Usher's Passing (52 page)

"New," Raven asked. "What attacked him?"

He glanced uncertainly from Raven to the sheriff, then said to her, "The panther. It was Greediguts, Miz Dunstan."

Kemp snorted. "Ain't no such thing! It's a story you mountain people made up!"

"Like we made up the Pumpkin Man?" His voice was calm and steady, but the power in it made Kemp's thin smile slip right off his face.

"Lord God . . ." Myra Tharpe whispered, clenching her hands tightly in her lap.

"You saw it?" Raven persisted.

"I was standin' as close as I'm standing to you right now when the panther jumped the old man from behind. I . . . guess he was too concerned about me to know it was creepin' up on him. The Mountain King was outside our house. If it wasn't for him, I might've gone down to . . ." He let his voice trail off, and then he picked up the gnarled walking stick from where it leaned against his chair. "I hit Greediguts with this," he said, "and ran it off."

"A
stick?"
Kemp scoffed. "You're tellin' us you ran a black panther off with an old stick?"

"It's . . . more than that." He ran his hand along the wood. "I don't rightly understand
what
it is, but it burned Greediguts across the head. Knocked me flat on my back, too." New handled it carefully, with great respect; though he couldn't sense the power in it anymore, he felt as if he were holding a loaded shotgun.

That stick. Raven thought, had put her shattered knee back together. Spells and magic wands. Witches on Briartop—

"Miz Tharpe, you look faint," Kemp said. "Can I get you some water?"

She shook her head. "I'm all right, thank you."

Kemp returned his attention to the boy, and narrowed his eyes. "You been dippin' into the moonshine keg? Maybe a cat did jump the old man, but there ain't no such thing as Greediguts! I say a good-sized bobcat—"

"Is a bobcat black, Sheriff?" New moved forward a few steps. "Can it rear up on its hind legs and stand six feet tall? Does it have a tail that rattles like a snake's? You saw the Mountain King. You don't really believe a bobcat did that to him, do you?"

"I've had enough of this!" Myra Tharpe suddenly shrieked, and shot up from her chair. Her eyes blazed at Raven. "It's you who started all this . . . this
evil!
You, with your damned questions and nosin' about! The panther would've let us be if it hadn't been for you! Damn you to hell, woman! I should've shot you the first time I seen you!"

"You gone crazy?" Kemp asked. "What's Miz Dunstan got to do with this?"

"She stirred up things!" Myra pointed at Raven, her skinny hand trembling. "Comin' up the mountain, goin' up to the ruins, askin' fool questions about the Pumpkin Man and things that are best left alone! Oh, you couldn't take no for an answer, could you? You had to keep on a-stirrin' and a-stirrin' until you drew the very Devil hisself out of the cauldron!"

Calmly, Raven met the other woman's fierce stare. "You never wanted Nathan to be found, did you? You knew those men wouldn't find him and you didn't
want
them to. Why was that? Why did you refuse to talk about the Pumpkin Man, or to let your son tell me what he'd seen?"

Myra's face splotched with rage. "Because," she said with an effort, "if outsiders go up on Briartop lookin' for the Pumpkin Man, there'll be death and destruction for everybody in this valley! My ma knew it, and her ma before her! The Pumpkin Man is left alone! If anybody tries to stop him from takin' what he wants, he'll cause the earth to split open and take us all down to hell!"

Kemp was wide-eyed. "What in the name of Holy Jesus are you jabberin' about?"

"An earthquake!" Myra screeched. "He'll send an earthquake to destroy us all, like he did that autumn of 1893! Oh, the outsiders went up into the woods with their guns and bloodhounds and they started prowlin' over every inch of Briartop! They kept the Pumpkin Man from takin' what he wanted, and he cracked the earth open! Houses disappeared, boulders smashed people flat, the whole mountain shook like it was gonna split in two! My ma knew it, and her ma, and back a hundred years! Everybody on Briartop knows it, and they know not to talk about the Pumpkin Man to outsiders or let outsiders 'help' us! The Pumpkin Man takes what he pleases! If he's denied, it's destruction for us all!"

"You mean . . . the Briartop people believe the Pumpkin Man
sent
the earthquake of 1893?" Raven asked. She'd read an account of it in one of the old
Democrats:
on a sunny November morning, the tremors had begun, and within minutes every window in Foxton had shattered. The most violent activity had been centered on Briartop Mountain, where severe rockslides destroyed many backwoods cabins and killed twenty-two people. Even Asheville suffered broken windows from the aftershocks.

"We don't believe it!" Myra said sharply. "We
know
it! The law came up to Briartop with their bloodhounds. They searched the mountain all through the autumn, and staked the trails out after the sun went down. They denied the Pumpkin Man what he wanted—and he struck back. There's not been another earthquake since then, because we don't deny him . . . and we make sure no outsiders do, neither!"

The only year that the number of disappearances had declined was 1893, Raven remembered. "You mean . . . you people give up your children
deliberately
? Why don't you just leave the mountain? Go somewhere else?"

"Where?" she sneered. "Our families have always lived on the mountain! We don't know any other home but Briartop! Most of us couldn't live in the outside world!"

"You do know that the Ushers own Briartop Mountain?"

"We know it. The Ushers leave us be. We don't pay no rent. If a child goes out alone in the dark, or strays too far from home, then . . . maybe that child's
meant
for the Pumpkin Man."

"Like Nathan was?" Raven asked coldly.

Myra's dark eyes damned the other woman. "Yes," she answered. "Most all the families on Briartop got more mouths than they can feed. The Pumpkin Man takes three, four, sometimes five a season. We know that, and we harden our hearts to it. That's a fact of life."

There was a moment of tense silence. "New," Myra whispered, and held her hand out for her son. He didn't accept it. "Don't look at me like that," she begged. "I've done all I could do! If it hadn't been Nathan, it would've been somebody else's child. The Pumpkin Man cain't be denied, New! Don't you understand that?" A tear trickled down her cheek. New's stare scorched her.

"The . . . Pumpkin Man ain't real," Sheriff Kemp said weakly, glancing back and forth from New to Raven. "Everybody knows , . . it's just a
story.
Ain't no such thing as—"

"Sheriff?" A nurse had come into the waiting room. "He's regained consciousness. He wants to see the young man."

"Is he going to live?" New asked her.

"His condition is critical. Dr. Robinson doesn't think he could survive the trip to Asheville, so we're doing what we can for him. Other than that, I can't say."

"Go on, then," Kemp said to New as he eased himself into a chair. "Jesus Christ, I can't make heads or tails of this mess!"

"New?" Raven stepped forward as he followed the nurse. "I'd like to see him, too. All right?"

He nodded. Myra gave a soft sob and crumpled into a chair.

In one of the clinic's small rooms, a white-smocked doctor with sharp features and thinning gray hair turned toward New and Raven as the nurse showed them in. The room smelled strongly of antiseptic. On a bed, the Mountain King lay facedown, his back covered with a sheet. He was hooked up to two IV bottles, one containing whole blood and the other a yellow liquid that Raven assumed was glucose. The Mountain King's head was turned so his eye faced the door, and he was so pallid that the network of veins at his left temple stood out in royal blue relief. Mottled black bruises were scattered across his face, and stitches had been taken in a long, jagged gash across his forehead. A bandage covered the bridge of his nose. Under its pale film, his eye was dark green and unblinking. Raven could hear his slow, labored breathing.

Dr. Robinson's expression told Raven all she needed to know about the old man's prospects of survival. He left the room and closed the door behind him.

New approached the bed, clutching the walking stick with both hands. But for the faint rising and falling of the sheets as he breathed, the Mountain King was motionless. Then his mouth twitched, and he said in a raspy, garbled voice, "It's . . . time. Come closer, boy, so . . . I can see you."

New stood at his bedside. "I'm here."

"Somebody's . . . with you. Who is it?"

"The newspaper lady, from the
Democrat."

"The lady with the yaller car," the Mountain King remembered. "She had a hurt knee. Tell her . . . to come closer. I want her to hear it, too."

New motioned her over. The Mountain King's eye was fixed directly ahead, looking at neither of them. "It's time," he repeated. "I've got . . . to pass it on."

"Pass what on?" New asked.

"The tale. It's time to tell the tale." One thin, braised hand emerged from beneath the sheet, and groped for New. "Take it," he commanded, and New did. The old man squeezed his hand so hard that New thought his knuckles were going to break. "You've . . . got the wand. That's good. You keep it. Oh, I've got a hurtin' in my ribs . . ."

New sucked in his breath. A ripple of fiery pain had shot across his own ribcage. The old man's hand wouldn't let him go. "You . . . listen to me," he rasped. "Both of you. I want to . . . tell you about the ruins . . . up on Briartop. I'll tell it . . . like my pa told me . . . before the comets fell." For a moment he was silent, breathing harshly. "Greediguts tried to get me . . . before I could pass it on," he said, "Them ruins used to be a whole town, full of people. But they . . . wasn't ordinary people. My pa . . . said they'd sailed from England . . . back when this country was just bein' settled. They . . . come down from the north . . . and they built a town of their own. Up on Briartop, where they could live in secret." The Mountain King's eyelid sagged and fluttered. Still, his grip on New's hand didn't weaken.

"A coven," he whispered. "It was . . . a town of warlocks and witches."

Raven looked at New, saw the boy's eyes narrow—and she knew he realized it was true, just as she did. She leaned closer to the old man. "What happened to that town?"

"Destroyed . . . by fire and wrath," he answered, and drew a pained, rattling breath. "One of their own . . . done it." Raven was silent, waiting for him to continue. "One of their own," he said softly. "One who'd done . . . what to the Devil is . . . the worst blasphemy of all."

"What?" Raven prompted.

The Mountain King's gray lips curled into a smile. "He . . . fell in love. With a girl from another town. A . . .
Christian
girl. He wanted to give up what he was . . . and marry her. But the others knew . . . knew they had to stop him. He was one of the strongest . . . warlocks of 'em all." He had to pause, gathering strength to speak again. "He must've gone through the fires of hell itself . . . in decidin' which path to take. 'Cause once the Devil leeches into you . . . he's like a drug . . . that beats you down and beats you down and keeps you needin' more." His eye fluttered again, then closed; but his grip was so strong it was grinding New's fingers together. "But . . . he loved her more . . . than he needed evil," the Mountain King whispered. His eye opened. "He made up his mind, and he went down . . . to the town in the valley. It's . . . called Foxton now."

As the old man spoke, his hand clutching the boy's, scenes began to form in New's mind—ghostly, faded images of people in dark clothes with white, stiff collars, a town's narrow dirt streets bordered by picket fences, horses and wagons stirring up a shimmering haze of dust, men in deerskin jackets and floppy hats, farmers plowing fields in the distance. One man in a three-cornered hat and a long dark cloak dismounted his horse in front of a small white house—then stopped, because on the door was a wreath of black ribbons.

Carrying a bouquet of wild flowers he'd brought from the forest, he was admitted by a tall, sad-eyed older man in dark clothes. The sad-eyed man told him what had happened: she had gone up to the attic room yesterday morning, and there she'd tied a rope around a rafter and hanged herself. There was no reason for it! Who could understand why such a lovely girl had done it? Her mother, the older man said, had found her, and was now confined to bed.