Fear, page 23
“FEAR COUNTY LINE” was all it said. But that was more than enough.
They simply stood and stared at the sign for a long moment. Then Sam turned toward Jeb and Roscoe, his face confused. “What does it say?” he asked. “Are we here?”
“Yeah, Sam,” Roscoe said. “We’re here.” Suddenly, the eyes behind the thick glasses no longer held the levity they had during the past hour or so. Now they seemed deathly serious and much older than they had before. “All right, boys. We could stand here gawking all afternoon, but we wouldn’t be doing what we came here to do, now would we?”
“No, sir,” said Jeb. The boy’s heart quickened a beat or two.
Sam simply shook his head and swallowed loudly.
“Okay, then let’s go,” said Roscoe cautiously. “But don’t wander off too far from each other, understand? Stick close.”
The three almost held a collective breath as they took a couple of steps and, in that one simple act, crossed the line that separated Mangrum and Fear counties.
At first, Jeb could tell no difference between the land he had just left and the one he now stood in. Then, slowly, subtly, it began to dawn on him. There was something different about Fear County. He had to study the ground beneath him and the forest that stood around him for a while before those differences became apparent.
The leaves on the trees were a little darker and a little less green than the foliage in Mangrum County, and the bark seemed a little rougher, more complex and convoluted in texture. Likewise, the earth of the road was not of the same clay red color as most of the rural roads in that part of the state. Rather, the earth seemed much darker in hue, almost black in some spots. Even as he stood there, Jeb felt something touch the toe of his bare foot. He looked down and, immediately, jumped away. There, burrowing its way out of the ground, was a long earthworm. But it wasn’t like any worm he had ever seen before. Unlike the plump pink earthworms he sometimes used while fishing, this one was the color of a bruise; an ugly mixture of purple and mottled yellow. He didn’t see it for long. It was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared, pulling the grainy earth up over it. For the first time in his life, Jeb longed for a pair of shoes to wear, even those torturous patent leathers he was forced to wear on Sunday mornings.
“You okay, boy?” asked Roscoe, placing a dark hand on Jeb’s shoulder. “You’re looking kinda pale,”
“I’m all right,” he said. They had taken a couple of steps more, when Jeb sensed that his dog wasn’t with them. He turned to see the bluetick hound sitting at the edge of the highway, staring at them as if they were touched in the head.
“Come on, boy!” called Jeb. When the dog refused to follow his master, the farmboy frowned at him in frustration. “What in tarnation is the matter with you, Buckshot?”
The hound dog failed to move a muscle. He simply sat there on his haunches and whimpered pitifully.
“He senses that something ain’t right over here,” said Roscoe.
“Well, we can’t just leave him behind,” grumbled Jeb. He turned to Sam. “Give me one of them baloney sandwiches that Miss Claudine packed for us.”
Sam opened the duffel bag and handed Jeb one of the sandwiches. The boy peeled away the waxed paper, revealing the slabs of white bread and fatty meat inside. He dangled the sandwich enticingly between thumb and forefinger. “Come on, Buckshot. Here, boy … there ain’t nothing wrong over here. Come on and I’ll let you have this whole sandwich for yourself.”
The bluetick whimpered and whined like a puppy, shifting uncomfortably from one speckled haunch to the other. Then, grudgingly, he went against his instincts and made his way across the county line toward his young master. Obviously, his weakness for anything edible overrode any qualms he might feel toward the land on the far side of the highway.
As they proceeded down the dirt road, the woods around them grew wilder and more choked with shadows. The branches of the trees met overhead, forming a dense canopy above them. Jeb looked up, trying to see the sun past the leaves, but only a few speckles of sunlight managed to break through. He noticed something else, too. Something that was almost imperceptible at first.
“It ain’t quite so hot on this side of the line,” said Jeb. “In fact, it’s almost downright cool.”
“Yeah,” said Roscoe looking a little wary. “I remember that from the last time I was here.”
No one attempted to explain the mysterious drop in temperature. They continued on, saying nothing. Gradually, Jeb noticed other things. One was the absence of any sort of noise in the forest. There was no rustle of a breeze through the trees, not even the faintest hint of one. And the sound of songbirds was totally absent. At first, Jeb was sure that there was no animals at all in the stretch of dark woods. At least, not the type that frequented the hills and hollows back home.
They were a half mile down the dirt road, when a cry echoed from somewhere off in the woods. It was a frightening cry; one that Jeb couldn’t identify. It almost sounded like a cross between the caw of a carrion crow and the throaty croak of a bullfrog.
“What in Sam Hill was that, Roscoe?” asked the boy.
The black man looked off into the woods, and then turned his attention back to the road ahead. “I don’t know son and frankly, I don’t want to know. Just don’t pay it any mind and keep on walking.”
The strange call came again from the top of a towering black oak tree, but, as much as he tried, Jeb couldn’t make out anything up there in the shadows. He glanced over at Buckshot, but the dog seemed to have no interest whatsoever in leaving the road to investigate. Instead, the hound moved away from the weedy thicket and stuck close to his master’s heels.
Jeb reached around to his hip pocket. The homemade slingshot was there, but he felt little comfort in knowing that it was there. He listened for the cry to come again, but the treetops remained ominously silent.
As they descended further into the stretch of dark woods, Jeb knew that they had left all familiarity behind. He recalled a verse he’d read in the Bible once concerning the unknown; something about “seeing through a glass darkly.” Just walking down the stretch of shadowy backroad, Jeb knew that particular scripture, however cryptic it might seem, described Fear County perfectly.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Junkyard
The afternoon drew on. Miles of dark forest and uneven road passed behind them and continued to stretch ahead. Jeb began to wonder if that was all there was to Fear County; tangled thicket choked with shadow and an arrow-straight stretch of rutted rural road.
Around four o’clock, the road began to curve and wind, if only subtly so. The forest remained heavy, though. Above the dark canopy of intertwined leaves, echoed the throaty rumble of far-off thunder. “We’ll likely find ourselves in a thunderstorm before long,” said Roscoe. “We’d best pick up our pace and try to find some place dry to spend the night.”
They did as he suggested. An urgency quickened their walking and they headed down the winding road, searching for something other than trees and thicket at the side of the trail. Several times, Jeb was certain that he heard the snap of a branch no more than twenty yards from the road. But, even though he searched to find something there, the woods seemed to be devoid of living creatures. That didn’t make him feel any easier, however. He still had the feeling that something was creeping among the trees out there, matching their progress, step by step.
As the thunder grew louder and closer, they were thankful to find that the woods were thinning out a little. In some of the open spaces, standing amid tall weeds and pink-headed thistle, were small dwellings scarcely the size of the kitchen back at the Sweeny house. Roscoe and Sam cautiously investigated each one, but found that their roofs were infested with holes or missing entirely.
“This one won’t do, either,” complained the Negro. “If we tried making it through the night here, we’d be soaking wet before night.”
As the two men lingered in the dilapidated shanty, looking around, Jeb surveyed the other buildings that stood in the waist-high weeds along the side of the road. “What was this place, Roscoe? Some kinda town?”
“I don’t know, Jeb,” said the bluesman. “Might’ve been … a long time ago.”
“But what happened to all the folks who lived here?”
Roscoe spotted a stain on the dry-rotted floor of the shack he stood in; a rusty brown stain that looked a lot like old blood. “I couldn’t rightly say,” was all he said, not mentioning his discovery to the boy.
They left the shanty and headed farther down the road. The canopy of leaves opened up in spots overhead. In the sky above, hung dark storm clouds the color of gray cotton. All three sensed the moisture in the air. The storm was nearly upon them. It wouldn’t be long before it let loose with rain and lightning, and they would be stuck right dab in the middle of it.
They had gone a quarter mile farther down the road, when Sam pointed up ahead. “What’s that yonder?”
From where Roscoe was he could only make out a tall, wooden fence perhaps eight or nine feet in height. “I don’t know. Let’s go see.”
A few minutes later, they were there. The boarded wall stretched around a good three acres of open land and boasted rusted signs that proclaimed “NO TRESPASSERS!” and “INTRUDERS WILL BE DEALT WITH!” But, when they reached the center of the fence, they found the gate standing wide open. It had been that way for a long time. Weeds grew tall and plentiful along the bottom of the door, and the hinges were frozen with orange rust and entwined with climbing ivy. It appeared as though the gate had not been closed for years.
The roll of thunder was accented by a brittle crack of lightning this time. Knowing they had no place else to go, the three stepped through the gate and took a wary look around. Buckshot lingered outside the doorway for a moment later, then, hearing the slight rustle of weeds from the far side of the road, decided to join the others. He caught a whiff of the critter that lurked in the thicket opposite the fence. It smelled like no animal he’d ever encountered during his rambling romps through the backwoods of Mangrum County.
They found themselves at the entrance of a huge junk-yard. The rusted hulls of automobiles and trucks stood in tall piles, five and six high in some places. None of the vehicles seemed to have been condemned there by a faulty transmission or the inactivity that long years of service tend to bring. Instead, they all seemed to have been the victims of horrible wrecks. Fenders were buckled, front ends were pushed—accordion-style—right up to the firewalls, and most of the glass of the twisted windows were either missing or riddled with spiderweb cracks. Some of the remaining glass was coated with splashes of reddish-brown or speckled with bits of foreign matter. Jeb could picture the crash of impact and imagine heads smacking against wind-shields, or even going clean through them.
“This is a bad place,” said Sam. “A mighty bad place.”
Roscoe nodded grimly. “You’re right about that. It surely is.”
“Couldn’t we go on down the road a little further?” asked Jeb. “Maybe we could find somewhere else to camp.”
He was answered by a loud thunderclap a couple miles to the north. “Naw, I think this is where we’ll stay tonight,” said the bluesman. “God knows I don’t cotton to the thought of sacking down here, but we ain’t got nowhere else to go.”
They crossed the weedy earth of the junkyard, stepping over rusted fuel pumps, engine blocks, and bent axles. To the right stood a single structure roughly the size of a storage closet. All the glass of the shed’s two windows was broken out and the door stood askew on its hinges. “You boys stay out here for a minute,” said Roscoe. “I’ll go in and take a look-see.”
The black musician stepped through the doorway and found himself standing in a cramped office. Its boarded walls were lined with old fan belts, radiator hoses, and airless inner tubes. They hung there like greasy trophies of some sort and were shrouded in cobwebs that had been abandoned by their spidery occupants long years ago.
He stepped gingerly over a couple of wooden crates and rusty gas cans, and walked to a desk at the far side of the office. The mummified remnants of a salami and rye sandwich sat there on a sheet of dusty waxed paper and, beside it, stood a coffee mug, its insides coated with a growth of thick grayish-green mold. Roscoe lifted his eyes from the cluttered desk, to the calendar that hung midway up the back wall. The words “KRULLER’S JUNKYARD” were printed above the month of October and the year of 1934. The picture above the numbered squares was what drew Roscoe’s interest the most. It was a black and white photo of a pretty, raven-haired woman dressed in spiked heels, thigh-length stockings, and a bodice of black leather, which did nothing to conceal her perky breasts. The girl wore a devilish expression in her dark eyes and held a braided bullwhip in her right hand. The end of the whip snaked its way down, across the laced belly of the girdle, and disappeared between the junctions of her thigh.
“Lordy mercy!” muttered Roscoe. For some reason, just looking at the calendar pinup made him squirm a little. He knew then that he didn’t want the boy in there, ogling the obscene picture half the night.
He checked the roof. Like most of the other shacks they had passed along the rural road, its roof was festooned with a dozen or so holes, some big enough to stick your fist through. He stepped back out into the open, relieved to be away from the office. “It’s just as bad,” he told them, shaking his head.
“Then where’re we gonna stay?” asked Sam.
Roscoe felt a droplet of water strike the bridge of his nose. He looked and saw a dark swirl of storm clouds hovering over them. Soon, raindrops were coming down steadily, pitting the dusty earth and rat-tat-tatting on the rusted bodies of the wrecked cars. As the rain grew in intensity and the thunder more vocal, Roscoe searched for a place that would keep them dry for the night. He found it a second later. “Over there!” he called, gathering up his guitar and gear. “Follow me!”
Jeb and Sam did as he said. Sam slung the duffle bag over his shoulder and, at a dead run, followed him through the driving rain toward a long vehicle that had once been painted a bright yellowish-orange color. Now it was covered with a heavy coating of rust and clinging ivy. The front end was torn open, the hood folded up clear to the windshield and the engine block protruding like an exposed organ from the open chassis.
They were nearly soaked to the skin by the time they reached the school bus. Roscoe tried to open the folding door with his fingers, but the hinges were fused together by years of rust. Sam stepped past the black man and pried at the door for a moment. His work-toughened muscles did the job and, soon, the door folded to the side with a squeal of protest.
Quickly, they ducked into the bus, mounting the steel steps to the dark belly of the vehicle. Buckshot caught a whiff of something foul, but reluctantly followed the others when thunder boomed like cannonfire overhead.
Dust and filth coated the windows of the school bus, casting an eerie gloom throughout the long vehicle. The first thing they noticed when they entered was the driver’s seat, which had been wrenched from its bolts by some terrible force of impact. Jeb noticed that the steering wheel was twisted and covered with something that might have been dried blood. Clinging to the wheel were fragments of a man’s shirt, as well as a few buttons.
Roscoe ushered the boy past the seat. “Come on, Jeb. We’ll find us a place on back a ways.”
They moved along the narrow center aisle of the school bus. The rain grew more furious, drumming against the roof of the bus and pattering against the small windows on both sides. The darkness of the storm, as well as the shadows inside the vehicle, made it difficult to see. Soon, Sam had to open the duffle bag and dig out the long-handled flashlight. He snapped it on and directed its bright beam around the murky interior.
School books, lunch pails, and Number Two pencils littered the floor of the bus. Jeb looked at several of the seats and saw that the padded seats were covered with something similar to what coated the steering wheel up front. “What do you think happened to this bus, Roscoe?” he asked.
“Head-on collision, more’n likely,” replied the black man. “Either that or it ran into a tree or an electric pole.”
Even though the accident had obviously taken place years ago, Jeb could detect a nasty odor in the bus; kind of a mixture of hot copper and the high stench of fresh roadkill on a hot summer day. True, the scent was faint, but it was still there…and probably always would be.
They had to go all the way to the rear of the bus before they found several seats that were clean enough to sit on. They directed the beam of the flashlight toward the roof of the bus. It seemed intact and watertight except for a few broken seams toward the front, which dribbled only a small amount of rainwater onto the center aisle.
When they were satisfied that the rain had set in and wasn’t going to let up for some time, they settled down for the night. Sam opened up the duffle bag and brought out a can of pork and beans, and half a pan of cornbread that Miss Claudine had packed for them. Roscoe took out his Swiss Army knife and opened the can. They considered building a fire in the center aisle, using cotton padding from some of the seats, but Roscoe decided against it. After all, there was no way to tell if there was still any gasoline left in the bus’s tank. If there was, the cookfire could burn through the floor and blow the vehicle—and its occupants to kingdom come.
Their canteen was nearly empty, so Sam pried down one of the side windows and, uncapping the flask, held it outside for a minute or two. It wasn’t long before the canteen was filled to the neck with fresh rainwater. While they passed the water, beans, and cornbread around, they talked about one thing or another. Finally, Roscoe knew it was time to talk about a few things concerning Fear County that he’d neglected to tell Jeb and Sam before.
