Maybe it was the fresh air or just the fact that he’d been more active these past two months than he’d been for the last five years, but Cecil felt better. Healthier. He felt strong again, like he had in his forties and fifties. The exercise was definitely helping. He’d swung that machete all morning long, stopping only to drink coffee and talk to the police officer, but his back and shoulder muscles barely ached.
“Yes, sir,” he whispered. “Maybe I’ll head on down to the Lutheran Home’s Senior Center tonight and see if I can’t meet a lady. Play a few hands of strip cribbage.”
He left the trail, pushing through the undergrowth. Although Tom and Terry were up in the field, Russ and Tina Farnsworth were around somewhere, putting up cornstalk walls along parts of the trail. Wouldn’t do for Tina to come strolling down the path and find Cecil with his penis hanging out of his pants. She might get one glimpse of it and leave Russ for him.
He stopped after he’d gone about fifty yards. He glanced behind him. The brush was dense enough that he couldn’t see the trail, which meant that nobody could see him either. Satisfied, Cecil unzipped his pants and freed his penis. Rather than the usual pathetic trickle, his stream was strong.
A twig snapped somewhere behind him.
Cecil turned his head, but couldn’t see anything. He focused his attention on the business at hand again, amazed by his renewed vigor.
“Yep,” he breathed. “Hard work does a body good.”
Then he thought of his brother, Clark—a reminder that honest labor didn’t always have the same positive results.
Cecil tried not to dwell on Clark. For years, he’d refused to speak or think about him at all. He’d put all of his brother’s pictures in a shoe box and hid them in the attic, beneath Gladys’s cross-stitch collection and a pile of old record albums. He’d tried to contact his nephew, Barry, a few times over the years, but the boy had turned out just like his father, and Cecil had given up. Talking to Barry just made him think of Clark. Thinking of Clark caused pain, so the easiest way to deal with it was to pretend his brother had never existed.
But, Cecil was learning, these days it wasn’t so easy to ignore the past. Maybe it was because he was lonely, or that he had so much free time on his hands since he’d retired, but lately, he thought of Clark more and more. The pain was just as strong now as it had been back then, like an old scar that had been reopened and was bleeding out fresh again.
Cecil felt haunted.
While Cecil had taken a good job at the paper mill, Clark Smeltzer had gotten work as the cemetery caretaker for the Golgotha Lutheran Church in Spring Grove. At first, Cecil had been a little jealous of his younger brother. Sure, Cecil had union benefits and a fine hourly wage, but Clark’s position entitled him to a home along with his weekly paycheck. He and his family lived across the street from the cemetery in a house owned by the church. They stayed there rent free, paying only for their utilities. It was a good job.
Until Clark fucked it all up.
Somewhere along the line, Clark went crazy. Cecil blamed himself for not seeing it sooner. Perhaps he’d just been bad all along—keeping his insanity brewing beneath the surface, hidden from everyone but himself. Maybe it was the booze or the gambling, or the whores he’d slept with on the side. Clark beat his son, beat his wife, and drank himself nearly to death. Then he’d started robbing graves—stealing from the people he was supposed to be burying. Worse, when the hookers apparently weren’t doing it for him anymore, he’d kidnapped two women and held them in a tunnel he’d dug beneath the cemetery, raping them repeatedly. He’d died in that same tunnel, killed while trying to murder his own son and the boy’s friend, both of whom had discovered what he was up to. And even in death, he’d continued to poison those around him. Cecil’s nephew Barry was living proof of that. Despite everything he’d gone through, the boy had turned out just like his old man.
As Cecil’s stream slowed to its more normal trickle, another twig snapped behind him, closer this time. Leaves rustled.
“Hello?”
Snap…snap…snap…
“That you, Tom? Don’t you be messing around now or you’re liable to get a surprise.”
Something growled, low and deep.
“Clark?”
Cecil immediately felt stupid. Clark had been dead since 1984. Why would he call out his name now?
Because I’m getting senile in my old age?
Cecil stuffed his shriveling penis back in his pants and quickly pulled up the zipper. The noises continued, coming from three different directions now. When he turned around, something brown and red darted between the trees.
Coyote, he thought, or maybe a fox. He’d never heard of either attacking a full-grown man before, but he didn’t intend on waiting around to find out.
“Go on!” He tried to holler, but it came out more of a whisper. His mouth was suddenly very dry. “Scat! You get out of here now.”
He hurried back toward the trail. To his left, the predator—whatever it was—growled again.
“Let me get my machete and you won’t be growling like that, I goddamn guarantee you.”
Sam, that kid the cop was looking for, stepped out from behind a tree, holding the machete in his right hand. Cecil noticed that the boy’s hand had what appeared to be dried blood on it. The teen looked sick. His clothes were dirty. Patches of his hair were missing. Cecil remembered seeing pictures of the prisoners in the Nazis’ death camps during World War II—living skeletons, flesh stretched parchment thin over sharply angled bones. That was what Sam resembled, which made no sense, since two days ago, when he’d helped Cecil and the others with construction on the maze house, he’d looked fine.
“Kid,” Cecil gasped. “What the hell happened to you?”
Ignoring the question, Sam raised the machete over his head. “Looking for this?”
“Put that down before you hurt yourself. Listen, there’s a coyote or something back there. Let’s get back to the trail. You don’t look so good. You got the AIDS or something?”
Smiling, the teen shook his head.
“You know the cops are looking for you?”
Still smiling, the teen shuffled closer, holding the machete as if to strike. As he closed the distance between them, Cecil got a good look at his eyes.
They were black.
“I…” Cecil tried to talk, but found that he couldn’t breathe.
Another man stepped out of hiding. Cecil didn’t recognize him. He wasn’t one of the volunteers. The stranger pointed a hunting rifle at him.
Cecil desperately tried to call for help, but could only wheeze. The forest seemed to spin and his heartbeat was very loud in his ears. Sam grabbed his wrist, hard. The boy’s fingers felt like burning ice.
“Want to see your brother again, Cecil?” Sam asked him. “Come along. We’ll show him to you. But first, you’ll have to do something for us.”
“I feel better,” Maria said. “Seriously, you can let go now. I’m fine.”
Levi released her hand. He’d been pinching the skin between the thumb and index finger on her right hand.
“Are you still light-headed?”
“No. Honestly, I’m okay. Just sweaty and thirsty. My senses are coming back again. Whatever you did, it worked. What was that anyway? Acupressure?”
He nodded. “Something like that. It wasn’t magic, though, if that’s what you’re thinking. A lot of what I do—a lot of powwow in general—has no basis in magical theory and discipline. It’s just herbs and prayer.”