Kelly finally looked at him. “I know. I keep getting the same feeling. Last night I dreamed about Jenny. And in the dream, I saw that old man, too. Only he was trying to get Jenny, not me.”
“But—”
“We have to find out, Michael. And it’s not just about Jenny, either.” Michael cocked his head curiously. “I keep thinking about what Amelie said, too.”
Michael’s frown deepened. “She said to ask Clarey. She said that Clarey knows.”
They were silent for a few minutes, and then Kelly said, “There’s a way we can find out.”
Michael looked at her intently. “I know. I’ve been thinking about it, too.” He was silent for a moment, then: “Tonight?”
Kelly hesitated, then nodded.
22
Fred Childress picked up the large ring of keys he’d brought home with him from the mortuary that afternoon and glanced at his watch. Ten more minutes.
Midnight, Warren Phillips had told him.
Childress had known better than to argue with Phillips. He’d done that once, years ago, and though he hadn’t thought much of it at the time, the next week, when he’d gone for his shot, Phillips had refused to give it to him. Two days later, when he’d gotten up in the morning and seen himself in the mirror, he’d felt a cold wave of fear he never wanted to experience again. Overnight, he’d aged at least thirty years, and when he’d called Phillips, begging for the shot, Phillips had coolly replied that the mortician didn’t seem to understand the rules. “I’ll give you the shot,” he’d said. “But you’ll never argue with me again. Is that clear?” With the reflection of his own death mocking him from the mirror, Fred Childress had quickly agreed.
Now, at a few minutes before midnight, he got into his Cadillac and drove out to Judd Duval’s shack at the edge of the swamp.
Judd was sitting in front of the television, a can of beer in his hand, two empty ones sitting on the scarred table next to his chair.
“Are you drunk?” the mortician demanded.
Duval glared at him through bloodshot eyes. “Ain’t you that has to watch out for them kids every night,” he growled, lifting himself out of the chair and draining the beer in a single long pull. Leaving the television on, he followed Childress out to the car.
Childress said little on the way to the cemetery, nervously glancing in the mirror every few seconds, certain that unseen eyes were following every move the car made.
The deputy chuckled darkly. “What’s the problem, Fred? The way you’re actin’, anyone’d think you’d never even been in a graveyard before!” The chuckle turned into an ugly laugh as Childress glared at Duval, but he said nothing more until the undertaker had parked his dark blue Cadillac in the deep shadows of the dirt road that led around to the back gate of the cemetery. But before he got out of the car, Judd saw Childress glancing around yet again. “Shit, Fred, would you take it easy? There warn’t another car on the road. Now let’s just get this done, so’s you can go on home while I do the hard part, okay? Sometimes I don’t know why Phillips puts up with a chickenshit like you.”
Fred Childress’s temper flared. “For the same reason he puts up with an ignorant swamp rat like you,” he snapped. “He needs us.”
Duval’s lips curled derisively. “Yeah?” he drawled. “Well, I don’t know ’bout you, but I’d say we need him a hell of a lot more’n he needs us. Or are you startin’ to look forward to old age?”
Childress felt a vein on his forehead begin to throb as his anger rose. “Drop it, Duval,” he said. Getting out of the car, he went to the gate in the cemetery’s back fence and used one of the keys from the large ring to open it.
He hesitated before he actually stepped through the gate into the graveyard, his eyes scanning the limestone mausoleums, glowing eerily in the pale moonlight, in which lay the dead of Villejeune.
“I don’t like this, Judd,” Fred Childress said. “I don’t like this at all.” He glanced around, imagining eyes watching him in the darkness. “If anyone sees us—”
“No one’s gonna see us,” Duval growled. “If you’d just shut your mouth and get it over with, you could be back home in fifteen minutes.”
Childress steeled himself, and at last stepped into the cemetery, moving quickly to the mausoleum in which Jenny Sheffield’s body had been placed only that afternoon. He fumbled with the keys, finally inserting one into the keyhole in the crypt. Opening the door, he pulled the coffin halfway out. “Give me a hand with this, will you?”
Together, the two men pulled the casket free from the crypt and lowered it to the ground. Fred Childress opened the lid, and for a moment they both stared silently down at Jenny’s lifeless face. Finally Duval lifted her from the coffin and started back toward the gate.
Fred Childress, left alone in the graveyard, reclosed the coffin and raised it back up to the crypt, sliding it inside once more.
He had just closed the door of the crypt when he heard the sound.
A crack, as if someone had stepped on a twig, crushing it underfoot.
He froze, his whole body breaking out in a sweat.
He listened, but the sound didn’t come again, and finally he twisted the key in the crypt’s lock and hurried back to Duval, who was waiting by the car.
“What took you so long?” the deputy demanded.
Fred Childress glanced back toward the graveyard. “I heard something.”
Duval’s eyes narrowed. “You sure?”
Childress nodded silently. Now it was Judd Duval who gazed out into the cemetery. “I don’t—”
He cut off his own words.
He’d barely missed it; indeed, he still wasn’t sure he’d seen anything at all. Just the faintest flicker of movement in the shadows. “Stay here,” he whispered. “I’m gonna have a look around.”
• • •
“He heard me,” Kelly whispered, but immediately fell silent as Michael held a finger to his lips and motioned to her to follow him.
Moving quickly, he started back toward the front gate of the cemetery, slipping as silently as a cat through the deep shadows cast by the mausoleums. A few moments later he paused, and as Kelly crouched beside him, slid his head around the corner of the tomb behind which they were concealed. He saw nothing at first, but then a shadowy form stepped out onto the path fifty yards away, crossed, and disappeared again. Michael straightened up, glancing quickly around, then squatted down next to Kelly.
“We’re only twenty feet from the gate. He’s looking in the wrong place, so we can get out. Just follow me.”
He peered around the corner once more, saw nothing, and made his move. Staying low, he darted toward the gates, then dropped down behind the wall.
“Maybe we better go home,” Kelly whispered as she crouched beside him once more. But Michael shook his head.
“I want to know who it is. Come on.”
He started off again, staying close to the shelter of the low wall that surrounded the graveyard until he came to the unpaved road that led around to the back. Across the dirt track was a thick stand of pines, and Michael darted into it, stopping only as the deep shadows of the trees closed around him.
“What are we going to do?” Kelly asked.
“Wait,” Michael told her.
• • •
Judd Duval silently crisscrossed the cemetery, his eyes scanning the shadows for any sign of life. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a movement, but even before he could start toward it, the lithe form of a cat leaped off the roof of one of the stone buildings and disappeared into the darkness. Chuckling hollowly at his own nervousness, he went back to the car where Fred Childress was waiting.