Risen (23 page)

He couldn't go to the authorities—he didn't trust Sheriff Clark, and anyone else would instantly write him off as a loony—and he couldn't go home. So he hit the highway and drove out to the Klempners' farm, thinking of Eloise. By all standards of decency (except those of television reporters, who had none) it was too soon to interview the grieving widower, but another day could be too late. If he had to err....

He knocked softly, figuring that Franz Klempner was probably in bed asleep. A dog barked inside, a fairly large one by the sound of him. Soon the old man appeared at the door. The dog scooted in between Brant and Franz and barked fiercely while his tail whipped the air, slapping against the old man's shins. Franz looked like he'd been beaten up but was remarkably hale for someone who'd been through such a serious accident. He should have been in a hospital bed, swathed in bandages, with tubes in his arms and a beeping monitor at his bedside.

"I'm Brant Kettering," Brant said. "I run the
Cooves County Times
. I was hoping—"

"I don't want to talk to the papers," Franz said, and he started to shut the door. It might have closed in Brant's face but for the dog who was in the way, trapped between the big door and the screen.

Brant quickly added, "I'm not here on business. In fact, I'd rather talk to you 'out of school,' as it were."

"Come back later," Franz said, shoving at the dog with his foot.

"It was no accident that killed your wife."

The words popped out of his mouth before Brant had time to think about them. It was a cruel and careless thing to say, but it worked. Franz held the door open and peered out at him, sizing him up.

"Something very strange is going on in town," Brant said. "Your wife may be the only person who knew exactly what it was."

The old man stood in the doorway for several long seconds. Finally he unlatched the screen door and turned his back on Brant saying, "You'd best come in. The dog won't bite."

Franz hobbled into the living room, obviously in considerable pain. He walked hunched over and picked his way slowly. When he lowered himself into an overstuffed chair that should have been sitting outside waiting for the trash truck, he moaned and freefell the last few inches. He fingered his side, where Brant could see through a gap in Franz' shirt that Doc had wrapped the cracked ribs.

Elmer the dog gave Brant the once over and received a scratch behind the ears, then he curled up at Franz' feet, lay his head on his paws and proceeded to ignore the ensuing conversation.

Brant sat in the rocking chair, the only other chair in the room. He expressed his condolences and Franz waved them away and steered him back to the main topic. Now that Brant had the audience he'd wanted, he wasn't sure where to begin.

"You heard about John Duffy," Brant said, and Franz acknowledged that he had. "Do you believe it?"

"I don't know," Franz answered. "If I'd seen it with my own eyes, maybe I would."

Brant angled his chair to point more squarely toward Franz and leaned forward. "It's true. And what's more, John Duffy isn't the only one. There are others. I don't know how many, but there's at least one more. There was no way to keep Duffy's rise a secret, but others could be dying and coming back and not telling anyone about it."

"Why would they do that?"

"That's the worrisome thing. One of them...well, it's Deputy Haws."

"I know him."

"He was shot the night John Duffy came back. He was shot and killed. The next day he was back, good as new, with a bullet hole in his shirt. He never said a word to anybody, not even to Sheriff Clark. Mr. Klempner, the boy who shot him was Galen Ganger."

Franz stiffened in his chair.

"I saw Haws talking to the Ganger boy shortly before your accident. I don't know for sure, but he may have ordered him to...do what he did. It may have had something to do with what Irma said at the church."

Brant became highly aware of the antique clock ticking loudly on the mantel. Either Franz or Irma had probably bought it new. The clocked ticked off a good three minutes before Franz said anything.

"I thought it was me," Franz said. "Because I drive slow, the boys have their fun with me."

"Mr. Klempner, who is Eloise?"

Franz shook his head. "I don't know anyone by that name."

"Did Irma know anyone named Eloise?"

"Not that I recall."

"Maybe someone from long ago."

"No, no. I don't remember anyone by that name. I'm sorry. My wife, she wasn't right, you know, in the belfry. But she was a good woman."

Brant nodded with a sympathy that he discovered, to his surprise, was genuine. Maybe two years in Anderson had softened him more than he knew.

They sat in silence for some time, Franz in his big stuffed chair, rigid as a statue, the dog at his feet. Brant noticed the Bible on the lamp table next to him, well worn.

"She had nightmares," Franz said. "Always had them, but they were worse as of late. It was the bell that set her off, though. Scared her half to death."

"The bell?"

"The church bell. Some fool's taken to ringing it late at night. Midnight. It's that new preacher, I'd guess. It just set her off something awful."

Brant sat back and subconsciously began to rock. "Hm," he said, and he rocked slowly, back and forth, forward and back, while the mantel clock ticked and Elmer the dog chased a rabbit in his sleep, and Franz Klempner sat like a stone in his ratty old overstuffed chair, occasional tears running unashamedly down his cheeks.

As dusk fell in Anderson, Deputy Haws jerked in his sleep and his elbow honked the horn of his patrol vehicle and he woke with a start.

Tom Culler arrived home and helped his mother by peeling some potatoes.

Doc Milford called it a day.

And the roaches under Carl Tompkins' floor picked clean the skeleton of a cat who'd crawled under the house a few hours before, seeking someplace cool.

Tom felt like a time traveler in the Grand Ballroom of the Titanic watching the doomed dancers in their finery twirl and laugh, watching star-crossed lovers nuzzle each other under the chandeliers, knowing that soon the alarm would sound and there would be panic and the mad scrabble for the lifeboats would begin as the unthinkable happened, as the unsinkable ship sunk to an icy grave.

The unthinkable was happening here, now, to Tom and everyone else in Anderson. Like the dancers on the Titanic, most of the town was unaware of the impending horror. His mother flitted about the kitchen, tearing lettuce and slicing carrots and celery and mushrooms for the salad, checking the roast in the oven, buffing the silverware with a kitchen towel, putting out dishes and finding chips on all the plates and digging through the shelves to find three perfect ones. She didn't know what was going on, and Tom didn't want her to know, not yet.

Obviously she was in love.

It made him feel good to see her excited about something again, but he felt shame, too, that he wasn't the one who'd snapped her out of her grim obsession with Annie. Brant had better not let her down as he'd let Tom down. If he thought for a minute that Brant was just using his mother for sex, he'd kill him. Not that that would do much good, apparently. Not in this town.

Tom peeled the potatoes and whacked them into fourths and put them on the stove in a pan of water. He marveled at the way life went on in its usual patterns while momentous events seethed beneath the surface. Everyone knew that a man had risen from the dead and they realized what an outstanding and uncommon thing that was. The news rattled through the community and set tongues wagging and raised some hackles. But after the gossip and the arguments and speculations, they went back to their houses and their families and their ironing and mending and sports on television, and come Monday morning they'd wake up and go to work or to school just the same as always.

What would it take to break the grip of the mundane? What would it take to shake people up enough to say to hell with school and the workplace and all the stupid minutiae of life, and compel them to dive deeply into unknown waters? A disaster, maybe. A flood, an earthquake, a war.

Miracles were happening in Anderson. Were they good miracles or bad miracles?

Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

Tom told himself that he had to start writing again and get some of this crap out of his head or he'd go crazy, if it wasn't already too late.

He heard a knock at the door and Peg dashed into the bathroom for some last minute adjustments, wondering why Brant didn't give her a warning toot. Tom let Brant in and they had a few hurried words in private while they could. Tom had noticed that Brant's car wasn't out front.

"I parked in the alley," Brant said. "Haws had my house staked out earlier. I spent most of the day with Franz Klempner. He doesn't know anything about Eloise, but Irma had been having nightmares. It had something to do with the Reverend ringing the church bell in the middle of the night."

Tom said, "I heard it! It was ringing the night we buried Haws." He told Brant about his "midnight" theory and Brant said that it fit the facts, what few of them he had.

"Maybe it's some kind of signal or catalyst or something," Tom suggested.

"Irma Klempner might've been able to provide the link, but...."

"Hi, Brant," Peg said brightly as she waltzed into the room. She was so pretty and chipper that Brant's gloom was brushed into the corners of his mind. He smiled at her and offered up a compliment and the three of them shared an awkward moment before Peg rushed out to check on the dinner. She told Brant to have a seat and instructed Tom to find him something to drink. Brant asked for a glass of water. Tom returned with the water and the news that dinner would be another few minutes. They huddled in the living room and tried to keep their voices down.

"Peg doesn't know about any of this, does she?" Brant said.

Tom shook his head. "I keep wanting to tell her. I keep thinking that she ought to know what's going on. But damn it...you should have seen her this evening. You've made her happy somehow. I want it to last as long as it can. Until we know what's really going on...."

"I know what you mean." So, he made her happy, did he? "Still, she's in a position to hear things."

Tom shook his head. "I know her better than you do. It's too soon."

Brant acquiesced. He could hear the resentment in Tom's voice. Brant had given Peg something Tom couldn't. Tom probably knew what a shit he'd been lately and confessing his role in a murder, however accidental, would leave him open to all manner of accusations and I-told-you-so's. Brant had screwed up with Tom once and didn't want to do so again, especially not with things on the mend.

And Tom was right in that he had a clearer picture of Peg's mental state than Brant did. Brant had never believed, as some people did, that God didn't give you more than you could handle. If that were the case, where did all the nervous breakdowns and suicides come from? Between the divorce and the accident, Peg was already walking the edge. He'd let Tom call this shot, for now.

"What did the boys say after I left?" Brant asked.

"They're freaked out. If it wasn't an accident, Galen must've been expecting to come back like Haws did. It's a freaky thought but, shit...anyway, we're going to check it out tonight."

"Oh?"

"We're meeting at the mortuary at a quarter to twelve."

"That'll test the 'midnight' theory, too. How do you plan to get in?"

"Kent. He got fascinated with Houdini in junior high, wanted to be an escape artist. He can open about anything."

Brant shivered. "If what I saw of Galen can come back, then anybody can."

He filled Tom in on his other thought, that there could be more Risen than John Duffy and Deputy Haws.

"I've thought of that," Tom said. "For every one we know about, there could a dozen others. People could be dying right and left and coming back before anybody knows about it."

"Or getting murdered. I saw blood stains on the dock this afternoon."

Tom's eyes went wide. "We heard shots across the water. A long ways off. We didn't think much of it. Jesus! Did you look around for bodies?"

"No, I got the hell out of there."

"You should've looked. We'd know who they were if they came back. I'll check it out tonight, before the mortuary."

"Be careful, Tom. If half of what I think is going on is really going on, we should just pack our bags and get out of town while we still can. Right now. Right this minute."

"Mom wouldn't go, not with Annie in the hospital. We'd have to get her released, get her transferred. That'd be a risk. Mom wouldn't do it, not based on what we have now."

That point struck Brant as one more reason to tell her what they knew. He started to say something when Peg appeared in the doorway.

"My, don't you two look serious," she said. "What's the topic of conversation?"

"Politics," said Tom before Brant could answer.

"We're against them," Brant added.

"I don't allow any political talk at my dinner table. It's bad for digestion. Come take a seat. Dinner's ready."