The End of Never (15 page)

“What are you doing in there, Callahan?” the headmaster called impatiently from the other side of the tarp. He wiped his damp brow with the handkerchief that he carried in his pants pocket. Callahan ignored the intrusive voice of the annoying administrator.

“Shall I fetch us some lunch, then?” Dr. Sullivan asked hopefully.

“Yes,” Callahan answered gruffly. “Go away,” he mumbled under his breath.

Relieved from his post, the headmaster broke into a slow jog toward the cafeteria, the keys to the locked door jingling anxiously in his fingers.

Under cover of the makeshift tent, Callahan examined the skeleton. He wondered who would have come there to dig in such a violent storm. The hollow eye sockets stared back at him from the smooth skull. Every bit of soft flesh had decayed a century before then, but the tattered remnants of a faded gray Confederate officer's coat remained upon the bones. With a brush of his hand, the cloth crumbled to dust. Running his fingers across the cracks and crevices of the skeleton, Callahan winced at the prick of broken bones upon his fingertips. He explored the cracked rib cage, stroking his palm along the splintered fragments of bone that had once been Colonel Charles Collinsworth's chest, if the old tales were true. As the story was told, a witch had stabbed him in the heart.

With his hand inside the chest cavity of the skeleton, a twitch abruptly jerked his fingertips. Callahan braced himself against the muddy pit with one hand, clutching at a wet lump of grass and dull rock. He allowed his other hand to rest lightly on the white bones. Searing heat shot through his forearms and pierced his chest. The world around him morphed from the steaming interior of a shabby blue tent into a forest of towering Georgia pines. The trees were cloaked in the dense darkness of a cloudless, starry night.

The horse beneath his legs bucked and whinnied at the approaching shadow. When a feral cry of hate rang through the trees, his horse reared up and tossed him to the earth. A jagged rock, the size of his fist, met the back of his head. Round, red orbs clouded his vision as he strained to see in the moonlight. The sound of fleeing horse hooves faded in the distance. He called for the frightened steed to return to him, but his breath caught in his tightening throat as the witch appeared.

Long, tangled, gray hair, as dry as harvested straw, hid the witch's face. But he knew with certainty it was Mary, his family's servant. She had become a wild animal, a frenzied woman, since the death of her son. Her son had died in a war that he had supported with his own money, land, and life. Now her hollow black eyes bore into his skull.

As she slithered closer in the pale moonlight, her thin, white lips slid back from her jagged, yellow teeth. She screamed, her withered body trembling with the strength of anger, and she plunged a blade into his heart.

He clutched at his chest where her blade had punctured. Blood came out through his mouth and ran down into the soil. Heat seared through his body. Quickly, the black night absorbed his soul.

A jolt of pain stung Callahan in the ribs as he groggily returned to consciousness from his trip into the last moments of the life of Colonel Charles Collinsworth. The tip of a shovel pricked at his ribs and roused his senses. Rising to his knees, he shook his head and realized he had fainted backward during his vision.

There was a slow trickle of blood dripping down to his hip from the base of his ribs. He wiped at it with his hand. He stared, cold and shaken, at the skeleton lying in the shallow grave. “Your story is not over, Mr. Collinsworth,” he firmly told the pile of bones.

Kicking his booted toe at a loose pile of dirt, he said, “If this much of the ghost tale is true, then he should have been buried with gold and treasure.” A patch of mud fell from the lip of the pit onto the skull. “So where is it, sir?” Callahan asked the skull. But this part of the legend, the bones could not tell Callahan.

There had been fresh footprints in the rain-soaked ground around the grave. This clue assured Callahan that any treasure buried with Charles Collinsworth had been the goal of the grave robber. He could not think of any other reason that someone would dig up bones in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Underneath the blue tarp, the air sweltered like a sauna. The acrid smell of wet earth and decay permeated the cloistered gravesite. Suffocating, dripping in sweat, and pestered by mosquitoes, Callahan decided he would be joining Charles any minute if he did not emerge. He crawled from under the plastic tent, leaned on the cannon Bloody Mary, and gasped for clean air.

The cacophony of chainsaws clearing the fallen oaks from the campus drowned his shouts for the headmaster. “Where are you, Dr. Sullivan?” Callahan yelled.

The bell tower of Drake Hall answered his cries with a single chime, and Callahan realized that the morning had passed and that the sweltering afternoon probably promised him more questions than answers. Checking his watch, he wondered when a delivery truck he was expecting would arrive at his home.

Callahan rested his left hand tenderly over the blood gathering under his rib cage and soaking through his t-shirt. He walked to the parking lot adjacent to the campus administration building, so that he was directly in front of Miss Daisy, the last of the fallen magnolia trees that were being cleared away. The grand old trees were being loaded on trailers hitched to mud-caked pickup trucks. Exhausted young workers in hard hats wrestled their heavy loads into the trailers. Their tanned skin had been scraped ruthlessly by tree bark and branches. They secured the loose limbs down with purple bungee ties.

Callahan's eyes darted across the quad in front of the administration building. In the main campus parking lot, the monster trucks fired their engines and blew clouds of gray exhaust from their bulging tailpipes.

He peered down at the spot of blood widening across the front of his t-shirt under his ribs. He could not fathom how such a thin sliver of flesh could hurt so badly. Gritting his teeth, he realized that he had to go home. It was time to check on the specimen anyway. The headmaster would forgive him for skipping lunch, he reasoned.

As for Dr. Sullivan, he was inside the cafeteria kitchen. He had buried his head in a five-gallon tub of chocolate pudding. He had forgotten momentarily about his history teacher, and he never heard Callahan's anxious calling. The headmaster finally decided to drop the spoon to the floor and just dive into the bucket.

“Sullivan!” Callahan called one last time as he traipsed past the cafeteria toward Drake Hall. The bell tower chimed once to indicate 1:30 p.m. When he gazed at the sky, his mud-stained hands shielding his eyes from the glaring sun, he heard a hellish howl, a sound not of pain but of assault.

He knew just how far it was to his house. A cemetery lay on the other side of Drake Hall, a building he knew was a converted church, and beyond the silent field of gravestones sat his rented Victorian mansion on Mockingbird Lane. The beast, Callahan's prisoner, was no longer asleep in the mansion's attic. He was very much awake and perhaps even loose.

His eyes searched the ground for the path he knew Alexandra and Taylor had worn around the old church when they needed a break between classes. He spotted the faint trail in the overgrown grass that led around the rear of Drake Hall. Breaking into a gallop, he leapt from the familiar cement sidewalk and tore past prickly holly bushes and towering dandelion weeds. Low-hanging limbs of dogwood trees hid the rest of the trail from the sun-soaked quad, and in a few swift seconds, he found himself facing a low stone wall at the perimeter of the cemetery. With a silent thanks to years of track and field training at boarding school, he leapt, nimble as a tomcat, to the top of the wall—just as another howl ricocheted off the cement headstones.

When he planted his ankles firmly atop the wall, a bolt of pain shot through his right leg. He realized that the ankle injury was probably due to securing the beast the previous night. He shivered and winced, betraying a crack in his invincibility.

“No weakness!” he shouted at himself and jumped gingerly down from the stones into the cemetery. “Where is that delivery truck?” he muttered. Dragging his foot tenderly behind him, he stalked past the headstones toward Mockingbird Lane. The wicked whine of a wolf rang in his ears.

Callahan could not have known that the truck drivers were lost, but close. Only a mile away, at the Gas 'n' Go, the white, boxy truck was idling while its driver went to make inquiries inside. He kicked open the gas station's clouded glass doors and greeted the perpetually grumpy Rhonda with a good day. He was facing a sourpuss with deep wrinkles and a bad perm. From her lofty perch behind the counter, she did not bother to look up at Lucas Harper, even when he put his last five dollars in cash down in front of her. All he wanted was a lottery ticket, a lighter, and directions to Mockingbird Lane.

“How should I know?” she said, barely audible. She slid a couple of pennies and a nickel across the counter toward his palm.

“Keep it,” he told her, swatting away the change and shoving the lighter and scratch-off lottery ticket into the front pocket of his orange-and-blue flannel shirt. He had customized it for the summer by cutting off the long sleeves.

His delivery truck was still idling outside at the diesel pump where he had left it. Inside the truck was his younger brother, Tommy, who huddled against his door in the passenger seat, snoring obnoxiously. His faded blue-and-red Atlanta Braves baseball cap was pulled protectively down over his baby face, hiding an eye that was turning deeper shades of black and blue with each passing minute.

Lucas cracked his driver's window and wiped at the foggy cloud created by Tommy's heated, heavy breathing. He tasted the smell of smoke in the air and swatted at his brother's shoulder to wake him up from his midday nap.

“What is it?” Tommy complained groggily, stretching his long legs in the cramped truck cabin.

“Your girlfriend is looking for you,” Lucas laughed, pointing to Rhonda in the rearview mirror as she stood outside the building for a smoke.

“No, man, only one girlfriend at a time for me from now on,” Tommy explained to his older brother. Lucas chuckled as Tommy tenderly rubbed his swollen left eye.

Clogged city drains had left the asphalt at the Gas 'n' Go wet from the storm the night before. As Lucas Harper punched the gas pedal, his truck peeled out sideways from the station and onto the narrow, two-lane street.

“We ain't there yet?” Tommy complained again over the sound of the squealing tires. Then he closed his eyes.

“Almost,” said Lucas, straining to read the passing street signs through the fogged windshield. Ahead of his truck, a man standing in the middle of the road threatened to hold up his progress. Bearing down on the pedestrian, Lucas blared his horn.

Rousing at the commotion, Tommy glanced out his window. “Mockingbird Lane,” he read aloud to his brother and pointed a thumb at the green sign looming above them.

“That's it,” muttered Lucas. He slammed his foot on the brake and shoved the gear into reverse, his smoking tires begging for forgiveness from the steaming asphalt. “Idiot,” Lucas screamed at the man. He rolled down his window and sped forward around the man, who was standing still as a stone statue in the middle of the road. “Get out of the way,” he yelled, swerving back into his own lane, his eyes locked on the bearded figure in his rearview mirror.

“Oh no,” Lucas mumbled.

“Ease up, man!” Tommy shouted at his brother, with his eyes buried in his hands.

“Too late,” Lucas whispered.

“What?” Tommy asked in a panic, his head dropping to his thighs as nausea boiled in his belly.

In the rearview mirror, the bearded man lay prostrate on the street, his body as still as a corpse. Lucas kept his foot on the gas and panic seized his senses.

“Slow down!” Tommy yelled. “You're going to kill somebody.” He had not yet checked the rearview mirror.

There was suddenly a loud crunch at the front grill.

“What was that?” asked Lucas, his voice quivering.

“A dog,” Tommy replied, frantic. “I think you hit someone's dog, you idiot!” Tommy struggled to rip the seat belt away from his stinging chest.

The brakes screeched, and smoke issued from the tires of the delivery truck. For several minutes, not a single breath passed the lips of the brothers inside the cabin.

“Get out,” Tommy finally hissed.

“No,” Lucas whispered fearfully.

Ripping his brother's seat belt away from his shaking chest, Tommy reached across Lucas's lap and unlocked the driver's door. “Get out,” he repeated and pushed his brother roughly from the cabin of the truck.

Falling to the asphalt, Lucas picked himself up from his trembling knees and peeked around the front of the truck. The crushed grill smoked from the crash. Horrified, he saw that a splatter of blood was boiling on the hot, white truck hood and was dripping down the side of the wheel hubs onto the front tires. Lucas came around to the other side of the truck.

Tommy was kneeling next to a massive brown dog on the pavement. It whimpered. “Look what you did!” he shouted.

Lucas put one foot behind the other and retreated slowly to the rear of the leaning truck. He realized that the load of chain, rope, and cement mix from the hardware store must have shifted in the accident.

Lucas saw that in the middle of the road, twenty feet behind the truck, the man lay flat on his back. He was utterly still, and at Lucas's distance, Lucas could not detect any motion of the man's chest. The man had long, scraggly, salt and pepper hair, and a beard. A ripped plastic poncho covered his arms and belly. His faded jeans were ripped at the knees.

“No!” Tommy shouted from the front of the truck. “Help me!” he yelled again.

Lucas jerked his neck but saw only a blur of matted fur that smothered his nose. He sunk to the ground in a helpless heap, flat in the middle of the street.