Bad Juju: A Novel of Raw Terror (23 page)

The dirt floor rippled like dark
pond water, as if the soil had all at once come alive.

Dey here, cher,
Rose
whispered inside her head.
De Yawahoos!

“Yessss,” Agnes rasped, knowing her
blood had drawn them. She slumped over the blood-slick stump and slid to the
ground. The swarthy dirt began to swarm over her bleeding arm like an army of
bugs. A swirling dust devil arose from the floor and danced over her, grains of
dirt stinging her naked skin and stealing beneath her eyelids. She saw things
no human could’ve ever imagined, visions of luminous creatures in a world without
light. They were communing with her, reading her most closely held wishes and
divining the deepest secrets of her soul. They were
feeding
on her. The
pain was ecstatic. When she opened her mouth to scream, the animated dirt
filled the fleshy cavity and silenced her forever.  

When Corny came to, Mr. Jones and
Mr. Tilley were looking down at him, their faces lumpy with concern. Behind
their heads, the stormy sky was all churned up like water in a mud puddle when
you stir up the bottom dirt with a stick.

“Cornelius? Are you all right?”
asked Mr. Tilley.

“Told him to be careful,” Mr. Jones
said, then spat on the ground as if he had something distasteful in his mouth
and couldn’t get rid of it.

“I reckon I fell,” Corny said,
sitting up.

Rufus Tilley put his writer’s hand
on Corny’s shoulder and said, “Don’t stand up too fast. Go easy now.”

“What the hell happened, boy?”
demanded Mr. Johnson.

“Wasp stung me,” he said, rubbing
his aching hand. “Think the stinger’s still in there. S’like a hot needle
stickin’ me.”

“Didn’t break anything, did you?”
Mr. Tilley squatted beside him.

“Don’t think so. Just a little
bummed up.”

“Good thing you got a hard head,”
said Mr. Jones.

Rufus Tilley shot the man a hard
look, then said, “Stand up real slow now.”

Corny got to his feet. Rolling
thunder pounded the sky. “They’re rollin’ pumpkins down the stairs,” he said
with a crooked smile. “That’s what my daddy used to say when it thundered like
that.”

“How do you feel?” asked Mr.
Tilley. “Dizzy?”

“No suh. Well, maybe just a
little.”

Big drops of rain began to fall on
the lawn, the biggest Corny had ever seen, though they were spaced far apart.

“Comin’ up a real frog choker,”
said Mr. Jones, glancing up at the turbulent sky. “Better get inside ’fore we
all get struck by a thunderbolt.”

“Aunt Mattie’s gone kill me,” said
Corny. “I’s spoze to have them gutters cleaned out before it rains.”

“Your aunt will be so thankful you
weren’t seriously hurt, I don’t think she’ll go too hard on you,” the writer
said with a wink. “Let’s get inside.”

He followed the men into the house,
wondering what the weird feeling he was having was all about. Something
was...not exactly wrong, but different. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that
he’d lost something or left something behind. It was right there in the back of
his mind. If he could just concentrate hard enough then he could see what it
was. It was right there, right in...

“You ort to put some tobacco on
that sting to draw the venom out,” said Mr. Jones. “Best thing you can do for
it.”

Then it was gone, like a door in
his head had slammed shut and sealed off whatever it was he was trying to get
to.
Damn that Mr. Jones. Always running his mouth like he knows it all.
Corny immediately felt bad for thinking so ill of the old man. The old guy was
only trying to be helpful.

Corny thanked the two men for
seeing about him, then stopped off at the fridge for a glass of iced tea and
took it to his room. He kicked off his sneakers and fell back onto his bed.

For some reason, he felt an
overwhelming sense of loneliness, as if someone close to him had just died. He
laid an arm over his eyes and cried tears of real grief—though he had no idea
why he should be grieving so.

***

Luke stood in front of the vanity,
gazing into a looking glass clouded with years of exposure to whatever it was
in the air that caused mirrors to cloud up. Probably oxidation, he thought.
Then a crazy idea flitted into his mind—the idea that the mirror was cloudy
because it had kept a little part of every reflection it had ever held. He
looked at his own hazy reflection and shook his head. Such fairytale notions
were foreign to him, and he chastised himself for entertaining the thought.
Ree’s
haunted-mirror tale must be getting to me.

Ree crept up behind him and stood
on tiptoe so she could rest her chin on his left shoulder. “See anything
interesting?”

“Uh-huh. You.”

She nibbled at his ear lobe.

“You’re not afraid Beau will get
jealous?”

“No, silly. I told you, that was in
another lifetime. Now he’s nothing more than my guardian.”

The bell over the shop’s door
tinkled, gaily announcing the arrival of a customer braving the inclement
weather. Ree disengaged from Luke, smoothed the front of her blouse and walked
into the front room to greet the patron. Luke stared into the mirror a moment
longer, then combed his hair with his fingers, lamenting the fact that his hair
was thinning on top. When he felt the urge to speak to the alleged man in the
mirror, he spun on his heels and walked away. Then, in uncharacteristic
behavior, he turned back to the vanity and whispered, “She’s mine, now, Beau.
Keep your dead paws off her.”

“Luke?” Ree called from the other
room. There was an edge of anxiety in her voice, and he moved quickly to see
what was wrong.

Wearing a yellow rain slicker,
Chief Keller was standing with her by the door, his face a mask of worry.
Through the glass display windows, Luke saw a hard, slanting rain beating down
on the street and on the squad car parked in front of the shop.

“You ain’t gone believe this,” said
Keller when he saw Luke.

“Believe what?”

“Joe Rob Campbell escaped.”

“Nah.”

“Yep. Walked right out the front
door. I wasn’t there at the time, but hell, it’s still on me.”

“Jesus, Bill, how’d he get out of
the cell?”

“Played sick. Like he was out cold.
Then got the jump on Snow and Holly and locked them in the cell. He took off
with Snow’s pistol, too. You seem to know a lot about the boy. You got any idea
where he might go?”

Luke shrugged. “Not really. If he
doesn’t wanna get caught, I guess he’d leave the county.”

“His car’s impounded, so if he
didn’t steal some wheels, he’s on foot. I figured I’d better let you know,
since you’re the one who took him into custody. I don’t think he’d be bent on
revenge, but you never can tell with a boy like that. He ain’t quite right in
the head, what with all that crazy stuff he said about seeing dark things
everywhere.”

“Well, thanks for alerting me. Let
me know if I can be of help.”

The chief nodded. “I just saw your
truck out front and figured I’d give you the bad news. Y’all have a good one.”
He touched his fingers to the brim of his hat, then went out the door, the bell
above it ringing with a mocking peal.

“I’ll be damned,” Luke said. “That
boy’s not helping his case with this stunt.”

Ree moved close to him and put a
hand on his chest. “I know what you’re thinking. If you want to look for him,
I’ll be fine by myself. I’d rather you didn’t because it could be dangerous for
you, but I just want you to know that you don’t have to stay here to baby-sit
me. I’m not as spooked as I was by my...vision. I just want us to get off on
the right foot, you know? The last thing I want to do is smother you.”

He smiled. “You can smother me any
time, babe.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. And I really do appreciate
it. You’re too good to be true.”

She hugged him. “I’ll be true to
you, big boy. As long as you’re true to me.”

“Count on it.” He kissed her parted
lips. He tasted her wintergreen mint. He drew back and said, “I think I’ll just
stay right here. Chief Keller can do his job without my help. I’m just a
private citizen now. A regular Joe Blow.”

“Mmmm, you’re giving me wicked
ideas, Mr. Blow,” she said with a vampish look.

“But I thought you were going to
teach me the antique business.”

“Oh, I am. But that’s not all I have
to teach you. I was just thinking up a wicked homework assignment for you.”

“As long as you’re there to help me
with the, uh, blow-by-blow.”

They laughed together.

A crack of thunder rang the bell
over the door.

***

Joe Rob slogged through the piney
woods, his shoulders hunched against the heavy rainfall. Mud sucked at his
shoes, and his socks were already soaked through-and-through, clinging to his
feet like an extra layer of clammy skin. The .38 he’d found in the desk drawer
at the police station was stuck in the waist of his jeans. He would’ve taken
one of the shotguns racked on the wall, but a civilian walking out of the
station house with a shotgun would’ve attracted unwanted attention.

He knew the smart thing to do now
was to get the hell out of Vinewood and out of Georgia, but something he
couldn’t identify seemed to be holding him here—some vague sense of unfinished
business. It would be good to see Skeeter before he lit out—perhaps to
Florida—but that was too risky. The cops would probably be expecting him to
contact his best friend and would be keeping close tabs on Skeeter, so he had
no plans for seeing him in person. He would try to catch him with a phone call.
The same was true for his grandmother. No way could he sneak home for a farewell
visit to the old lady. He regretted that he’d sullied the family name (he knew
that was how
she
would see things) and that he couldn’t thank her in
person for taking him in and seeing him through high school. His grandmother
and Skeeter were the only real ties he had to Vinewood now, but he was more
than ready to sever those ties. So what was it that was still holding him to
this place? He had no clue. All he had was the sense that invisible ties as
strong as thick vines were binding him to the land. And he didn’t like it at
all.

His immediate course of action was
hiking to Candyman’s trailer for something to eat, some ready cash and some
clean clothes. Then if he decided to hit the road, he would take Candy’s old
Harley—if they could get the vintage hog up and running. Candy would balk at
the idea of letting him ride off on his chopper, but if Joe Rob decided to go,
the fat fuck wasn’t about to stand in his way.

A deafening crash of thunder
startled him, and he slipped on muddy pine straw and went down hard. As he was
getting to his feet, a blinding bolt of lightning struck a tall pine less than
ten yards in front of him, the concussion of the strike knocking him back on
his ass. A ball of red-and-blue fire ran down the trunk of the tree and hit the
ground, where it broke apart like a giant drop of water and spread little
rivulets of flame in all directions. One tiny tributary of fire darted over the
earth and touched the toe of his left boot. A tingling sensation ran through
him like a weak electric current, and he tried to crawl backward to get away
from the freakish fire, slipping in the mud and falling flat on his back. The
tingling stopped, leaving his muscles so relaxed that he couldn’t move, so he
lay there with the heavy rain hitting his face, blurring his vision and making
him gag on the water pouring into his nostrils and down the back of his throat.
Just when he thought he might actually be drowned by rainfall, he coughed and
sputtered and sat up, his motor control returning.

He heard music. Someone was
strumming steel strings of a guitar. A bluesy progression of chords.

He wiped water from his eyes and
saw his father sitting cross-legged on the ground, his back braced against the
lightning-struck pine tree.

  “Dad?” he said, his voice
waterlogged and hoarse.

Billy Joe Campbell looked up from
his finger work on the frets and grinned at his son. Then he started humming
along with the guitar, and the humming became a musical moan. It was the
blackest blues Joe Rob had ever heard. It was a sound too sad for human ears,
an eerie tune not born of this earth. He knew this instinctively—and with great
certainty.

“Devil’s fucking Valley,” Billy Joe
sang.

Then Joe Rob saw the blood-caked
crater in the side of his father’s head, and he knew his old man was dead.

“You’re a fu-fucking ghost,” he
stammered.

Billy Joe winked a dead eye at his
son and played on.

***

The sound of the rain beating on
the roof and windows of his old pickup gave Boots Birdwell goose bumps and made
him shiver. It was not the pleasant sort of shiver he sometimes got from a
thunderstorm. He was cozy and dry, sitting here behind the wheel of his old
Ford, but
this
case of the shivers was the kind you get when somebody
walks over your grave or when you hear the lonesome hoot of an owl in the
middle of the night and you know it’s foretelling the death of someone close to
you.

Something bad was coming.

Could be it was already here.
Coming down all around like the rain, seeking its lowest levels and seeping
into the darkest nooks and crannies of the human heart to foul the mortal soul.

Boots had seen it before. Evil
conjured by hate and set against folks who had no idea of its power in this
world and never saw it coming till it was too late to get out of the way.  He
had seen it only once, a long time ago, but he remembered it as clearly as if
it had happened last week. He’d been living in Florida then, in a little
settlement of colored folks on the edge of the Everglades swamp. The place was
never on any map and never had a legal name, though folks in the area called it
Holy Crossing. That was back in his rambling days, before he settled down to a
steady job with the railroad. He was a wild buck back then, drinking shine,
carousing with fast women and committing just about every sin there was—including
killing. He’d got into a fight with a rowdy young bull at a juke house, and
when the man went at him with a knife, Boots had flicked out his straight razor
and opened up the poor bastard’s throat. He would never forget the bug-eyed
look of surprise on the dying man’s face as his blood spurted three feet in
front of him and fell on the sawdust floor like red rain. He’d often wondered
if that killing had anything to do with the black evil that fell on Holy
Crossing a few months later. He knew he hadn’t been a specific target of the
old conjure woman who called up the darkness, but still he wondered if the
killing hadn’t contributed to the general atmosphere of wickedness that hung
over the swampland community like dirty fog. He was certainly not without
sin—not back then.