“What did she say?” asked Shaw.
“She said to get the dog, Brogan. The dog will track Gillany if you speak her name to him.”
Heading out into the Pine Barrens at night, even with a torch and a gun, was daunting. People who knew how unpredictable the wilderness could be usually stayed close to home at night. Still, the doctor, the factory owner, Fate, and three other workers most loyal to the Shaws headed out with guns loaded. There were two shotguns and two pistols among the party. Fate carried an over-under, double-barreled pistol, and the doctor went armed only with his elixir.
The night was cold as the world moved toward winter. There was a strong breeze, and the leaves from scarlet and blackjack oak to maple and tupelo showered down around them. The moon was a sight brighter than on Halloween, and in the clearings it reflected off the sugar sand, glowing against the dark. They found the black dog, Brogan, a powerful beast with a thick neck and broad chest, chained up next to the outhouse beside the sisters’ home. He was happy to see them, having gone unfed since the morning of the day prior. Fate thought to bring a cut of salted venison from her kitchen for the beast. This made her and the dog fast friends. Shaw undid the collar from Brogan’s neck while he devoured the meat.
“Find Gillany,” said Fate in her most soothing voice. “Find Gillany.”
The dog looked from one member of the party gathered around him to another. Mrs. Shaw repeated her order one more time. Brogan barked twice and padded down the path into the pines.
“Stick together,” said Boyle, and they were off at a slow jog trying to keep up with the dog. The torches crackled and threw light but also made it difficult to see anything near the intensity of the flame. They passed down a sandy trail all of them were familiar with and then the dog dove into the brush and all followed him winding among the pitch pine and cedar. Luckily, there were no chiggers or mosquitos still active. The doctor heaved for breath as they moved quickly along, wishing he’d brought another bottle of bourbon. An owl called far off to the west. He knew from the direction they were heading that the dog was leading them toward the marsh.
It wasn’t long before the doctor found himself alone in a meadow of marsh fern gone red with the season. He’d lost the others a good twenty minutes earlier but could hear the dog barking not too far ahead. The ground was soggy, and he moved slowly, knowing that in a moment he could be in water up to his neck. At first, he intended to call out, but on second thought he realized that Gillany might be somewhere close by with a sharp weapon of some kind. He thought silence a better strategy. It’s then that he heard the dog yelp and whimper in a manner that could crack ice. A gun went off. There was a human scream followed hard by a splash.
A brief moment of silence and then more screaming, more shots. The din of the commotion sparked Boyle’s adrenaline, and he so wanted to run away. Finally, he called out, “Shaw!” at the top of his voice, and then stood still, listening to the night over the pounding of his heart. He shivered in the breeze for a long while, and then he heard the crack of brittle twigs and the crunch of dry leaves. “Shaw? Is that you?” he called. But it wasn’t Shaw. A pale figure staggered through the marsh ferns toward him. He backed up into a clearing of sand, wanting to flee but was unable, as fear robbed his energy.
She came toward him in the moonlight, her hair loose in the wind like the tail of a black comet. She wore nothing but carried a hatchet stained with blood. He swept the torch in front of him as a means of warding her off. As she approached, he could see a gunshot wound to the hip, the bloody hole writhing with white worms. “That’s it,” said Boyle. He turned and ran as best he could, which wasn’t all that good. With no idea which direction he was headed, he stumbled forward through the marsh ferns toward where the moonlight showed him a tree line. Not even a hundred yards, and he’d slowed to a hobble, out of breath and caught in the grip of a coughing fit.
It was work to get control of his breathing, but he finally managed. Behind him he heard or thought he heard, even above the sound of the wind, the tread of Gillany. He turned and saw her only yards away. Her breathing was like a whistle, and she limped stiffly. She lifted the weapon when she saw him looking, and he groaned, knowing there’d be no more running. His heart was pounding. She came for him and he crouched away from her. She lifted the hatchet, and from above his head, he saw an arm descend from behind him. At the end of that arm there was a hand aiming a derringer. The finger pulled the trigger just as Gillany was upon him. The pistol exploded with a dull thud, smoke and sparks, and the two balls of shot ripped off her face. There was blood and flesh, and just below the skin there was a tangled layer of worms. She fell on him and he screamed.
Fate Shaw and the doctor made it back to the village at daybreak. Once there, she turned doctor and prescribed a bottle of bourbon for Boyle. When he was comfortable, she called the village together by ringing the bell outside the factory. She told those who gathered how they’d tracked Gillany Kane into the marshes and how she’d attacked Mr. Shaw and the others. A dozen men volunteered to go and search for survivors in the daylight. Fate decided to accompany them as did two of the wives whose husbands had been part of the posse. They uncovered the remains of Brogan’s mangled body, but no sign of any of the men. They searched every day for the better part of a week. Nothing. They followed the creeks and streams in case the bodies had been deposited in the water and swept along with the tranquil current. Nothing.
Finally, the sheriff from Mount Holly arrived and was told the tale just as it happened. Fate and Boyle gave much of the testimony, and the other half was supplied by Mavis, who had made a full recovery from the disease that gripped her sister. She referred to the illness as the suspicions, for the paranoia it engendered with a fury that took over the mind. The sheriff couldn’t make heads nor tails of it and eventually slunk back to Mount Holly to file five missing persons reports. Somewhere in the middle of that very harsh winter, Mavis Kane disappeared. No one was sure exactly when it happened, but everyone was certain it was after the snow came and before it left. She could have slipped away from Cadalbog, but there were also many who weren’t willing to forgive her part of the Halloween mayhem. Maybe the barrens took her, but after that most forgot, leaving only Fate and Boyle to wonder what actually had happened.
Three years later, in spring, Fate Shaw reported in her diary on the passing of Dr. Boyle. “I’d go to see him out there at his place on the way to Harrisville. He’d drink and talk, and I’d listen. He was the one individual who didn’t mind hashing over the enigma of the Kane sisters’ disease. He was convinced it was a matter of biology and chemistry, the psychosis of a fevered mind. I, on the other hand, knew better, because I was privy to the end of the story. The helper I’d hired to look after the doctor reported to me that the day the old man died he’d had a visitor, an old woman in tattered clothes with a strange green-tinged complexion. She was accompanied by a black dog. The helper didn’t know how long the old woman had been there, but when he returned the next morning to make a fire and cook breakfast for the doctor, he found Boyle in a chair, head flung back and white worms crawling from his nose and ears, squirming out through his tear ducts.
“The last thing he told me on my final visit to him was, as he put it, ‘His confession.’ It so happened that the reason he’d come to the Pine Barrens in the first place was due to a botched delivery. It was a breech birth, and he was pie-eyed drunk. ‘Twin sisters with the cord wrapped round their necks,’ he said. ‘As they struggled for their freedom, they strangled each other. I was passed out on the floor. Unsettling that the tragedy occurred on All Souls’ Day. The parents wanted to put me in jail, and I fled like a thief in the night.’ I didn’t have the heart to wonder aloud about the twin connection and neither did he. The strangeness we’d been part of was already too complicated.