Tucker’s Grove (15 page)

“
I wonder what could have done that, though,”
Litch said.

Wilson grunted as he twisted a thick stem. “
First frost of a
u
tumn sometimes does funny things to plants.”

Tucker grasped at the explanation. “
Yeah,”
he managed to say, “
that must be it
.”

Tucker sat on the porch before dusk, cradling his shotgun on his lap as the sun died on the horizon. Birds sometimes came out to sing at sunset, but not today.

He watched the moon rise. Within another few days the obese Hunter
’
s Moon would make its ann
ual appearance.

She was still in the loft, smothered in the dry straw with the bugs and the field mice and the spiders. It had been nearly a month.

Something made him stare at the rickety, gap-toothed barn
—
a calling came from inside, wordless, lost, some k
ind of perverted siren song that drew his attention. Was it her voice? He had ne
v
er heard her voice, he suddenly realized, not while she was alive…
except for that final, sharp scream.

Tucker
’
s breathing came in quicker, shallower gasps.
She
had made the pu
mpkins look bloodstained. Now she was calling to him.

With all the people due to be going in and out of his barn to set up for the Hallowe
’
en dance, he needed to move her soon,
soon
. But he couldn
’
t bring himself to. He wouldn
’
t go to her while she whisper
ed to him in the twilight wind. He couldn
’
t!

Tucker raised the shotgun and fired a round of birdshot at the side of the barn.

The voice stopped.

***

The Hunter
’
s Moon rode high among the stars, lord of the night sky. A cold wind whistled a dirge among the
trees. The night before Hallowe
’
en.

Tucker
had
to move her. Now.

The door slammed behind him.

He was afraid.

He took the shotgun with him and filled his pocket with shells. Not birdshot this time. He walked toward the barn, carr
y
ing his lantern.

He
’
d have
to bury her before the Hallowe
’
en dance
—
out in the fields somewhere. Everything had been harvested. No one would notice a little more overturned earth.

As he entered the maw of the barn, his lantern blew out, plunging everything into momentary darkness. Wi
th matches in fumbling fingers he relit the flame, but this time the jerking light only sharpened the shadows.

He cursed in a trembling voice as he stood in front of the open barn door, not certain of what to do. But the interior of the barn glowed faintly
with an eerie light. The wan illumination of the moon oozed through cracks and knotholes in the barn
’
s dilap
i
dated sides. Like moonlight shining into an overturned wa
g
on-bed…

Setting the lantern on the floorboards, Tucker gripped the shotgun and entered t
he barn. The floor had been swept clean for the upcoming dance. He reached the rickety ladder that led to the upper loft. His hands were sweaty. He climbed upward.

The floor of the loft seemed weak and flimsy, covered with straw. Tucker groped forward, fee
ling with his hands in the deepest part of the straw, digging around until he felt something cold and sickeningly stiff. Pushing the straw away, he grabbed what must have been her arm, lifting her out into the pale moo
n
light.

Her skin was splotched and des
iccated, decomposing but half mummified from the dry straw. Her hair and fingernails had grown an alarming amount. Tucker winced, but his stomach r
e
acted more strongly. He clenched his teeth together and forced the bile back down.

As the Hunter
’
s Moon shon
e beams upon her face, the bul
g
ing eyes opened wide. And she smiled at him. Her jaws were filled with canine fangs. Her eyes were green-yellow and slitted, like the wolf
’
s staring at him through the knothole in the ove
r
turned wagon.

The scream latched onto
the inside of his throat as he jerked backward, stumbling to the edge of the loft, falling. He landed roughly, twisting his ankle. His eyes were wide and dry because he had forgotten how to blink.

He looked around in the barn, but the Hunter
’
s Moon and the lantern by the door cast strange shadows as pointed as long fangs. He saw her face in the corner, and again along the wall, and again behind him, all with eyes wide and mouth open
—
faces, screaming, mocking faces,
her
face, splotched with blo
od. She was surrounded by the distorted faces of wolves, ja
g
ged mouths filled with fangs, slitted animal eyes in the corners of the barn, on the floor, up near the wall. Faces wild, covered with blood dripping toward the floor, screaming.

Now he could hea
r the cries of pain pounding around him
—
her face in every corner, everywhere he looked. And the howling of wolves. Everywhere. Coming to get him at last, b
e
cause he had escaped them so long ago.

Tucker raised the shotgun and fired at one face. It exploded
into red-orange fragments of skull and flesh. He fired at another one, and another. His hand fed shells into the gun and spat the empty ones onto the floor.

He continued to fire, but heard her voice screaming louder and louder with each face he destroyed.
And the howling. As he fired, he added his own screams to hers.

Malcolm Litch stepped out of his house, followed closely by his wife. In the town of Tucker
’
s Grove, others opened their doors, gathered on the street, looking up toward Clinton Tucker
’
s hous
e on the hill. Gunshots sounded as if a great battle were ta
k
ing place up at the old house.

They listened in horrified silence to a long series of shots, then a long, long pause, then one final shot. Murmurs ran through the crowd until someone yelled “
Come
on!”
A few men fetched their horses and galloped down the street; the rest ran after, fo
l
lowing as best they could.

Tucker
’
s house stood dark and empty with the door u
n
locked
—
and they knew Tucker always locked his doors. Litch and the farmer Wilson met to
gether, carefully entering the dark and empty house, calling Tucker
’
s name. They heard shouts from the old barn and ran out of the house as the others converged there.

Somewhere off in the fields, a chorus of wolves howled lou
d
ly, then fell silent. Litch f
elt a shiver go down his spine.

Tucker
’
s lantern stood at the entrance to the barn. Litch and Wilson entered, feeling the hush fall upon the others.

On the cleanly swept floor lay Clinton Tucker with the back of his head blown away and his hands still on t
he shotgun stock. Piles of empty shells lay strewn about him like mourning flo
w
ers.

“
My Gawd,”
someone shouted from the upper loft. “
Is Ted Billings out there? We got something he should see.”
Then a long pause. “
Or maybe he shouldn
’
t.”

Malcolm Litch looke
d around the barn in a daze as they brought the body of Elizabeth Billings down from the loft. He mumbled to himself as he tried to fit the events together. Tears hovered in his eyes, and the minister
’
s face looked baffled. “
It
’
s crazy. Just plain crazy.”

Burly Wilson put a hand on Litch
’
s shoulder, but the minister did not notice. He spoke in a very small voice. “
With all this, I just don
’
t understand why he ruined them all?”
He blinked his eyes and looked at the farmer, thinking of the children. “
Why did
he have to shoot
all
of the Jack-o
’
-Lanterns?”

Clouds congealed in the sky like a smoke pudding. The weather r
e
port on the TV news talked about severe storms, heavy rains on the way.

Thunderstorms fascinated Peter D. the way a rattlesnake fa
s
cinates a mouse, and he stood in the shelter of the old house
’
s front porch watching the clouds, smelling the ozone in the air, waiting for the crack of lightning and the roar of thunder. He could
sense a raw, elemental power just waiting to be unleashed on the thirsty cropland.

If piddling Kansas twisters could transport little girls to the Land of Oz, he thought, what could the whim of a big-blast Wisconsin thunderstorm do?

The first raindrops sme
lled like metal as they came down. When a stray horizontal gust splattered him with raindrops, Peter D. pulled open the screen door and darted back inside the far
m
house. Within moments, heavy rain began to rattle the rippled windowpanes.

As the storm built
, the ancient Waltercroft house creaked and groaned. At least the tornado siren from nearby Tucker
’
s Grove hadn
’
t sounded
—
not yet. Peter D. empathized with the people who had lived in this same house a century before. He tried to transport himself mentall
y
into the past, smelling the dampness in the air, the wood of the old house. How could he write about history, even a piddling history of Rutherford County, if he didn
’
t
feel
it? It sounded like some creative-writing class exe
r
cise.

In the hallway Kathy tu
gged his arm. “
Come on, Peter D.
—
we
’
re alone at last. Better make the best of it.”
She used her playful voice. She was 23, half a year older than himself, both of them fresh out of college with liberal arts degrees, neither having the slightest clue what
t
hey wanted to do with their lives.

Only an hour ago, his eccentric aunt Lillian had driven away on her Florida vacation as what she called a “
doozer”
of a storm built overhead. While Lillian was gone, he and Kathy would house-sit and work on their local h
istory book that his dear old aunt had convinced her women
’
s club to sponsor.

Now he turned to Kathy, stroked her short brown hair. “
Why, what did you have in mind, ma
’
am?”
he drawled in what he co
n
sidered to be a passable Rhett Butler imitation. They had
been together for two years, yet still found opportunities to act like high-school sweethearts. “
This is a respectable old house. We should act appropriately.”

Kathy arched her eyebrows. “
Appropriately? The original owners must have fooled around sometime
s.”

He slipped his arms around her waist and glanced up at their reflection in the antique hall mirror. Aunt Lillian once told him the mirror had been hanging in that hallway undisturbed, open and glazed as a dead man
’
s eye, for more than a century (and sh
e should know, he thought, since she was almost that old). “
Look at us, the perfect couple.”

The thunderclap sounded like the eruption of a Midwestern Mount Vesuvius. A jolt ran through the walls, threatening to knock the entire Waltercroft house off its
foundations. The ligh
t
ning flash, simultaneous with the thunder, was blinding, disor
i
enting, powerful.

Peter D. found himself sprawled on the hardwood floor, knocked flat as much by the sound as by the blast itself. He rubbed at the blotches of color that
danced in front of his eyes. Kathy lay next to him, trying to focus her eyes. He grabbed her shoulders. “
You all right, Kath?”