Mountain Dead Read online

  Uncle Jack rummaged in his coat pockets and withdrew his flashlight. Before he could switch it on, movement in the deep shadows between the mausoleum and the church building caught his eye.

  He froze.

  "I’m assuming you have an explanation, Jack." He reveled in the sound of her voice, even as venom-tipped as it was.

  "Bethy," he sighed in relief. "Is that you?"

  She looked to her left and to her right and placed her hands on her hips. "You seeing anyone else out here?"

  "No, but that don’t mean nothing." He pocketed the notebook. "Is there somewhere we can talk?"

  "Not here, I don’t want Promise to see you. I’ll never hear the end of it if she thinks you’re really in town."

  "But Bethy…"

  "After. I’ll send her home with Daddy, and you and I can chat over coffee at the diner. Just stay out of sight until then. She’s already asked too many questions of the damned gossip-mongers." Bethany turned on her heel and walked directly back into the community room.

  Uncle Jack watched her go, wanting very much to follow. Instead, he flicked on his flashlight and got out his notebook. He made careful notes about the stones and recorded the exchange with the caretaker’s girl. The pieces were finally beginning to fit together.

  The moon moved behind some clouds and darkness edged in around his solitary flashlight beam. The noise of chatter and guitar strumming from the community room seemed much too far away all of a sudden. The whisper of vertigo returned. Uncle Jack decided to wait in his truck.

  At long last, most of the congregation had dispersed. He watched Promise get into her grandfather’s car and disappear into the tree-lined shadows of Maplewood Drive, just off of Tulip Poplar and a few blocks from the church. Bethany had stayed behind to close up. She was taking an awfully long time.

  Flooded with curiosity and a fair bit of worry, Uncle Jack got out of his truck and made his way back to the church. The sanctuary itself was dark, and only a few lights remained on in the community room. He heard a voice coming from the corridor that connected the two buildings.

  Gertrude Goodstead, Bethany’s elderly maiden aunt, leaned heavily on her cane as she made her slow way toward the exit. She murmured to herself in a long, incoherent line of syllables. Gertrude had been uncharitable to Uncle Jack, but she had been downright vicious toward Promise because the girl had been born out of wedlock and this was, as one might guess, no way to curry favor with Uncle Jack. Still, he approached the old lady and would be civil to her, just like his mother taught him to be.

  Gertrude had always favored her left leg, but this evening her limp was far more pronounced. She all but dragged her bad leg behind her, and as she drew closer Uncle Jack could see that her knee was bandaged; the hem of her skirt had been pinned up so it wouldn’t irritate the wound. He also saw that Gertrude, who had been a nurse nearly all her life at the tiny town hospital, wore her starched white cap, crisp pinafore-style uniform dress, and a navy blue cloak. The cloak hung awkwardly from one shoulder and swayed as she shambled toward him. The woman was ancient and crone-like and Uncle Jack had never really liked her, even before Promise.

  She said nothing to Uncle Jack—she merely paused in her halting walk toward the door and stared at him, hard. Her grey eyes were as shrewd and as cruel as ever, and her mouth formed the same self-righteous frown it had the last time he had seen her.

  "Good evening, Miss Gertrude," he said. "It’s a pleasure to see you again."

  Gertrude made no immediate reply, she only shifted her weight, bracing against her cane. Uncle Jack saw the bandage around her knee shift and slide a bit.

  "Are you hurt, ma’am? Can I call Bethy for you?"

  Gertrude’s head snapped up and she might have growled, or perhaps simply cursed at him under her breath. "No one needs or wants your help, John Harker. You should never have come back here."

  "If you’ll forgive me, ma’am, I simply…"

  "No, I do not forgive you. You are not to be forgiven. Not for this."

  He was genuinely taken aback. "I’m afraid I don’t understand."

  Gertrude made another strange sound, even more unsettling and guttural than the first. The bandage fell, sliding down her spindly leg to hang on the drooping nylon of her knee-high stockings. The flesh revealed below it was bruised dark purple, and a putrid gash ran across the center of the joint. It looked infected, angry.

  "Ma’am," Uncle Jack began to say.

  What words that were meant to follow died in his throat when the wound on Gertrude’s knee opened like an eye.

  Uncle Jack shouted and sidestepped the old woman. He fled toward the church and called for Bethany.

  "I thought I asked you not to come in here?" Bethany met him in the corridor, her jacket over her arm and her keys in hand.

  "What the hell is wrong with your aunt Gertrude?"

  "First off all, do not use that language in this place. And second…" she trailed off, a suspicious light coming into her eyes. "Aunt Gertrude is dead. She passed on a few months ago."

  "Dead? But…why didn’t you tell me?"

  "Because I was afraid you’d show for her funeral."

  Uncle Jack closed his eyes. Too many emotions gathered there, and he had to fight to stay focused on the one thing, the only thing that was important. "Dead?" he repeated.

  "You must have confused another congregation member for Aunt Gertrude." Bethany straightened and looked him in the eye. "After I specifically asked you to—"

  "It was her, Bethy. I’d know that old battle-axe anywhere. She spoke to me. It was her, I’m telling you!"

  "What did she say?"

  "She told me that I shouldn’t have come back. That no one would ever forgive me."

  Bethany nodded. "Well, that does sound like something Aunt Gertrude would say."

  "And she was wearing the weirdest costume. I know she was a nurse, but what’s with the get-up? The hat and the cloak?"

  Bethany paled. "She was wearing a hat? A white nurses’ cap?"

  "Yes. And a navy blue cape. With red lining. Had it hanging from her right shoulder, because she had her cane in her left hand."

  "Was her…her left leg bandaged?"

  Uncle Jack’s heart pounded through his whole body. "Yes." He was disinclined to say more and was not given the opportunity.

  Bethany took a step back from him then looked past him into the darkened community room. "That’s what she was buried in, her old nursing school uniform. She took a horrible infection in her knee, she was diabetic, you remember. She fell and banged it up, but it wouldn’t heal. That’s what finally got her, sepsis from that wound."

  "Bethy, we have to get out of here right away. We have to get out of this building, hell, out of this town. I thought I had more time."

  "What are you talking about, Jack?"

  "Go get Promise and meet me back at the bridge. As quickly as you can! I’ll explain there."

  "Jack, this is ridiculous!"

  "Please, Bethany. Go and get Promise, I won’t leave without her. Or you. Hurry, or we’re all going to die."

  "Die? Jack, do you hear yourself? Seeing my dead aunt, telling me I need to flee my own—"

  Through the window, they saw a light in the churchyard. For an instant of desperate hoping, Uncle Jack supposed it could have been the reflection of headlights, or maybe a firefly out too early in the year, or the gleam of the moon. But it was none of those things. It was a light eerie and unearthly and Uncle Jack knew then that he had come home too late.

  The glow emanated from the Goodstead mausoleum, almost as if someone was inside with a flashlight. Which Bethany mentioned as a distinct, although improbable, possibility. But that didn’t explain the fog that oozed along the ground, shining bleakly with opalescent flecks of blue and green and violet. It was beautiful but sinister, and Bethany’s rational explanations failed her.

  "What is this, Jack? What do you know about this?"

  "I know this valley is cursed. The whole lot of it,
not just our corner of it. All the way from Monteagle to Chattanooga there are little cemeteries here and there. Cemeteries but no houses, no towns. Didn’t that ever strike you as strange?"

  Bethany crossed her arms. "I can’t say I ever gave it much thought."

  "I’m sure you gave it more than you want to admit to me right now. I’ve known you since you were a girl, Bethany, you were always the curious one. That was why I first fell in love with you…"

  She raised an eyebrow and dismissed his train of thought with a wave of her hand. "So, the cemeteries?"

  "Something lives here, in this place. From the legends, it resides under the whole of the Cumberland Plateau, but in places where the land has opened—like valleys, like this valley—the presence is exposed."

  "Like…erosion?"

  Uncle Jack grinned despite himself. "Exactly. I think the presence is bound to the soil or the rock or something within the very earth below our feet." He reached out and took Bethany’s hands. "I knew you’d get it."

  She gave his fingers a momentary return squeeze before disengaging herself. "Understanding what you’re getting at and believing it are vastly different."

  He pointed out the window where the fog had pooled all around the mausoleum.

  "Well, yes," she replied.

  "There were rocks in the mausoleum."

  "Yeah, they’re called headstones."

  "No, Bethy, dark rocks brought down from the Town Cemetery, little bits of them crammed in anywhere they could be. Some look like they’ve been there a long while, others look newer."

  "Who would have done that? You know my feelings on that rotten piece of land up at the top of the valley, my whole family’s feelings."

  "A pact was made, a long time ago. A blood pact."

  "Between who? For what?"

  Uncle Jack took out his notebook and thumbed through a few pages quickly. He turned the book toward Bethany and let her read what was there.

  "My family…and yours? Over rocks?"

  "The Goodsteads and Edensorrows were the first families of this town. If the diary from Deertrace is to be believed, a pact was made between the people of this valley and this…entity, whatever it is. A pact of safety, of coexistence. Certain promises were made. And I believe they have not been kept. Just as they weren’t kept in Deertrace. Or Jasper’s Fork."

  "Deertrace? Jasper’s Fork? I’ve never heard of those places."

  "I know." Uncle Jack sighed. "They’re long gone now. Struck from the earth without a trace. Leaving behind only the cemeteries."

  Out in the churchyard, something moved in the spectral fog, something long and sinuous.

  Bethany clutched Uncle Jack’s hand once more. "Snakes?"

  "If only." Keeping hold of her hand, Uncle Jack made for the door at the far side of the community room. "We need to move and we need to move now. This graveyard is too close to the bridge for my comfort, if this spreads…" He wasn’t sure how to explain the phenomenon he had read about. "Let’s get to Promise."

  Outside, the air smelled of mildew and damp and something metallic, sending chills through Uncle Jack’s flesh. Bethany stood transfixed at the edge of the churchyard. As if scenting them, the luminous fog changed course, bearing down on them. Uncle Jack pulled Bethany back toward him, so her feet no longer touched the hallowed ground and rested instead on mundane asphalt. The creeping mist stopped at the edge of the grass, spreading side to side as if searching for a path to them.

  "Can’t it leave the graveyard?" Bethany wondered.

  "It may not have enough strength, not yet. But I have no doubt that sooner rather than later it’s going to break free of whatever binds it here and come after us…all of us."

  "What about the rest of the town? We’ve got to warn them!"

  "When I am certain that you and Promise are safe—"

  "No, Jack, we have got to warn them now!" She tugged once at his sleeve, but her gaze focused beyond him on the churchyard.

  Something moved, a shadow denser than the tendrils of fog and more upright than the curving shapes that writhed within them. It moved with a stumbling gait, as if with a limp.

  And it was not alone.

  The mausoleum trembled, then finally shook violently as if an earthquake had struck it. But it did not collapse in on itself. Instead, the walls tumbled outward, spilling masonry and shards of dark stones onto the grass. A maw had opened through the center of the ruined building and the light flickered up from it, unholy and terrifying.

  "We’ll have your father help us warn them, all right?" Uncle Jack pulled her insistently toward his truck. She finally shook herself free of the mesmerizing scene and allowed him to move her. "Besides," he continued, "it’ll give the good Reverend Goodstead something to occupy his time that doesn’t include me."

  At the mention of the reverend’s name, all motion in the graveyard paused. The snake-like shapes rose up, much like cobras, breaking through the low-lying fog. They were long and thick as a man’s leg, tapered toward the ends like an octopus arm, and the same livid, bruise-purple color of Aunt Gertrude’s knee. All at once, across each of these slithering appendages, dozens of eyes opened and fixed upon Uncle Jack and Bethany. The same guttural growling that Gertrude had uttered reverberated through the stillness of the night and the serpentine appendages undulated toward them.

  Bethany screamed, half a primal shout of fear and half a cry of defiance.

  "Promise," Uncle Jack urged her and they both turned and ran for his truck.

  He hopped the curb and cut the corner from Tulip Poplar onto Maplewood, knocking over someone’s mailbox in the process. In the rear-view mirror, the lights and fog at the churchyard looked like a grand Halloween party.

  He roared into the driveway of the Goodstead home, but the place was dark and empty.

  "Where are they?" Bethany hopped out, her legs uncertain as she jogged across the lawn while yelling for her father and daughter. She disappeared into the house for a long handful of minutes before she returned, eyes wide and face ghastly pale. "No one’s there…maybe they went for ice cream?" The optimism in her suggestion skated thinly over her mounting panic.

  "We’ll go check the diner, get in."

  They were headed back in the direction of town within seconds.

  "Take me back to my car. We’ll split up," Bethany said.

  "No. Too risky."

  She flashed him a smile. "Oh, Jack." As he slowed at the corner of Tulip Poplar, she jumped out of the truck.

  "Bethy!"

  But she was already gone, sprinting toward her little four-door still parked at the community room’s side.

  "Damn it!" He punched the steering wheel.

  Bethany was just pulling out of the parking lot when the pulsating light in the graveyard changed. All the shadows bent toward Stewartsville Boulevard…no not exactly, Uncle Jack thought, but to the northwest. Toward, he reckoned, the Town Cemetery.

  Uncle Jack rolled down his window. "The other cemetery," he shouted.

  "I’ll go to the diner, see if they’re there. Meet you on the far side of the river in no more than thirty minutes," Bethany called back.

  "Thirty minutes," he confirmed. He pulled out onto Stewartsville Boulevard and turned left, gunning the engine as he pushed the old truck to accelerate. There was no traffic out on the road, which was unsurprising but still unsettling.

  As he passed the diner, he glanced at it: red vinyl booths, Formica countertops and tables, shiny chrome trim, all the lights on. But not a soul inside. He didn’t stop to investigate, he had to trust Bethany. Instead, he continued up to the Town Cemetery.

  There was another car at the gates, a sleek beige Buick—a preacher’s car.

  The truck’s engine shimmied when he turned it off, as if in protest.

  There was no fog here, none that he could see anyway, but there was a strange light. Several strange lights. Candles. Small tealight candles had been placed all along the low wall surrounding the Edensorrow plot.

  U
ncle Jack got out of the truck, the crunch of gravel under his boots sounding too loud. All around him, the old grove of trees groaned and creaked as if blown by a stiff wind, but their branches were still.

  The girl was there, the caretaker’s daughter, waiting at the gates. She rubbed the wooden talisman she wore and eyed him nervously. "The masters are unhappy and ain’t no one else but you that can put it to right again, Edensorrow. Damned Goodsteads likely to get us all killed. Or worse."

  "I don’t understand."

  "Quit playin’ stupid with me." She pointed at his jacket pocket, where he kept the notebook. "You know. You know good and well what’s happening."

  "Not exactly."

  "Guess ‘cause you never bothered askin’ any of us. We’ve been groundskeepers here as long as there been a here and we learned a thing or two. About the rocks, about the trees. But both those Goodsteads and the Edensorrows were too high and mighty to ever give us the time of day." She glared, then straightened up and looked to the trees. "He’s here," she said in a calming, nearly cooing tone. "He’ll make it right."

  Uncle Jack tried to follow her gaze but saw nothing. He thought he understood the rocks, but there was nothing in his research that said anything about trees.

  "We ain’t got an abundance of time, Edensorrow. Get your ass in there. The reverend already has the backhoe going, and Pa’s trying to stop him."

  "The backhoe…?"

  The girl looked a little crestfallen and wrapped her thin fingers around the piece of wood. "I couldn’t get out all the rocks. There’s still so much of it, buried deep. They didn’t bring it all up when they moved the Goodstead plot. Damn that man, but he’s diggin’ for the rest."

  Uncle Jack thought of the light and fog and the walking dead down at the other cemetery and nearly turned right back around. But if Reverend Goodstead was here, so was Promise.

  He ran, leaving the strange girl to her vigil of his family plot. The spot where the Goodstead mausoleum had once stood was now a gaping maw beside a pile of sickly-looking black dirt studded with chips and hunks of the dark stone. The backhoe was still running, but no one was in the compartment. From around the far side of it came the sounds of men arguing.