Drummer Boy: A Supernatural Thriller (19 page)

“The bulldozers ripping the mountain to pieces?”

“Maybe. Ghosts are sensitive to disturbances of their resting place.”

“Think it has anything to do with the Stoneman’s Raid re-enactment?”

“Who knows? Maybe the ghosts have been walled inside the mountain listening to those bugle calls and shouts of muster and it triggered some sort of memory. If they get energy from the things around them, they get stronger the more they get pestered. Maybe they get a charge just from us sitting out here thinking about them.”

“Man, this sounds pretty damned loopy, you know?”

“Hey, all you got to do is tell this to a grown-up, and I’m sure you’ll get a rational explanation, a warning not to trespass, and a weekly session with the school shrink. Only kids can be trusted with this kind of knowledge.”

Bobby took a sip from his Gatorade bottle and peered through the tree trunks at the grassy entrance to the Hole. “I reckon. But if we don’t see anything, this never happened, right?”

Vernon Ray looked through the binoculars for a moment, then lowered them and turned to Bobby, red rings impressed around his eyes. The brown irises and thick lashes again reminded Bobby of Bambi, and he hoped his friend wouldn’t say anything stupid and sensitive. Why couldn’t he just be a
guy
, for Christ’s sake?

“Thanks for coming along,” Vernon Ray said, though it looked like he wanted to say more.

“Well, I’m a sucker for anything weird,” Bobby said, hoping Vernon Ray wouldn’t translate it into an invitation of some kind. “I mean, beats hell out of sitting around watching the race or doing homework.”

“Think you’ll get in trouble?”

“I was born in trouble.”

Vernon Ray was about to respond when Bobby heard a pattering like rain on leaves. He squinted at the sky, and though some gray clouds had gathered, there was more than enough blue to patch a pair of jeans. The wind had picked up a little and the sun-speckled canopy was whispering in a parched autumn voice, limbs creaking slightly. “Shh,” Bobby said.

“I hear it, too,” Vernon Ray said.

“Ratta-tatta-tat?”

“You got it.”

Bobby lifted the camera, ready for action. “Showtime.”

The rolling thunder of drumbeats was muffled at first, echoing from deep within the Hole, oozing forward as if testing the resistance of air.

“Rolling out reveille,” Vernon Ray said, sweeping the clearing with the binoculars. “Time for the troops to fall in.”

Bobby heard the scuffing of fallen leaves before he saw the man. At least, he was big enough to be a man, a few inches over six feet and filled out, though his arms seemed a little scrawny. Maybe the overalls exaggerated the effect, but there was a childlike quality to the man’s movements, as if he had only recently learned to walk.

“It’s one of them,” Vernon Ray whispered.

“No, I don’t think so. He looks a little too
real
.”

“Something’s off about him.”

Bobby wanted say that
everybody
was a little off, especially V-Ray, but he was too intent on following the man’s movements. His wobbly steps were carrying him straight toward the Hole, though the way he cocked his head made it appear he was listening for instead of looking for his destination.

“Dude, that’s Hardy Egger’s boy,” Bobby said. Donnie Eggers had attained some urban-legend status himself, as few people had ever actually seen him. The story of a mute, senile, drooling lunatic locked away in the old farmhouse was juicy enough to launch a hundred variations.

Some told it that Donnie was the lone survivor of a summer-camp serial killer and didn’t have enough marbles left to tell the cops the killer’s identity. Others chalked it up to a weird red church over in Whispering Pines where some people had died. Vernon Ray had looked on the Internet but a Google search for “Donnie Eggers” had yielded hundreds of Web pages about Donnie Osmond, chicken hatcheries, and genealogical records of people who had died long before George Washington had dropped his trousers to the King.

“I thought they never let him out of the house.”

“Look how he’s walking. Like a spaz.”

“He’s following the sound of the drum.”

“Creepy.” Bobby clicked a picture of Donnie, figuring he would get a little attention for providing proof of the man’s existence. He checked the photo and found it was blurred, but before he could aim the camera again, Vernon Ray elbowed him.

“Holy molars, Batman,” Vernon Ray said.

Coming through the trees behind Donnie, marching in a ragged line, were a half-dozen soldiers. They reminded Bobby of the re-enactments his dad participated in, except these guys looked worn and haggard, as if they had been in a real war for years instead of a pretend one for a weekend. Bringing up the rear was a man in an overgrown felt cowboy hat, a scabbard dangling from his belt.

“They don’t look like ghosts,” Bobby said.

“Of course not. They’re actualized.”

“Do what?”

“They’ve become real.”

Bobby clicked a couple of pictures, not stopping to check them lest he miss a good shot. Donnie was nearly to the Hole now, and the drum roll swelled into a cavernous echo. “Then they should show up on the digital, right?”

“Something should. Ectopic matter, maybe, or ether.”

“They’re headed for the Hole.”

“And taking the Eggers boy with them. Just like they tried to take me.”

It sounded weird to call Donnie Eggers a “boy,” but despite his size there was a definite boyish innocence about him. Or maybe his imbecility brought a lack of motor control that made him appear vulnerable and fragile.

Bobby lowered the camera. “Damn. Think we ought to save him? He probably doesn’t know what he’s doing if he’s out of his mind.”

“What can we do? These are
ghosts
, for Christsakes.”

“Go get the cops.”

“And then what?”

Donnie’s halting steps led him to the mouth of the cave, where he stood swaying and blinking into the darkness. The snare reveille rattled out of the stone tunnel and filled the forest. The weary, slump-shouldered troops narrowed the distance and were approaching Donnie when the drum fell silent. The soldiers stood hunched in place, at raggedy parade rest, with only the bearded man with the scabbard moving, taking brisk but discordant steps to the front of the line.

“I don’t think the cops will do a damn bit of good,” Vernon Ray said.

“Well, if they’re solid, they can be shot and killed,” Bobby said.

“I don’t think it works like that. They’re already dead, remember?”

“So we just watch while they do a ghost version of throwing a virgin sacrifice into a volcano?”

“Well, there’s one other option. That bearded creep must be the colonel.”

“Colonel Kirk?”

“The leader.”

The man with the scabbard-
Colonel Creep
, Bobby decided-stopped in front of Donnie, but Donnie stared at the ground, swaying back and forth as if the snare were still rattling out its rhythm. Through the zoom of the lens, the colonel’s eyes looked like black, miniature versions of the Jangling Hole.

Bobby looked at his friend, running down the many other options besides the one he knew Vernon Ray would offer. “We can shut our mouths and pretend nothing ever happened. We can say we got photos but have no idea what happened to the Eggers boy. We can say we thought they were Civil War re-enactors.”

“I know what it’s like in the Hole. If they take him in there, he’ll never come out.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah. We can’t let that happen.”

Bobby sighed, reluctant to lose the Karen Greene hero-worship fantasy. Or possibly his life, for that matter. “Well, at least we won’t have to worry about becoming grown-ups.”

“You want to do it, or me?”

“Which way you running?”

“You’re faster than me, so you head across the ridge. When they follow, I’ll grab Donnie and drag him away.”

“What if they don’t all chase me, or if more of them come out of the Hole?”

“Nobody lives forever.”

“Except
them
.”

Donnie still hadn’t looked at Colonel Creep. The other soldiers sagged like handless puppets, waiting to be snapped into action. The air was charged with expectation, as if the static were building for a thunderbolt. Bobby let the camera dangle from the strap around his neck and stood up, emerging from the concealment of the laurels.

He cupped his hands to his mouth. “Up here, you dirty Connecticut Yankee dogs.”

Donnie was the first to turn his head, followed by the bearded colonel. Shaking, Bobby lifted his middle finger and shot the ghost a bird, wondering if the universal hand signal for “Screw you” had been in vogue in the 1860s.

Vernon Ray waited in the thicket, peering through the binoculars.

“What’s he doing?” Bobby asked.

“Darn. Better duck.”

The soldiers, without speaking, had turned their attention toward Bobby, some of them raising their rifles. Bobby wondered if the ghostly musket balls and minis had any power in the real world, and decided despite his bravado about not growing up, he was in no rush to get killed.

For one thing, he still had a few gaps in his Spiderman collection to fill, and for another, he was going to kiss Karen Greene before the eighth grade was over. And one more notion ran under the others: if he died, then maybe his ghost would be stuck on Mulatto Mountain, too, conscripted to an endless darkness with the cold company of Colonel Creep’s Raiders.

He dodged behind a massive gnarled oak just as thunder erupted. Lead balls ripped though the leaves over his head, answering his question about the reality of ghost bullets. The soldiers scattered and headed up the slope toward him, their feet making no noise as they passed over the carpet of dead, dry leaves.

Bobby cupped his hands and yelled. “What now, Ghostbuster?”

“Run for it,” Vernon Ray said.

“Which way?”

“Both.”

“Great plan.” Another volley sounded, and Bobby peered around the oak to check the positions of the approaching soldiers. Two stood in the clearing by the cave, smoke rising from their rifles. One was reloading.

Good thing they’re using breech loaders instead of semiautomatics
,
or I’d be Swiss cheese.

Donnie finally looked up, though Bobby couldn’t make out his expression, and the colonel drew his sword from its dull brass scabbard and pointed it toward Bobby in another universal “Screw you” signal.

So much for Vernon Ray’s plan of “Divide and conquer.” Time for Plan B: Get the hell out of Dodge.

Bobby broke from cover and scrambled across the ridge, the protruding granite boulders giving him cover. He wondered if the sheriff’s deputy had known he was shooting at ghosts yesterday. Since cops were trained to be good shots, it probably proved that ghosts couldn’t be killed. On the other hand, ghosts seemed not only able and willing to kill the living, but took the mission pretty seriously. After all, Kirk’s Raiders had spent a century and a half stewing on their resentments.

An explosion of powder sounded. Something pinged off a nearby boulder, throwing rock chips in the air.

Bobby stayed low and kept running, dancing between rocks and trees the way he dodged tacklers on the gridiron, the camera bouncing off his rib cage, the dying green smell of autumn forest mixed with the rot of loam. Another shot echoed through the trees. He wondered if Vernon Ray had enough sense to run away, then realized they were almost recreating yesterday’s chase, only this time it was dead soldiers and not the law that was after them.

Breathing hard, he reached the highest point of the ridge, where storm-sheared hickory trees stood in jagged brown lines. A low branch thwacked him across the cheek, nearly knocking him off his feet. He rubbed the stinging flesh and hurried onward. He was about to descend the slope, figuring to curl around the rocky promontory and wait for Vernon Ray at the bottom of the mountain, when he heard a loud, low rumble.

Too loud for rifles.

Cannon? A hundred snare drums?

He slowed and squinted at the sky. Cloudy, but not dark enough for thunder.

Bobby found a rocky, rain-cut gully and scooted down it, sliding in the black mud. The mechanical chugging grew louder. The gulley opened onto a clearing of cut trees and an open, level gash of brown soil.

Two dump trucks and a logging truck were parked along one edge of a rough dirt road, and a bulldozer was parked in the clearing, black smoke rising from its smokestack. Bobby waved his arms and ran toward the man in the baseball cap who was revving the noisy, stinky diesel engine.

The man didn’t see Bobby at first, and Bobby climbed onto the dozer’s thick steel tread. He grabbed the dozer operator’s shirt and the man spun in surprise, nearly knocking Bobby from the bulldozer. “What?” the man shouted.

“Ghosts,” Bobby said, knowing it sounded like a bratty prank, but too shocked to tell anything but the simplest truth.

“Go?” the man yelled.

“They got somebody,” Bobby said, pointing toward the ridge.

The man’s face was blotched and his eyes bloodshot. His breath smelled of beer and onions. His eyebrows furrowed in anger and he yanked down the throttle, quieting the engine to a deep throb. “What you talking about?”

“They got my friend.”

“Who got him?”

“Ghosts. From the Jangling Hole.”

The man’s face scrunched again, but he must have seen the fear and panic in Bobby’s eyes. “Who are you?”

Bobby was again too shaken to lie. “Bobby Eldreth.”

“The plumber’s kid?”

Bobby nodded.

“What you doing out here? Don’t you know this is private land?”

“We came to see the ghosts.”

“That’s just stories they make up for kids on Halloween.”

“I saw them. And they’re taking away the Eggers boy. They’re taking him into the Hole.”

The man fidgeted with the throttle. “You been smoking something?”

“No, sir. You got to help.”

“I don’t know what you seen. But the Eggers boy ain’t got enough letters in his soup bowl to spell ‘C-A-T,’ much less wander this far from home. I got work to do.”

“Please.”

The man’s mouth twisted in a “Hell with it” mime then he shut the engine down. The diesel engine chugged, chuffed, and died, acrid exhaust hanging in the air. Bobby hopped off the dozer and waited for the man to climb down.