13
“It isn’t possible,” Lucas said. “No, by God, it just isn’t possible.”
But the impossible was taking place, right before his eyes.
Tracy suddenly lost her ability to keep down the food she had eaten. She threw up, the vomit spraying the walls. The sickness was infectious, and Lucas’s own stomach emptied. Both of them staggered backward, leaning against the wall for support.
Lige had come on a run when Jackie rang the buzzer for him; he had already been moving at the sounds of the booming shotgun.
He panted up the stairs and came to a dead halt before he got to the landing. He could see what was left of the rocking horse. And could both smell and see the blood.
“Oh, Lordy, Lordy, Mr. Bowers,” he said. “You shouldn’t had oughta done that. Oh, Lordy. Now it’s really come unglued.”
Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, Lucas snapped, “What in the hell are you babbling about, now, Lige?”
Lige lifted his eyes to meet Lucas. There was something odd flickering in the man’s eyes. “You jist don’t know what you’ve done here, Mr. Bowers. You done unleashed all the devils and demons. That there horse is part of this house. Been here ever since the house was built. The house’ll git you for this. Hit’ll git you, and hit’ll git your family. But hit ain’t gonna git me. No, sir. I’m a-leavin.’ ”
He turned and ran down the steps.
“Lige!” Lucas shouted at his back. “Lige, damn you, come back here.”
“No, sir!” Lige called over his shoulder. “I’m a-leaving’ here. I’ll write and tell y’all where to send my pay. Good-bye!”
“You leave these grounds and I’ll call the law on you—Ira!”
That stopped the man cold.
Jackie and Johnny stood under the archway leading to the stairwell, watching and listening.
“Lucas,” Tracy said. “Lige is Ira?”
“I think so,” he spoke softly, just loud enough for her to hear. “But it was a wild guess.”
Lige turned slowly. When he looked up, his eyes were filled with a combination of madness and hate. His hands were balled into fists. “That’s two ways the law will get me, isn’t it, Mister Bowers?”
“Two ways, at least, Ira. Why, Ira? Why all the pretense?”
“You’re a lawyer and you’re asking that?”
Lucas grunted his reply.
“Now what happens?” Lige/Ira called up the steps.
“That’s up to you, Ira. All that talk about demons and devils—that was just an excuse for you to run, wasn’t it? You knew I was getting very suspicious of you, didn’t you?”
The man laughed and shook his head. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, ol’ buddy,” Lige/Ira suddenly got very intimate with his speech, and his grammar improved greatly. “But all that was the truth.”
“Come off it, Ira.”
The man again smiled. “You’ll see, Lucas. Oh, yes. You’ll see.”
“Are you . . . do you really expect me to believe this house is haunted?”
“Buddy, this place is the devil’s own. And you’re an interloper—you and your family. And you’ll all pay for violating something you don’t understand. You should have stayed away, Lucas.”
“I think that is pure crap! What caused this rocking horse to seemingly come alive? And the blood—that isn’t real, is it? You rigged all this to try to scare us away—right?”
“For a lawyer, Lucas, you’re a goddamned fool. Seemingly come alive? The blood not real? Oh, Lucas, you didn’t kill that old horse. It can’t be killed. It’ll be back. You just hang around and you’ll see. As long as this house stands, that horse will be a part of it. That, and . . .” He paused, then laughed. “Well, you’ll see.”
“Crap! ” Lucas spat the word. “You rigged all this. I know you did. You had to have rigged it. There is no other logical explanation.”
“Ol’ buddy,” Lige/Ira said, “there is no logical explanation for anything about this house. You’ll see, if you stay, and you probably will. You’re that goddamned stupid.” He smiled.
Lucas had difficulty trying to control his temper.
“Who were those men who broke in here last night?”
Ira shrugged. “Why not? They were part of the Brotherhood.”
“The what?”
“The Brotherhood. And they’ll be back, too. You’ll never leave Georgia alive, Lucas. None of you will. If this house don’t kill you, the Brotherhood will. You’ve been marked since before you were born, buddy. You’re the weak link in the chain.”
“What in the hell are you talking about, Ira?”
The man shook his head. “How’d you put it together about me?”
“Mostly a guess. You were trying to act a lot older than you were.”
“Very good, Lucas. But . . . now what?”
“More questions, Ira. Were you a part of those men who attacked me and my family?”
“Sure.”
Blind, red, hot rage filmed before Lucas’s eyes. With an inhuman howl ripping from his throat, he dropped the empty shotgun to the landing floor and charged down the steps toward his brother. Ira braced himself and got in the first punch, a stinging right to Lucas’s jaw. But Ira was fighting an enraged father and husband, and Lucas scarcely felt the blow. Lucas snapped a short left to Ira’s mouth and the lips of the man turned crimson, blood leaking down, dribbling on his chin, dropping off to stain his dirty shirt. Ira swung a roundhouse right that Lucas ducked, and the father slammed a hard right fist into Ira’s belly. Ira doubled over, gagging. Before Lucas could follow through, Ira stepped to one side and kicked Lucas on the leg, bringing a grunt of pain. Ira followed that with a wicked punch to the side of Lucas’s head. Lucas backed up until the stars faded in his head, then charged his brother, grabbing the man’s hips and propelling him backward, slamming the man into a wall, knocking the wind from him. Ira slumped to the floor. Just as Lucas drew back his foot to kick Ira in the face, the man scooted away and came to his feet, a knife in his hand. His grin was ugly.
“Now, Lucas,” he hissed. “Now I gut you like a fish.” He shifted the blade position to cutting edge up, for a gut-cut.
From the outside, a wolf began howling. He was joined by several more, their voices sending eerie calls throughout the mansion. Ira looked wildly around him as a strong wind began blowing, sending the drapes and curtains in the room billowing out like loose sails in a raging sea storm. The sky darkened, and lightning licked and slashed and flickered, followed by waves of seemingly endless thunder. The chorus of wolves grew more menacing as a loud voice was added to the din of confusion. It seemed to be a young voice, but a very powerful one; so loud it rattled the chandeliers.
Ira dropped the knife and put his hands over his ears as the sound became unbearable. His eyes were filled with an insane light. Then, lowering his hands, he grabbed up the knife, and charged Lucas, screaming as he came.
“I’ll kill you, you bastard! I won’t wait for the Brotherhood to do it. I’ll kill you myself.”
An explosion filled the room. The strange sounds ceased abruptly. Ira was flung forward, a hole in his chest. He slammed to the floor, quivered once, and then died, blood spilling out of his body, staining the area around him.
The house became utterly, totally deathlike in silence. Lucas lifted his eyes from his dead brother to the man standing in the open doorway, a pistol in his right hand.
The man smiled and opened his western-style sports coat, revealing a gold star pinned to his shirt. “It’s OK, folks. I heard and saw enough to know the shooting will be justified. Oh—I’m Bill Pugh, Sheriff of Edmund County. I was stoppin’ by to introduce myself. Right sudden little storm we had, wasn’t it? They do come up like that sometimes in the summer. Might have been my imagination, but did y’all hear a pack of dogs howlin’?”
* * *
“It’s so odd,” Lucas said as they lay in bed, the cool breeze from the outside gently fanning their bodies.
“What’s odd?” Tracy asked.
“I watched my own brother die today, and I felt nothing. Nothing. I still feel nothing. I don’t think that’s normal.”
“You didn’t know your brother; didn’t even have a mental picture of him. He was a stranger. Besides, isn’t normal relative to the situation? I think I read that somewhere.”
“My own brother hated me so much he wanted to kill me. How he must have hated me. He must have fed off his own hate for me.”
“He was crazy,” she said flatly. “When I think of what he might have done . . . ” She was silent for a few seconds. “I’m just glad it wasn’t you who killed him. Sheriff Pugh seems like a nice man.”
“Yes, he did. Well,” he sighed, “maybe things will start to settle down. I threw that damned rocking horse—or what remained of it—on the trash pile out back. I’ll burn it first thing in the morning.”
“Good. It still frightens me. I just don’t understand what caused it to . . . buck and jump and make those noises that it did. And that red liquid that poured from it.”
“Ira rigged that liquid. As to its jumping around. . . I don’t know. It sure did. And, Tracy, I could swear the damned thing tried to bite me. Damn!” he said, his voice full of disgust. “That’s impossible. Hell, maybe Ira filled the damn thing full of Mexican jumping beans.”
Tracy laughed softly. “Oh, Lucas—really! It was. . . I guess, all the tension we had built up in us. But that strange storm, those wolves howling, that loud voice. I know these things were real. But I don’t understand them. All those things Ira said.”
“Ira was just trying to frighten us. But what the kids said . . . I’ve been thinking about that. Trace, Thera means untamed.”
“The storm?”
“Maybe. If we want to believe in all that. Yes. Randolph is supposedly advised by wolves.”
“The howling?”
“Yes. Harod is known as the loud terror.”
“The loud voice.” This time it was not posed as a question.
“Yes. Aldis means from the oldest house, and Hall means from the master’s house. I can’t recall the rest of them; they’ll come to me in time, I imagine.”
Before going to bed, Lucas had shown her the gold rocking-horse pin. She had commented on the workmanship and how lovely it was. Until she looked more closely at the tiny face of the horse. Then she had seen the evil there, and had said as much. Lucas had put the pin on his dresser.
She took his hand in hers. “Lucas, are you saying there might be some truth in the kids’ stories?”
“Yes,” he replied, his voice containing a dead flatness. “I guess I am. I don’t know any other way to explain it.”
“Then what Ira said about the house might also be true? ”
He elected not to reply to that.
She looked at him through the darkness, then sat up in bed and hugged her knees. She stared at her husband. “I want to go home, Lucas. Back to our real home.”
“I think that’s a good idea, Trace,” he said, surprising her.
“You mean it, Lucas?”
“Yes. Why don’t you, Tracy? Take the kids and head on back. I’ll join you all later. I want to stay here a while longer.”
“No. Why?”
“No, why, what?”
“No, I won’t go back without you. And why would you want to stay here?”
“A lot of reasons, Trace. The Brotherhood. That rang a long-forgotten bell in my head. I know something about the Brotherhood; I just can’t dredge it up to the surface. But I will. There is more than just a mystery here, Trace. Much more. And I’m going to find out what it’s all about. That is not a player piano in the ballroom. I checked. What does the little rocking-horse pin mean? Why did Ira come back here? Who are those people in the Gibson house? Those ghost-hunters that Kyle told me about, and he says no one else will talk about—were their deaths accidental, or planned? I lean toward the latter. Why did my grandfather warn me never to come to Edmund County? Why did Grandmother Bowers never leave the mansion? Where is she buried? Why was it held in secrecy? The strange deaths of the Garretts. Everything points toward . . . something, Trace. Something . . . planned. Something . . . evil. It intrigues me. And I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”
“Yes, Mr. Columbo,” she said with a sigh. “Whither thou goest, and all that.” She snuggled up close to him. “Goodnight, Inspector.”
* * *
“The Brotherhood never forgets, Lucas,” his grandfather’s voice rang in his sleeping head. “And one never leaves the Brotherhood.”
“What is the Brotherhood, Granddad?” the young Lucas asked.
“It’s why your father refuses to ever go back to Edmund County, boy. It’s . . .”
The dream faded into emptiness. Lucas was left looking down a long tunnel. A spot of darkness was visible far at the other end. He began walking toward the darkness.
Lucas stirred in his restless, troubled dreaming.
“. . . evil, boy. The Brotherhood is a secret group of men. Women can join, but they’re excluded from the meetings. Your uncle is part of the Brotherhood. That’s the uncle you’ve never met. Your dad won’t allow him to come near.”
“My uncle?”
“Your father’s brother. He lives down in Edmund County. I haven’t seen him in thirty years. Name is Joe Bowers. I told your grandmother if I ever saw him again, I’d shoot him.”
“I never knew I had an uncle,” Lucas said.
* * *
Something was interfering with the dream. A noise Lucas could not immediately identify. The noise was shattering the continuity of the dream. Then the noise became clearer. It was a tapping sound.
And the tapping had a voice.
“Here,” the voice said. “Now. Back. Let me in.”
Lucas woke up, drenched in sweat, even though the night was pleasantly cool, with a light breeze. Lucas sat up in bed. Had he been dreaming the tapping, the voice? Surely he had. Then he heard it once more. He listened. Slipping from the bed, Lucas dressed quietly and quickly and opened his nightstand drawer, taking out his pistol. He eased down the dark hall.
The tapping grew louder as he got closer to the kitchen. The voice came to him, but it was muffled, and he could not make out the words. They seemed to be coming from far away. He jacked a round into the chamber of the .45 as the tapping and the muffled voice became more intense, somehow demanding, suddenly insistent. Lucas paused, shifting the pistol and wiping his sweaty right palm. He once more gripped the butt of the .45 in his right hand.
He stepped into the dark kitchen. It was the door. The tapping and the muffled voice were coming from outside, on the veranda, behind the kitchen door leading to the outside. The smell of fresh earth came to Lucas, assailing his nostrils. Earth? And something else . . . some medicine-like smell. Through the curtains, Lucas could make out a form. It looked like a man.
“Back,” the voice said, much more clearly now. “Here. Wrong.”
Wrong? Lucas thought. What is here? Back? What does that mean?
“Who is it?” Lucas whispered hoarsely.
“Back. Here. Wrong.”
Then the tapping picked up in rhythmic intensity.
“What do you want?” Lucas called softly.
“You.”
The tapping stopped. The form stood patiently behind the door.
The smell of fresh earth was much stronger.
Lucas cocked the pistol. Putting his left hand on the door knob, he slowly turned it.
He jerked open the door.
He fought back a scream of protest.
Ira stood on the veranda. He was dressed in a cheap dark blue suit, white shirt, and dark tie. He was naked from the waist down, his feet bare. He was covered with dirt and bits of grass, and a yellowish fluid dripped from his nose and mouth. Ira opened his mouth and grinned at Lucas through bloodless lips. He opened his eyelids.
His eyes were gone.
Ira held out his arms and opened his hands, the fingers wriggling. A foul odor sprang from the dead man’s mouth.
Lucas screamed and raised the pistol, emptying the. 45 in Ira’s chest.