond hairs. Her nose points back down to her phone as she texts away, “You the FBI woman on the news a while back?”

“Yes,” I concede. There's no point in denying it.

A smile spreads across her face. “Daddy said you were a witch.” It's a joke to her.

“I've been called worse.”

“I asked him if you flew around on a broom and cast spells. That made him angry.” She looks up at me. “He's got an engineering degree. See the solar panels? He's got a side business putting them on folks' houses. He's not stupid.”

“He's scared of what happened to his friends,” I explain.

“That's for sure. He's sitting there right now, watching us, with his shotgun. He's got it on him all the time now.”

“What do you think he's afraid of? Sheriff Jessup?”

“Why do you say that?” Her eyes flash up at mine.

The lab report isn't public knowledge yet, and I'm not sure how much information has made it through the grapevine to Baldwin and his daughter. “Just a question, since he's missing.”

She leans over the fence and lowers her voice. “He won't say it, but I know he's watching out for the sheriff. They ain't found him yet, have they?”

I shake my head.

Kris's eyes scan the trees. “The sheriff is a good man. Daddy
looks up to him. When the business wasn't doing so good, he gave him the deputy job.”

“So why is your daddy afraid of him?”

Kris narrows her eyes. “Lately stuff has been
happening
around here. Before the church exploded. A lot of it involving the sheriff.”

“Stuff? What kind?” There's something about the way she says this that tells me this is more than small-town gossip.

“Little things. Dead cats and birds showing up in front of the sheriff station. Jessup was complaining nothing worked. His cell phone getting all static. Daddy said there would be calls at the station where no one was on the other line. They can trace that kind of thing, but the calls were coming from phone numbers that were disconnected. Weird stuff.” She shrugs.

“You don't seem too fazed by all this.”

“Ain't got nothing to do with me. Something bad is going to happen, it's going to happen. Might be a prank. Someone having some fun. People get crazy out here.”

A little girl comes running from around the back of the house and across the yard. Kris turns to her. “Go back, Becky.”

The girl crosses her arms and looks up at Kris. “I'm bored in there. Daddy won't let me watch the TV and I can't find the iPad.” She reaches up and grabs her big sister's hand. Wearing dirty socks and a T-shirt that stretches to her knees, she's got the same blond hair and green eyes as Kris. “You the witch Daddy talked about?”

“I'm an FBI agent. A cop, like your father.”

“He says you're into devilcraft.” It's more a question than an accusation.

Kris sighs. “Ain't no such thing as witches. She look like a witch to you? Daddy is just drunk and talking out of his butt.” She rolls her eyes. “He only gets all churchy when he's scared and been drinking. If he really thought that about you, he wouldn't let us come out here and talk to you.”

“When did the weird stuff start happening?”

Kris makes a face. “Hawkton's always had weird things.” She points to a flat-topped mountain peak along the eastern ridge at the edge of the city limits. “Lightning Peak gets hit a dozen times a year. We have lots of strange lights. Plenty of haunted houses. A teacher said a while back there was a poltergeist. We got one of them hills where your car goes up when it's in neutral. Indian temples. Lots of odd stuff. They should do a show out here.”

“But when did the weird stuff start with the sheriff?”

“A few months back. That's when I heard about it. The same time I think the Alsops found their dogs dead, strangled, I think. And Bear McKnight said he saw weird tracks around his house.”

Every town has its folktales and mysteries. But this seems a little excessive. “Tracks? What kind?”

“Hooves.
Devil
hooves, they said,” she replies with a grin.

“You think that's stupid?”

She shrugs again. “Wild pigs, more like it. Grown-ups get so retarded when they can't understand what's going on.” She caresses her little sister's head. “What do you think, Becky?”

“I don't like it when Daddy is scared.”

“Where's your mamma?” I ask.

“Inside,” replies Becky. “She and Gram-Gram are praying.”

Kris rolls her eyes. “Next they'll be asking Black Nick for one of his twig evil catchers.”

“Black Nick? Who is that?”

“You ain't heard of Black Nick?” asks Kris.

Becky points to Lightning Peak. “He lives up there.”

“Nick is a medicine man,” explains Kris. “Lives in a shack in the hills. Older folks go to him for potions and stuff when they don't like what their doctor says. They say he knows the old magic. Whatever.”

“He's crazy,” adds Becky. “Smells like a raccoon.”

“Be nice. You don't want him hexing you,” scolds Kris. “He'll turn you into a chicken and Momma will fry you up.”

Becky's eyes widen. She releases her sister's hand and runs back to the house.

Kris shakes her head. “When I was a kid we'd tell stories about Crazy Black Nick. How he'd come for you if you misbehaved. How he had piles of bones by his shack. It's stupid. He's just an old man.”

I admire Kris's skepticism. She reminds me of myself as a teenager. I always thought adults were a bit ridiculous.

“Do a lot of people take him seriously?”

Kris points to gray twigs, bundled together with twine, that are nailed to the front of the house. Buttons and pieces of foil are threaded through the bindings. It vaguely looks like a person—made by crows. “See that? Daddy got that from Black Nick.”

“What's it for? To keep evil out?”

“I reckon. Smells like dog piss to me.” She thumbs away on her phone.

“Can I give you my number in case your daddy wants to talk?”

“Sure. He won't, though.”

“Just in case. And could you tell me how to find Black Nick?”

Kris lowers her phone and stares at me. “Sure you want to go up there?”

“I thought you said he's harmless?”

She points to the forest cloaking the peak. Her voice grows more concerned. “Sun is going down. I don't think I'd want to be there in the dark if the sheriff was up and about. People only go talk to Black Nick during the day. No one goes there at night.”

“I'm due back at Quantico in the morning. I don't really have a choice. Black Nick isn't in any of the reports.”

“Fine. Just don't get lost,” she tells me.

A
N HOUR LATER,
I've parked my car at the edge of the road and started hiking up the hillside. A thin path leads over a ridge and into a copse of trees. Before my cell phone signal vanishes,
I decide I should call headquarters and tell them where to find my body.

“Black Nick?” Ailes's voice cuts in and out.

“That's what they call him,” I reply, surrounded by forest. The faint blue light of the sky is barely visible through the trees.

The woods have a quietness about them, but I get the feeling I'm being watched by dozens of small eyes.

“Isn't ‘Old Nick' a name for the devil?” he asks.

The signal goes dead.

I realize he's right. I tell myself it's just a coincidence.

 

T
HE TRAIL TO
Black Nick's cabin is more of a dried-up gully than a path. Shards of white stone poke out of the earth like whale teeth, telling me I'm on the right track—at least, the one Kris told me to follow. Every few hundred feet there's a fork in the trail, marked by rocks, intended to lead the bad spirits astray.

My dad and I once took a trip to the Winchester House in Northern California, a sprawling mansion that had stairways leading to the ceiling and doorways opening to brick walls—all of it to confuse the spirits that the widow of the Winchester rifle magnate imagined were after her. This trail reminds me of that.

The sun is setting and the frogs have started chirping from deep inside their soggy homes. On the fringes of the trail, creatures scurry in the bushes. Out of the corner of my eye I catch long shadows of twisted branches as I go farther up the hill. They reach out to me across the trail as the sun sets.

Crows, an awful lot of crows, perch in the trees. Watching me with their beady black eyes, they turn their sharp beaks toward me as I pass.

Kris had mentioned a rock shaped like a skull without a jaw. The setting sun makes its shadowy eye sockets and gaping nose stand out.

I make my last right turn here and come to flat ground, where tall grass gives way to a ring of white stones. A shack stands
at the end of the clearing. Covered in plastic bottles, aluminum cans and knots of foil, it looks like a house built by a giant magpie—the same creator who made the twisted twig-man on the Deputy's porch.

A blue rocking chair sits on the porch next to a wind chime made from spoons and forks. It sounds like the bells of a Lilliputian cathedral in the breeze.

The only churchgoers are the silk black crows still watching me. What do they make of the sound? Is it meant to scare them or invite them closer?

As arresting as the shack is, my eyes are drawn to the mound of bones as tall as the roof piled off to the side of it. I spot antlers, cow skulls and the femurs, ribs and spines of a hundred other stark white creatures. Nothing human that I can see.

I hope.

I can't imagine generations of Hawkton children
not
having stories to tell about this place. Even without the threat of a cannibal sheriff looming somewhere out in the woods, it's eerie. I resist the impulse to touch my gun under my jacket and take a deep breath.

The shack's one window, made from different-colored pieces of glass joined by thick solder, is blocked from the inside by what looks like a burlap sack. There's no sign of life except for the smell of burning.

There's a small fire of charcoals in front of a tall oak tree that was old when this was still Indian country.

White stones keep the smoldering briquettes from setting the dry weeds around them ablaze.

There's only the ringing sound of the spoons and forks in the wind and the occasional caw of a crow in the distance. Telling the others I'm all alone, I assume.

“You da witch?” a deep voice asks from behind.

I suppress a gasp and spin around to find the source. In the
fading sun and dim glow of the fire, I almost miss him. Tall, real tall. Thin like a scarecrow, Black Nick is dressed in stitched slacks, a sweater as random as his house, and a black blazer with patches on the sleeve. Well-worn, but not dirty, he reminds me of a survivor from a postapocalyptic movie. Old—hard to tell how old—he's got deep blue eyes. White-blond hair sits on his head like a bad toupee. His feet are bare.

“I wouldn't call myself that,” I reply, more calmly than I feel.

Black Nick steps out of the trees and takes a seat on a rock by the fire across from me. “Dancing up in trees in the middle of da storm, pitch black night, if that ain't a witch, I dunno what is.” He stirs the coals with a stick.

“You saw me in the tree?”

“I didn' say I did. I just said whats you were doin' last night. Yo business is yo business.”

His accent isn't West Virginian, but it's not quite Southern, either. It's a mishmash of pronunciations I can't quite place—maybe with a hint of Minnesotan Swede.

He gives me a close look in the firelight. “You ain't no witch. Just a fool.”

“I'm an FBI agent.”

“Same thing. I see why people think you a witch. You got a mysterious way about you. Coming up here in the night. Things out here. Dark things.” He's reproachful, but not menacing.

“I came to talk to you about that. Has anyone asked you about what happened at the church?”

“Lotsa people. Coming here to ask Black Nick for some help. Wantin' totems to ward off the wickedness. Ignore me forever. Call me names behinds my back. But when the evil come, then they all want Black Nick.”

“Has anybody like me come to talk to you?”

He stabs the stick into the fire, sending up a shower of sparks. “Fools aplenty.”

“I mean a law enforcement officer, a cop. Has anyone asked you for a statement?”

He draws a circle in the ashes with his poker. “What would I state? You seen what happened. Not much else to tell.”

“What did happen?” I hope that, even up here, he may have heard something we didn't.

“Didn't you see nothing with all your tree climbing? Something evil happened.”

“Yes, but because of whom?”

He scratches the rough skin of his chin. “The
whom
is da Sheriff Jessup. I suppose you know that already.”

There's a way he emphasizes ‘whom.' “Is there someone else involved?” I ask.

He stirs the flames again. “Supposing you knock this stick from my hand into the fire? My hand done let go of the stick. But it's yo hand that done the knocking.”

“Is there someone else involved?”

“Supposing.”

“Can I ask you if you know something about this?” I reach for my phone to show him the photo of Bear McKnight's chest.

He raises a hand. “Don't show me that. Might as well call him over to supper. I know who you're talking about.”

“Is that who's behind this?”

“That troublemaker has been to these parts before. The Indian-folk had their own name for him. And the folk before them, and before them. He's playing his tricks, as expected.”

Tricks. It's a weird word for evil. Oddly, that's how many cultures see the devil: as a trickster.

“What else has he done?”

His blue eyes stare into mine. “You read your Bible? Plenty. Ask old Abraham.”

“So you think he's the cause of what happened?”

“I didn't say that. I say he's involved. But if you let the door
open for him to step inside, your fault for leavins the door open.”

“The door?”

“He don't just show up unannounced. Someone brought him here,” he replies matter-of-fact.

This drunk Yoda act is getting on my nerves. “The sheriff? Did he open the door?”

“Why'd he do a fool thing like that?” Nick's blue eyes flash at me like this is the dumbest question in the world.

“Maybe he's crazy?”

“If'n he's crazy, he don't need the troublemaker's help. Crazy people do awful things all the time. The troublemaker just sit back and laugh.”

“So someone else made the sheriff do these things?”

“I reckon.”

“Anyone around here?”

“No one here knows about how to use a man's fears to open the door. Nothing.”

“Except you . . .”

“Excepting me.”

“You and the sheriff get along?” I take a cautious step away from Black Nick, wishing I'd brought backup.

“We get along fine. When those prisoners bust out the lockup, Black Nick help get them. When kids get lost up here because they want to spy on Black Nick, I make sure the sheriff find 'em. When the fools decided to camp out on Lighting Peak and got a taste of the 'tricity, Black Nick carried them down the mountain. Me and Jessup get along fine. I've no need to open the door on him. Wouldn't open it no how, even if I did. You never get it closed.”

“What about Reverend Curtis?”

Nick shakes his head. “He's a Christian man just like me. No quarrels. I ain't got none. If you're trying to ask me polite if I
had anything to do with what happened to those poor folks, the answer is ‘no.'”

He reaches into a trouser pocket and pulls out a handful of moss. He drops it into the fire, then tosses a copper penny from his jacket into the middle of the flames. White smoke shrouds the penny and begins to drift upward. Black Nick fans it with his hand. “No one round here knows the magic.”

Growing up in a family of magicians, I've met plenty of people who believe in the ‘real' kind and have their own rituals. I stop myself from distracting him by asking what he just did. “Can you name someone who might know that kind of magic?”

“Lotsa folks. I been a bunch a different places before I came here. Hill folks, like me. Keep to theirselves. Following the old trails. The ones the Indian-folk found when they came here. Trails left back in the days when the angels were all getting along.” He points toward a cluster of trees. “Trails like that.”

I glance at the thick gnarl of bushes and trees protruding from the edge of the clearing. “It doesn't look like much of a trail to me.”

“Cause you can't see. Like I said, lotsa folks can. None around here no more, save me.” He stands up and beckons me closer.

I hesitate.

“Come on. Black Nick ain't going to bite ya. We need to say a prayer.”

“For who?”

“For poor Sheriff Jessup. So his wandering soul will find its way home and he won't disturb nobody more.”

I relent and take his hand. He's more bone than muscle. I'm sure I could take him in a fight, especially since I've been spending extra time at the gym these last few months. Maybe too much time.

Black Nick clasps my other hand. I feel like the root of an oak tree has grown around them. He lowers his head. “Lord, forgive
there Sheriff Jessup for what he's done. Find him safe passage and protect all them folk.” His grip tightens. I try to pull away gently, but he won't let go. “See to it this one finds her way. Make sure she don't get lost in her own long shadow.” He releases me. “All right. I should take you back to your blue car down at the end of the trail. I don't want you gettin' lost up here and running into you-know-who.”

I'm not sure if he means the devil or the sheriff. Neither one would make for an enjoyable encounter. Although with the sheriff I'd be able to do something within my mortal jurisdiction.

A
HALF-HOUR LATER,
we reach my car. Black Nick managed to guide me without the use of a flashlight. He said it just invites troubles—it is better to not be seen.

“Things agonna work themselves out. But you gonna keep putting your nose where it don't have no business.” He takes out a shard of black glass from his pocket. “I get these up on Lightning Peak. When the 'tricity hits the ground, it leaves these behind.” He hands it to me.

It's heavy. He's ground the rough rock into an edge like a blade. A hand knife made from a bolt of lightning.

I'm uneasy about the gift. “That's okay. You don't have to.”

His eyes widen. “I do have to. You go running into trouble, some of that trouble is going to come running toward you.” He throws his hands up in the air and won't take it back.

He waits for me to get inside my car before turning back to the trail that leads up to his shack. Unafraid of the dark, he vanishes in the night with the determination of someone who knows his own destiny.