CARVED IN STONE
Part 2
By
R. Peterson
“Why
John Walker! You haven’t visited me at home for years!” Cloverdale’s mayor
opened the front door to her very attractive home wide so that the sheriff
could enter. Not that he needed the room … she just wanted to show him he was
welcome. He was holding his brown Stetson hat in his calloused hand and she
stepped back and looked at him wirily. Her lips almost formed a smile. “You haven’t come here to ask for a raise
have you?”
“No,”
the sheriff said. “Actually I’ve come here to talk to Joanie.”
“Oh
my God!” the mayor said. “I knew she was running in a bad crowd. What’s she
done now?”
“Nothing
that I know of,” John said. “I just need to ask her about something that
happened in the cemetery the other night.”
“The
cemetery?” Margaret Otter gasped. “When I was young we parked at Makeout Lake
with boys we liked. “We didn’t powder our faces white, paint our fingernails
black and hang out at graveyards!”
“Times
change.” John said. “Can I speak with Joanie?”
“Of
course,” Margaret said. “She’s supposed to be up in her room studying. If I
find out she’s snuck out her window again I’m going to send the entire police
department plus the canine unit to scare a little sense into her.”
The mayor started for the stairs and then paused.
“I’m sorry,” she said turning. “Would you care for a cup of coffee?”
“I
know where it is,” John waved her on. “Remember I helped Fred build this
house.”
-------2-------
Margaret was just coming down the stairs when
Madeline Bird knocked once and then opened the door. She looked around to make sure she and the
mayor were alone. “I saw the sheriff’s car parked outside,” she whispered too
loudly. “Is he here about what we did
to Elvis’s truck?”
“You
mean what you and Florence did,” the mayor hissed. “I was just the lookout”
“Did
I hear someone mention Elvis Hicks?” The sheriff had just walked from the kitchen
with a cup of coffee in his hand.
“We
heard that fancy new truck of his got flat tires and scratched-up real good
while it was parked at the Red Rooster,” Madeline gushed. “He’s been sleeping
around on a friend of ours. We were just wondering if you’d caught the ones
that did it yet.”
“Hicks
knows better than to turn in a vandalism report to me,” the sheriff said. “I
have a warrant for his arrest gathering dust in my glove box over two unpaid
speeding tickets. I’ve been to that shack he passes out in three times … and
he’s never home.”
“How
could someone named Elvis turn out to be such a stinker?” Madeline shook her
head.
“His
mamma had high hopes for the skunk,” Margaret said. “But he couldn’t sing a
lick.”
-------3-------
The mayor’s daughter bounded down the stairs looking
preppy-smart in short pants, too large earrings and a low-cut pink sweater.
There was not a trace of makeup on her face.
The mayor and Madeline walked outside to look at
some roses. John followed Joanie into the kitchen.
“Something
about you looks different.” The sheriff smirked.
“I dress for the
night.” Joanie shrugged her shoulders. “Only the matinées look witchy around the clock.”
“I need to ask you some
questions about who you were with and what you were doing in Black Rose
cemetery.”
“I was with my familiars,” Joanie said. “We were entertaining guests from out of town.”
“And who might these
guests be?”
“Hamilton Fisk and
members of Abra Cadaver. They burn the largest black candle in Salt Lake City.”
Joanie poured a glass of milk from the refrigerator.
“Black candle?’
“It’s a ritual thing.”
“Do you or any of your friends happen to own any crows?”
“No we use flying
monkeys,” Joanie laughed. “Why do you ask?”
“I parked down the road
to make sure you left the cemetery. I saw at least one large black bird fly
across the face of the moon.”
“So some witch’s familiar
was running an errand for her at night … is that against the law?”
“Erma Bates was found
dead in her house. It looked like a bird or several birds had been savagely feasting
on all the soft parts of her face.”
“Oh my God,” Joanie
gasped. “Ham was right. It’s starting to happen.”
“What’s starting to
happen?”
“Hamilton Fisk has an
authentic crystal globe that’s charged by moonlight and she’s way into
astrology and history. She reads the heavens like other people read a
newspaper.”
“And what does the
night sky tell her?”
“People have always stolen
knowledge from the stars.” Joanie explained. The heavens say forty-nine years
ago, during a total solar eclipse … a creature with extraordinary power was
born … inside Motha forest!
“What does this have to
do with killer birds?”
“Hamilton’s crystal sphere
also shows her that an enchantress with great power has come of age,” Joanie said. “Sometimes, evil takes a lifetime
to grow. A murder of crows is used for revenge and Melania says a much younger Erma
Bates was part of a terrified mob that burned Scarecrows a half a century ago …
just before the sun turned black.”
“And this is bad?”
“Very bad,” Joanie
said. “We’re talking about a Momett witch!”
-------4-------
The next morning the
sheriff was on his way to see Melania Descombey when he received a call. Kenworth
Hill hadn’t dug any graves for two days. Questions for Cloverdale’s resident
witch would have to wait. The cemetery sextant lived at the end of Vineyard
Road just beyond the county graveyard. His twenty acres crowded the edge of the
Motha Forest Protected Trust and abutted the rock face of a cliff. The former
mason had cut every stone for his dwelling and people said more rooms were
bored deep into the granite of Horse Head Mountain. Technically, parts of the rock
structure were probably illegal, but so far Sean O’Brian, the trust
administrator, hadn’t complained and the sheriff never encouraged trouble …
especially from a house that looked like a tomb.
The man’s old battered truck
was parked by the front entrance. Three Vanishing River newspapers lay on the porch.
No answer came from knocking and no one responded to his yell. When John walked
around a sagging barn, a Black Lab with worried eyes came out barking and
wagging his tail. The sheriff poured Purina Dog Chow from a storage-shed into a
bowl and filled an empty coffee can with water from a hand pump.
Shirts and pants hung
from a clothes line and were now soiled with bird droppings. The front door was
unlocked, so John went inside. A droning came from another room and a too-ripe rotten
apple smell was overpowering. Thousands of flies, some dead and some crawling
painted the walls and the living room window. The sheriff covered the bottom
part of his face with his hat and tried not to gag as he walked into the
kitchen.
Kenworth was slumped
over on a broken chair next to an overturned kitchen table. It looked like a
freight train had jumped the tracks and shown up for breakfast. His shrinking
and hardening skin looked as cold and blue-white as fresh fallen snow. A half-eaten baked potato and hamburger patty
was crawling with maggots. Every hair on the man’s head stood on end as if
trying to escape his last thoughts. His wide open eyes ignored a blowfly
crawling across one of them. A denture had slid part way from his gaping mouth.
The man’s elbows were bent and his fingers splayed as if he had died trying not
to see what he saw. John stared at a splintered-door hanging by its hinges and
to stone steps receding into darkness.
“Damn Ken!” the sheriff
muttered as he turned away. “Whatever came up from underground … looks like it
scared you to death!”
TO BE CONTINUED …
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