Drummer Boy: A Supernatural Thriller (36 page)

The air was charged with the static of a coming storm, though only a few clouds dotted the horizon. The ground throbbed under Hardy’s feet as he ascended the road bed, and the roar of the big diesel engine shouted down the forest noises. Ahead was a gap in the laurels where he could duck into the woods and reach the cave. Hardy thought he would make it without being seen when one of the Caterpillar’s treads locked and the machine swung around sideways.

Budget Bill was in the cab, working the dozer’s levers, his hands encased in White Mule work gloves. He eased down the throttle and a tuft of black smoke spilled from the smokestack. As their eyes met, understanding and horror dawned on the developer’s face.

He thinks I’ve gone squirrel-shit nutty and that I killed Carter, trying to stop the development. And he reckons he’s next.

Hardy nodded at Budget Bill and patted the musket barrel, letting him think the worst. He let a grin creep up one side of his face, enjoying the developer’s torment. He considered the steep hike remaining to reach the Hole. Even if he made it without his heart exploding, he wouldn’t have much wind left to take on a haunted platoon before Kirk and the mountain took whatever little bit was left of his son’s mind and soul.

He pointed the musket toward Budget Bill, not bothering to aim. Budget Bill eased back on the levers and raised his hands like a prisoner in a war movie. Hardy eased the barrel of the musket back and forth, motioning for Bill to dismount. Bill reached for the ignition but Hardy shook his head. Bill climbed down, eyes flicking back and forth as if considering escape.

Hardy met him when he reached the ground and yelled over the rumble of the diesel engine. “How do you run this contraption?”

Bill, perhaps sensing if he let Hardy take the bulldozer he could escape with his life, made a pulling motion. “Left bar forward, right for back, brake in the middle.”

“Like an old Massey Ferguson tractor,” Hardy said.

Bill nodded, though Hardy suspected the developer didn’t know the first thing about Massey Fergusons. Bill would have probably agreed that the sun rose in the south and the Tooth Fairy was real if it would keep Hardy’s finger away from the trigger.

Hardy settled in the cab seat, laid his gun across his lap, and pulled back on the throttle. He yanked the lever-Budget Bill, who was skidding down the muddy road as fast as his stunted legs could carry him, hadn’t lied to him-and the dozer lurched into the saplings and strewn granite stones, grinding toward the Hole.

The Jangling Hole was cool, the air fetid. Vernon Ray was just past the reach of daylight, beyond the spot where the rubble had settled during the long-ago cave-in. The throat of the underworld was now open, the slumbering lungs taking a deep breath of the outside universe as if starved for light and life.

The dead soldiers were resting around an unseen campfire. They no longer appeared solid, except for Kirk, who crouched near the cave’s mouth and surveyed the edge of the woods. Another soldier, whose cheek bore a deep scar, stood just beyond the opening, his musket at the ready. Vernon Ray adjusted his kepi and blinked into the darkness, expecting the icy pierce of a bayonet or the muffled detonation of a deadly powder charge.

The ground trembled with the drone of heavy equipment, and a rock kicked loose from the cave ceiling and bounced near Vernon Ray’s feet. A shower of moist dirt sprinkled on his shoulder.

“You warm enough?” one of the men said, and the words echoed a couple of times before dying in the rumble of heavy equipment.

“You can talk,” Vernon Ray said, and laughter erupted around the circle, mimicking the low rumble of machinery.

“Yeah, but you can’t rightly hear,” said another soldier. His kepi was pulled low over his forehead, but white bone glinted dully where his chin should have been.

“Leave the boy alone,” Kirk ordered, before turning his gaze back to the forest outside the cave. His voice was the same as the one Vernon Ray had heard in his head during the rain-shed encounter.

Those words rose from the depths of his memory like a drowned corpse bobbing up from a watery grave:
We don’t belong together.

The soldier to the left of Vernon Ray was scraping his spoon against a tin plate, dredging up air and scooping it toward his moss-covered face. The moss parted, revealing a black maw, and the spoon entered. After a brief slurping, the spoon pulled free, dribbling bits of gooey mud. The spoon hit the plate again, combining with the rattle of hardware and the cleaning of muskets in a jangle of activity that had given the Hole its name.

There were three soldiers between Vernon Ray and the opening. Kirk was one, the sentry the second, and the last lay sprawled behind Vernon Ray, propped up on the stump of an arm. Shattered bone emerged from a ragged sleeve packed with rancid, discolored meat. The stench of corruption mingled with the mildew and mud and the acrid smoke that arose from somewhere below.

Vernon Ray thought of running for daylight, leaping the soldier behind him and plowing past Kirk. But he wasn’t sure his legs would work anymore. The Raiders had marched him up the mountain under the cover of gun-smoke, somehow diverting the attention of his dad’s Living History group.

The bullets had whizzed past, manifesting into solid things, the battle made real for a short stretch of the morning. The ghost soldiers could have killed him, or let him get shot by friendly fire, but instead they had taken him prisoner.

So they wanted him alive for a reason.

“Here come Eggers,” the sentry shouted.

Several of the soldiers reached for their muskets and Kirk rose to his feet and moved to the edge of sunlight. Vernon Ray shifted away from the dark depths of the tunnel that promised its own special brand of gravity, one that would suck and tug until all light was defeated. He knew better than to trust his depth perception in the Hole, and the grinding of the bulldozer’s steel against ancient granite added to his disorientation.

From his vantage point, he could see Donnie Eggers approaching the Hole, grinning like a rabid possum and tapping two sticks against his thighs as he juddered up the slope. Branches slapped at his face but he seemed oblivious to the welts raised in his flesh. His cotton shirt was torn, naked toes covered in mud, his hair greasy with sweat. Donnie’s wild eyes were fixed on the cave as if the darkness inside it held vast pleasures and joys.

“Go back,” Vernon Ray whispered.

“Ain’t no going back,” Kirk said, though Vernon Ray’s words had barely been audible.

That’s when the corporal came out of the trees, floating over ferns and galax and jackvine. It was the man from the railroad tracks, the one with the CSA canteen. Earley Eggers. Decades dead and as hellacious and rebellious as ever.

“All right, boys, we got one more battle,” Kirk said, and though the command was issued loudly enough to carry over the bulldozer that was crashing through the trees on the back side of the ridge, the soldiers rose with a languid reluctance. The man with the stump lifted himself by his wounded limb, gangrenous flesh dropping from the effort.

Boneface with the kepi was grinning, but Vernon Ray couldn’t tell whether it was due to nervousness or the fact that his lips had long since melted away to dust. The soldier with the red kerchief and crusty blue tunic drifted toward the mouth of the cave, moving his legs as if his spirit still harbored memory of needing them. The preternatural platoon was mustering around their leader, taking a stand, black eyes flinting tiny sparks of hellfire. They were misfits, losers, a band of outcasts that the world had no room for, a coalition of the damned whose camaraderie had survived the grave.

We don’t belong together.

And one of them had broken ranks. The deserter, Eggers.

No wonder they were riled.

But that didn’t mean the innocent should suffer. Every war had its collateral damage, every conflict its unintended targets. If Cindy Baumhower’s law of balance was correct, then Earley’s return should end the war, at least for this go-round.

But Donnie might reach the Hole first, and Kirk might decide a living Eggers was better than a dead Eggers, and fresh blood might be welcome.

Donnie was close enough that Vernon Ray could see a strand of clear drool dangling from one corner of his idiot grin. Donnie’s head bobbed as his wrists flexed in a fluid grace that defied the spastic jerking of his legs and shoulders. He was stamping out the vintages of his mental isolation, marching to the beat of an indifferent drummer.

Earley was mostly solid, though ripples of light played in his limbs as he staggered toward the Hole. His face was like dishwater, sloshing around the soulless eyes.

Kirk rubbed his beard, standing with broad shoulders squared and one hand on the hilt of his saber, his silhouette dark against the spilled shaft of sunlight. Muskets rattled as the Raiders tamped sulfur and brimstone into their barrels.

“Want them dead or alive?” Boneface asked Kirk.

“Let him go,” Vernon Ray said. “He never belonged here.”

Kirk angled his head around, then around, until he was facing Vernon Ray, though his boots and medals were still pointed toward the forest. Kirk’s words were nearly lost in the roar of the diesel engine and the cracking of tree limbs, but Vernon Ray wasn’t sure whether they were spoken or were voiced by the dank wind oozing up from the depths of the cave.

“Nobody belongs nowhere,” the voice said, reverberating in Vernon Ray’s head as if his skull were a granite sheath.

Donnie was less than 30 feet from the cave now, eyes bright with fevered hope. He would reach the Hole before Earley. And the oddest part was that Donnie, who was alive, appeared to fade and become less substantial the nearer he got, while Earley grew more solid and heavy, his scuffed boots now flopping over the ground.

The grinding, splintery thunder of the bulldozer swelled louder as the earth machine ascended the ridge.

“Vernon Ray?” came a shout from the edge of the forest.

Bobby . . . .

Bobby had raced ahead of Cindy and the sheriff, anxious to find Vernon Ray before Kirk and the goon squad siphoned him so deep into the Hole he would never return.

At least not in any recognizable, useful,
human
way. Donnie Eggers had been only half gone, according to the rumors, and an intangible half of him was trapped lurking somewhere in those black depths. Vernon Ray’s fate might be far worse.

Bobby wasn’t sure what he would do when he got to the Hole, but he slowed enough to scoop up a fist-sized stone from among the fallen leaves.
Th’ow it, doof
, Dex repeated in his head.

And if what Dad said were true, Vernon Ray was more than his best friend, more than the guy who tried to kiss him, more than a fellow survivor of the Dysfunctional Family Circus. Vernon Ray was his brother by blood. That carried extra obligation, and Bobby was willing to risk death, or whatever passed for death in the depths of the Hole, to rescue V-Ray.

When he entered the clearing in front of the Hole and beheld that terrible orifice of rock, dirt, and darkness, the sun ducked behind a clump of clouds and stretched a shadow over Mulatto Mountain. Earley Eggers staggered toward the Hole like a wayward son returning to the family doorstep.

The cave was still and empty, at least from the few feet Bobby could see of its interior. The entrance seemed like a solid wall of black glass, and he imagined that if he made it close enough to hurl his stone, the wall would shatter like a midnight mirror into a thousand sharp pieces.

And what would be behind it?

Donnie didn’t slow down. The man-child took staggering steps toward the Hole as if navigating a sheet of ice with cinder blocks on his bare feet, but he moved forward with determination and strength. Earley’s movements were almost in perfect rhythm with Donnie’s, as if the two had undergone the same parade drills and now were locked in a unison of muscle memory.

The bulldozer chuffed and trembled in the woods, tearing up trees as it made its inexorable assault on the ridge. Donnie was almost to the entrance now, Earley about 20 feet behind him. Donnie had dissolved and faded so that Bobby was able to see gray slabs of mossy granite through his body. Donnie was ten feet from the Hole when a command issued forth from the cave: “Halt!”

Bobby didn’t recognize the deep and chilling voice, but he would have bet his entire run of Silver Surfer comics that it belonged to Col. Creep. Donnie and Earley both stopped, though Donnie continued to tap out his quiet cadence, his head bobbing up and down.

“Vernon Ray?” Bobby shouted again, and he heard the reporter and the sheriff hollering after both of them, then the bulldozer burst through the line of laurels and clanked into the clearing, a wild-eyed Hardy Eggers at the controls.

The sheriff stood near the stump where the boys had been smoking cigarettes a week ago. He held his pistol in his hand as if he were the star gunslinger in a shoot-em-up western. Bobby looked down at the rock in his hand, then at Hardy’s musket.

Crapola. Am I the only one who isn’t packing heat?

Just when Bobby thought the situation couldn’t get any weirder, Capt. Jefferson Davis jumped out from behind a boulder near the cave, his saber flashing in the filtered sun. He grabbed Earley and yanked the dead, ragged scarecrow of a soldier close, pressing the saber to Earley’s neck. The captain’s Rebel yell temporarily drowned out the rumbling bulldozer.

Hardy stood in the cab of the idling bulldozer and his musket swiveled from the cave to Earley, then to Jeff Davis. The sheriff’s pistol did likewise. Cindy Baumhower had appeared at the sheriff’s side, and her camera lens also tracked between the various targets.

The commanding voice boomed from the cave again: “Looks like we have us a standoff.”

There was motion at the mouth of the cave, and a hunk of shadow broke itself free and stepped forward.

It was the man in the cavalier’s hat, the ratty ostrich plume flailing in the October breeze. Littlefield aimed his Glock at the man, and then remembered they’d already played out that scenario and all Littlefield had to show for it was an empty shell casing. Except the man-Col. George Kirk, if he believed Cindy-appeared more substantial than he had down at the park, as if submersing in the Hole had revitalized him in the same way that heated natural springs restored spa visitors.