Bloodstone (9 page)

Still pondering the problem, he noticed that something
was out of place among the old graves down the hill. There was a gap between two of the stones. One of them appeared to be missing.

Curious, Bucky swung the pickaxe onto his shoulder (he could not have said why he gripped it so hard; only that the emotions of his dream persisted, those feelings of being buried alive), and walked down through the newer monuments. The stones got progressively older as the ground sloped down toward the river, the oldest graves being located at the far edge of the cemetery, nearest the water. These ancient stones were so weathered as to be rendered almost unreadable. There were people with the historical society in town who had spent hours down here, trying to decipher some of the names and inscriptions on the stones. Graves had been found dating back to the early eighteenth century. The town’s history was there, if you had the patience to work for it.

As he walked beyond the newer, larger monuments and down the hill, as the stones got smaller and darker, it seemed the air around him became cooler by degrees, and a chill raised the hairs on his arms to gooseflesh. He was out of sight of the road now, and the radio was nothing more than a faint hum. The feelings of his dream came back with renewed force. He felt as if he were under the ground, looking up through the layers of dirt and clay and grass with eyes that were not his own.

But that was crazy, and he was not the type to give in easily to such thoughts.

Bucky approached the gap in the line and realized what had happened. The stone was not missing; it had simply fallen over and half-buried itself in the freshly cut grass. He dropped heavily to his knees, put the pickaxe aside and lifted the stone upright, settling the base into the ground as best he could. The face of the stone was obscured by dirt and grass clippings, and mold. He scraped at the surface, wiped it with his palm as if he were trying to clear a fogged
window. The stuff that came off on his hands was soggy and cold, and stained his skin a deep, dark green.

He wiped his hands on his shirt and then dug at the stone’s faint letters with his fingernails, trying to clear them. Portions of the lettering were revealed, badly worn; he could just make out the last name and a date.

Thomas
, it read.
D. 1820
.

“Jesus jumpin’ Christ,” Bucky said, not quite sure what made him suddenly straighten up and take a step back. He recognized the grave, sure enough. Most people in White Falls knew about old Frederick Thomas. What he could not explain was the sudden tightening of the muscles in his back; the prickling in his scalp, and in his armpits; the way his breathing caught in his chest. The feeling of being buried six feet under, all that dirt and rock between him and fresh air.

And his unreasoning suspicion that this headstone and the rotting coffin he had just uncovered up the hill were close relations.

When Sheriff Pepper arrived fifteen minutes later, Bucky Tarr was waiting for him in the church parking lot. “Oh, Christ,” the sheriff said, when Bucky told him about the surprise visitor waiting in the reverend’s plot. He looked at his watch. “I honestly can’t fucking
believe
this. First the cooler shuts down. Now we got a hundred people coming in just under two hours to see the man put to rest, and now we don’t have anyplace to bury him?”

Bucky nodded. “Not unless we…” He paused. The sheriff looked at him blankly. “Move them remains,” he finished.

“Where the hell are we gonna put them?”

“Seems to me,” Bucky said, keeping his voice slow and even (he was still a little spooked, much to his disgust, and did not want the sheriff to see how this had gotten to him), “we might want to find out who those bones belong to. Once we put a name to them, maybe we can give them a proper
burial. Somewhere down the hill, closer to the…you know. Friends and relatives and all.”

“How are we going to figure out who it is?”

“Maybe there’ll be something in the records about it. Or maybe Doc Stowe can figure it out. Dental records and such.”

“Dental records that old? Fat fucking chance.” Pepper scratched at his belly and spat on the ground.

Finally they walked over to the open grave and stood looking down at the hinge and rotten corner boards of the coffin, now fully exposed. Bucky had said nothing about Frederick Thomas’s headstone down the hill, and didn’t plan to do so. The sheriff would think he was crazy, trying to make a connection like that, and Bucky Tarr would be half-inclined to agree with him. No reason to think what he was thinking. But there were two rules in life he always tried to keep in mind. One of them was, there were things happening everyday that just couldn’t be readily explained. Sometimes the answer was simple, and sometimes it wasn’t, but for the most part it was easier and smarter to leave these mysteries well-enough alone.

The other, more important rule was, don’t do twice what can be finished in one shot. That applied to digging graves just as well as anything else.

“Hell.” Sheriff Pepper had a look of complete disbelief on his face. “This sure is a mystery. That thing looks about a hundred years old, if it’s a day. Back then the cemetery ended way back down near the river. So why the hell would anyone bury a body up here on top of the hill?”

“Don’t know, chief,” Bucky said. “All I know is, we got one hole, and two bodies. Now, we can dig another hole, but that’ll take the rest of the day. No way we’ll finish in time for the service.”

“You better get him out of there, then. I’ll call Harry and have him bring a bodybag for the bones. We’ll figure the rest out later. Try and keep this quiet for a while, will you,
Bucky? We don’t need people hearing about it until the service is over. When things have settled down a bit, we’ll let the news out. The historical society’s likely to have a field day with this one.”

Bucky nodded and kept his mouth shut. It had become the sheriff’s decision now, and he was free from all responsibility, which was the way he liked it.

After Sheriff Pepper left to use the phone, Bucky Tarr went about the ugly business of disinterring the remains, and a few minutes later, the first drops of rain began to fall.

By ten o’clock, as the mourners filed slowly into the church, the rain had begun in earnest, and by ten-thirty it was coming down in a steady, solid sheet. The rain drummed on the roof, making a sound like thousands of little feet, and ordinarily that sound was a soothing one. But not at a funeral. At a funeral the sound of rain brings thoughts of mud and mildew, damp clothes and cold flesh, and all the other things a mind turns to when faced with the end of a life.

The family and a few of the closest friends were seated up front and occupied the first two pews. Sue Hall, wearing black and clutching a handkerchief which she used to dab at her eyes, and beside her, crazy Annie Arsenault, white hair carefully combed, eyes vacant; the uncle from Boston, an investment banker in an expensive black suit, with his aging wife and son; a cousin from Kennebunkport. Myrtle Howard had a place just behind Sue, along with a few of the most active church-goers.

To the right of the pulpit, on a waist-high stand, lay the mahogany coffin with the body of Reverend Hall. A wreath of brightly-colored flowers sat at the head of it, along with an arrangement of roses.

The interim preacher from the Waldoboro church led them in prayer, and then Sue herself got behind the pulpit and read from the good book until her eyes teared up. The
church was standing room only. Reverend Hall had been well liked.

After the church service they all opened umbrellas, filed outside, and stood in the pouring rain while the Waldoboro preacher read the passages the family had chosen from the Bible. The rain wet the pages of the good book and made them difficult to read. The preacher sheltered them with his hands as best he could, and kept it short. Nobody had thought to set up a tent or even prop a tarp up over their heads, and most people were thoroughly soaked by the time the casket was finally lowered into the muddy hole, in spite of their umbrellas.

The big sling swung the casket some as it moved. When it passed by the edge of the hole, it bumped a chunk of dirt, or rock. “Sounded like someone moving around in there,” little ten-year-old Jason Marshal would tell his friends later. “Like someone had just turned over, knocked his elbow on the lid, and gone back to sleep.”

Pat Friedman noticed the sound too, and it sent a chill along his spine. He hadn’t slept much the past few nights. The thoughts of his wife’s late-night transgressions had begun to occupy more of his time, and he felt consumed by a fierce jealousy. She was distant, cold in bed, her mind on something (
or someone
) else. He was not the sort of man, Pat kept telling himself, to be consumed by this. He was
not
. But he kept seeing Julie in his mind, slick and naked, in bed with a stranger. In
their
bed. As hard as he stared at the image, he could not see the mystery man’s face. Dark circles ringed Pat’s eyes and his skin sagged with fatigue. He looked ten years older.

God, he hated funerals. Dead things rotting away in the ground.
They close you up in a box
, Pat thought,
and they
lock it up tight, just in case you wake up and feel like getting
out
.

As he stood there in the rain, watching the coffin disappear into the muddy hole, he was reminded of that cold
night a week earlier, the night he had seen Jeb Taylor coming out of Johnny’s, looking so much like his father it was like seeing a ghost. The feelings came back with renewed force, bringing with them a hard knot in his stomach.

Something in the air tonight. Something horrible. Dead
men are coming to life
.

Then the casket hit bottom with a solid thud and the sling was raised back out. Someone let out a sob; Pat glanced over and saw Sue Hall, her hand pressed against her mouth. The preacher closed the Bible and people began to leave, one by one, some going back into the church, some heading straight for the parking lot. Nobody spoke.

Pat Friedman remained near the grave, head bent against the rain, as the first heavy shovel of dirt was thrown in. It landed not with a patter of small stones but with a wet slap of mud on wood. The sound was a terrible one, full of the heaviness of the act. Pat thought about what might happen if the lid began to open, if a single white fingertip appeared in the crack, scratching to be let out.

Finally he turned away, but he couldn’t shut out that sound of dirt hitting the casket. It followed him as he walked to his car, and as he drove home, Julie silent in the seat beside him, he fancied he still heard it, muffled by the distance but just as horrible. Each wet shovelful of mud as it slapped against wood. The sound of death.

Sometime after six o’clock, the rain stopped, and the cold closed in.

Billy Smith and Angel were sitting in the dining room of the Old Mill Inn when the rain began to fall. Though the inn didn’t usually serve a hot breakfast, Bob Rosenberg had opened the kitchen up early for them. They had the place to themselves. Smith sipped at a cup of coffee, with his Danish and part of an English muffin on a plate before him. Not particularly hungry, he watched the sky darken outside the windows, watched the bloated clouds reflected in the water of the mill pond. The water was the color of flint.

Since Saturday night, they had existed in a kind of limbo. Done some shopping for clothes and other essentials, eaten all the proper meals, explored some more of the town. Monday they had gone to look at Gedford’s strawberry fields, bare but still beautiful in the bright spring sun (looking at the fields, Smith got the feeling they could almost watch the spring water flowing through their roots, the plants growing before their eyes), and had a picnic on the banks of the river. It had been pleasant but uneventful. They had not said more than a few words to each other about that night and the face in the window—and it hung in the air between them, like a great black gulf.

A great black gulf, or a line drawn in the dirt. Crossing that line meant they were fully committed; it meant anything
could happen. The old rules did not apply anymore. Oh, they had talked about crossing that line before, it was true, but before Saturday they hadn’t been faced with anything stronger than a few bad dreams. Now they were faced with whatever lived out there by the pond—and whatever it was, Smith had the feeling they wouldn’t like it much.

“We need to talk,” he said.

Angel was silent for a long time, looking out the window at the rain, her hands in her lap. One side of her face carried the color of the thunderstorm, the other plainly lit by the overhead lights. Light and dark, black and white. It was as if the storm mirrored her own struggle within, picking up her mood like some sort of lightning rod and playing it out for him to see.

“I’m scared,” she said.

“So am I.”

She was silent for a moment, then spoke slowly, hesitantly. “I was a goner if you hadn’t come along. You asked me before if I would have come here on my own, and I said I didn’t know. That…wasn’t really true. The truth is, I don’t think I would have had the chance. I think I would have killed myself. Not jumping off a bridge or blowing my brains out, not that way. I think I would have just slipped an extra hit or two into my veins one night and that would have been it. Not so bad, really, if you have to go. The truth was, I hated myself.”

“And now?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been given a second chance. Like I can live my life all over again, the way I want it—”

At the sound of those words something flashed through his mind, a memory he could not quite put his finger on. “Say that again.”

She looked at him strangely. “You know. Like I’ve been given a chance to live my life over.”

Those who have been born again
. It was true for both of
them, wasn’t it? They had reached the end of their ropes in their previous lives, and had been offered a second chance, a chance to wipe the slate clean.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s it. That’s it exactly.”

“I’m a good person, Billy.”

“I know you are.”

“I lost sight of a lot of things, and now I’m beginning to get them back. I don’t want to lose that.”

Billy looked at her across the table, the contrast of bright and dark playing about her face as the rain began to fall harder, streaking the glass of the window. For a moment he might have caught a glimpse of the little girl she once was, small for her age, skin like ivory, huge blue eyes, hair in pigtails. A big gap-toothed grin. The kind of girl who could light up a room. She had changed in the short time they had been in town. He saw an inner strength that hadn’t been there before, or had remained well hidden. A growing confidence in herself. And health; she practically glowed with it.
Two weeks ago she was a spaced-out junkie on a Miami
beach
, he thought.
How is that possible?

“You’re not the only one who’s been given a second chance by all of this,” he said softly. “I feel the same way. Maybe I can’t make up for what I did twelve years ago. But I can try.”

Angel reached out and touched his hand, and for a moment his mind was filled with the odd, swirling images he had felt lying alone in his bed Saturday night; candy apples, the color blue, the flutter of wings. And then she withdrew her hand and the images were gone, leaving him cold and empty.

“I never really believed in evil before,” she said. “I mean, most people think murderers are evil, but I bet
they
don’t think they are. Maybe some of them even feel guilty but can’t help themselves.” She paused. “But after that night and that place…”

“What about a spiritual world? Goodness? Have you ever believed in that?”

“I never really did as a kid,” she said. “My parents weren’t religious people, so we didn’t go to church. I guess I just never thought about it much.”

“And now?”

“If evil can exist, there
must
be good, too,” she said. “After all, something has brought us here, hasn’t it?”

“God’s done a lot of his own killing,” Smith said. “If you believe in him, that is. Plagues, wars, all of the things he allows to happen. Do they serve some kind of higher purpose?”

“Some people might say that’s the devil’s work.”

“According to scripture, the devil was a fallen angel.”

“So what are you saying?”

“Just that it’s hard for me, I guess,” he replied slowly. “It’s tough for me to believe.” He thought about how his mother had tried desperately to grab onto something that would help her deal with her coming death. Religion, spirituality, God’s greater plan, had become a central part of her life. She was certain that a lot of prayer and a flurry of good works would save her life—and failing that, save her soul. As she drifted deeper into her own world Smith found himself starting to despise it all. The church where she spent nearly every waking moment, the well-thumbed Bibles scattered around the house, the paintings on the walls. The phone calls from well-meaning church parishioners, promising to “pray for her.”
And now what
, he thought.
After all
that’s happened to me? Does it make any difference?

“Hard as I try,” he said, “I just can’t get my mind around the idea that there’s more to this world than what we see every day.”

She smiled. “People have been struggling with that for a very long time.”

“So what if this is all in our heads? What if we’re really in some mental institution somewhere, and having some kind of delusion?”

“No,” Angel said firmly. “Delusions are personal. Maybe
it could be happening to one of us, but not both of us together.”

He reached for his coffee, found it cold, and held the cup in his hands, staring down into the murky brown remains. Bits of black grounds floated at the top, sank, surfaced again.

“I felt it, you know,” he said. “Saturday night. We went back to the inn and went to bed and I was lying there in the dark, trying to understand things, to understand what we had just seen. And I started thinking about what had happened to me in my life, good memories and bad ones, letting them play through my head, remembering. And then I just let go and…” He paused, unsure of exactly how to express this thing he had done. Had it been some sort of telepathy? Some kind of weird mind-link? Or simply wishful thinking?

“And I reached,” he said finally. “I reached out for you in my mind. It was like I was stretching something, like I was working out the kinks in a stiff, weak muscle, and then using it to push me forward. Only I was pushing forward inside my head. My thoughts.” He shrugged. “It sounds crazy, I know. But I felt something. You were there. And then you were gone, and there was…something else.”

“Something else?”

“Yes. It was huge, that was my first impression. Larger than I could really understand. Powerful. And…awake.”

“That’s not so crazy, is it? I mean, if this thing can talk to us, if it can make us dream what it wants us to dream, then why shouldn’t we be able to—”

“No.” Smith shook his head. “What I felt wasn’t what’s been sending us the dreams. At least I don’t think so. This thing was what we’ve been dreaming
about
. It was about death and pain. It wanted to kill me. I felt it in my bones. It scared the shit out of me. But what scared me the most, I guess, is that it sensed me, too. It knew I was there.”

“But what
was
it?”

“I don’t know.”

They sat in silence for a moment, considering this. They had faced great open spaces of mystery over the past few weeks, and been forced to trust in themselves and whatever had been guiding them. Smith had been able to do that mainly by keeping himself busy; physical activity, however it came, kept some of the doubts and second-guesses at bay. Until Saturday night they had not been faced with real danger (
and even then
, a voice asked him,
were you really in
danger? Or were you just seeing things?
).

But it was one thing to obey what a few intense dreams and visions drove you to do. It was another to go into battle without understanding what you were up against. And that was what they were facing, if all this were true.

It knew I was there
.

“We need to do something,” Smith said. He was filled with an odd sense of urgency. Outside the sky had turned purple, and great bursts of lightning popped like flashbulbs. “We have to start somewhere, get moving. We can’t just sit here.”

“But what are we supposed to do?”

“There should be a library around here where we can do some research. Right here in town, or at least nearby. The next town, maybe. I’ll go ask Mr. Rosenberg about it.” Smith stood up, ready to leave.

“You said you felt me, the other night,” she said, stopping him. “Inside your mind. Is that really true?”

“Yes. It’s true.”

She got a dreamy sort of look in her eyes. “I think I felt it, too. Like one of those pushes we’ve been feeling, only softer. Almost like a touch, but inside my mind. Very light. I was half asleep, and by the time I woke up it was gone. I thought I was dreaming.”

“So did I, at first. But it happened.”

She smiled up at him. “Have you ever been in love?”

“Thought I was once. A girl in high school. It was just a crush. Why?”

“You asked me if I believed in a spiritual world. In goodness. I don’t know if there is a God or not. But I think love is good. True love, I mean, the kind that doesn’t ask for anything in return.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. The dreamy look was in her eyes again, or maybe, he thought, it had never really left. “I think so. There has to be.”

The White Falls library was located just past the new high school, on a stretch of empty road. Previously a private home, it had been converted to hold a few hundred novels, nonfiction confessionals, and some serious books, most of them donated by a prominent citizen several years earlier. Inside a few walls had been knocked out here and there and long, high bookshelves installed where the front hall had been. There was a pleasant reading area with a couch, table, and a couple of chairs in a room to the right of the door, another room to the left which looked to be an art gallery of sorts, and a desk with a computer terminal near the back. A set of stairs opposite the door to the right led up to a second floor; a sign on the wall read,
Private
.

All the rooms were empty except for the reading room. A girl who looked like she might be a high school student sat in a chair near the window, a book open in her lap, two more on the table. She had a freckled face and arms like matchsticks. When Smith and Angel entered she looked up at them vacantly then turned to stare out the window at the rain.

As they stood in the front hall shaking the water from their hair, a young man appeared from somewhere upstairs and came down the staircase to meet them. He was birdlike, standing five-three at the most, and kept his hands tucked nervously behind his waist. “We don’t have a very large selection,” he said apologetically, after they had introduced themselves. “Almost everything is privately donated. Books
are constantly coming in and out of here, you know, we try to keep track of them, but the budget is limited. A few have been stolen or vandalized, I’m afraid. But the computer has a list of everything we have, more or less, and it’s connected to the state system. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, perhaps we can locate it at another library for you.”

“Actually, we’re looking for something on local history,” Smith said. “Anything about the town of White Falls, the people…”

The young man had led them down the hall as they talked, and stopped near the computer, now twisting the belly of his shirt between sweaty palms. For some reason, Smith was reminded of a mole, scurrying blindly along the ground, bumping into things, bouncing off them again before turning in another direction. “I don’t know how much is in…” The librarian turned and punched a few buttons. “Well,” he said, after a moment, “it says we have quite a bit. But I’ll tell you—” he pointed at a reference on the screen, “—this is a book on Maine history, that might have a paragraph or two in it about this area, and this one is a paperback on Southern Maine architecture that won’t have much either, and is probably missing anyway. That’s the sort of book these students are always using for their papers, you know, and they’re always forgetting to return them. I swear, I just don’t have the time to keep sending out notices. I’m just a volunteer, you know, we don’t have the resources…”

Smith glanced around. Angel had managed to wander off into another part of the library.
Escaped, is more like it
, he thought, and grinned. The librarian went on, his voice hushed but eager.
Not a mole, more like a terrier. One of the
little ones that grab onto your trouser leg and won’t let go
.

“Why don’t you just point me in the right direction,” Smith said. “I’ll figure it out.”