Copyright (c) 2020 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner
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CARVED IN STONE
By
R. Peterson
It was just after
midnight early Saturday morning when the Comanche County Sheriff’s car turned
east on Vineyard Road. The police radio crackled. “Calling all available sheriffs … When you get done scaring
the hell out of those kids in Black Rose Cemetery, I need your help in the
dispatch office… Over”
“What’s your problem
Beth? … Over”
“There’s
a man hiding under my desk … over”
“What’s he doing down
there? … Over.”
“Right
now he’s sitting in a bucket of ice … over”
“Does this varmint have a name? … Over.”
“He
goes by all kinds of names … but around here folks mostly call him John
Barleycorn … Over.”
“I’ll bet he’s Canadian
… right? … Over.”
“You
know I always buy my whiskey from north of the border … Over.”
“This sounds like a job
for your husband … Over.”
“His
idea of fun is letting the cat out when the neighbor’s dog is loose … over.”
“I’ll call you when I
find out what’s going on in the bone-yard …over.”
“If
I don’t answer it’s because I’m asleep … over.”
“Okay Beth … Sheriff
John Walker … over and out.”
“You
better stop in before you go home … or there will be hell to pay.”
John smiled. He had
known Beth all his life. She was a
second or third-cousin from one of the county’s founding families, and was
named for his great-grandmother Elisabeth Walker. Elisabeth Descombey Hicks
would never cheat on her husband Carl, but there wasn’t much else to do working
dispatch after midnight in a sleepy town like Cloverdale except play on the
police radio … and tease whichever officer was on duty.
-------2-------
Kenworth
Hill, the cemetery sextant, was parked in a battered Ford just outside the wrought-iron
gate when John pulled up. John guessed the old man’s age at about ninety three,
but then in Cloverdale it was hard to tell. Kenny looked like he had gone downhill since John had seen him and
that was only a month ago at the Founder’s Day Picnic. Living next door to the
place you worked would do that to a person. The old man’s white hair needed cut
and his hands were covered with rock dust. Not only did he mow and trim the
grass in the Cloverdale resident’s final resting place he also carved most of
the stones under which they lay.
“Are the dead rising up out of the ground … again?”
John asked him.
“There
will always be death in Cloverdale until someone finds that’s infernal devil’s
nest and gets rid of that murderous night
vulture,” the old man said. He was rolling a cigarette with shaky fingers.
“That
better be tobacco you’re putting in there!” John smiled.
“If
it was loco weed … I have enough sense to not be smoking it right in front of
John Law,” Kenworth retorted.
“I
understand you have some night visitors.”
“Sounds like someone skinning a damned cat in there,”
The old man pointed toward the stars. “Must be that time of the year.”
John glanced up at the sky and then stared through
the elaborate scroll work of the black-iron fence. “That looks like Mayor Otter’s
daughter and a few friends. They’ve always been strange … into Goth dressing. But I’ve never known them to dig their black
fingernails into any animals.”
An infernal screeching sound came from the back of the
cemetery it sounded like a couple of huge cats getting ready to fight.
“That’s
why I can’t die peacefully in my
sleep.” The old man scowled as he covered his ears. ““If you don’t mind, I’ll
sit in my truck and listen to my songs. I seldom work nights … that’s when the
crow flies.” He pointed toward the cemetery and then stared at John. “And I’d never go in there … under a flower moon.”
The crackling sound of
Hank Williams singing I’m so lonesome I
could cry came from the truck radio as the sheriff drove to the back of the
cemetery. What the neck is a flower moon?
He decided he didn’t want to know.
The sheriff used his
spotlight to scan the headstones, and near the back rows he saw five girls, dressed
in black and with flashes of silver, chase a cat into a bag that two others were holding. They were tying it
shut with rope when he got out of his car.
He was right, it was
the mayor’s daughter Joanie, her friend JoAnne Wolfe and three others he’d seen
hanging-out around town. “What you got in the bag?” he asked as he walked
toward them … as if he didn’t know. For the first time he saw another group of
mostly girls standing far back in the shadows. None looked familiar.
“Nothing!”
Joanie shook her head. “We’re just playing
around.”
“There
is a law in Comanche County about harming animals,” John told them, “even graveyard mousers.”
“Better
show yourself, Babybat,” Joanie smiled as her friends untied the rope. John was
sure he saw the bag bulge just before Marsha
Heron crawled out. Her mother was on the city council.
“I
want you and the rest of these ghouls …” He gestured to the strangers standing
in the shadows. “To clear-out for the rest of the night,” John told them.
“You’re going to give poor Kenworth Hill a heart attack with all this witchy business !”
“We
were just leaving,” Joanie assured him.
-------
3 -------
Kenworth Hill had left when John got back to the
gate.
The Sheriff parked just
down the road behind a clump of trees and read a newspaper as the two groups
walked out of the cemetery. He waited until he was sure that they had left.
Joanie and her friends were unusual but he’d always found them polite …
respectful. A person had to make allowances for that. The night was especially
bright and oddly there were no cricket sounds. Cold chills caressed his spine
for no apparent reason.
He took a coat from the
back seat and was putting it on when a shadow passed over a copy of the
Vanishing River Tribune that lay on his dash. John looked up. The silhouette of
a woman on a bicycle crossed the face of the moon. It was gone when he blinked
and looked again. Seconds later another silhouette followed the first. This
time it looked like a large, dark bird. John thought it was a crow or a raven;
he could tell by the feathering at the ends of its wings. It was flying west
toward town. He shook his head and started his car. “Only in Cloverdale,” he
muttered.
-------4-------
Erma Bates was
eighty-seven years old, so Sheriff Walker wasn’t surprised when she had been
found deceased by a home healthcare worker. She was the right age. Two deputies
arrived at the tiny house at the south-end of Wallace Avenue a short time
before he did. Deputy Miles Davis stumbled out of the house and vomited on a
rose bush as John was getting out of his car. Hopefully Renny Young was still
on the scene. “Are you okay?”
“Just give me a
minute,” Miles said wiping his mouth with his shirt sleeve.
John wasn’t prepared for the carnage inside. A
window was broken on the far wall. Erma lay under torn bed-sheets and bloody
glass fragments. It looked like she struggled and she would have been staring at
the ceiling if she had eyes. Someone or something had forcefully removed them
from her head. The sheriff dropped his pencil when he opened a pad to take
notes. It bounced off his boot and rolled
under the bed. “I’ll be damned,” the sheriff muttered just before he stood up
holding the pencil and something else
…in his trembling fingers.
“What’s
that?” Renny asked. His face was as white as the sheets used to be.
“A
black feather,” the sheriff said. “It looks like it came from a crow.”
TO BE CONTINUED …
