CARVED IN STONE

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 …