The Deadsong (11 page)

“Yeah, pretty much,” Jared said. “This has been our little hangout since Duke and I were kids. You promise not to tell anyone about it, right?”

“I guess so,” Gina said, shrugging.

You won’t tell. Will you?

She glanced at Duke who was looking unsurely at Jared.

“I dunno, man. Do you trust her?” Duke asked.

Jared’s eyes moved over Gina’s body. Her body tingled, but not from the icy current.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What should we do with her?” Duke was grinning, which should have eased her, but it didn’t. She realized she was out here with two guys she didn’t really know that well and they could have their way with her if they wanted to.

(railin and wailin)

(mighty fine)

(fine wine in the summertime)

Gina felt like paddling back to creek side and running like hell back to the Pearsons’ house.

But she didn’t. Jared’s eyes were kind and kept her still in his gaze.

“I know just what to do,” Jared said and began tickling Gina under the water. She cried out hysterically, but when Duke tried to join in, he froze.

Jared stopped and asked if he was all right. Duke shook his head.

“Something touched my leg, man.”

They laughed. “You afraid of some little fishies, Duke?” Jared asked.

Duke just shook his head again. “It wasn’t a fish.”

“What?”

“It felt like a––”

Gina saw it first. The snake broke the surface and swished quietly towards her. She screamed. She felt like a grenade went off in her chest.

Then, another snake. Then another. Then another. Soon, there were a half-dozen slithering, dancing on the water.

“What the fuck man!” Duke stroked and climbed up onto dry land while Jared looked on motionlessly.

“Jared!” Gina cried out, but he didn’t answer. He just watched them swim past her, and then they were on him. Gina looked away in horror, waiting for Jared to succumb to a nasty attack.

It didn’t happen. Jared floated on his back, his eyes closed. The snakes glided around him, caressing him, nudging him like puppies.

“Oh my God,” Gina said. All she could do was stare at this remarkable phenomenon taking place.
It’s the alcohol, Gina. This isn’t really happening. It’s just your imagination. Get a grip, girl. GET A GRIP!

Gina heard it again, that awful sound, that song, that deadsong swelling in her ears, twisting into her mind and splintering like shrapnel. A full-blown panic assaulted her and when the auditory carnage receded she heard something else woven into the noise. A voice. Jared’s voice.

It was ethereal and fantastic. It was like a lullaby. He was singing to them and they were drawn to him by warm invitation, whether or not intentional. She heard the snakes’ own song, one that harmonized with his own. He was creating this connection, this symbiotic coupling of creature and human.

Duke looked on with his mouth open, but Gina knew he could hear nothing. If there had been any reason for being able to hear ‘beyond’ as Dylan put it, it was this, this peek behind the curtain at the raw, candid nature of the deadsong.

Gina had so many questions, hundreds upon hundreds of questions that kept stacking up. Her temples throbbed and she felt as though her skull had been stuffed with cotton. She drudged through the creek and groped for the muddy bank, pulling herself up and collapsing onto a thick carpet of moss covering the base of a fallen oak.

She woke up bouncing in someone’s arms. Gravity was pulling her down, and she knew she wasn’t in that damn creek anymore. She cracked an eye to see who was carrying her and saw a bare chest towering up into a strong chin––Jared’s. Water droplets ran down his hair and fell on her nose and cheeks.

“Are you okay?” she asked him.

He nodded but never looked down at her. She tilted her head to the side and saw Duke walking ahead of them, his hands on his hips.

“We’re not gonna talk about this, okay?” Jared said.

Duke shook his head. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you weren’t bit. I thought––”

“Not a word, Duke. Not another word about it.”

Gina sighed with relief at the sight of her car parked in the Pearsons’ driveway. Again, she dozed.

3

Gina came to, slouched in Mr. Pearson’s chair in the living room. Jared was gone and Duke had fallen asleep on the couch so she got on the road and stopped at the Do-Rite Pharmacy on the way home. She bought a bottle of aspirin and a soda to keep her going until she made it back to the farm. Her brain felt like a beehive ready to burst open and let loose a swarm of thoughts she hadn’t the energy to restrain, but a steamy shower and cool sheets would be all she’d need to put everything aside until morning.

She got home and ran a bath instead. Before she could undress, a knock came at her bedroom door.

“You up?” Dylan asked.

Gina let him and closed the door behind him. “You won’t believe the night I’ve had.”

“You look rough. Talk to me.”

She and Dylan had been much closer in their youth, but over the past few years they had grown apart, mostly because of the feuding brother/sister roles they felt obligated to play because that’s just the way things were suppose to be, right? Love became uncool, lame. They gave each other hell but laughed about it afterwards. Now that they were both scouring the same minefield, the time had come to put all the bullshit aside and work as a team putting the pieces together.

Gina told him everything. It all came out: Jared’s gym bag, the note, her meeting with Floyd, the snakes in the creek, the deadsong. Dylan’s freckles seemed to darken, standing out like little orange flakes dusted on his nose and cheekbones, but it was only his complexion draining of color.

“What are you, crazy?!”

She hushed him and gripped his shoulders. “You’re not half as stupid as you make out, Dylan. You’re a helluva lot smarter than I am. You can’t stand there and tell me I’m crazy when you know something is seriously wrong here.”

“Well, I just did, didn’t I?”

“Listen you little pukeface––”

“Oh, so
you’re
gonna start bullying me now?”

“Shut up, Dylan. Shut. Up. Right now.”

He looked down at his feet. “I’m scared, Gina. I admit it, okay. What can we do?”

Gina went to her window. “Well, we can’t just sit around and do nothing.”

Then it came to him. He’d nearly forgotten about Alan Blair since he never got the chance to tell Gina the night before. So Dylan told her now. Alan had mentioned to him at the theatre he’d been trolling through the archives, which meant he could probably be found there. And so they made plans to find Alan and join the hunt for these snakes and destroy them by any means necessary. If this devil-breed of serpent could be eradicated, Pearson would be out of a job, in a fantastical sense. And Gina would have her pigskin-totin pretty boy

(railin and wailin)

and kids would quit dying and Hemming would return to a state of normalcy it hadn’t known for a very long time. Things would be just fine.

Like fine wine in the summertime.

PART two

SHAKERS AND SERPENTS

CHAPTER
FIVE
:
SAND
MOUNTAIN

1

“Good evenin gang!”

Reverend Motley stood at the lectern running his sweaty hands along the holy imitation leather. The congregation sat quietly in their pews on flattened tweed cushions the color of faded limes. All nine members had been attending Sand Mountain Church since they were children while their own children had moved away or found comfort in a less controversial place of worship.

The regional presses labeled Sand Mountain’s outspoken elderly outcasts ‘the shakers’ but they were not shakers in a traditional sense. It was because of their fanatical resistance to change as well as their loyalty to shake up the community's peaceful climate when the reaping season rolled around. Many members were respectable contributors to Hemming’s workforce––Margaret Oates, Gloria Webb, Perry Smith (or Shitty Smitty as he was often called), Harley Robinson, Ava Carruthers, and even old Floyd Wiggins made an appearance from time to time. Reverend Carl Motley often spoke in favor of expanding their small congregation, but whenever a visitor was dragged in for a fiery sermon, they never seemed to come back. But that was quite all right. They liked their little family of heavy-handed Christ-pushers.

This was a very special Wednesday night service. Tonight, Motley had grand news to rave about, but he didn’t want to get all wound up straight away. He looked around expecting to see one particular face, someone who wasn't a regular, someone who had a bit of news to tell in the privacy of Motley's office. Floyd hadn’t arrived yet and he wondered if Margaret had given Floyd a good enough reason to show up. He relaxed. Margaret could be very persuasive.

Motley wiped his brow and threw a pair of spectacles up on his face. He scanned over a photocopy and shifted his gray eyes to the crowd.

“I was just lookin over this signup sheet for the bake sale on Saturday and I sure expected a lot more names written under desserts.” A few hoarse laughs echoed across the paneled walls. “Sister Webb, you ain't gonna bless us with that Italian cream cake of yours?”

Miss Webb chuckled. “That’s awful selfish of you Reverend cause I know you just wanna have it all to yourself.”

“Uh-oh, she found me out,” Motley croaked. “All right, well I reckon this'll have to do then. Go ahead and get your hymnals out, but before we begin, I got a few things to get off my chest.”

“Here we go.” Perry Smith rolled his eyes and brushed back all twenty strands of hair on his head. Motley peeled a grin and shook a finger at him.

“I’ll keep it short, Brother, I'll keep it short. You just keep bouncin that book on your belly.” More cheap laughs, then Motley's face grew cold and firm, very serious. “There’s no way around it gang. It's that time of year again. And no I ain’t talkin about the weather here, I’m talkin about you know what.”

The old gang nodded. They knew what he was talking about.

Floyd walked in and all eyes rolled to him. He ambled up the aisle and sat in the back row, folding his hands over the grip of his cane. Motley’s eyes grew wide with selfish delight. The mission he was about to deliver was solely based on his intel from Margaret Oates, but the fine details he would have soon enough.

“Three deaths already. Three. Them little slimy slitherin things done killed three teenagers in our little community. Ashley Monroe, Susan Lubbock, and Seth Willard. Up till now, there ain't been much we could do about these reapins, but as sure as we’re all here in the House of God, amen, we now have a pretty good idea who the Keeper is.”

Muttering, whispering heads turned this way and that. A few broke their naps to join in the throws of gossip.

“All right now settle down.” Motley waved away the chatter. “That’s right. But there's only one problem with that and we all know what that is too, don't we? This person of interest may be flesh and blood, but he has no soul cause he sold it to the devil himself. The same devil that tempted Eve and Job and even Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, amen, the very devil that snares the righteous and turns them wicked. Amen, gang?”

“Mhmm, mhmm.”

“Yessir!”

“Amen!”

Motley had never before felt so grand in the pulpit. He unbuttoned his suit coat and stepped down from his soapbox, leaning back against the altar, pleased with the glittering eyes fixed upon him. “We gotta be sure it's him, this Keeper. Our old bird Floyd has been out there doing his thing and we’ve got him to thank. But I feel it in my gut, y’all. We're close to shuttin this mess up once and for all.”

“Who is it?”

“Come on, Carl, tell us!”

“Pipe down, Harley,” Motley said. “I said we gotta be sure first. But we are close. His well must be within town limits or pretty nearby, and it’s bein looked for.”

“Well?” Mrs. Carruthers asked. “You mean like a water well?”

“Something like that, Sister. But this is a well that goes straight down to the sizzling furnaces of hell. That's where these things sleep. It’s a den, darlin. Where they wait till he comes to get them and carry them out under the cover of darkness to sic them on the little babes born under Lucifer’s contract. I trust this don’t apply to any of y’all, but there are women out there who’ve done this deal. Pray their forgiveness and detest them not for trusting Satan’s clever disguise. We must find these people, gang. We must protect them. We must save them. ‘Rescue the perishing’ as the hymn says. ‘Duty demands it. Strength for thy labor the Lord will provide. Back to the narrow way patiently win them’.”

“Then what, Reverend?” Mrs. Webb asked from the third row.

“We get this Keeper,” Motley said against the growing silence. He removed his specs and burned those smoky eyes, “then we send him straight back to hell.”

2

Duke straddled the remains of a summer issue of Untamed Slutz whittling his morning wood. When he finished, he jumped in his car and got in the wind. He’d never been to the new bowling alley that was put up directly across from the Phillips 66 on the corner of Macklin and Potsdam. It was a great idea to have a place where kids could go unwind and have some clean fun without skipping across into Cullman County where you were just a cheap fake ID away from a frosty mug of carbonated piss called Witch Hazel Draft or something like that. Linda Starkweather had approved Bill and Joanna Bixby for the startup capital––she passed on the behemoth’s pastry shop––because there was nowhere in Durden or Hemming for youngsters to play, and Bixby Lanes sounded like a swell place to start.

The lot was packed, but Duke squeezed into a sliver of asphalt in back of the place. He threw open the double doors and stood there checking out the glossy lanes. The smell of lumber, paint, and drywall still hung lightly in the air, but the mouthwatering aroma of cooking pizza from the snack bar drew him like a moth to a porch light. He bought a slice and a large Coke then sat down in a booth near the shoe rental nook. He checked his watch. 12:03. The afternoon sun shot into the lobby when the doors opened, usually just a couple with their rugrats bound for the lanes with gutter bumpers. He recognized a few faces. Shitty Smitty was sweeping up a pile of cedar-chip-covered spit-up beside lane 6, Susie Grafton from Social Studies was at lane 3 with Rick Watts and Billy Lowell, and in the far corner at lane 12 stood Jared Kemper and that lovely fedora with legs, Gina Starkweather.