Fear, page 24
“I want to tell you two about how things are here in Fear County,” said the bluesman. “I tried to tell you how bad this godforsaken place is, but I didn’t tell you all of it. I want to do that now, before we go any farther.”
“All right,” agreed Jeb. “Go ahead. We’re listening.”
“Well, first of all, there ain’t no real reason why Fear County is so dadblamed evil,” continued Roscoe. “It ain’t like the storybooks. There ain’t no long-ago Indian curses or anything of the sort to explain why things are the way they are. It’s just like this particular patch of land was made naturally bad when God first breathed life into the world. Things are kinda out of kilter here. The folks hereabouts don’t act like normal people. They’re mean and ornery, and have nary a kind word to say to anyone, even their own kin. Some are drunkards, thieves, and drug fiends, while others are just plain stone-cold murderers.”
Jeb recalled that Saturday morning five years ago. “You mean like Jack Gallow?”
Roscoe’s eyes narrowed behind his thick glasses. “Lawdy, boy, where’d you ever hear of that son-of-a-bitch?”
“I was there on Main Street the morning they caught him and sent him off to prison,” Jeb told him. “He’d kidnapped a baby for some reason.”
The Negro nodded grimly. “I recall hearing about that. Bad business, from what I gathered.”
“I think he’d done something to the kid’s arm, but I don’t know what,” said Jeb.
Roscoe’s eyes told the boy that he knew exactly what had happened, but wasn’t about to say it out loud. “Yeah, that Jack Gallow was an evil bastard, that’s for sure. But there’s others in Fear County that’re a shade worse.”
Jeb remembered the bearded man with the wild look in his eyes and the butcher knife in his hand, and couldn’t fathom anything more evil than that.
The black man went on. “Even nature ain’t the same as it is in the neighboring counties. The trees, the plants, even the earth beneath your feet … all are dripping with shadow and full of poison. Don’t ever eat a nut or apple off a tree in Fear County, ’cause it could very well be the death of you. And the critters here ain’t like any you’ve ever known over in Mangrum County. They don’t take the laws of nature to heart. Animals mate with animals they have no business mating with. Birds mate with reptiles and reptiles mate with dogs and cats. That creature that’s been terrorizing Pikesville is probably the offspring of some such act of fornication. And there are other critters in Fear County that don’t have no link a’tall to God’s creatures. Critters that don’t have no rightful name and likely never will.”
“But there is some good here, ain’t it?” asked Jeb. “Like the Granny Woman?”
“That’s right, but she’s just one person in the entire county. She supposedly lives in a place called Paradise Hollow a good ten miles south of the county seat of Brimstone. I’ll be honest with you, Jeb. I’ve traveled across Fear County before, but it was from south to north, and not north to south. I’ve never walked this stretch of road before today, but I know where Brimstone is located and, if Paradise Hollow is where it’s supposed to be, we shouldn’t have no trouble finding it a’tall.”
“I sure hope so,” said the boy. He thought of his grand-mother, dying in the upstairs bedroom of Claudine Johnson’s house, as well as Mandy Rutherford trapped in a cocoon of tough snakeskin and at the mercy of the snake-critter in the cliffside cave. If he didn’t find the Granny Woman, both would surely be doomed.
“There’s something else I forgot to tell you,” said Roscoe, his face grim. “We’ll have to keep a watch out for the Snake Queen.”
Sam’s eyes widened with fright. “The Snake Queen? Who is she?”
“Another witch, or so the story goes,” explained the musician. “But she ain’t a good one like the Granny Woman. She’s the curse-flinging, chicken-sacrificing kind. Makes the Wicked Witch of the West look like a dadblamed Sunday school teacher. They say she lives to make misery and chaos, and that she dwells on the far side of Adder Swamp. She lives in a nest of every kind of snake you could think of and thinks of each and every one as her children.”
“The snake-critter,” said Jeb. “Do you think it came from Adder Swamp?”
“Could have,” agreed Roscoe. “I just hope we don’t run into the Snake Queen or any of her young’uns before we reach Paradise Hollow.”
“Me either,” replied the boy, feeling more than a little uneasy.
Fortunately for Jeb’s youthful nerves, the conversation shifted away from the subject of Fear County and they began to talk about other things. After the beans and cornbread had been finished off, Roscoe took up his guitar and began to sing a few tunes. He had sung half a dozen songs when he started to play a Roy Acuff song called “Wreck on the Highway,” but he neglected to even finish it. The lightning of the thunderstorm flashed outside the school bus windows, revealing glimpses of the wrecked vehicles, stacked one atop the other. Seeing all that devastation and destruction in one place kind of put a damper on the blues man’s singing and picking, and he put the guitar aside, looking a little spooked.
The storm raged on, giving no indication of letting up. Despite the fact that it was the height of summer and they were shut up in a bus whose windows were mostly fused shut, it seemed a little chilly inside the old wreck. Sam brought out several woolen blankets and they each settled upon a seat, turning it into a makeshift bed. The darkness of twilight descended swiftly and, soon, they were asleep, exhausted by the distance they had walked that day.
Jeb’s slumber was more restless than that of the others. He kept hopping from one nightmare to the other. One was the recurring dream concerning McHenry’s Funeral Home and the three caskets. Others included the murder of Old Jack and his narrow escape from the cave in the bank of the Cumberland River. As one dreamscape dimmed, revealing yet another, Jeb hoped that the next would be something cheerful and pleasant. But that wasn’t the case. They always turned out to be even more depressing and horrifying than the nightmare before.
The farmboy was jolted awake by a particularly loud clap of thunder. He muttered a soft cry and propped himself on his elbows, staring into the darkness. The storm was at its pinnacle; lightning cracked wickedly and rain fell in heavy sheets, drumming almost deafeningly upon the roof of the school bus. During one lightning flash, Jeb caught a glimpse of Roscoe and Sam in the two seats opposite his own. The Negro had his dusty fedora down over his eyes and his blanket pulled clean up to his stubbly chin. Sam was sprawled on his back, his mouth wide open and his legs dangling off the edge of the seat. Jeb reached down beside his own seat and felt his dog sleeping on the floor of the bus. Buckshot’s ribs rose and fell gently, but every now and then the coonhound would twitch violently, as if enduring a doggy nightmare of his own.
Jeb lay back down and was about to attempt sleep again, when he heard something echo from outside the school bus. It was a long, shrill shriek that he couldn’t identify at first. Then, as it came to its climax and ended in a crunch of crumpling metal, he knew what it was. It was the distant sound of tortured brakes, just before a fatal crash.
The noise was followed by a scream—a woman’s from the sound of it and then the sound of weeping. The urge to sit up and look out the side window almost overcame Jeb, but he resisted it. He simply lay there, staring up at the leaky ceiling of the bus, his ears straining to hear more.
And he did. As the storm grew in intensity, so did the sounds of squealing brakes, buckling steel, and shattering glass. The sounds grew so plentiful that the boy could’ve sworn he was caught in the middle of a demolition derby. But he knew if he looked out the window, he would see none of the vehicles moving across the cluttered acreage of the junkyard. Rather, they would be right where they had been earlier that day, resting, mangled and beyond use, one atop the other.
The sounds of automotive carnage seemed to grow nearer, causing a dread to settle in the pit of Jeb’s stomach. He lay there on the seat, waiting. Then, abruptly, it was the school bus’s turn to participate. Jeb heard the shriek of brakes and felt the bus lurch sharply. There was a loud crash of folding metal and breaking glass. For an instant, Jeb had the dizzy sensation of spinning, as if the vehicle was rolling over, time and time again. Then there was a bouncing of struts and springs, and the bus seemed as if it were back on its tires.
Jeb’s heart thundered in his chest as he lay there and listened, knowing that it wasn’t over yet. He was right. There was a long stretch of silence, then it began; the cries and moans of the injured and dying. The terrible commotion filled the bus, seemingly coming from every seat and the aisleway in between. From the driver’s seat, Jeb could detect the deep groaning of a man, as well as a nasty sucking sound. Jeb could picture the terrifying scene in his mind; the school bus driver impaled on the twisted column of the steering wheel, still alive but unable to pry the obstruction from his shattered ribcage.
Jeb clamped his hands over his ears and attempted to drown out the sounds around him. But he couldn’t. In fact, they almost seemed to come from inside his head, rather than outside.
Then, from the seat directly in front of the one Jeb lay on, came the mournful cry of a child perhaps six or seven years of age. It was a heart-wrenching cry, full of agony and the fear of death. Jeb looked up at the top of the seat and watched, terrified, as something appeared over the edge. It was the pale hand of a small child, glistening with fresh blood. The tiny fingers were curled like the talons of a bird and, through the torn flesh, Jeb could see naked bones, some jagged and splintered.
Jeb clinched his eyes shut, trying to drive away the sight of the mutilated hand. Go away! His thoughts pleaded. Please… just go away and leave me alone!
The crying of the child in the next seat grew louder, and then faded. Another clap of thunder shook the junkyard and, abruptly, it was over. The school bus returned to an empty hull of a wreck. If the ghosts of its former victims had, indeed, been there, they were gone now, leaving only bloodstained seats and discarded textbooks.
Slowly, Jeb opened his eyes. The mangled hand was no longer creeping into view. Only empty darkness yawned beyond the edge of the seat.
The farmboy released a sigh of relief. He sat up and peered toward the front of the bus, seeing only empty seats and the shattered frame of the windshield. He then turned his attention toward Roscoe and Sam. Both men had slept throughout the horrifying spectacle. He glanced down at Buckshot. The one-eyed bluetick was also fast asleep.
Jeb considered waking them up and telling them about what he had experienced, but he didn’t. Instead, he lay back down and closed his eyes. He didn’t sleep for a very long time that night. Every time he began to drift off, the apparition of the dying child’s hand came back, reaching toward him, and he would wake up, afraid that it might follow him into the inescapable confines of yet another nightmare.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Something Underneath
They awoke the next morning to find sunlight streaming through the dirty windows of the school bus. Water dripped sluggishly from the broken seams of the roof, but it was the last remnants of the thunderstorm. Jeb sat up and listened for the singing of robins and sparrows, but he heard no such comforting sounds. It took him a moment to realize exactly where he was and, again, that antsy feeling of dread fluttered in the pit of his belly.
“You don’t look so good, Jeb,” said Roscoe from the seat opposite him. “Did you have a bad night?”
Jeb nodded. He almost told him about what had happened last night, and then decided not to. “I had me a passel of nightmares all night long,” he said. “Hardly got a wink of sleep.”
“I slept like a winter bear, but I had me one hellacious dream, too,” replied the bluesman. “Dreamt that I met the Granny Woman and she was my own mother, God rest her soul.” The very thought of the dream seemed to unsettle Roscoe a little and he shuddered openly.
“I had a dream, too,” added Sam. “But it weren’t no nightmare. I was fighting in the war, just like John Wayne or Gary Cooper, and I was shooting at the Nazis from a foxhole. Then somebody threw a tatermasher grenade into the trench and everything went black. Funny dream, wasn’t it?”
Jeb and Roscoe traded knowing glances, but said nothing in reply.
“Roscoe?” asked Jeb, tossing off his blanket. “Can we get out of this place now? It gives me the creeps just being here.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” agreed the black man. “We’ll eat our breakfast somewheres else.”
They gathered up their gear and soon were climbing down out of the wrecked bus. As they crossed the junkyard and made their way toward the front gate, they walked around broad puddles left behind by the storm. In one such mudhole, Jeb spied the dark body of a cottonmouth snake. But it was unlike any the boy had ever seen before. When it lifted its neck from the murky water, Jeb was shocked to see that it had two heads. It hissed contemptuously as he passed, both of its fanged mouths yawning wide and exposing the pale white flesh that lined the inner jaws.
Jeb, Roscoe, Sam, and Buckshot made a hasty exit through the open gate, leaving the auto junkyard behind. They walked a mile farther down the road before they sat down beneath a huge oak tree and began to fix breakfast. Roscoe built a small fire out of twigs and dry weeds, then, taking a small cast iron skillet from his knapsack, mixed up a pan of home-made biscuits using flour, butter, and water from the canteen. They ate the biscuits with pear preserves Miss Claudine had sent with them, then put out the fire and continued down the lonely stretch of rural road, their spirits a little lighter than they had been an hour ago.
They passed a couple of wide pastures where only tall weeds and jagged tree trunks grew, and then the open land again gave way to forest. Like the woods they had passed through the day before, the upper limbs of these bowed outward and connected, casting a dense canopy of foliage above the road.
Soon, the sunshine was shut out and only speckles of light showed through the shadowy thicket.
“How far is it to Brimstone?” asked Jeb.
Roscoe shrugged his skinny shoulders. “Like I said before, boy, it’s been thirty years since I last walked this land, and, even then, I was walking from the other direction. If I had to take a wild guess, I’d say maybe two or three miles.”
Jeb didn’t know whether to be glad or frightened over the prospect of reaching the Fear County seat by late morning. On one hand, it would be nice to be away from the spooky forests and abandoned shacks, but, on the other, there was the unfriendly folks of Brimstone to consider. He recalled what Roscoe had told him about the citizens of Fear County and how they weren’t the most congenial folks on the face of God’s green earth. He was wondering exactly what they might find in Brimstone, when he almost tripped on something. He stumbled a couple of steps, and then looked behind him. Stretched across the road, was a long, leafy strand of dark green kudzu.
Puzzled, he turned to look ahead. Jeb was surprised to see that the wild ivy criss-crossed the road, growing thicker and thicker until it completely covered the bare earth some fifty feet away. He stared off into the distance, but saw no visible sign of the road reappearing. There was only the heavy carpet of kudzu, stretching as far as the eye could see.
“What the heck is this?” asked Sam.
A guarded look crossed Roscoe’s dark face. “I don’t know. I can’t recollect coming across anything like this the last time I was here.”
“What’re we gonna do?” asked Jeb. “I can’t even see where the road goes … if it’s even there anymore.”
“Aw, of course it’s there!” barked the Negro. “We’ll just keep on walking until this ivy peters out and the road shows itself again.”
Roscoe Ledbetter stepped into the kudzu and began to high-step across its leafy growth. Reluctantly, Jeb and Sam did the same. Buckshot stood at the edge of the road and watched them for a moment. Then he tucked his tail between his legs and followed.
Slowly, the kudzu grew wilder and more tangled the further they went. It wasn’t long before the road beneath their feet took a sharp dip and they found themselves up to their knees in the thick ivy, rather than up to their ankles. Once or twice, Jeb and Sam had to kick free from vines that got tangled around their lower legs. Roscoe and Buckshot seemed to make better progress. The black man’s long strides kept the kudzu from tripping him up and the dog simply jumped from spot to spot, the vegetation reaching clear to the hound’s shoulders with each hop he took.
They were halfway through the viney thicket, when Jeb yelled out. “Hey!” he called, his eyes startled.
“What’s the matter?” asked Roscoe, turning around.
Jeb looked down at the kudzu around him. “I felt something rub against my ankle. I swear I did.”
“Could’ve been a snake,” offered Sam good-naturedly. “Or some kinda furry critter like a weasel or a rat.”
“Thanks, Sam,” said Jeb with a frown. “That makes me feel a whole lot better!”
“Just forget it and let’s go,” said Roscoe. “I think I can see the road up ahead.”
Jeb craned his neck and saw that the guitar-picker was right. He could see the dusty track of the rural road, emerging from the kudzu a hundred yards ahead.
They took a couple more steps forward. Then it was Roscoe’s turn to nearly jump out of his shoes. “I felt it that time!” he said, his eyes wide behind his eyeglasses. “And it sure as hell wasn’t no snake or weasel!”
“Then what was it?” asked Sam, looking a little frightened.
“I don’t rightly know,” said Roscoe. “Felt kinda slick and slimy, and as cold as frost.”
Jeb was about to suggest that they head for the road, when Buckshot bared his teeth and began to growl. “What is it, boy?” he asked, his heart beating faster.
“Listen!” whispered Roscoe.
