

The Bridge over Miller's Creek

(Dark Soul Trilogy – Book 2)

Paul J Donaldson

## The Bridge over Miller's Creek

by Paul J Donaldson

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2006 Paul J Donaldson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

# Chapter 1

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# Stephanie Hawkins pulled her white Firebird to the side of a state highway in central Pennsylvania. The sun had just risen fully over the eastern horizon. Stephanie hadn't slept for a solid day. She rested her hands on the steering wheel, ten o'clock and two o'clock, exactly where her father told her to place them when he taught her to drive. She always did things the correct way, until evil touched her.

# The rear view mirror reflected the deep gray circles around her eyes. In her present state, she could not purge the dark images of the past few months from her soul. Like evil fingers crawling up her thighs. They penetrated her, entering where only one man had ever been. The extremities of darkness entered and into her womb. They impregnated her with vile thoughts. Images she could not have witnessed on her own, even in her most aroused state.

She gripped the wheel with white knuckles. The sights before her closed eyes were erotic. She craved the acts of fornication. In the rear seat there was a blonde wig, purchased for more money than the fake mop was worth. With it she could be someone else. Someone without the morals of the girl who walked in the guise of righteousness while pondering on a sinful nature.

She wasn't the angelic creature others saw when they met her. Stephanie played the role well, but darkness knew what she really desired. She looked at her legs, sheer stockings exposed beneath a short black skirt. She ran a hand between her thighs. She felt her moist desire. In the past she would never have touched herself this way, now she couldn't resist.

In her side mirror the reflection of a vehicle approached. First she noticed the double headlights in the front grill and the chrome bumper. The vehicle moved at a clip well over the forty mile an hour speed limit. As it sped by the driver glanced her way. He was male, her type, as they all were lately. Momentarily the brake lights flashed beneath the horizontally stretched fins. The white car slowed. She thought it was a Chevy, at least twenty years old and in immaculate condition.

She considered grabbing the wig and slipping it over her short black hair. The vehicle stopped, waiting. If the driver chose to back up he would meet Stephanie Hawkins. A thirty year old, more interested in dreams than actual men. The blonde wig would turn her into someone else. Would the driver of the vehicle want to spend time with someone else?

The male driver hesitated for a moment, as if trying to decide if the price would be right. She hadn't offered and he hadn't agreed, or shown any interest beyond hesitation. They were nothing more than a thought without action. The brake lights flashed off and the Chevy accelerated toward its destination.

# Chapter 2

The country bridge stretched its wooden planks out into the morning fog, a cloak concealing the actual color of the new day's dawn. His footsteps echoed across the heavy boards and in the silent beginning of morning their reverberation seemed to fade into the surrounding mountains. Miller's creak, shallow in summers past as it was now, lay a little more than fifty feet below. At the center of the narrow overpass the man with features masked by vapor turned to the left. With both hands he gripped the iron rail meant to secure travelers from a fall to the rocks below. He stared into the dense murkiness, seeing nothing but a conjured image from the past.

A limp body against the night sky, a silhouette against the moon speckled water. The thawing spring of a time passed rushed beneath the bridge. The splash of a weight penetrating the surface of clear fluid and the sickening thud of ripe fruit being smashed against stone gave the vision its soundtrack.

There was nothing to actually see, except the veil on the world. He breathed in the stale vapor, allowing it to fill his lungs and believing in the purpose it gave him.

"Enough for now," he spoke hoarsely into the fog.

The day would soon burn through its disguise, only to be graced by a blue, cloudless sky. He returned to the eastern end of the bridge where a vehicle idled. Its headlights outlined a trail through the vapor, leading the man wearing jeans and sneakers back to its shelter. He climbed in behind the wheel and studied the low clouds clinging to the earth, caught in the wide spread beam of the vehicle's lights.

***

Harland Hecht didn't mind working the graveyard shift. The tiny Pennsylvanian town of Wilkesboro usually slept through the night in quiet solitude. A deputy on the five man one woman police force, Harland found a much needed peace in the rural town. He stretched his legs out on top of the scarred Mahogany desk. Six cells, down a hall to his right were all empty. He hadn't babysat an overnight villain in two weeks.

Harland closed his eyes. It wouldn't be difficult to drift off, dreaming about an unnamed female he recently hooked up with from down in Dubois. The one-night stand would stay vivid in his mind for a long time to come. He never shared the fact that he worked as a law enforcement agent and she shared nothing about her line of employment.

Seven years in Wilkesboro, five years free of a nagging ex-wife, he had found the perfect way to spend his years past forty. In his mind he pictured the bar where he met his nameless lover, a longhaired brunette with breasts the size of grapefruits. The woman spoke with an accent from the Deep South and she drank more than most women he spent his hard earned cash on.

In a way she had been nothing more than a prostitute, excepting twenty dollars worth of drinks from his wallet before agreeing to share her bed. Had he simply laid cash down on the bar to be shoved down her cleavage the act between them would have been illegal. He simply converted his currency to liquid and became a law abiding, off duty, cop.

His right foot, crossed over his left on the desktop, began to tingle. The sensation interrupted his lingering fantasy. He re-crossed his legs, placing the left over the right, before closing weary eyes. In two hours he'd be relieved, the pleasant thought of bacon and eggs at the Main Street Diner replaced the dark eyed brunette.

The floor creaked behind him. The ancient floor of a building erected in the late nineteen-thirties moaned as if an unfamiliar weight suddenly sought its support. The grimacing wood gave warning to the dozing deputy. He interpreted it as nothing more than the plight of old floorboards.

The noise gently moved and the room's temperature touched the hairs on Harland's neck with a chill. He had locked the doors after beginning his shift at midnight. Only Sheriff Townsend or one of the other deputies could enter without disturbing him and he was certain he would have heard a key turning the door's lock. He looked across the room to where his hat, lightweight jacket and holster hung. His imagination stole a chunk of reality from his tired flesh. He closed his eyes again as another timber creaked.

Unnerved by the floor's protest against motion and the dancing hairs on his neck, Harland spun around in his chair. The castors squealed out their own objection to the movement of his weight. The last utterance of sound came from behind him, close to the door leading out of the room.

In the shadows, created by the single lamp on the deputy's desk a figure unveiled itself from against the wall. Where once only a silhouette of light and dark had been, sneakers and jean-clad legs were now visible from the knees down. The rest of the uninvited visitor held tight to the darkness.

"Who are you," Harland firmly stated as he began to rise from his chair, "and how the hell ja' git in here?"

The face became an image of this world, chiseled by defining highlights of shadow. Masculine features and dark hair followed the sneakers and jeans into the light. The man appeared to be in his late twenties and might have even crossed the barrier into his thirties. Harland gave up, long ago, attempting to determine the ages of others, especially the women he frequently spent lonely nights with.

"I'll ask again," Harland began, feeling his anger rise.

"The door was unlocked." The answer came from the direction of the visitor, but Harland couldn't be certain if he saw any movement from a shadowed mouth.

The deputy moved across the room to the closed and supposedly locked door. He knew it should have been locked. He remembered locking it, especially tonight, but routine doubts entered his mind. After all, the man in the shadows didn't walk through the wall.

"I'll be damned," Harland commented, as the handle of the unlocked door turned in his grip. "Coulda sworn I locked this."

The visitor moved completely into the light cast off by the lone light in the room. Harland realized his uninvited guest positioned himself between the deputy and the rack where his holster and pistol hung.

"My name is Wilson Pierce," the stranger said as he weaved in and out of shadow and light.

For a brief moment Harland though he saw subtle changes take effect in the shaded features of the man's face. He decided the dimly lit room played games with the inner workings of his over tired mind.

"Shoulda knocked before just enterin' in," the deputy stated. "Frighten a man at the wrong time 'n ya could end up with a bullet hole in yer head."

"I'm a novelist," the man who identified himself as Wilson Pierce said. The stranger glanced over his shoulder to the wall where Harland's issued firearm hung. The gesture made it clear to Harland that his visitor knew he was unarmed.

"I don't care what you are mister... ya don't..."

"I apologize," the stranger gently interrupted the agitated deputy, "I was lookin' for some information about the town... this seemed like a good place t' start. My being a novelist simply explains my purpose... that's all."

"A writer?" Harland asked, allowing the stranger's calming influence to settle his nerves.

"Yes," Wilson Pierce answered, "I write novels... fiction..."

"Can't say I ever heard of ya," Harland shot back with a sense of sarcasm.

"I'm not quite to the level of King."

Ignoring the comeback, Harland moved back to his previously vacated desk. He passed close to the stranger, determined to appear at ease with the situation. The desk was Harland's center of command and he considered control of his post to be catamount to victory.

"Mister, it's six in the mornin'. I have no patience for people at this un-godly hour, so speak your peace or get the hell out."

"I'm doin' background on a book," Wilson Pierce began. "There's certain attributes of this town which I'd like to... incorporate into the story."

"At six o'clock in the friggin' morning?"

"Sounds a little strange," Wilson Pierce admitted.

"Strange... strange ain't nothin'... this is downright weird. Maybe in the cities you carouse all night long, but out here... where respectable folks live... we're just comin' back t' life at this hour."

The stranger, the writer, the novelist seemed to ignore Harland Hecht's appraisal. His smile, offered as a token of peace, greeted the deputy's rant about all-night partying urban dwellers with solace.

"I was traveling through, plannin' to check out the local thrills in the morning," the novelist said. "I was attracted to this area by some old tales about the bridge out over Miller's Creak. In particular... the one about the young man who jumped a few years back. I drove out to the bridge; with the fog... it's a perfect setting. I wouldn't be mentioning any names, just using the info for background."

"Why you interested in a drifter who committed suicide?"

"It's not just the drifter," Wilson Pierce's level of excitement increased as he spoke, "there's got to be a whole story leading up to the fateful night. I'd like to talk with a few of the people who might have crossed his path while he was here."

"He wasn't here long."

"But there's a story buried in those few days. I only need someplace to start... to give a direction to the novel, a little solid ground and the rest I'll make up... to enhance the story. Actual stories... about actual people are boring."

Harland leaned back against the desk and folded his arms over his chest. He decided the visitor named Wilson Pierce was in no way a threat to him or anyone else. Harland saw him as a city nerd, eyes and hands bound to books and not the land.

"I could tell ya a little," the deputy offered. "I'd only been on the force for about a year at the time. The drifter was stayin' up at Miller's farm... by the bridge. The farm's located on the east end. Joshua Miller rents a room or two on occasion. He probably has a room you could stay in... cheap.

"Anyway," the deputy went on, "we figured the drifter's name was Joey Hilliard from the ID we found in his belongings. I'll be damned, we found no kin... no relatives. A young man just passin' through, aimin' for nothin'. Made no sense in the least... why he jumped. Funny ya know," the deputy commented, "stuff kinda stays with ya, fresh in the mind even after all these years. Not much for excitement in these parts. Young man jumpin' off the bridge... hell that's big news out here."

"It could be possible for a man to survive a jump from that height." Wilson Pierce offered an observation, "that is... when the runoff is flowing down out of the mountains."

"Be a shame if he did," Harland retorted, "broken on the rocks... head bashed in and all. Wouldn't want t' live to heal from those kind a injuries."

"Just seems like there's other ways t' kill yourself, where the guarantees of success are greater. Then again, I'm sure it's not your job to understand the architects of a crime or as in this case... a suicide."

"I've been around the block more than once Mister Pierce," Harland responded harshly. "I have a pretty good understanding of what it takes t' jump from a bridge. Desperation... a man has t' be desperate. Have you ever felt so desperate that you'd consider takin' your life? I think in that moment clear thinkin' goes flyin' out the friggin' window. We don't think about the possibilities of livin'... all we think about is dyin' and hopin' that the world on the other side is better than this."

***

Vandals, teens with little to do but cause trouble and destroy property. Neil Jasperson remembered his younger days, hiding out in the local cemetery into the early morning hours, turning a few headstones face down. Now that he was nearing his later fifties and losing most of his hair, his patience for vandals diminished completely. Their acts of destruction meant work for him.

Jasperson, as everyone in town called him, arrived two minutes after seven to care for recently turned soil. The fog of the night before still slipped lazily through the rows of headstones like vaporous intertwined spirits. He drove out toward the back of the property to check out the fresh grave of old lady Kingman. Three days ago they placed the eighty-five year old woman in the earth. She died of cancer, the kind that takes your entire body with slow purpose and leaves little in return.

The fog seemed thicker along the back fence where a couple unmarked graves resided. From a distance he could see a small stone, placed as a marker on a grave a few months ago. It was turned on its face. The grave had been unmarked for nearly five years, even though the real name of the dead man was discovered a week after his death. The unfortunate soul had no one, not family or friends. The dead body possessed less. A few months ago a stone had been delivered and placed on the grave. The piece of granite read 'Rest Now Joey, 1979'.

As Jasperson moved closer to the stone's location he found the damage to be much more extensive. The vandals were more than a group of teenagers having fun with a few dares. These vandals had carried shovels and picks. The hole in the earth, which housed the remains of a dead young man, lay reopened. Dirt was scattered around the grave's perimeter, as if by an explosion occurring from within.

Jasperson approached, expecting an empty chasm, yawning into the new day. Then, with apprehension, he considered the possibility of an opened casket, a fleshless body gazing out at the world with an empty eyeless stare, white bones left behind by a spirit relocated to either heaven or hell.

As he cautiously peered over the edge of the abyss, his fear found no hold in reality. The coffin remained, simple, un-ornate wooden boards of pine, closed as he had hoped, pristine as on the day of burial.

# Chapter 3

Marge Polk owned and operated the Main Street diner. The three-story building, erected in 1932, wore a brick facing and sported a green and white awning. Marge lived on the second floor, alone since the death of her husband five years ago. The third floor contained two small apartments, both presently rented.

The décor of the restaurant greeted visitors with red vinyl booths and the sounds of pop music from the sixties. Marge Polk was a fan of any piece of music climbing the charts in 1965, the year she and Harvey Polk met and married. Marge and Harvey crossed paths the day after New Year's of sixty-five; two months later, on the second day of March, Harvey asked Marge if she'd spend her life by his side. Fifteen years of bliss followed before lung cancer took her best friend.

After Harvey's death Marge remained vibrant, although Harvey's hundred and thirty-pound bride now weighed one eighty. Her robust shape gave the woman a jolly appearance. An active member of the Baptist church out on the road to Miller's Farm, Marge spent her days alone, but not lonely.

Harland Hecht would probably spend old age with clogged arteries, thanks to the greasy breakfast she served him daily, but he was an icon in her mornings. The same stool at the counter always occupied the deputy after his shift. On a rare occasion, the morning after his night off, Harland would either be a no show or about three hours late. Marge knew the no show mornings followed nights of Harland sharing his dreams with some drunken whore in a neighboring town. The single night romances didn't happen nearly as often as Harland would like to believe they did. Once every two months, if that, Marge estimated.

This morning Harland strolled through the front door with his normal lack of luster. The tired deputy seemed always to be dealing with the repercussions of a sleepless night and in desperate need of an injection of caffeine straight from the pot. Today though, he dragged along an associate, middle twenties, dark hair and attractive in Marge's view for a man nearly half her age. The stranger sat to Harland's right and asked for a coffee with cream and a single lump of sugar.

She brought Harland his usual, black coffee, piping hot, and positioned her pen over the pad in her hand, ready to jot down one of two notations. Harland either ordered eggs in triplicate, over easy, with potatoes, bacon and sausage, or he'd decide on buttermilk pancakes with bacon, sausage and enough maple syrup to bathe in.

"Eggs... and the usual works t'day Marge," the deputy said after first testing his coffee.

She noted his order on the pad before turning her eyes toward Harland's sidekick. "And what c'n I get you t' go along with that coffee?" She asked, concealing her jovial nature behind a mistrustful attitude. Strangers didn't often wander into her place. Not for even so much as a coffee. Just as they seldom bothered to drift into town and stay long enough to have a full breakfast in company with any of the locals. Not only had this individual scheduled a visit to Wilkesboro, for he didn't seem to be some random drifter, but he also managed to get chummy with one of the town's deputies.

"Just a muffin with the coffee... Blueberry if you have any." His voice lacked any definable accent, a mental note Marge didn't even know she made.

Another scribbled entry on the pad in her hand and Marge called the order to the cook at the open grill. She reheated a couple coffees a few stools to Harland's right, before walking the length of the counter to check on a couple other early morning customers.

***

"She's a local," Harland said to Wilson, in reference to Marge, "lived here all her life... knows almost everything that ever happened that meant anything. I'm told she was quite the looker once... but those days are before my time in Wilkesboro."

"The waitress?" Wilson asked when Harland paused.

The deputy gave a quick head nod. "She runs the place... takes orders behind the counter most mornin's and isn't afraid t' get her hands buried in a little grease.

"Marge is related to the Miller clan, most folks in town are," Harland continued. "Seems a couple generations ago the Miller's had a ton of kids, nine boys and three girls. A couple of the girls moved away after findin' husbands. The one who stayed was Marge's grandmother."

"And the nine boys?"

"All stayed put, that's why there's so damned many relatives in town."

"A lot of small towns like that," Wilson commented as he watched Marge walk back toward he and the deputy. She carried a plate filled with Harland's eggs, potatoes and greasy meat, along with a smaller plate containing a Blueberry muffin.

"You guys want some more coffee?" She asked and reached for a fresh pot brewing behind her without waiting for an answer.

"Marge, I'd like ya t' meet Wilson Pierce... he's a writer from..." Harland hesitated, not knowing where the author, whose books he'd never read, came from.

"Northern New York," Wilson replied, "way up... near Plattsburgh."

"Damned if I know where that is," Harland responded, "Plattsburgh... not New York," he added with earnest, knowing Marge would jump in to offer the insights of her higher I-Q.

"Plattsburgh's not far from the Canadian border," Marge appended the deputy's limited store of geographical knowledge.

"Don't git sassy at me," Harland said jokingly, concerned more with his eggs than any insult to his understanding of states and the cities therein. Marge treated him much like his ex-wife. He found a queer comfort zone around women who constantly corrected his shortcomings.

"I'm trying to get some background... local color for a new novel I'm working on," Wilson added into the fray of words. "Harland tells me you might be able to give me some detailed information about certain aspect of your community."

"I don't see any reason why a stranger would be interested in the crap going on around here." Marge placed the pot of coffee back on the burner. She wiped clean a small dribble beside Harland's mug before interjecting into an uncomfortable silence. "Maybe you should just go to the next town on your list, the next tiny hubbub of country hick activity. Ain't nothin' here deserving to be written about. Ain't nothin' worth the effort of a big city writer."

"See... told ya," the deputy commented, "Wilkesboro is a boring place."

"I'm interested in the bridge over Miller's creek," Wilson said without paying any credence to Marge's sworn testament to the town's lack of noteworthiness. "In particular I'm interested in a story about a young man who jumped to his death back about five... or six years ago."

"And for some reason you're not listening to me," Marge retorted impatiently. "This town has little goin' for it. One thing we do have is no crime. Ain't that right Harland?"

The deputy nodded, not given a choice to disagree.

"News around here is hearin' that Joshua Miller's cow gave birth to a healthy calf. We don't need publicity pointin' to one instant in our history, an instant in our history tainted by some drifter."

"I didn't mention anything about crime," Wilson's comment gained nothing but silence from the waitress. "I'm only lookin' to get a feel for what happened that night," Wilson said. "I'm not going to use names or actual places. No one who ever picks up the book would have any idea I wrote about a town called Wilkesboro."

Harland finished his coffee and turned in his chair after poking Wilson Pierce with an elbow, stipulating it was time to quit. "Maybe you oughta give it up, get behind the wheel of your car and head over to the next town. Marge is right... there ain't nothin' t' talk about here."

Wilson left his mug, half filled with warm coffee, on the counter. He barely touched the muffin. "Just one thing," he said to the waitress as he spun away from the counter, "Plattsburgh is not a big city."

***

The sun bathed a cloudless sky. Harland said nothing to the man who came into the jailhouse earlier in the morning, as they walked up the road. A quiet street greeted them with no more activity then there'd been a half hour ago.

Harland hoped the self-proposed novelist would decide to leave town rather than poke around in business Wilkesboro buried years ago. Wilson Pierce didn't seem threatening in any way. A little strange maybe, Harland figured most writers were. He'd been surprised by Marge's defensiveness. Harland really thought Marge would have found it intriguing that an outsider found their town history something of interest. Sometimes Marge was like that, the jolly robust woman would seem to melt away and give ground to some unfriendly demon with six-inch horns jutting out of her head.

Harland hadn't noticed the vehicle parked in front of the station house before. The walk to the restaurant was short and neither he nor Wilson offered to abort from Harland's usual routine by driving the distance. A white 1960 Chevy Impala in mint condition sat against the sidewalk. Other than the car being twenty-five years old, there wasn't anything unusual about it. It displayed proper New York state plates with an up to date registration sticker. The upper portion of the vehicle's front window was tinted blue and a pair of furry dice hung from the rearview mirror. He knew the interior was a dark shade of red.

Wilson Pierce jingled his keys as he walked toward the vehicle. Harland tried desperately to extract a memory from his mind, one triggered by the car parked at the sidewalk, one triggered by the dice in the windshield.

"Is that your vehicle?" The deputy asked.

Wilson Pierce nodded his answer as he inserted the key into the lock.

"Where'd you find this?" Harland continued his interrogation. He moved closer, ascertaining the color of the vinyl interior.

"Old dude in upstate New York... beauty, isn't it? Forty thousand original miles and driven only on Sundays t' church. Guy was almost ninety... a danger on the road... his kids forced him to give up driving."

"Not many of these on the road... in this condition," Harland said, bending down at the passenger's side window to inspect the red interior. "Saw one like this once," he added, "almost identical... in perfect condition... but this couldn't be the one. Had the same interior and..." He paused, his verbal expression became silent as his gaze locked on the dice hanging from the mirror.

"Upstate New York... right," Harland straightened back up and ran a hand over the upper part of the fender, "you wouldn't..."

His thought vanished with the interruption of a beat-up Ford truck bounding to a stop against the sidewalk behind the Impala. He knew the Ford F-series belonged to Neil Jasperson, retired war hero and caretaker at the local church. Occasionally, on weekends, Neil would stop by the diner for breakfast. He always made an effort to talk with the deputy about random trivia having no significance to present events.

Neil Jasperson got out from the driver's side of the truck without shutting the engine off. "Damned vandals," he shouted, "this time it's gone a bit too far, Harland. We're past the stage of overturned headstones... now the friggin' idiots have gone and dug up a grave. Somethin' has to be done!"

"Calm down now," Harland said, intending to sooth the older gentleman.

"It's one thing havin' t' turn back a couple of tipped stones, but this time they went and uncovered a casket... the entire thing. Damn... Harland... they musta been workin' on it all night."

The deputy's attention no longer centered on the vintage car parked against the sidewalk. "I'll head back out and give ya a hand fillin' the grave back in... then we'll file a report. I'll have t' make certain the cemetery gets a drive by at night for a while... maybe we c'n catch the teens responsible for the damage."

"Whose grave was it?" The question came from the mouth of the stranger Harland had forgotten about.

"Who're you?" Neil Jasperson asked the bystander who took the privilege to interrupt his verbal report of the town's crime of the century.

"I don't see where this is of any importance t' you," Harland retorted.

Wilson Pierce shrugged his shoulders and for a moment Harland thought the novelist was going to get into his car and part company with the folks of Wilkesboro. "The cemetery... there's only one cemetery in town... I assume." Wilson paused; Harland's answer consisted of a simple nod. "Was out by that way... before stopping by here. The cemetery is on the way out to Miller's bridge... right."

"Both churches use the cemetery," Neil Jasperson answered, "a few un-churched souls are buried there too."

Bodies are buried, souls migrate to better climates. Harland considered the sarcastic response before deciding to give credence to the more intelligent side of his brain.

"Well I was by there around three or four this mornin'... quite foggy," Wilson said in lieu of Harland's response, "but unless your teen vandals were digging in complete darkness I saw no activity."

Harland felt the weariness of a night short on sleep. "You interested in lending a hand? Yer younger than the two of us and Neil has a few nasty issues with his back."

"Couple slipped disks that give me trouble now and then," the caretaker explained.

"Sounds like a good way t' spend a mornin'," Wilson said as he climbed into the back of Neil Jesperson's truck.

***

"I came out around sunup," Neil Jasperson explained to Harland as they drove out to the cemetery. "I saw a stone turned on its side, small one, couple of kids could have moved it quite easily... I guess. Wasn't prepared to find the whole damned thing dug open."

Their passenger in the rear sat with his back to the cab. Harland glanced over his shoulder once to assure the privacy between he and Neil.

"As my new found... acquaintance asked," Harland said in a soft tone, "whose grave?"

"The kid who jumped off the bridge a few years back."

Harland took a second glance back toward the bed of the truck.

"Who is he?" Neil Jesperson made a point of asking.

"Some guy who claims t' be a writer... shows up at my office at an ungodly hour and..." Harland's voice succumbed to a wordless void.

"You okay deputy?" Jasperson asked.

Harland nodded as his mind raced through fact and fiction. "You said the open grave was the drifter's?"

Neil Jasperson nodded his agreement.

"I don't recall a stone being placed on the site."

"About half a year ago... I think," Neil answered, "Bobbi Miller had one made to be placed on the grave. It said somethin' like rest in peace... Joey. Guess someone in town knew at least his first name."

"The investigation into the suicide revealed his name," Harland responded. He weighed coincidences in his head, the stranger, claiming to be a novelist, on the bridge, asking questions about the young man who jumped to his death six years ago and the uncovered grave of the same young man, on the same night.

The truck turned left into the cemetery and bounced a few times through weather worm ruts. The open grave was in the back of the graveyard. The Miller family had donated the plot as an act of kindness to a lost soul.

Neil Jasperson brought the vehicle to a stop on the dirt road along the cemetery's rear. Before the truck came to a complete rest Harland popped open the passenger side door and stepped down from the vehicle in rhythm with the orchestrated halt of wheels against gravel. Wilson Pierce hurdled from the back of the Ford and immediately handed Harland one of the shovels from the bed.

The caretaker had already advanced toward the open hole in the earth.

"Not only did the vandals uncover the grave," Jasperson said, "they scattered the dirt for yards around."

Harland took notice. The soil having once filled the open sore in the ground appeared to have been purposely spread out around the gravesite, rather than shoveled into piles. "We need rakes more than we need shovels," he commented to the other two men.

Harland stood at the edge of the open hole. "What's the purpose?" Neil Jasperson asked the deputy.

"I don't think vandals often have purposes," Harland answered. "Think they just like t' see us clean up after their friggin' games."

"Did they open the casket?" The question came from the stranger. Harland almost forgot that Wilson Pierce accompanied them. The deputy turned to the caretaker, playing middleman for a question he couldn't answer.

"It was closed when I got here," Jasperson answered, "wasn't really in a mood for spookin' myself."

"Looks too clean," Harland said as he jumped down into the opened pit, like a desperate man leaping off the edge of a flat world. The top of the wooden casket opened as one solid piece. Harland knelt at the side, positioning himself to gain enough leverage to lift the heavy panel.

"Deputy... I'm not so certain about this," Neil stated a little squeamish about seeing the decomposed bones of a dead body.

"The grave's unearthed," Harland responded, "this ain't my idea of fun and games. Vandals might knock over tombstones and deface property. Folks with creepier... objectives," he actually surprised himself with the use of his previous word, "uncover caskets."

"And you expect to find?" Wilson spoke before the caretaker could respond to Harland.

"Nothin'... I hope."

By nothing, he meant the lack of crime evidence, proof that no one had defiled the contents in the drifter's grave. Had this been the tomb of someone like Thadeus Miller, Joshua Miller's father, who passed on a year ago, Harland would have gone to the family to report the grave's violation and request their permission to open the casket. Any seal, employed by time in the ground, was already broken, a bad sign.

Imagining the possibly of missing bones, he hoped instead to find the corrupted skeleton of a broken young man. Harland slowly raised the lid; opening the casket's internal environment to the daylight it hadn't seen in six years.

***

Marcus Swartz listened, the accusations against him were always as such. He paid attention to conversations, which were never his business. Harland Hecht had sat at the counter, three seats to Marcus' left, with an outsider. The stranger sitting with the deputy stood out in no particular way, dark hair, slender, dressed in casual blue jeans, a shirt and sneakers with a brand new appearance.

Marcus worked in the town's only garage. Oil changes, lubes and tire rotations were his specialty although he was rarely allowed to perform the tasks. Pumping gas occupied most of his daily adventure. Marcus knew most of what there was to know around town. Those who frequently called out through their opened car windows for a fill-up, or a few bucks of gas, considered Marcus to be mentally slow. Things were often discussed in his presence by those who thought he couldn't understand concepts foreign to a gas pump and a handful of small-billed currency, nothing larger than a twenty. Sometimes Marcus understood more than he should.

The stranger asked Marge about something Marcus remembered well, the young man who jumped off the bridge over Miller's Creak. Marcus wasn't sure how much time had passed since that night, maybe five years, maybe six or seven. Marge gave the stranger more attitude than answers and Marcus knew Marge normally wasn't like that. The woman, who owned the diner and still waited on the counter because the task kept her close to her customers, possessed a warmth Marcus came to love. Marge Polk made people like Marcus feel comfortable. In her diner he was waited on with the same respect as the sheriff or Joshua Miller.

He'd caught the name of the stranger when the deputy introduced him to Marge. Wilson Pierce, a writer, wanted information about the young man; the one named Joey who Bobbi Miller seemed to have had a fondness for. In the short period of time the young drifter stayed in Wilkesboro, Bobbi and he became close friends. Marcus saw them embrace once, out behind the general store. They probably kissed, which he knew would have driven Joshua Miller, Bobbi's father, crazy. Of course there were also rumors about Bobbi having had an abortion at a hospital in Pittsburgh a couple months after the drifter's suicide. If the town gossip held any truth, Bobbi Miller and Joey the jumper did a lot more than just kiss. Marcus found himself aroused by that thought; there wasn't much to enticing a grown male in Wilkesboro, but Bobbi Miller wasn't a negative eyeful.

He noticed Marge's relief when Harland and the man introduced as Wilson Pierce left the diner and headed back up the road. Marcus resisted the notion to turn on his seat and watch their progress out into the morning's light.

Now he was alone at the counter, waiting for Marge to offer a fresh cup of coffee to her favorite customer.

# Chapter 4

Empty, as if the casket had never felt the cold human flesh of death. The opened lid of the cheapest coffin available revealed an unblemished interior. Harland stood and gazed down into a casket, which appeared to have never been used. He looked to the two other men standing at the side of the open hole. They had to see exactly what he saw.

"What do you make of that?" The caretaker spoke for the astonished deputy, to no one in particular. The question was asked for all three of them. The elusive answer went unspoken.

"Doesn't look as if anyone... was ever buried here," Harland said in disbelief. "It's as if the casket was thrown in the hole empty at the start, no body... nothin'. My figurin' is we should at least see..."

"Maybe you touched on it deputy," Wilson broke his own silence, "maybe there never was a body... period."

"Who in the town would have reasons for removin' a dead body from a casket?" The deputy directed the question at Jasperson, since Wilson knew no one in the town well enough to give a viable answer.

"Not anyone I'd share my lunch with," Neil Jasperson answered.

"So this drifter comes into your town... without purpose," Wilson commented, allowing a smile to touch the corners of his mouth. "The question here might be... was this Joey dead... or for that matter even alive."

"Knock it off!" The deputy sounded off from the open grave. "Yer not turning' this inta no fuckin' King novel. Why don't you just go 'n use some other town for your horror story."

Wilson squatted, bringing his eyes as level with the deputy's as possible. The same calm voice the stranger emitted earlier in the station house flowed with ease. "Seems like you have a situation here well beyond your understanding. Run this through your investigation process, you might find that nothing dead or alive ever touched the inside of that casket. You might also find that much of this town is not what it seems. Sometimes suicide is really murder... and sometimes the villains... the ones we despise because they don't belong... are the real victims. I know you'll find much and I will be waiting to hear from you. When you need me... I'll be stayin' up at Miller's Farm."

Wilson rose to a standing position of dominance at the edge of the chasm. Harland found himself unable to respond to the stranger's prophecy. A hypnotic trance would have lent him more freedom

"I'll walk back to town... if that's okay with you," the novelist said. "Looks like you're gonna have a bit of work here."

If a passerby had crossed the path of Harland and Neil Jesperson at the moment they would have thought it strange that neither man seemed able to respond to their surroundings. A minute, maybe less, passed on the face of Harland's watch. He didn't notice the moment's passing, nor did he recall the third person who accompanied he and Neil to the cemetery in the back of Jasperson's pickup.

***

The mid afternoon sun reflected off the Chevy Impala as it pulled up in front of the old farmhouse. The estate of the Miller family required a fresh coat of white paint and Joshua Miller considered the task a possible job for this coming autumn.

Bobbi watched the sun stroked vehicle from the barn where she'd just finished brushing her favorite mare. She studied the man who got out of the two-door sedan and estimated his age to be thirty at most, maybe slightly younger. He stood taller than her father, but didn't appear to be very muscular, as were her brothers, but she wallowed in desire for men with brains and emotion, rather than brawn. She made little notice of the car, its male contents held her attention for the moment. She wiped her hands on a dirty pair of faded jeans and decided she was not dressed to meet a future conquest.

She walked without being observed from the barn to an old brown Chevy truck parked behind the house. Two sacks of grain were to be left near the chicken coup. She could easily wait until one of the men came in from the fields to have these moved, but waiting for her brothers was not her style. She lifted the first bag, weighing nearly half her weight and cradled it to her chest. The strain didn't show on her face as she completed the task of dropping the fifty-pound bags where they belonged.

After following the same procedure to offload the second sack she inspected the front of her dark green tee shirt. The bags were filthy and most of that dirt had been transferred to her chest. She didn't have a bra on, and if the shirt had been a lighter color her dark nipples would have shown through. She brushed herself clean, feeling a tinge of sexual excitement from her own touch and considered finding a private place in the barn to pleasure herself.

Bobbi stole one more look toward the car at the front of the house as she returned to the barn. The man was nowhere in sight, having obviously gone inside either to sell something or to inquire about a room rental. The car, which seemed to escape the direct rays of the sun, was white, definitely white.

She paused, deciding not to enter the old structure, seeking haven. Instead she crossed the yard, drawn to the white Chevy Impala. She knew the car, or one like it. Joey Hilliard drove one of a similar model. He had stopped in town thanks to a faulty carburetor. The local garage wouldn't fix it, but her brother Aaron knew mechanics. Her brother offered to get the vehicle back on the road. Her brother offered to get Joey Hilliard on his way.

Joey wasn't like the people of Wilkesboro. She felt an attraction to everything, which made him different, and her father found no joy in his daughter's transgressions.

Without thinking she moved from the barn to the car. She knew two dice would be dangling in the windshield, they were. She studied the dark red interior, almost daring herself to open the passenger side door and touch the cool vinyl. The back seat beckoned for her attention, a spirit six years dead made itself visible to her eyes. She was naked, beneath Joey's weight, moaning with pleasure, begging him to thrust deeper inside her, begging him to plant his warm seed in her womb.

She touched the front of her jeans, knowing she was wet and hoping her arousal didn't show. Stepping back two strides from the vehicle she prepared to give into her fear and run back to the barn. Hesitation convicted her, caught in the limbo of indecision; she heard the front door of the farmhouse open.

***

He saw her in his mind as one of those girls who might look attractive regardless of the garments worn. Given a different setting he would have seduced her, filthy jeans and all. Her brown hair hung straight, breaking slightly over her shoulders. Her shape was almost boyish, hidden by an oversized tee shirt and loose fitting denims. In his mind he undressed her, bathed her and embraced her naked flesh.

"You must be Bobbi," he said to the girl who seemed frozen in her tracks, "heard mention in town that Joshua Miller had an attractive daughter."

With the spell of sexual urgency not completely broken the girl's gaze went from the car to its owner. He took note of her dark eyes and her full lips. A desire to taste her kisses rose in his loins.

"My name is Wilson Pierce," he offered, extending a hand from his stronghold at the front of the Impala.

Like a fawn caught in the headlights her large eyes met his. Her mouth moved with wordless expression.

"Like the car?" He said into the silent void, "It's a nineteen sixty Chevrolet Impala... American made right down to the bolts..."

"Where'd you find this," her voice escaped her mouth trancelike.

"You're the second person today to ask me that question... picked it up in a used car lot in upstate New York." He smiled, attempting to lend comfort to the moment. "The interior doesn't have a single tear and I don't think anyone has ever sat in the back seat." He studied her expression, the way she seemed to glance nervously toward the back seat of the vehicle.

"I'm going to be stayin' in one of the upstairs rooms for a while," he continued, "maybe, while I'm here, you might like to take a ride?"

Her voice slowly escaped from her parted lips. "That... would be... nice."

Wilson moved to the driver's door with the intention of moving the car to the side of the barn. Bobbi took a step back toward the vehicle, caught in the trap of a not so distant memory.

"It's alright, you know," Wilson said, drawing her eyes back to his, "the moment was beautiful and always will be."

***

A white Firebird pulled off the road into the dirt parking lot. The engine idled for a minute before the driver shut the engine down. One shapely leg adorned with black heels and nude nylons emerged from the open door, a second leg followed. The female driver rose out of the low-slung bucket seats and slammed the door in her wake.

Country music poured out from the pub. Northeastern cowboys would be dancing to guitars and fiddles, dressed in tight jeans and tee shirts. She liked cowboys.

She straightened out her short black mini skirt and adjusted the front of her white halter. She confidently made her way toward the front door.

A live band commandeered the stage, drummer, a couple guitars and a skinny blonde at the lone microphone. She thought about places like this, where girls sitting at barstools were looking for a one-night romance. The singer began the first verse of 'Angel of the Morning', and the girl at the doorway in the black mini skirt related intimately to the lyrics. She knew that a single night was all she would ever have and all she ever wanted.

She made her way to the bar, after taking inventory of the handful of couples on the dance floor. She slipped past a pool table where four jean clad studs eyed a possible prize. She advertised well.

"A gin and tonic," she said to the bartender before the question escaped his lips.

"I'll buy that fer the lady," a tall man who she estimated to be at least six foot four said. "Not often Dana's place gets blessed with a doll like you."

She smiled; knowing her smile said all she needed to say for now. Later she would say more, after business had been transacted.

She imagined herself to be a blonde with long curly locks and the wig covering her short black hair was almost perfect.

"Ain't ever seen you before around these parts," the stud commented while waiting for the drinks, "just passin' through?"

"Business... I'm here on business."

"And what kinda business does a looker like you have herself involved in?"

She tipped her head and for the first time caught a glimpse of his pale gray eyes. "There's a price t' find out," she stated, adding a slow sensual lick to her lips. She felt his eyes studying her nipples as they poked through the fabric of her halter-top. She waited for his rough hand to find its way to her exposed leg.

The bartender set a gin and tonic down on the bar in front of her. A double shot of whiskey occupied the space in front of her male friend. She took a long drink from her glass, making sure to lick the lip of the glass with her teasing tongue.

"So what's the price?" He asked, his untouched whiskey attracting her attention.

"You got enough t' buy me another drink?"

"Depends on what yer sellin' doll."

She turned toward him on her stool. His thick hand found her knee and quickly charted a course up her leg. She parted her thighs and knew that in a moment he'd find out she forgot to wear panties.

***

"So the grave was empty... when you open it up?" Sheriff Townsend was a tall man, standing at least six and a half feet. He asked his question to Harland Hecht as the deputy relayed his version of the day's events. Neil Jasperson listened without interruption.

"It's in the report... I put down exactly what we saw... me and Neil and the other guy, the one who stopped by here last night." Harland felt fatigued and wished for the sheriff to head home to his adoring wife and three kids. Harland had definite plans to close his eyes as soon as he occupied the jailhouse alone.

"And this other individual... the one you said stopped by the station early this morning?"

"Wilson... Pierce," Harland responded.

Sheriff Townsend picked up the report Harland prepared earlier in the afternoon. The thorough document outlined a story the sheriff first thought to be contrived by too much beer and an afternoon in the sun.

"The interior seemed to have never been used." Harland repeated this statement for the fifth or sixth time, as if trying to convince himself of the unlikely fable.

"Seems more likely that whoever chose to disrupt this resting place... took the remains as well," Sheriff Townsend responded. "I have my doubts that this crime was committed by bored teenagers lookin' for a thrill. There seems to be more purpose here than the simple violation of a grave and its contents."

"I disagree..." Neil Jasperson began to spit out. A quick glance from the sheriff left the remainder of his protest unspoken.

"I'm not interested in ghost stories. What happened here is perverted and sick... and the perpetrators will be caught, flesh and blood perpetrators."

Sheriff Townsend, a forty-eight year old law enforcement officer, wore the badge of his position since 1977. The drifter, whose defiled grave some vandal trespassed upon, crept back into his mind occasionally, only because Wilkesboro had no axe murderers to contend with.

A fight broke out between Aaron Miller and Willard Paul two weeks ago, which became the highlight of the month. They'd been drinking out at Dana's and some tramp from a neighboring town got them riled up. Joshua Miller, Aaron's father, suggested leaving the two young men in one cell so they could pound each other to oblivion. Sheriff Townsend figured they should have just tag teamed the girl; after all it was probably what she wanted to begin with.

"Whoever stole the remains did a great job cleaning up after themselves. That's the way I see." The sheriff continued, hoping to end any argument before adding, "What about this third guy who went out there with you... the Pierce fella?"

"He left," Harland said, "strange character... made some comment about... victims and said if we needed him he'd be up at the Miller's place.

"Strange character," the sheriff said, "in what way?"

"I don't know sheriff, I had breakfast with him... he talked about writing a book... expressed interest in the drifter's suicide..."

"This drifter's suicide?" The sheriff pounded a heavy hand down on the report neatly laid out on his desk.

"Yes!"

"Coincidence," Sheriff Townsend mumbled, "simple coincidence."

"He wasn't country folk in the least. Ya might describe him as nerdy in a way... strange like most writers."

"And you know of many writers," the sheriff said sarcastically.

"One more thing," Harland tried again to explain an elusive feeling, "remember the unregistered vehicle we found a half mile from the bridge... a couple days after the drifter jumped?"

"White Impala... vintage..."

"Yes!" Harland cut off his superior. "Dice hanging in the window... red interior. Wilson Pierce drives a car exactly like it... only it has New York state plates. The dice, the interior, the fact that the body was mint..."

"JJ Fellows took the car to his lot in Derry. I understand he sold it to some young kid at State College. I doubt you were lookin' at the same vehicle."

***

Harland felt different about the car, and once he was alone at the stationhouse he'd be free to raise his feet on the desk and contemplate other possibilities. What if the student from Penn State came from New York? What if he returned home and traded in the vehicle on some used car lot; the same used car lot where Wilson Pierce shopped for his vehicles? If so, it would all be a coincidence and the deputy's tired mind could rest.

He would need to pay JJ Fellows a visit in the morning when his shift was done.

"Tomorrow I'm goin' out to the Miller's farm and talk to your mister Pierce," Sheriff Townsend said as he removed his lightweight jacket from the hook behind the desk. "I'm not reachin' beyond the possibility of coincidences... but I would like t' know why this Pierce fella just so happens t' be interested in the story of the drifter... just when the same drifter's grave is bein' stripped clean."

Harland Hecht watched as Sheriff Townsend checked the locks on his desk drawers. Privacy held great importance to the man Harland was subordinate too. Keys jingling in hand, Sheriff Townsend crossed the wooden floor of the stationhouse. The door closed firmly behind him as he announced his exit.

Harland envied the sheriff for what the man went home to nightly. A wife, who was twelve years his junior, and three handsome kids, two girls, six and eight years of age and a boy of twelve. Ginny Townsend had once worn the crown of queen at the county agricultural fair; she was a niece to Joshua Miller and one of the finest looking women in Central Pennsylvanian.

Morgan Townsend was a lucky man in Harland's eyes.

# Chapter 5

Aaron decided to purchase what the girl at the bar wished to sell. Her price for an hour at a nearby motel came to a little more than the contents of his wallet. He dropped a twenty on the table, without concern for witnesses. A deal was reached; the front seat of his pick-up, and her clothes would stay on. She lifted her skirt before dismounting from her stool to show the big boy what he was missing out on. Deal done, the eldest son of Joshua Miller and the girl with the black mini skirt left the bar.

The witness of a crime, an off duty deputy from Wilkesboro named Dylan Hall. The youngest member of Wilkesboro's police force celebrated his twenty-forth birthday less than a month ago. The deputy knew he was out of his jurisdiction and that Aaron Miller received immunity to most of the arcane laws of society. Dylan walked to the window where a view of Aaron Miller's truck could easily be obtained. He watched Aaron climb into the driver's side of the year-old Chevy.

"Aaron's gittin' hisself a little action," a regular said as he moved beside Dylan. "Guess she's gonna do her business out in the front of the truck... fer the world t' see."

The prostitute lifted herself up onto the passenger seat and once she was in the truck she closed the door, shutting off the interior light. In the lights shining off the front of Dana's, Dylan could still make movement in the truck's cab well enough to understand what the single bill on the counter paid for.

Dylan stepped out in front of the building, on the concrete walkway, to avoid any additional comments the regular prepared to ask. The exterior lighting cast a glow across the entire lot, except for the two farthest corners. Most men would have parked their vehicle in those shadows, but Wilkesboro and the surrounding communities didn't treat Aaron Miller as any man. The off-duty deputy contemplated the rules of the small community. He had no intention of arresting Aaron, but where the hooker stood he felt undecided.

He could make out Aaron's form shifting, rising slightly off the seat, before the prostitute's head disappeared beneath the dashboard.

The door behind him opened and closed. The regular he attempted to avoid continual contact with stepped out for a better look.

"Wonder how many skin flutes that girl plans t' play t'night?"

Dylan didn't respond to the question, but the same thought danced through his mind and aroused him.

***

Bobbi broke a date with Calvin Hall for the evening. She gave him no reason. The planned outing consisted of nothing more than a run to Dana's for a few beers and whatever she was willing to give after. Bobbi wasn't a bad girl, but her virtue had been given to Joey the drifter six years ago and in a town the size of Wilkesboro her reputation became common knowledge. Most men in Wilkesboro spent time with Bobbi because of the rumors. The greater portion of them went home alone.

The old farmhouse possessed an uneasy silence. The new boarder went to his room after dinner and remained there, much to her disappointment. Her brothers were out, carousing as usual and her father seemed zoned in on the programming offered by ABC. Outside the air cooled from the warm temperatures of the day. She threw a cotton blouse on, over a clean white tee shirt before stepping out into the yard. The car belonging to the boarder was parked beside the barn closest to the house. She couldn't resist the urge to inspect the vehicle closer, to touch the cool steel. The dice hanging from the rearview mirror seemed to dance in her sight without the benefit of open windows or a breeze. She felt sixteen again, not that twenty-two wore her body down. She sensed the anticipation of a love experienced for the first time.

"I shouldn't be here," she said out loud, and remembered having said those words one night while a slight westerly breeze caused the dice to dance. Joey's hand was beneath her tee shirt and the cup of her bra, caressing her hardened nipple. She didn't want him to remove it.

Bobbi stepped away from the car, shaking her head to clear cobwebs of memories. The dice no longer moved.

The walk to the bridge amounted to a mile and a half hike by road. A trail through the woods shortened the journey by half. Bobbi slipped behind the barn and strode out through her father's fields of plenty toward the tree-line barely visible in the darkness.

***

Dylan carried a portable strobe light in his pick-up; the kind used in all the police shows on television by the plain clothed officers in eight cylinder sedans. He waited for the Firebird to cross over town lines before attaching the magnetic strobe to the top of his cab and turning it on. A woman, out late at night, dressed the way the driver of the Firebird chose to dress, played dangerous games with her own safety. Some women asked for it, a motto he and his younger brother Calvin lived by.

He'd taken a mental note of the fact that the hooker wore a blonde wig. Beneath the wig he saw a black mop of straight black or dark brown hair. He figured she must have honestly believed that blondes had more fun.

The strobe flashed into the night as his vehicle closed on the rear of the Firebird. No resistance, the driver in the short black mini skirt pulled to the side of the road.

Dylan pulled his truck up behind her. He didn't look like much of a law enforcement officer at the moment. He pulled his badge from the pocket of his jeans so she could identify him as a deputy of Wilkesboro. Once at her car he displayed the symbol of his menial office to her through the window. She rolled it down an inch or two as he scanned the interior of her vehicle with the beam of his flashlight. The blonde wig laid in a heap on the passenger's seat. The driver had black hair, cut short, and she possessed a certain attractiveness, not what he expected from a woman who made her living pleasuring men.

"Mam... I need t' see your driver's license," he stated as professionally as he found possible.

"Was I speeding officer?" She asked while making a concerted effort to dig into her purse. "I don't seem to have it with me," she said and attempted to display a posture of innocence. "I honestly didn't think I was speeding or anything... I always stay real close to the speed limits and all."

He stepped back from the vehicle. "I'm going t' have t' ask you to get out of the car."

The driver's side of the two-door fastback opened. Dylan's flashlight caught the exit of the first leg. The second leg followed, revealing a hiked up skirt and an invitation the deputy wanted to avoid. His hand held beacon rose to her face as she stood and stepped away from the car's interior. She turned her back as if knowing the routine and placed her hands on top of her Firebird's roof.

"It not about speeding," Dylan told her as he grabbed one arm and pulled it behind her back, "it's about your present line of business." He gripped her second arm and brought it to position to attach his handcuffs. "Might not have followed you if you'd a gone the other way, but this is my town... 'n we don't like havin' prostitutes visitin' us."

No argument came from her lips. Dylan held both her arms and directed her to his pick-up. The next monologue he'd recite would be her Miranda Warning.

***

Bobbi gripped the railing on the bridges southern side, trembling with built up emotion. Joey jumped from this spot to the rocks below. She had been spared the sight of his broken body, but her mind imagined a vision much more horrible.

Often she came to this place, to wonder why Joey Hilliard did such an incredibly stupid thing to her love. Hours would pass, and sometimes entire sleepless nights would be spent on the bridge or by the rocks. Bobbi's grief had subsided over the past few years, until today, when the white Impala forced her to see old memories.

She didn't wear a watch, but she knew the time neared midnight. The bell in the tower of the Congregational Church chimed eleven times a while ago. Another hour passed, her weariness felt the passing of each minute.

Headlights approached the bridge, high beams staring out onto the suspended span. It was seldom that any vehicle would come out this way, especially at this hour. The four bright beacons of light bore into her world. She pictured the front of the Impala in her mind and for a moment expected a ghost of Joey to rise from the glow.

"B-Bobbi," the voice belonging to Calvin Hall reached forth from the glaring light, "been l-lookin' fer ya." Calvin supported a drinking problem capable of keeping a small brewery in business. "Saw Aaron... he said... he said you been g-google eyed o-over a new b-boarder. Swhy ya changed our plans? Been fuckin' another boarder... l-like a fuckin' dirt bag whore."

She backed up against the cold steel of the bridge's rail. Its chill erupted into the lower portion of her spine. Fear conquered her flesh.

"Still comin' out h-here l-lookin' fer ghostsss... of a d-dead lover," Calvin continued his stuttering rhetoric. "Thinkin' ya c-c-could j-join him on the r-rocks... sm-smash yer fuckin' head. Th-th-think ya c'n see wha' happen... that n-night. Only a dead asshole knows fer sure."

Bobbi wanted to run toward the opposite side of the bridge. Calvin could easily outrun her sober, but in his inebriated state running would prove difficult. Still, her feet were caught in a trap of fear.

Calvin had always wanted Bobbi to be his. They dated a few times and a month ago. After a drinking binge at Dana's, she allowed the situation in the backseat of Calvin's car to go farther than she wanted it to. She told him it was simply casual sex, he agreed in words, but not with his heart or soul. In his present drunken state, she knew Calvin would rape her. She would scream out and nobody would hear.

"If you touch me Calvin Hall... Aaron will kill you... you know that," she threatened the approaching nightmare.

"Whose gonna tell... Aaron?" Calvin stopped, weaving in and out of the headlight beams. "There's things only a few k-know. Aaron... Aaron and t-the others didn't wan ya with something' like t-that. Aaron knew ya did th' drifter. It's rape ya know... stat-u-a-tory... r-rape. The fuckin' drifter p-paid a p-proper p-price fer rapin' a Miller girl."

"What price did Joey pay?" She asked the drunken shadow moving through the illumination.

"Isa w-w-witness... saw all of it. Aaron... my brotha D-Dylan," Calvin laughed at a joke she wasn't privy too, "no-no... ya know... he didn't die on them rocks d-down there." He almost fell forward on his face, she would have bolted to safety if he did. "He f-fuckin' died right h-here... on the bridge... then they throwed him over."

"Calvin... stay away!" He didn't seem in a mood for listening as he took a couple shaky steps toward her. He reached out; she tried to move quickly in defense, clawing at vulnerable flesh. She got one clean swipe before Calvin captured both her wrists in his beefy hands.

# Chapter 6

"The witness bears the same guilt as those whose actions take life." A male voice broke the spectral silence, hovering over the darkness.

Bobbi looked back down the bridge toward the direction of Calvin's parked car. A shadow took form, moving into the light administered by radiant beams.

"You saw," the shadow continued, "when all evil is brought into the light your deeds will be known for what they are. Is that not true... Calvin?"

"W-who are y-you?" Calvin asked his question of a face he couldn't see.

"Leave the girl... release her."

Again Calvin asked the shadow surrounded by the glare of burning headlights. "Who the h-h-hell are you?"

"I am one who sees what there is to see... and who is forced to judge by what is seen."

The wavering, drunken coward felt the fear of six years steal his control of Bobbi's wrists. He released her and moved away from the girl he intended to force himself upon. He stood at the center of the bridge watching the billowing lights flow as a liquid mass around the shadow of his guilt.

"I did not t-t-touch h-him," Calvin stated, fear beginning to sober him up.

"As a witness... you bear equal blame."

"Go to hell," Calvin screamed at the top of his lungs, loosing any semblance of a studder. "Ghost... demon. You are n-n-not real... you are n-n-not of this w-world."

Calvin crossed the bridge, to the opposite side from Bobbi. The shadow spoke in a calm, soothing voice, no longer focused on Calvin Hall, but on the girl born to Joshua Miller and his deceased wife twenty-two years ago.

"Bobbi... come this way... to safety."

***

She felt only comfort, where fear previously laid claim to her body. Her legs no longer seemed planted firmly on the surface of the bridge. Each step from the spot where she had been frozen became easier than the last. She heard a distant sobbing, a distant moan of pain, and realized the sound belonged to a wretched drunk, one who would have caused her harm if the shadow hadn't saved her.

Bobbi moved into the light, heaven's beacon. The voice calling her belonged to Joey for a moment, then it belonged to another, but neither tone frightened her.

"Come this way Bobbi... everything will be fine."

She could make out hands reaching for her. Arms promising safety, spread out to engulf her in their security. She did not have the power to resist the urge to seek the offered comfort.

"You?" She recognized the new boarder, the one she'd met this afternoon. His semi-shadowed face expressionless, he drew her into his embrace.

"How did you find me? She asked.

"It's alright now," his calm melodic voice sang hypnotically.

"How did you know I was out here?"

He shielded her against his shoulder. Protecting her from sight his interference would cause, protecting her soul from the darkness he would beckon from the night.

"You are owned by that which clings to the belly of sin." His words brought no fear to the brown haired girl in his arms. The threat was meant and understood by Calvin Hall. "Do what you will with haste... while no eyes look upon you."

Bobbi felt herself led off the bridge, past Calvin's car, still idling with its lights glaring out across the bridge. They walked to the trail leading down toward the water, toward the short route she had followed through the woods earlier.

"Is this the way you came?" She asked as her sneakers struck loose dirt.

"I do not know this way... I need you to lead me back."

She turned onto a narrow trailhead between two trees. He followed, reaching for her hand, wanting distance to dampen the sound he knew would soon echo from the overpass.

She turned to face him and warm kiss of passion closed her ears to the sound of flesh crashing against the rocks. Bobbi thought of only the contact between them, the fusion of her wet lips to his. She sought his tongue and he made no effort to be anything less than what she craved.

When the moment slipped into memory, when her heart slowed to a steady beat, he broke their link. His palms stretched out along the side of her face, massaging away tension and offering reprieve. She felt his desire press against her. If he wanted to take her now she would give herself without hesitation, naked on the trail beneath the moonlight.

"We should return to the house." His was a voice of stability in a moment slipping into chaos.

"Would you make love to me?" She asked, wondering where the words came from.

"Not tonight," he responded, taking her hand and leading her down a trail of unfamiliarity, "soon... but not tonight."

Something unseen led him through the darkness. He followed a ghost, her hand held tightly in his. The question of his identity slipped across her lips, a flavor she needed to taste again. Ahead the old barn, closest to the house, loomed. They paused behind the weather beaten structure. Why did he wait? Slowly she began to remove the outer shirt she wore, forgetting all else except a longing to lie with him.

"What we have shared," he told her, "is a moment together... walking through the woods... coming to know each other deeply. There was nothing at the bridge... just you and I and a moment like this." He raised her hand, held in his. She felt connected to more than external flesh.

"Who?"

A finger of his warm hand touched her lips, gently requesting silence. "Soon... there will be no secrets between us. He pulled her into his embrace, his eyes lingering on the contours of her face, before seeking the warmth of her lips again.

***

She'd given her name to the arresting officer as Keri, nothing more, although she only felt comfortable wearing the moniker when the blonde wig covered her head. Her alter ego set on the sheriff's desk now, she occupied a cell, alone.

She watched the deputy across the room, feet on desk and a low rumbling snore emitting from his mouth. He wasn't the one who arrested her for a passion she couldn't control.

How long the second man in the room had been standing in the shadows was unclear to her. His movement into the embrace of illumination slowly registered in her tired mind, a second deputy on duty, coming in from having protected the town from hookers and wild teenagers at keg parties. He remained silent, as her cage seemed to shrink in size.

"Hello!" His voice greeted her from the shadow's ebb. whispering softly across the wooden floorboards in an effort not to wake the sleeping deputy.

The sheriff's assistant didn't stir. The male form in the shadows gained substance, moving into the room's glow, emitted by a single lamp on the deputy's desk.

"Everything will be fine... Stephanie," the figure morphing from darkness to light said, "this is not meant for you... this reality is not yours."

She backed to the furthest recesses of the cell, pressing her back to the cool cinderblock wall. The man walked past the deputy, unconcerned with the possibility of waking him from slumber. He wasn't dressed in the uniform of a law enforcement officer and suddenly she realized he possessed an aura, which did not belong to her surroundings. He approached the bars of her cage. Like an animal she felt trapped, caged, to be viewed for some abnormality her species were known to possess.

"I'm a hooker," she said, as if the revelation would spare her from some horrible wrath. "I don't know what you want from me. I am not Stephanie."

His hand passed over the locking assembly. The tumblers clicked and with no effort of his part the gate between freedom and imprisonment opened.

"What do you want from me... please?"

Sudden awareness riveted itself to her mind. The man was more than a stranger in jeans and sneakers, with a pale blue shirt buttoned loosely at his neck.

"You're one of them!" The revelation brought her to a new level of fear.

"No Stephanie... you were touched by darkness. It is darkness that infects your soul. I can offer light... a light that will make you forget ever having seen the darkness."

He stepped into her cell, pulling the door closed in his wake. With trembling fingers she reached for the zipper at the side of her skirt and nervously pulled it down. The skirt fell to her ankles. A tingling sensation rose through her flesh. Naked from the waist down she anticipated him. Without thought of reservation she would accept him. His excitement for her became obvious as his slender fingers reached to her face, palms taking both cheeks in their warmth. He pulled close, concealing her nudity against his form, pressing his arousal against her. His thumbs gently closed her eyelids and all that seemed real began to fade.

"Relax, Stephanie! You have been made to see evil by evil. It is not a part of your true self. You are Stephanie Hawkins. All other names conjured up by your soul will be forgotten. All actions of this dark night and those past will be lost in another's life. You are incarcerated, not for a crime of the flesh. You were speeding and driving under the influence. All who enter this place will see that as your crime. In the morning you will be released." With absolute intent he left a lightly brushed kiss on her forehead. She sighed softly at the touch of his lips as if a burden weighing a thousand pounds lifted itself from her back. "Should we meet again, I am nothing but a normal man, someone you met before. My name is Wilson Pierce."

***

Red and blue lights rotated into the early morning darkness. The vehicle owned by Calvin Hall had been reported abandoned on the old bridge. Milton Herr a retired businessman, who moved out into the thick of the country two years ago, discovered the automobile, running with lights on, driver's door swung open and no driver. Sheriff Townsend responded to the call from his home after being notified by Deputy Hecht.

Calvin's older brother Dylan, arrived on the scene within minutes of the sheriff. Calvin's rusted out '72 Buick still occupied the right side of the roadway. Five empty bottles of beer sat in the cardboard carrier they'd been purchased in. The sixth bottle, half drank, sat on the hood. The engine had been turned off, by the sheriff, along with the headlights. Dylan stroked the hood, the vehicle still radiated warmth.

The older brother found the body, catching its broken shape in the beam of his flashlight, head mutilated by impact with a boulder at the water's edge. Morgan Townsend tried his best to comfort a deputy who had always been like a son to him. Dylan's mother passed on last year after a long bout with lung cancer. Her husband took his own life fifteen years earlier, a month after returning from Vietnam.

"I'll be okay, sheriff," the young man said while watching his brother's body being removed from the creek below.

Dylan walked back toward the car his brother left behind. What had taken his brother over the edge? He knew Calvin lived with unfulfilled desires, a deep loneliness and a tendency to escape inside the bottle. Calvin witnessed too much in his life, including the night on the bridge six years ago. No one suspected the truth about that night and no one cared, but Dylan knew guilt still found a harbor in his brother's heart.

A pair of lights came toward the bridge from behind Calvin's car. In the soft light of pre-dawn Dylan could make out Joshua Miller's old pick-up. Sheriff Townsend caught up to his deputy as Miller's vehicle stopped behind the abandoned car.

"Here come the wolves," the sheriff muttered. Dylan didn't think the intention was for him to hear.

"Morgan," Joshua Miller shouted as soon as he opened his door, "thought I'd come out 'n lend a hand."

Dylan noticed Aaron Miller exit the passenger's side of the truck. His old friend appraised the abandoned vehicle. Without paying complete attention to the conversation between Sheriff Townsend and Joshua Miller, Dylan overheard the sheriff's explanation of the crime, or lack thereof.

"Sorry Dylan," Joshua Miller offered.

Dylan looked into the eyes of the abundantly proportioned man with a gray beard. He felt the elder Miller was sincere in his sympathy. The deputy moved away and as the speaking voices on the bridge dwindled he heard a fragment of conversation, which grabbed hold of his attention.

"Need t' stop out t' yer place," Dylan clearly heard the sheriff's words, directed to old man Miller, "talk t' yer new boarder about some questions he's been askin' around town."

The conversation moved further along the bridge and out of Dylan's range. A new boarder at the Miller Farm was not unusual. A new boarder demanding the sheriff's attention was.

***

"Calvin?" Aaron spoke quietly, prodding the fender of the Buick with nervous hands.

"Jumped," Dylan answered without much emotion.

"What the fuck... man. Why th' hell would he want t' go 'n kill himself like that?"

"Just like the drifter did... or so the story goes. It's like it happened just as we said it did... only it's Calvin not some drifter with eyes for your sister." Dylan looked over his shoulder, checking the distance between the two of them and Sheriff Townsend. "Calvin had trouble seein' things the same way as the two of us... ya know. Always told me he could deal. Wanted Bobbi Miller real bad. It's why this," he held out a hand to the half empty beer on the Buick's hood, "hid inside any bottle he could get."

Aaron looked into the car through the passenger side window. "I think my sis stood him up t'night."

"Just one more straw t' break Calvin's back," Dylan said allowing anger to overtake his tone. "Fuckin' bitch... that whore. He told me he slept with her one night... a short time ago. I have no reason not t' believe she spread her fuckin' legs for him... then spit in his face."

"Ain't my fault if she can't get it right with guys," Aaron shot back.

"No... I suppose not," Dylan responded, "she never gets it right with guys... does she?" Aaron chose not to answer the question. "Fuck em and leave em, ya know. Story of your sister's life, sleep with 'em before they jump."

Aaron again chose silence rather than argue a point he believed to be true.

"What's this I hear about a new boarder up at your place?" Dylan asked.

"Some writer or somethin'... passin' through town."

"Askin' questions," Dylan clarified, "questions which seem to concern my boss."

# Chapter 7

From her second story window she watched the new boarder named Wilson as he spoke to Sheriff Townsend. Bobbi tingled with desire when she thought of the dark haired man staying in the room off the back of her father's house. She remembered being with him last night, although pieces of the encounter possessed a dreamy effect. Their kiss lingered in her mind, the press of his body against hers. The reason why he came out to the bridge at such a late hour played an elusive game with her mind.

The clock on her wall said five minutes after seven. Dreams occupied her entire night it seemed, visions prompted by Wilson Pierce and his warm body. With five fingers she combed through her hair watching the two men outside. A thin white tee shirt and a pair of cotton panties donned the silhouette she cast in the window. Aroused, her nipples poked out from the fabric of her top seeking a gentle caress of loving hands.

She heard footsteps on the stairs leading up to the second floor of the farmhouse. She peeked out her door and saw Aaron entering his room. She grabbed a pair of jeans off a chair by the door and after stepping into them went to her brother's room.

He opened the door within seconds of her first soft knock.

"What's up sis?" He asked, barring her entry to his domain.

"What's Sheriff Townsend doin' out there... talkin' to Wil... Mister Pierce?"

"An old friend of your's jumped off the bridge last night," Aaron waited for shock to rise on her face. "Calvin... Dylan's brother... hadn't you dated him a couple times recently?"

"My God," Bobbi stated with a stale tone, "is he dead?"

"Very!"

"I was supposed to go with him t' Dana's last night for a couple drinks."

"And what happened?"

"Cancelled... didn't feel much like goin' out."

"Looks like he drank himself to a state of jumpin'. An empty six pack in the car and the vehicle was left runnin'... kinda looks like he went up there with the intent t' do himself in," Aaron explained. "Sure you didn't see Calvin last night?"

"No... I didn't see Calvin at all."

Bobbi moved away from her brother's door nervously. Was she advertising a guilt she couldn't remember?

"You seem t' have a queer effect on the boys... don't cha? This is the second fella of yours who chose t' take that route from life."

"I have no idea what you're talkin' about," Bobbi responded, trying desperately to keep from running from her brother's sight. She remembered nothing to accuse her. "Calvin and I are friends... casual friends... nothing more."

"He had the hots fer you... and claimed that you, little sis, had it for him too. Course guys tend t' get a feelin' like that after a tumble in their back seats." Aaron's smile spread across his pot-marked face. He loved making his sister uncomfortable with the reputation she laid out for herself.

"Well I didn't have any feelings for him." Her voice rose a few distinct octaves as anger erupted.

Aaron's smile gave way to laughter. "I know all about it sis," he chuckled, "Girls like you rarely have feelings for the guys they fuck."

***

"My deputy says you went with he and Neil to the cemetery yesterday to check on the uncovered grave?" Sheriff Townsend asked, his suspicious nature coming to the forefront.

"Weird thing... huh, sheriff," Wilson Pierce stated the obvious, wanting to keep conversation with this member of Wilkesboro's finest to a minimum.

"Officer Hecht told me you were askin' questions about... Joey... Hilliard?"

"Didn't know his name sheriff," Wilson offered, "just read a story about the suicide, happened to be by here... and like I said to your deputy... I'm a writer in search..."

"He did tell you there was nothin' t' find here?"

Wilson nodded.

"What kind of writtin' do you do?"

"Novels," Wilson answered and took notice of the sheriff's eyes shifting toward the farmhouse at Wilson's back. Wilson determined that the sheriff's attention wasn't drawn to the porch, but to one of the upper level windows. The two of them were being watched by Bobbi Miller. "I've had a few sell respectfully."

"You seem young," the sheriff, stated his opinion.

"Probably so."

"This town doesn't take well to people pokin' around in their business and coincidences... such as you askin' about that Joey and then the kids grave being... dug open don't look right... not the way they see it."

"Can I ask you a question sheriff?" Wilson asked.

Sheriff Townsend gave no response and instead waited for the young man to ask.

"How do you see things?"

Morgan Townsend lived in the town all his life, except for his two years serving in the army as an MP in Utah. Most of his ideals were tempered by his experiences away from the grip of Wilkesboro and by life as an officer of the law. Folks in Wilkesboro saw life with a narrow focus. They pictured only what lay straight ahead and ignored the peripheral. Their families were important, their neighbors were important, provided they walked down the tunnel the good folks of Wilkesboro deemed proper.

"A kid jumps... six years ago," Wilson said without waiting for the sheriff to answer his previous question, "doesn't feel like somethin' this town had any experience with. In some parts of the world... suicide... hell crime for its own sake... is a daily event, but here in Wilkesboro there's a void which seems t' keep crime away, then an outsider comes and changes the way things always were."

The sheriff again looked up to the window at Wilson's back. Wilson caught an empty reflection in the older man's eyes. She wasn't there anymore. When the sheriff chose to turn his attention back to the young author, Wilson captured his sight and held it.

The calm voice, which had spoken to Calvin Hall last night before the young man jumped from the bridge, came to the surface. "It is all together possible sheriff, that the two suicides are not as they seem. If the first was an act of murder, it is possible that the second is an act of revenge. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord and he has given permission to the shadows to seek retribution."

The dazed eyes of Sheriff Townsend closed briefly. The calm prophecy of Wilson Pierce had not been heard, but felt. He reached out his hand to shake the hand of someone welcomed in their town.

"It was nice to meet you, Mister Pierce," Morgan Townsend said, releasing his weak grip on Wilson's hand.

The sheriff turned toward his vehicle, which was parked in the drive in front of the house. On the edge of the woods a shadow filtered through the brush, one seeking a promised vengeance. Wilson knew Morgan Townsend had committed no murder, but he protected those who stole life. The shadow would wait for another time to feed.

***

As soon as Harland Hecht completed his shift he drove his pick-up to nearby Derry. JJ Fellows had over a hundred and fifty cars on his lot, most were older models, which JJ could sell inexpensively. An advertisement on local television stations scanned JJ's lot as sticker prices flashed across the screen. The motto 'Got a thousand, come buy a car... Got five-hundred, come buy a car' was read off a cue card by JJ himself before he waved to prospective customers.

His real name was Jon Jacob Fellows, friends and acquaintances called him JJ and his two ex-wives called him asshole.

Harland pulled into a parking space out front and looked at his watch to verify the time. Ten minutes after eight, the business opened at nine. On the way into town the deputy stopped at a pair of golden arches. He wasn't much for Big Macs and fries, but he liked the way Ronald made a cup of coffee. Breakfast at Marge's would have to wait, maybe become lunch. Dylan had called a few minutes before six. He explained the situation out on the bridge and said the sheriff knew he wouldn't be in. Mike Kendall showed just before seven and Harland managed to escape the station house without running into Sheriff Townsend.

The first sip of coffee burned his upper lip. He raised his eyebrows over the steam and watched movement within the office of the car dealership. A rounded middle-aged man Harland knew to be JJ, thanks to the local commercials, entered through the back with a short blonde who appeared to be no more than eighteen.

Harland got out of his truck and walked up to the front door. The dealerships hours were posted clearly on the upper pane of glass. The deputy tapped on the window to get the attention of either JJ or the short blonde.

The young girl turned toward the sound of intrusion, as did JJ. Based on the uniform and badge pressed against the window, the round man nodded his head, giving permission to the girl to open the door. She invited Harland in, locking the door again once the deputy entered. The buxom girl possessed a strong resemblance to JJ Fellows, the round face with a couple teenaged blemishes and a build which given time would fill out much like his. Her chest stretched the fabric of a light pink sweater. She seemed quite proud of her cup size.

"I'm JJ Fellows... officer," the round man said as he approached, "how can I be of help?"

"I realize you're not opened yet and all," Harland apologized for the early arrival.

"Nonsense," JJ insisted, "have I by chance allowed another stolen vehicle to slip onto my lot?"

"Not this time," Harland smiled in an attempt to seem friendlier and less authoritative.

"Well then... how can I be of help?"

"Need you to dig back in your memory a few years... maybe you even have records on hand of the sale which might help," Harlan stated.

"Depends on how long ago you're talkin'... officer."

"Six years... but this particular sale might still linger in your mind."

"Some do."

"Recall a white Chevy Impala... nineteen sixty... mint."

"Perfect piece of machinery as I recall," JJ responded. "The vehicle didn't stay on the lot long... some college kid with dough came in here and drooled all over the purchase... the things we crave in our youth. Wasn't that car associated with some crime over in Wilkesboro?"

"A suicide."

"Oh yes... the vehicle had no title."

"Did you ever have any contact with the individual who purchased the vehicle?"

"None really... no reason to... that car not only had a mint body but the engine looked as if it just drove off the showroom floor."

Harland's information gathering gained him no more knowledge than he already possessed. The young girl moved over to a small desk in the corner of the office, typewriter keys tapped a code against paper and carbon.

"Someday... hopefully... JJ Fellows will belong to her," JJ stated. Harland turned his attention back to the salesman. "My daughter," JJ continued, "graduated high school this year... tryin' to convince her t' go to Business College in the fall, but you know how that goes?"

Harland nodded his head in agreement, although he had no understanding of the younger generation's way of thinking.

"One more question... if I might?" Harland asked. JJ, the typical salesman, interpreting every meeting with a stranger as a possible future sale, beamed with his most welcoming smile. "You wouldn't happen to recall where the kid from state college lived when he wasn't at school."

The round man closed his eyes and thought for a brief moment. "Of course," he announced, "it just so happens that my cousin owns a dealership... not as honest as this one mind you," JJ laughed at his own joke. "I took note of the kid's hometown because of that... figurin' if the kid wasn't at college lookin' for transportation... and at home instead... he might have ended up at my cousin's lot which is in a town neighboring his."

"And where would that be?" Harland asked, trying to maintain patience.

"Upstate New York."

# Chapter 8

Dylan Hall thought about the past too much. An afternoon of whiskey, fear and guilt weighed heavily on his confused psyche. The bottle on the floor had not been filled when he started his binge; he emptied it into his stomach and now progressed through a second bottle of a different brand. He lived with the spirit of his brother Calvin now that the younger Hall no longer took breaths of the same air Dylan breathed.

A handgun set on the coffee table. Fear left it in place, the fear of spirits seeking revenge from empty graves. Word was out, around the stationhouse, about Harland and Neil Jesperson's fling with the eerie at the cemetery. The empty grave of the drifter held as much apprehension in its open pit as did Miller's Creek below the bridge.

Why had Calvin jumped from the bridge? Did he feel the same trepidation the flow of whiskey made Dylan swim in? Could he have been pushed? The more answers Dylan sought with his intoxicated mind the more frightened he became.

Their course had steered clear of any association with the drifter's death. They were six years down the road from that particular night, yet Calvin could not let it go. Had guilt absorbed his brother so deeply that he would commit suicide in league with the unknown drifter? He watched two furry dice dance before his eyes and closed his mind to the drunken illusion.

Dylan knew the truth about the night six years ago, as did Calvin. His younger brother had watched, nothing more, a witness to the vile tempers of his older brother and Aaron Miller.

"Sometimes you make mistakes man," he said out loud to an empty room. "Gotta pick up the pieces left behind. What good's it t' wallow in fuckin' guilt... it's not like we murdered an actual someone... he was a nobody... it's different." He downed another shot of whiskey and threw the empty glass against the wall across the room. The rest of the night he would drink his poison straight from the bottle.

Dylan reached for the pistol and stroked the barrel of the weapon. "Shoulda used this and driven the body out of town. I told Aaron, who the hell cared about his little sister anyway? Why the hell did you feel somethin' for her Calvin." His hand came down on the table with force enough to nearly bounce the bottle of whiskey from the surface. "She got it on with a loser man. Why the fuck did you still think she was worth your time?"

Dylan's face met the palms of his hands before he allowed himself the indignity to slam the table once more.

"Worthiness," the single word hung in room's stale air. Dylan hadn't uttered the sound to himself. He stood up from the sofa without grabbing his weapon from the table.

"Why do you think you're worthy of life?" The voice asked, reverberating from the void which should have housed the kitchen.

"Who's in there?" Dylan bellowed. "I have a gun... show yourself... and do it slowly."

"So use it."

Darkness filled the adjacent room, but the detached voice didn't come from the larynx of any shadow. Dylan thought of firing his gun into the kitchen. His finger itched on the trigger.

"Sometimes mistakes are made," the voice said, "sometimes they're paid for in full. Calvin has made his payment... tonight you will... and soon Aaron Miller will pay his overdue debt."

"Come out of there now," Dylan yelled, becoming soberer by the moment.

The dense darkness of space flowed from the other room, absorbing light. In its midst walked the man whose calm voice filled Dylan Hall with dread.

"My brother didn't jump... did he?" Dylan said as he aimed his pistol at the figure trespassing in his house.

"Some deaths are not as they seem," the figure from out of the shadows said.

Dylan felt his finger tighten on the trigger. The weapon failed to fire, desperation began to claim a new victim.

"The sheriff overlooked much that night six years ago. He did not need to overlook the same evidence this time," the trespasser said. "Darkness has come to claim vengeance... and the Lord has allowed it."

"Who are you?" Dylan screamed in a panic freezing his body in place.

"Call me Wilson... I usher in the darkness."

***

The one shot fired, went unheard by any who cared. In the coming morning Dylan Hall would be found stretched across his couch wearing the frozen expression of a man who had obviously tried to swallow the barrel of a gun. Ballistics would prove the weapon had been fired by his own hand. His own finger had managed to squeeze off a single round from his weapon.

The science of police investigation would also find alcohol running through his veins in abundance. An empty bottle of cheap whiskey and one on the go would add to the evidence, convicting the deputy as inebriated.

Dylan Hall took his own life, drunken and depressed. He fired a single shot into his open mouth. The single bullet penetrated his brain and blew the back of his head apart. No forensic tests would identify anyone else having been in the room at the time of death. Guilt claimed those who had not the stomach for condemnation.

No witnesses had watched darkness enter a household consumed in light. A darkness which had lain in a grave. Until permission was given to set forth upon the soil of the living, a darkness seeking a promised vengeance.

In the morning, when police would ask questions of neighbors, no witnesses would be able to recall anything unusual about the previous evening. The single shot fired from Dylan's gun would have fallen on deaf ears and a white Chevy Impala driving away from the scene, the moment before Dylan's death, would have been witnessed by blind eyes.

***

"You shouldn't be out here... at night... by yourself."

Bobbi should have been frightened by the intrusion into her privacy. She stood at the side of the bridge staring down into the blackened void at a time of night when most women her age were in the safety of their homes. The voice speaking comforted her and comfort came in rare quantities these days.

"You seem to have an uncanny way of knowing my hiding places," she said to Wilson Pierce as he leaned on the rail beside her. "Sometimes I look at you and I get a feeling like I've been with you before."

"It's called deja vu," Wilson said.

She threw a small stone over the side and waited for the sound of it bouncing off the rocks below. "I can't believe Calvin jumped off the bridge last night. It's such a waste of life ya know. What do you suppose makes someone that unhappy with life that they would jump from here into the rocks below?"

"Guilt."

Bobbi looked his way and in the light of the moon they studied the features of each other's face.

"Who are you?" She asked. "And don't tell me you're a writer from upstate New York. I want to know who you really are... in here." Her hand went to her chest, signifying the aspect of his personality she wanted him to reveal.

Wilson looked out into a void claimed by darkness. The moon and stars offered no light to the chasm. His words began softly, as if he were talking to a supreme entity in prayer, rather than her. "I woke from a coma six years ago, without any recollection of anything. None of my life prior to the coma has ever come back, nor do I think it ever will. I had a fever... an infection I should have died from. My liver and kidneys were shutting down. The doctors told me I lapsed into unconsciousness after three days of burning up. They had no idea what was wrong.

"Anything I know... believe about my life has been told to me by others... who supposedly knew me before I took ill."

"Were you married... kids?" She asked the question as a gauge for future possibilities.

"I was engaged," he answered, "at least that's what this tall... leggy blonde said. She was beautiful, but I couldn't imagine myself with someone like her."

"Tall... blonde... model?"

"All three," he responded. "Expensive comes to mind also. I must have had different tastes in women before the fever."

She knew she fit into none of those descriptive words. At five foot three she couldn't be described as tall. Her hair hanging limply from her head in a bland shade of brown could only be depicted as plain. She could model grain sacks, maybe, or possibly the farmer's jeans she wore at the moment.

"That doesn't explain why you're here, in a nothin' town like Wilkesboro, or how you ended up with Joey Hilliard's car."

"I was prodded by a thought," he began. "I don't know if you dream in a coma, or if you're aware of conversations around you... can't recall. I read this tiny article in a New York paper. It said very little... other than that a young man committed suicide by jumping off a bridge. Even the spelling of your town was incorrect.

"My mind had no memories to fill up space. Things I'd learned... reading... writing... it all stayed with me, but when I was shown a book and told I authored the novel when I was only twenty, the words formed a plot I never imagined. It was as if the words weren't mine... just as the tall model wasn't mine.

"Anyway... the car thing was strictly coincidence... I think. I needed a set of wheels to make the trip here... hadn't planned to buy a car that old. My plan was to buy a vehicle with low miles... good transportation. I needed to come here to write a story. You see, every time I sit at my typewriter... I envisioned the tiny article I read a few days after coming out of my coma.

"I thought all I experienced was a certain attraction to the first words I read... after a long spell of not reading... kinda like the first sounds you hear after a long void of silence. I felt drawn to the place from where the story found origin.

"The car drew my attention the minute I saw it. You don't see many like that anymore, well kept, even though it had passed through the hands of five different owners."

"Maybe you're wrong to think the car was a coincidence," Bobbi said. She knew, from the way he looked at her, even in the dark, that the heart beating in his chest would link itself to hers given the chance.

"Have you heard about the vandals at the cemetery?" He asked.

"No."

"Joey's grave."

"It's not the first time."

"His remains are gone," he stated.

She stared at his somber profile for a few minutes without response.

"Another coincidence?" He added into the silence.

"I don't believe Joey jumped," she spoke without emotion. The conclusion had been burnt into the embers of her mind a short while after Joey Hilliard's death. "He was pushed..."

"...Or thrown," Wilson added.

"Then you feel it too. The wrongness about this whole thing."

"The sheriff looks at Joey's body and at the distance between the rocks and the bridge. He says somethin' like "damned fool" or some other curse... and the investigation is complete. Three men have received six years of life they didn't deserve."

"Three... how do you know?"

"It's crazy... it sounds even crazier, but I believe everything is linked. My coming out of the coma, the car I felt drawn to purchase... even the fact that I needed to buy a pair of fuzzy dice to hang from the mirror. The empty grave in the cemetery... and the shadows of memory I seem privy to... which I somehow know are not mine."

"Was Calvin Hall one of the men who killed Joey?" Bobbi asked.

"He watched... he had a benefit to reap... you. He wanted you and Joey Hilliard was in the way. His brother Dylan was well aware of the fact that Joey's relationship with you was technically statutory rape... so he and a good friend brought Joey to the bridge to beat him senseless. Calvin watched and carried his guilt with him to the rocks last night."

"Who was Dylan's good friend?" She spoke the question with full knowledge of the answer.

"Aaron."

***

Dana's in Derry changed little from night to night. The same patrons sat on the same stools. The same pool sharks agued about round balls on a green felt sea. Aaron watched with amazement. Before coming to the bar he called Dylan Hall. Aaron considered stopping by Dylan's place. They'd kept their distance over the last five years, but his old friend had lost his only family to suicide last night. The phone rang without being answered.

Aaron looked for the wigged blonde he spent time with last night. He took the curly mop of hair as a false get-up the moment he laid eyes on her. She didn't seem to be in the bar tonight, in blonde disguise or otherwise.

Sandra Marks sat across the room with two other women he'd never met. She'd gained a few pounds since they dated back in'82. He had the cash to pay for the required amount of drinks it took to get Sandra in the sack. Actually she'd be cheaper than the prostitute.

"Watcha want, Aaron?" The bartender asked.

"Just a beer."

"Same as usual?" The bartender said as he poured a glass without waiting for an answer.

"Seen that girl from last night around?"

"The one with th' curly blonde hair?"

"That's the one," Aaron answered.

"Never seen her before last night, ain't seen her since." The bartender placed the foaming glass of beer on the bar. "You must

be lookin' t' score again t'night."

Aaron leaned onto the bar to close the distance between his mouth and the bartender's ear. "She wasn't a blonde... ya know. Fake as shit."

A smile spread across the bartender's face as he washed and dried a few used glasses from the bar. "How's Dylan... with Calvin and all?" He asked without looking up to direct his question.

"I don't hang much with Dylan anymore."

"Seems, you two use to be real tight."

"Guess he's doin' as well as c'n be expected."

"He was here last night," the bartender stated, "came in while you was talkin' up the hooker. He watched you... in the parking lot. Thought he was gonna jump on his law enforcement horse and arrest your ass... as well as the hooker, but he just watched. Strange fella... ain't he... could never understand why Morgan Townsend hired him as a deputy."

"I never question the mind of Morgan Townsend," Aaron replied before turning on his seat to build his appetite on Sandra Marks. Two men now occupied the booth, holding cue sticks and waiting for their turn at the closest pool table. Sandra and her friends had left Dana's, quite possibly in search of some other idiot willing to pay the price for their habits.

# Chapter 9

"I always suspected Joey was murdered, but I didn't know who did it," Bobbi said.

They stepped into the clearing behind the barn; only the moonlight's fullness could have given them away.

"Joey said he was different... capable of unusual things," she continued. "To a naïve sixteen-year-old the unusual things were sexual... nothing more."

"Did you love him?" Wilson asked.

"In the mind of a teenager... yes, but I'm an adult now."

"I discovered you as part of the story about a year ago," Wilson added. "An article was printed in a neighboring town's newspaper about an effort by a young woman named Bobbi Miller to have a proper stone placed on an unmarked grave. There were no pictures, but I tried to imagine what you would look like... in case we met."

"And..."

"I pictured someone I would find attractive... and looking at you... it's almost as if I had a picture in hand when I read the article."

If she blushed in the moonlight it went unseen. The headlights of a truck pulled into the drive.

"Aaron," she whispered as she pulled Wilson toward the barn for cover.

Wilson watched, crouched near the side entrance, as Aaron left his vehicle and slowly walked toward the farmhouse. When Aaron reached the back door he paused and scanned the back of the property. Wilson wondered if he looked for shadows and dark voids of hatred.

"In here," Bobbi whispered behind him and he followed her into the overwhelming darkness of the old barn.

"We should probably stay here for a while," Bobbi added, her voice still maintaining a soft volume. "He won't go to bed immediately. I wouldn't want him to hear us coming into the house together."

"He wouldn't like to have you out... and about with another stranger... would he?"

She moved deeper into the shadows. A stair to the upper loft squeaked before she answered. "No... Aaron wouldn't like that at all."

Another dry timber stair moaned from shifting weight. Wilson moved toward the announced movement. His eyes began adjusting to the dark void. With the aid of thin streams of moonlight, seeping through the ancient siding, he saw the staircase.

"Up here," she whispered, causing him to jump when she reached out and brushed his shoulder with her foot. "There's an upper hayloft."

Wilson followed, up the previously unseen ladder. Light from the moon filled the loft through a window at the westerly end of the barn. Bales of hay were neatly arranged for sitting or lying. Bobbi spread a heavy blanket out, over the hay.

Relics stored high in the ceiling were protected from view by overhead shadows. Wilson strained his eyes, seeking to defeat the hold darkness had on light. In the end he failed.

"Come and sit," she said from the bales covered with a soft, inviting blanket. She unfastened the bib of her jeans and let it fold downward into her lap.

***

Sheriff Townsend asked Harland to check up on Dylan during the night. Harland made a call to the residence of the last living member of the Hall family in Wilkesboro at ten o'clock. He received no answer, just the empty sound of a ringing phone. He tried again at eleven and gave a third try few minutes after midnight. When Dylan didn't answer at ten past one the deputy decided to take a ride in one of the black and white squad cars.

Dylan's small ranch style home sat in a nondescript neighborhood filled with cookie cutter houses with American made pickups in the driveways. The cruiser's headlights swept the heat burnt lawns, seeking to uncover the horrors of night. A garbage can set on its side, abandoned by its lid, on the front lawn of a neighbor's house. The empty trash container was back-dropped by a car on cinder blocks. The lights were on in Dylan's place, all the lights. Harland pulled his vehicle into the drive behind Dylan's truck.

Dylan Hall was Harland's least favorite co-worker. Dylan always seemed to act as if the world owed him a favor simply for being born. Harland tried to cut the young deputy some slack. Having lost both parents, and now his only brother, maybe Dylan could claim a little back debit from the sorry world.

An unlocked storm door met the deputy at the front of the house. The inside door was opened completely, given other circumstances Harland might have drawn his weapon, but his expectations pushed aside possible axe murderers.

Dylan drank, often too much for his own good. Not that Harland would be canonized for his efforts to remain sober. When alcohol filled the belly of a Hall, all hell broke loose. When Harland first came into town, taking the open deputy's position, Dylan Hall and Aaron Miller where friends practically joined at the hip. Over time those two blood brothers had become separate entities, Dylan, the hoodlum who tried to enforce the law to his own interpretation and Aaron, walking on the wrong side of most misdemeanors, using a childhood alliance to be kept from behind bars.

Three lights in the living room glared into Harland's brain. The illumination accompanied silence. The back of the couch faced the deputy upon entry. He expected to find a drunken waist of flesh sprawled out across the sofa's seat. At worse Dylan might have launched the contents of a liquid meal. He never expected the horrendous sight before him, a faceless body, the blood-splattered arm of the sofa, the gray matter which once formed the brain of Dylan Hall. The weapon of choice had been his police issued revolver, similar to the one holstered on Harland's hip. The last meal consumed forced itself up Harland's esophagus. He hurried from the house, to leave the contents of his stomach on the lawn.

***

Wilson moved toward the brown haired girl. In the moon's light he noticed the light sprinkling of freckles on her nose and the way her eyes danced with golden hues. She said nothing, as she lifted her tee shirt over her head and exposed her naked breasts to his eyes. In the six years since the coma, Wilson shared only one intimate relationship. A nurse, who helped ease his transition back to conscious life. He couldn't remember having held another woman, not his first love, not the fiancée he didn't recognize.

"Lie with me," she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

His lips met hers as she guided his hand to supple flesh eager to be caressed. She fell back into the roughly made bed. He didn't allow their connection, mouth to mouth, to separate. Soft kisses traveled a course they hadn't followed since the nurse seduced him, over the contour defining her neck, her breasts, her nipples and her concaved stomach.

She pawed at his shirt. "They say things about me... around town," she said, as the buttons gave way to her nimble fingers, "about me and Joey... me and other men. It's not all true."

"Doesn't matter," Wilson whispered.

"To me it does."

He settled beside her on the hay as she rolled into his embrace. Her breath filled his senses, warm against his face.

"I would be for you... what they say I am," she whispered.

He kissed at a tender spot near her ear. His probing hand felt for the buttons and zipper on her jeans. A soft giggle escaped her lips as he found a ticklish spot at the fore of her hip.

"Let me." The two words slipped from her mouth with connotations beyond their simple meaning. She sat up and worked the denim material beneath her and down her legs. For a moment she stayed, knees drawn up to her chin, naked back exposed to his eyes, the pink scars of a childhood beating tattooing her flesh.

"I don't care what happens to them... Aaron... Dylan," she proclaimed. "I can't morn for Calvin. They did this to me... after I was already disgraced by the town and my father," she paused to prepare herself for the next revelation she needed to reveal. "Joey impregnated me. My father took me away to have an abortion. When I returned my brother and his friends felt I deserved a beating to suppress my carnal desires."

"And your father?" He asked.

"He closed his eyes, pretended none of this happened."

Wilson moved behind her and caressed the brands on her back. In the dim light they were faint. He knew that in the bright light of day the markings would be much more pronounced. She leaned back against him, resting her head. He cupped her breasts from behind and held her.

"If we're going to make love, I needed you t' know." Her voice came through without emotion as he kissed the side of her head.

***

The bed beneath Aaron sprouted lumps. Sleep could not take hold of his restless mind. He sensed movement in the darkness, forcing him to lie without rest in a room bathed in lamplight. He didn't believe Calvin hadn't jumped, just as the drifter hadn't jumped six years ago. The younger brother of Dylan Hall had struggled with guilt since that night on the bridge. The witness to a necessary sin, Calvin watched, cheered, but never stained his hands with blood. Aaron never saw him as suicidal. Calvin wanted to have his way with Bobbi. The drifter no longer barred his way.

He damned his sister with his own soul for the trouble she brought to their family. If his mother had still been alive, he knew the grief would have killed her. A sixteen-year-old, lying with a man. The drifter deserved what he got, impregnating a child. Only Aaron didn't know about the abomination growing in his sister's womb on the night they threw Joey Hilliard off the bridge. He knew only that the drifter, Bobbi Miller was sweet on, had taken the virgin child, and by law raped her. Knowing of the complication would not have changed a thing. They still would have beaten the drifter with their fist, kicked him when he cowered on the ground, and threw his body over the bridge when fear of their deeds became realized.

Everything changed after that, the old man taking Bobbi to the hospital in Pittsburgh and forcing her to abort the drifter's kid, the day in the barn, when he and Dylan made her pay for the shame she brought on the family. Calvin didn't watch that time, as they stripped her blouse off her shoulders, tied her hands around the old wooden beam and whipped her with a leather belt. They went too far, Aaron felt the wrath of his father for taking family matters into his own hands. Bobbi would have probably run away, never to be seen again, if their father hadn't shown his favor to the girl from that day forward.

He and Dylan drifted apart, friends to acquaintances who tolerated each other and hardly spoke. Secrets failed to bond them together forever, although the knowledge of a shared sin proved to be a useful bargaining tool when tiny laws were broken.

Now Calvin was dead. A stranger in town had begun asking questions about Joey the drifter. Bobbi made herself known to the man who called himself Wilson Pierce; Aaron didn't care for the way she looked at this new stranger. Vandals raided the grave marked by the stupid stone Bobbi paid for, going so far as to steal the bones of the dead man and a white Impala sat outside by the barn, a car strikingly similar to the one driven by Joey the drifter.

Aaron got up from the bed and moved to an opened window. The night outside hid shadows with ease. The moon's dim light barely illuminated the defined curves of the Impala. Aaron studied the dark shape of the mystery car. His bones told him it was the same vehicle he and Dylan had literally car-jacked, six years ago, at the end of the Miller's property. Calvin met his older brother, Aaron and the drifter out on the bridge. After history was made, Aaron drove the vehicle across the bridge, about a half mile from the scene, and abandoned it. In the early evening Aaron had taken time to look closely at the Impala. Somehow this was the same car.

A shadow by the vehicle's left quarter-panel pulsated, movements in the night, silhouetted against the moon. A simple creation of his imagination. The Impala had been sitting by the barn when Aaron stepped out earlier. It didn't appear to have moved. Shadows were all that shifted near the car.

He knew he should check on Bobbi; make sure she wasn't sharing her bed with the new boarder. He analyzed his logic; his sister would never sleep around beneath their father's roof, not with big brother across the hall. She wasn't that stupid. He knew of other suitable places where a blanket and desire could oversee the slight lack of comfort, the clearing down by the bridge, the back seat of a certain Chevy Impala and the hayloft of the barn.

He peeled his eyes from the shadows looming beside the car belonging to Wilson Pierce. His focus swept to the old barn, well beyond the cry for paint. The hayloft, when passion persisted on a warm night, the hayloft lent itself to wicked behavior.

***

"When are you going to leave?" Bobbi asked as she drew circles on his chest with her finger. Her cheek rested against his shoulder, ensuring their eyes no contact.

"Soon."

Their union had reached consummation with suppressed sighs of pleasure. She whispered a promise of love during the afterglow. He responded with a gentle kiss on her neck. Bobbi wondered if she should have made herself so vulnerable.

"I could go with you." Her eyes still sought the shadows in the loft.

"If you want."

Fingers, of the man she'd just made love to, raked through her hair. She felt exposed less by her nakedness than by the three words spoken in response to her declaration. The last thing she wanted was for Wilson to leave her quest for freedom in her own hands.

"Are you okay?" She raised her face to his, letting her dark eyes peer into his pale ones.

"Thinkin'... just lost in thought."

"About?"

"This," he smiled, his curved lips were meant to comfort her, "I'm thinking about this moment... and the last. I'm thinkin' about how anyone could do to you... what's been done." His fingers traveled from her hair to her spine, tracing scars and areas of unblemished flesh. "I'm thinking about what it felt like, being inside you, about love," he added, "about who deserves it... and who doesn't."

"Do I... deserve love?"

The same hand that outlined the harsh reminders of her sin caressed the feminine curves below her waist. Bobbi sensed an unknowing strangeness about the man she took as a lover in the hayloft. Since first meeting she felt drawn to him, a man without a past, a man chasing the same shadows haunting her. When he chose to leave she would have two options, stay behind and face judgment from those who previously condemned her, or climb into the Impala's passenger seat and seek to fulfill her need.

# Chapter 10

When Sheriff Townsend first heard Harland Hecht's voice on the telephone line he prayed for a dream, a nightmare at best.

"Suicide," projected as a single coherent word from the deputy's mouth amid the fog of broken sleep. "Dylan... I can't believe it sheriff. Damn it all.... Why'd the hell he go and do a damned thing like that?"

Morgan Townsend was out of bed instantly. The phone had already awakened his wife. From the few syllables Morgan said into the receiver she knew Deputy Hecht was on other end.

"Trouble?" Ginny Townsend knew the answer would be a simple nod of his head. He never gave details and she never asked for them.

He dressed while his wife studied his every movement.

"It was Harland on the phone?"

"Yup," he responded while buttoning his shirt. A slight kiss on her forehead, as she sat in the darkness on the bed, signaled the end of her information gathering. He went straight to the door. "I'll call later... when I get to the stationhouse," he added. "Probably won't be for a few hours."

"Love ya," she responded.

"Always," he countered with his standard response.

Ginny knew he winked in the darkness, although she couldn't see his face, a sentimental nuance which had been part of their relationship since they first spoke of love. The endearing promise to love, an emotion Morgan Townsend struggled with when they first met; an emotion he couldn't live without today.

***

Marcus Swartz walked every morning past the small ranch style home belonging to the Hall family. Since he was a child the house remained stagnant on the outside. The color of the painted clapboard never changed, no new plantings ever furnished the yard. Marcus knew though, that things inside were ever changing. First Howard, and then his wife Janice Hall became sick. Janice passed away after a debilitating illness. Howard Hall died within the following year. The house seemed to Marcus to be a beacon of grief.

Calvin Hall would be laid in the earth soon. Marcus knew they couldn't leave bodies above ground long after death, they began to smell. He had never liked Calvin, but Marcus kept his hatred inside knowing evil begot evil.

The strobe light on the top of Sheriff Townsend's car still rotated, casting off its red and blue sequence of color on the surrounding landscape. Marcus ignored the police tape marking off the front of the property. The front door to the home of Dylan Hall stood wide open, inviting shadows from the outside easy access.

"Marcus... you know better," a voice of authority called from the corner of the house. Deputy Hecht moved between the trespasser and the open door. "You know the tape marks a crime scene Marcus... you need to move back to the other side."

"I sees somethin' last night... Deputy Hecht."

Marcus always saw and heard things, he usually didn't speak about them out loud. They were private visions. If no one else saw them, then Marcus knew they were simply for his viewing. Sometimes Marcus saw good things, sometimes he saw bad.

"Whadya see last night?" The deputy asked, knowing that the mentally challenged young man wouldn't shed any light on an open and closed investigation.

"See them shadows... ya know," Marcus said, "They's was on the street last night... three... maybe four. They all became one... like this." He placed the palms of his hands together in demonstration of the union, then in a voice with diminished volume he added, "They's from the grave you know... the empty one."

***

Harland Hecht's shift neared its end. He offered Marcus a lift to the service station where he pumped gas and checked the oil for old ladies. Marcus clammed up about shadows and empty graves once he was in the cruiser. The deputy figured Marcus' confessed vision had nothing to do with the physical world and everything to do with the mental wanderings of retardation.

Harland pulled into the front of the gas station. Cale Hunter, the proprietor of the two bay garage hadn't shown up yet. Cale trusted Marcus to open and close the service station, especially since Cale had a weakness for drinking and women.

"Ya know deputy," Marcus said before making a move to get out of the cruiser, "he was thrown off the bridge."

"Who?" Harland's response made no effort to hide his impatience.

"The man who should be in the grave," Marcus answered with a tone accusing the deputy of foolishness due to his lack of knowledge.

"The situation at the cemetery is not what it seems, Marcus. There's an explanation... it's a prank." Harland couldn't believe he was trying to explain the matter to Marcus Swartz.

"I heard 'em talkin' bout it," Marcus continued as if the deputy hadn't interrupted him, "when Mister Cale was workin' on their's car. I heard them real good. They say... they throw him off the bridge, but Mister Cale not listen to me, but I hear them say what they did."

Harland wanted to ask, but he knew he was being drawn into the confused world of a clouded mind.

"That's why the shadow... it was after Calvin and Dylan," Marcus shook his head and Harland wondered if cobwebs really did flutter through his brain. "No... it came after Dylan. It musta already gotten Calvin. The shadows want... revenge."

"You heard Dylan and Calvin talking about throwing something off the bridge?" Harland knew asking would accomplish nothing of any value, but he took the bait.

"No... not something... someone."

"And you heard them talkin' about it at the garage?"

"And Aaron," Marcus added.

"Aaron?" The deputy asked before quickly answering his own question. "Aaron Miller... you heard Dylan, Calvin and Aaron."

"Talkin' about throwing that man off of the bridge. They say they did it for Bobbi. They say he did somethin' terrible to her."

"What did Joey Hilliard do t' Bobbi Miller?"

***

The confused information Marcus Swartz relayed to Harland began to come together cohesively. Harland wasn't about to give credence to ghostly shadows and bodies risen from empty graves, but he did see a pattern of revenge. If Marcus' story had any thread of truth in it, then someone was playing vigilante. The deputy almost found it in his mind to suspect Marcus Swartz, since he seemed so certain of the Hall brothers and Aaron Miller's guilt. He shook that thought from his intellect much as Marcus shook the cobwebs from his brain.

How did Wilson Pierce fit in? The stranger came into town bearing an interest in the six-year-old suicide of a drifter. Sometimes there were files, which needed to be archived or lost, and never opened again. The incident left scars on the town. The type of wounds, which only began to heal, once all was put neatly in its place. Harland always felt the case of the drifter who jumped off Miller's Bridge to be one of those. Then Pierce arrived, driving a vehicle identical to the one driven by Joey Hilliard. Harland knew that if by some remote chance the white Impalas were one and the same, it was merely coincidental.

Someone stole the drifter's body, or what was left of it, from its grave, Calvin Hall jumped off the bridge, or did he jump? Dylan placed a gun in his mouth and shot himself, did someone help him pull the trigger, and where was Pierce when all these events were taking place?

Marcus identified the two brothers and Aaron Miller, as being the ones responsible for the death of Joey the drifter, a man in his early twenties who was having sexual relations with an under aged Bobbi Miller. Marcus offered the deputy colorful details about the intimacies between the drifter and the teenager. Harland wondered how often the retarded man studied the behavior of lovers.

The deputy considered two routes of action. He could go to Sheriff Townsend with the town dope's story, which of course included shadows and empty graves, or he could have a refreshing conversation with Wilson Pierce, the kind where the law asked the questions and the citizen simply answered. When he noticed Aaron Miller's pick-up at Marge's place Harland discovered a third course of action.

***

The shroud of early morning fog lifted from the cemetery, almost as if the arrival of a visitor lifted the veil with his will. Wilson Pierce parked his Impala along the dirt road outside the iron gates. The caretaker's truck blocked the cemetery's main path just inside the entrance. Wilson knew Neil Jesperson was probably preparing the mist covered graveyard for the body of Calvin Hall.

Shadows without foundation engulfed headstones. The sunless sky gave them no credence to exist, yet Wilson saw the unholy cloaks of wasted lives.

Jesperson knelt at an existing grave, in the distance, to Wilson's right. An outline barely discernable marked the living entity among the dead. If the caretaker's purpose for the morning visit was to dig a hole for bones and flesh, he hadn't yet begun. A small marker in an older section of the cemetery held the kneeling man's attention. From the caretaker's submissive posture Wilson surmised that the grave beneath Jesperson's knees was of someone dear to the old man's heart. Upon first meeting the man, Wilson felt a loneliness thriving in an empty soul. Empathy, one of the senses gained from his coma which he couldn't recall possessing before.

Wilson passed unnoticed, toward the rear of the burial ground, where the recent dead were laid. The shadows lifted with the fog, revealing the unearthed plot covered by two sheets of plywood and cordoned off with yellow police tape. He ignored the authoritative bold black letters and stepped into the restricted area.

"She is deserving," he whispered to a spirit he sensed, "though not of you... and quite possibly... not of me. You took without any real desire to give back. Before... I was probably no different."

Wilson lowered himself to a squat. To a bystander his pose would have been reminiscent of a catcher in a baseball game, waiting for a pitch to be thrown from his battery mate, winding up by an adjacent headstone. He touched the cold marker for Joey Hilliard's grave; the one Bobbi Miller spent a meager fortune to purchase.

"You share blame for every scar on the girl's heart... and flesh. Could you have loved her? I think she would have only become another lewd victory among many. If revenge is for her benefit... keep it to yourself, she has forgiven." Wilson straightened himself, studying the letters carved into the stone marker without reading the words they formed. "It's quite possible you were deserving of this... though I am not a judge."

"Talk often to the dead... or t' yourself?"

Momentarily, the precept of a voice speaking from the grave froze Wilson's heart in mid-beat, but the dead didn't speak.

"Sorry t' startle ya... spend so much time walkin' around this place I kinda forget that most folks are a little eerie when it comes t' graveyards."

Out of the corner of his eye Wilson saw Neil Jesperson. The caretaker wore denim overalls and a red plaid flannel shirt.

"Not often anyone visits the dead this early in the mornin'," Jesperson continued, "Especially this... empty hole."

"Bobbi Miller come out here often?" Wilson asked without turning to face the caretaker.

"Use t'... not anymore though. It was like placin' that stone on the grave gave her good reason to let go completely." A crooked accusing finger pointed to the simple headstone imbedded with a name and date Wilkesboro strove to forget.

"Gonna be openin' the ground for Calvin Hall's burial," Neil Jesperson added. "Probably won't be much... no family 'cept Dylan. I imagine the sheriff and the other deputies might show... to support Dylan mainly... maybe Aaron Miller... maybe he'll come too... they use t' be real good friends."

"I heard."

"Bobbi Miller is good people," Jesperson said after a brief pause, "can't say the same about her brother."

"What about the man who... laid in this grave?"

"None of us knew much of him," the caretaker answered. "Did have a thing for Bobbi... Bobbi was naïve... drove Joshua... her father... nuts."

"What about Aaron?"

Neil Jesperson stepped to the edge of the plywood covering the hole. He kicked a booted toe against the compressed wood. "Sometimes things ain't what they seem," he stated without acknowledging Wilson's question. "The body buried in th' grave... gave shelter t' evil, an evil eager to steal innocence. Bobbi Miller had an innocence craved by this thing. The body of this one... should've been cremated, burnt to a cinder, but the one minister in town didn't see things that way."

Up until this moment Wilson had seen the caretaker as a man of simple nature, one who cared only about hard work and limited thinking. It became obvious to him that Neil Jesperson saw more in the world than the physical; he envisioned the spiritual also and feared its dark side.

"Them Protestants pay no attention t' Latin, look right at it and see only fancy words." Jesperson turned sideways, drawing Wilson's gaze toward him. "Do you know Latin?"

"A little," Wilson answered.

"You was raised Catholic?"

"Maybe."

"Seems one would remember the religion one was raised in," the caretaker commented. "Of course if you was raised without religion... or faith... that is the way of some, not the proper way... but I shouldn't judge."

"What does Latin have t' do with this empty grave?"

"If Reverend Hollister had known Latin... he woulda understood. 'Pravus Progenies' that's what the tattoo said... right here on the back of his shoulder." Neil Jesperson rubbed his left hand over his right shoulder to illustrate. "Parvus is evil... and Progenies is offspring. The drifter craved innocence... and the drifter was evil."

"Based on a tattoo?"

"And what I've seen since," the caretaker answered. "Shadows... been brought into the world. They seek vengeance ya know. If one takes his own life, there is no vengeance to be sought, but murder seeks revenge. The truly righteous bow to the Lord and love those who strike them. The truly evil seek to strike back."

"Joey Hilliard didn't jump off that bridge... did he?"

"No... he was thrown," Neil Jesperson responded. "Aaron Miller sees himself as... above any law binding other men. He knew of the act between his sister and th' drifter. Evil kills evil... one evil dies and another is given life. The child woulda been unholy, an evil spawn... like the father."

"You knew of the child... and the abortion?"

In the soft light of the new morning Wilson studied the older man's eyes. He received no verbal response from the caretaker, but his thin smile answered the question. Jesperson turned away and wordlessly moved across the cemetery.

"Neil," Wilson called, addressing the caretaker as if he were an old friend. "What if the evil that laid here was given another chance? What if something in this world... some unholy act... brought a measure of sanctity to a torn soul? Would he not be allowed a chance to repent... to make right all his wrongs?"

"He had many," Jesperson spoke without turning back.

"As do others."

# Chapter 11

Aaron Miller looked straight into the mirror glass across the counter. He gave no response to Harland's revelation about Dylan Hall. The deputy believed Dylan had given up on life over the grief of losing his brother. Aaron felt a gnawing concern about things he couldn't quite explain or understand.

The deputy spoke of the matter in a cumbersome way. A friend had died, a friend who had once been a huge part of Aaron's life. Grief was a thing that changed people, sometimes for the worse.

"I thought you should know now... rather than later," Deputy Hecht said trying in vain to alleviate the discomfort of the moment.

"It's fine," Aaron said to his reflection. "We seldom speak anymore. Dylan had his ways... and I have mine. Where once we were alike... we are now very different." Aaron's explanation about the deteriorated friendship cloaked his real feelings. Dylan and his brother were both dead, he was alive. He knew the apparent suicides were linked to the drifter who impregnated his sister. How does a dead man kill?

"Guess he was takin' Calvin's dyin' real hard... harder than I thought," Harland offered. "Didn't seem t' be... ya know... havin' too hard a time with everything. Wouldn't have expected this... no way. Guess it just didn't show on the outside... how bad he was takin' it."

"Deputy... your guess would be as good as mine. Like I said..."

"I know... you weren't very close anymore."

"Deputy... look, in a way Dylan changed sides... didn't he? We were always spendin' our nights high tailin' it whenever the law was around. Shit... half the time we was the reason the law came around. Then Dylan goes and decides he's gonna become one of you... and I'm still who I am. Don't get me wrong deputy... my nose is clean and all. It just don't seem right... and Dylan understood."

"So I guess he really had nowhere to go then... if he were to need someone t' talk to," Harland responded. "He wasn't too close t' any of us."

"Had just Calvin."

"What about you?" The deputy asked. "Who do you have?"

***

Harland finished his cup of coffee and got up from the stool. The fable told by Marcus continued to swim through his head. He considered asking Aaron how he felt about Calvin Hall's mimicry of Joey Hilliard's act from six years ago. He would have like to seen Aaron's reaction. Instead he decided that Marcus Swartz played with a quarter of a deck of cards and there was no value to joining in the fantasy. If he gave any credibility to the story told by Marcus, he'd open his world to a belief he chose to not possess. To Harland Hecht, death was the end of life, nothing existed beyond, heaven and hell where myths fed upon by those who felt worthless in this life. Not that Harland was much more than a wasted law enforcement officer. He just didn't have time for faith in anything beyond the here and now.

Aaron Miller hid something beneath a character, which showed no empathy for the Hall brothers. Murder didn't play well in the deputy's stomach, not in a town like Wilkesboro. He figured Aaron simply sheltered his true feelings behind a macho exterior. Breakdown would arrive with an emotional torrent when no one was watching.

"You take care." The words slipped out of Harland's mouth as he turned to leave. It was doubtful Aaron Miller heard.

When Aaron failed to respond, Harland chose to give the young man room to seek his own form of bereavement.

Along the curb, outside of the diner, a white Firebird pulled in to park. Harland recognized the woman behind the steering wheel as the one Dylan Hall had picked up for speeding the other night. He was surprised to see that she hadn't left town after getting out of jail. The shorthaired brunette stood up from the low profiled car. She wore black slacks and a pale blue blouse. Recognition spread across her face when she saw the deputy, accompanied by a smile.

Harland knew there had to be more to the situation which led to her arrest. Dylan's report simply stated speeding, a crime which didn't warrant a night in jail, unless alcohol was involved.

"Thought you would have been miles from here by now," he said in passing.

"Need to take care of a few loose ends." Her response was cordial; her eyes met his with directness. "Is it true what I've heard about the deputy who arrested me?"

"Word travels fast in a small town."

She waited silently for his answer.

"Yes... it's true," Harland eventually admitted.

"It's a shame."

She turned; short cropped black hair hurrying to catch up with her attractive face. Harland wished more women like Stephanie Hawkins frequented Wilkesboro. Eager country girls, willing to grasp any form of life beyond the hills, were all the tiny community had to offer. Girls who saw escape in a pair of bald tires and the foolish dreams of an uneducated male with a bulge in his jeans.

He watched her enter the Main Street Diner and look over the cast of characters at the counter. She took the seat Harland had vacated, next to Aaron Miller.

***

What manner of darkness stalked him? Aaron saw shadows, which had no reason for existence last night, by the Impala belonging to Wilson Pierce. He knew the new boarder was with Bobbi, felt it deep in his bones. Bobbi watched every move Wilson Pierce made and Aaron caught the stranger checking out her lithe movements with more interest than was healthy. He'd seen that look many times before and imagined it probably was painted on his face at least six times a week, the look of lust, the look capable of undressing the desired subject with eyes only, hands if permitted.

His dislike for Wilson Pierce gave way to the nagging voice of Harland Hecht. The deputy was gone from his presence, but his dialog lived on. 'I know you weren't very close anymore,' Aaron whispered the words under his breath. "Tell me something new," he murmured and didn't care in the least that Marge Polk looked in his direction.

"You okay... Aaron?" Marge asked.

"Fine."

"Sorry about Dylan."

"I said I was fine," he erupted. Silence followed and he found it preferable.

Someone took the stool next to him and asked Marge for a cup of tea. He noticed the woman out of the corner of his eye, brunette, attractive, professional looking. A twinge of familiarity passed over him, but left him almost immediately. He snuck a better look as the brunette was fixing her hot drink. Aaron wondered why girls like her weren't patrons at Dana's.

"Haven't ever seen you in these parts," Marge said. "Visitin'... or just passin' through."

Aaron looked away, but kept an interested ear on the subject.

"A little of both I guess," the brunette answered.

Again Aaron was filled with a feeling of recognition. Something seemed familiar about the woman's voice. He stole another quick glance and looked away quickly when Marge crossed him with a fierce expression. The brunette's profile tried to spark a memory, but Aaron couldn't grasp it.

"Got t' watch for the wolves in this town," Marge offered the brunette advice about Aaron's kind. "They love t' drool over girls... flies on shit."

The woman on the stool next to him didn't respond as Marge walked away. The Diner's owner bore another hard gaze on Aaron. Her expression demanded that he keep his hands off.

"Friendly woman," the brunette said.

"If ya like friends with fangs," Aaron answered, not certain if the woman's statement had been directed to him.

She laughed, a short burst of sound allowed to escape her lips. She covered her mouth, holding off any outburst she might not be able to control.

"Aaron Miller," he introduced himself.

"Stephanie Hawkins," she responded.

"Funny... I didn't picture you t' be a Stephanie."

The brunette picked up the cup of tea and sipped slowly. Aaron took full inventory of the features of her face.

"We met before... haven't we?" He asked.

"In another life... maybe," she answered. "I haven't met anyone in this town before this moment, besides a couple deputies and a man named Wilson Pierce."

Maybe it was the expression of recognition spreading across his face, or a pure guess on her part.

"You know him... don't you?" She bore into his soul as if her eyes were tentacles. "You know the man named Wilson Pierce?"

***

"Suicide," Sheriff Townsend offered, "first Calvin... then Dylan."

Harland Hecht removed his feet from the desktop when the sheriff entered. He nearly fell backward in his chair, but by grace he stayed upright. He eyed the small chunk of dirt which his boots had deposited. Sheriff Townsend paced, giving to Harland a chance to wipe the evidence away.

"Things aren't right in this town," the sheriff's observation was directed to no one in particular, even though Harland occupied the room. "I remember when the worse blemish on the citizens of Wilkesboro were a few speeding tickets given to out-of-towners tryin' t' pass through this hole-in-the-wall as quickly as possible. Those days passed by ya know, not that long ago. A stranger passes through and decides to take his own life on our soil. We become cursed... tainted by an act of cowardice."

"Morgan," Harland didn't often address his superior by name, "do you suppose there's a chance he didn't jump from the bridge?"

"If it weren't suicide... it would have been murder. I can think of no one in Wilkesboro capable... or with the reason to kill. There are a few troublemakers, vandals maybe.... no murderers. Not sayin' the drifter had any friends here. Only one person would have wanted him to stay and his... union with her would have been considered a crime. Statutory rape, a man in his what... middle twenties with a sixteen-year-old girl. There might be a few people in town who'd cut his balls off... as well as his pecker, but not kill him." The sheriff stopped pacing the room. He faced the deputy who now had both feet squarely on the floor. "Why... have someone in mind?"

"Just thinkin'... out loud."

"The scene left nothing to the imagination, fresh blood on the rocks below the bridge, as fresh as can be expected by the following morning. Drifter definitely took his last breath there. No sign that anyone else had been on the bridge in the recent hours. The man had nothin' but a cursed soul. Sometimes it just catches up to ya."

"Guess so," Harland said, opening a magazine geared toward hunters. Deputy Hecht considered himself to be a marksman with bow and arrow even though he hadn't killed any form of prey in three years. "Just listenin' t' folks talkin'... that's all."

"By folks you mean Marcus?"

"His twisted tale does have a few nightmares in its crosshairs," Harland admitted.

"Heard most of what he's dreamed up," Morgan Townsend said. "Been listenin' t' his stories for as long as I've been sheriff. Can't pay too much attention to his ramblin'... it'll drive ya nuts."

***

He put a blonde wig on her, after she'd driven away. The image Aaron conjured in his mind didn't fit the woman he'd just met. She told him she knew Wilson Pierce, that she'd met the man while occupying a cell at the jailhouse. Wilson had come to see her without a purpose Stephanie Hawkins could recall. She spoke of an aura of strangeness surrounding the man, examples took no form, but she felt an oddity about the writer when in his presence.

"Not evil," she had said, "but not necessarily good."

Aaron thought of his sister, trapped in female flesh, which desperately wanted a male. She'd fallen prey before, to those who stalked the innocent. He told Stephanie Hawkins about his concern for his sister, and that the writer had found shelter under the Miller family's roof.

Her familiarity nagged at his mind.

"Is he not on the police force?" She had asked. "He possessed a key for the cell I was in. When he entered to speak with me... I sensed... saw something."

Aaron found himself captivated by the brunette's voice. He no longer thought about the conversation he'd just had with Harland Hecht. The woman, Wilson Pierce and his sister occupied every cavern of his mind.

"What did you see?"

"Him... Wilson Pierce and a girl, she was young... and she had brown hair I think. They were on a bridge... looking over the side... into the water. I saw it like a moving picture passed from his mind to mine... when he touched me."

Aaron wanted to address the brunette by a name other than Stephanie. The syllables danced on the tip of his tongue, but never found rhythm.

"I don't believe it has occurred yet... what I saw. Tonight... maybe the vision is to take place tonight, or tomorrow... or maybe it already took place... last night. No," she shook confusion from her brain, "I don't believe it has happened yet. Wilson Pierce will go up onto the bridge with the girl... tonight."

That was all she saw, all she sensed. Aaron knew the girl with brown hair was Bobbi and the bridge mentioned bordered his family's property, the bridge over Miller's Creek, the only name ever given to the narrow two-lane overpass. He remembered pleasures of being a child beneath the span, bathing in the summertime pools, shallow water and slippery rocks. Aaron also remembered terrible things, which had happened on the bridge, recently and six years earlier.

The white Firebird vanished where the road curved to the right down the street. Stephanie headed west out of town, rather than east toward her home. He thought again about the blonde wig outlining her face and came to the conclusion he had never met Stephanie Hawkins before.

# Chapter 12

The overcast sky gave way to nightfall, obscuring the stars from view. Wilson moved quietly from the old farmhouse out to the yard. He'd spent his afternoon contemplating the last six years of his life, the only years with any meaning. The shadow among them, the one he believed he might have ushered into Wilkesboro's presence was the spiritual remains of malice. Leaving it beneath the cloak of darkness would be best. He hoped the shadow would be impotent without him to continue guiding it.

Since his conversation with Neil Jesperson he'd felt his need to solve a haunting murder diminish. He had no desire to help a worshipper of evil seek revenge. He was not a religious man, but evil did nothing except fester more evil.

From where he stood in the yard he noticed a light shining from Bobbi's window. He yearned for her. If he answered only to his own longings he would have taken her with him. She had ties in Wilkesboro, roots planted deep in the soil he was blown like dust upon.

He opened the passenger side door and leaned the seat forward to gain easy access to the rear compartment. He set his single piece of luggage on the back seat. Finished with the task of loading up, he closed the door gently, as to not wake the horrors of night. A chill blew across the hairs on the back of his neck. Movement brought his attention to the edge of the woods, beyond the nearest barn, where he had made love to Bobbi Miller. He abandoned his immediate urge to leave and slowly moved toward the back of the barn.

Neil Jesperson shared his insight into the events of six years ago. Wilson Pierce had come to the conclusion that Joey Hilliard was just as evil, maybe more so, as the Hall Brothers and Aaron Miller. Old man Miller's role in the episodes following Joey's death were of concern. When Wilson allowed his mind to visualize Bobbi being brutally stripped and whipped by her father and brother he almost changed his mind about not bringing her with him.

He looked back to Bobbi's window again, turning his back on whatever evil cowered in the thicket. Who was he? His wandering mind asked the only part of him he knew. How could he take Bobbi Miller with him when he possessed only six years of memory, six years of being the man who walked the earth at this moment?

"What if what I was... is completely different than what you see today?" He mumbled the question to himself. "I was not a good man... self-centered... uncaring."

"Confession..." The word drifted on the slight breeze, so softly he wasn't sure he actually heard it.

"Wilson..." Again the whispering wind spoke.

"I'm not leading you to your revenge. You'll have to guide your own hatred."

"Revenge... Bobbi... Revenge..."

The breeze dissipated, but the last words lingered. With caution Wilson moved back toward his car, stopping once he had reached the vehicle. He backed up against the hood. Heat rose from an engine which hadn't been running for hours. His imagination took hold of his senses, heavy movements in the brush, a racing engine, voices cursing in the distance. Shadows encroached upon the perimeter of the car and for a brief moment Wilson doubted his ability to stand up to wickedness.

***

From her room, Bobbi watched Wilson exit the house with his small suitcase. He was leaving without her, leaving her to face loneliness, as she had before. She wanted to fight for him, to not let the world dictate the rights and wrongs in her life. When Joey Hilliard had stepped on her life a naïve teen possessed her body. She was a woman now. Love felt different at twenty-two than it did at sixteen.

She stepped back from the curtain as he looked toward the house. He didn't see her. She quickly pulled on a pair of jeans and left the room wearing the white tank top she planned to sleep in. Aaron wasn't home from his usual carousing. In the living room her father slept in front of the television, while the eleven o'clock news wove its political view of the world in living color. She wondered if he would have stopped her, if he even cared whether or not she occupied the room at the top of the stairs.

Joshua Miller had been a shell of a man since her mother's death. The kind of man who looses all energy for life once dealt the deck of loneliness. He still took care of his animals and the land, but both she and Aaron were burdens their father wished not to bear.

She wasn't certain if she loved him anymore. Emotions for the unit referred to as family evaporated from her soul the night they scarred her. Often she had relived the moment, whipped by the old man while her brother stood in witness, marked for her sins.

Her father slowly stirred in the chair. For a moment she thought he might wake before she left. A loud snore escaped the mouth of the slumbering elder. Bobbi reached for the door knob, turning gently as a map of the United States filled the television screen, illustrating weather predictions for the next week.

Out in the night air, she closed the door behind her and moved across the yard toward Wilson's car. He was nowhere in sight. She circled the car, looking in the windows to see if the small suitcase laid on the backseat. It did. She had nearly crossed the short distance between the vehicle and the barn when she sensed movement behind her. In the dark she was uncertain, fluid shadows moved beneath the light cast off by the moon. Gravel crunched under the pressure of a shoe and a form took shape against the black background.

"I wondered... if you'd come," the voice of Wilson Pierce stroked the darkness and for a brief moment she wondered if a ghost could take on solid form.

***

Earlier in the evening Aaron left the Miller farm for a typical night at Dana's. The conversation with Stephanie Hawkins failed to slip from his mind. Initially Aaron had every intention of going out for a dozen beers and a little cheap company. After a single glass of his favorite cold brew his intentions shifted.

Wilson Pierce and his sister would be on the bridge tonight, if the vision of Stephanie Hawkins held any validity. For what purpose would the couple take a stroll in the night, to the site of Joey the drifter's demise? He gave little credence to the existence of a sixth sense, but the fantasy drawn out by the girl at the diner still bothered him.

For reasons Aaron couldn't define he found himself back in his truck and driving out toward the old bridge. He knew if the night was going to bear witness to the visions of Stephanie Hawkins it would come later. For now he would wait.

At the moment his truck paid homage to the night, black against black. He left it parked on the side of the road, at the far end of the bridge, out of sight. He ensured his shot gun, which he stored behind the seat, was loaded. The Remington twelve gauge had been given to him as a gift, from his father, for his eighteenth birthday. He never shot a man with it, although he did threaten to demonstrate its firepower on Joey the drifter. The jump-push-fall from the bridge saved him from unloading on two legged flesh. Traffic rarely crossed the span, leaving him with little concern when it came to carrying the gun in the open. Still, he moved quickly across the worn blacktop, feeling naked and exposed to demons he didn't understand.

A shadow shimmered where no light gave it reason to exist. Aaron paused and nearly considered turning back to his truck. Demons of darkness played games with his mind as dense clouds moved through his peripheral sight. He moved quickly in a circle, wishing to catch a glimpse of the culprits in flight.

Nothing was as it shouldn't be.

At the side of the bridge he checked once again for elusive shadows before turning his attention to the water below. He watched the woods, where the path led from the stream up along the side of the overpass. If Wilson and his sister were to come out for a romantic look at the stars it would be along that trail. He would need to save his sister again, this time single handedly.

A rumbling of an oncoming vehicle ruptured the silence. A truck with a porous muffler approached laboriously in the darkness. Aaron hurried back to his pickup. He tossed the rifle behind the seat as headlights became visible over the rise. The vehicle slowed and a face Aaron had never seen before studied him from the passenger's side of a Ford F150. They passed without stopping; probably figuring some hillbilly drunk had just finished emptying his kidneys in the bushes after a night of too much booze.

***

"Were you going to leave," Bobbi asked, "without saying goodbye?"

"No," Wilson answered, his response seeming almost too truthful. "I won't be leaving until sunrise... and I would have said goodbye."

"I want to come with you. I asked... last night. You didn't say I couldn't."

Wilson leaned against the hood of the Impala. She knew he hadn't been anywhere near when she circled the car's perimeter. Maybe he'd been by the barn, in the shadows, and she'd failed to notice his approach.

"I've no idea where I'm going," he countered.

"Doesn't matter." It didn't, wherever he planned to slip off to in the dark night would be better than here.

"Does it matter... what I am?"

Bobbi moved close, wishing to tempt him. She wanted to feel his touch. She wanted her nipples caressed between his fingers.

"I know now," she whispered into the tiny space between her mouth and his ear, "Joey was evil. He took from me... something that wasn't his to take. Did he ruin me... forever? Did he make me something as unholy as he?"

She slipped into Wilson's embrace, almost without planning to. His hands caressed the small of her back, beneath her tank top.

"Some entity seeks revenge... or redemption." As he spoke his breath moved through her freshly washed hair.

"I was only sixteen... I knew no better... I was insecure... Still am."

"And you wanted love for the sake of having love."

"Joey said he loved me." She pulled her face from its nest against his shoulder and found his eyes in the darkness. "I know now that he only wanted t' take me, to impregnate me with his evil... make me what I've become."

Wilson's hands gripped the hem of her tank top. Without protest from her lips he raised the thin garment over her head. Bobbi took it from him and let the discarded fabric fall to the ground at her feet as his hands massaged her naked back and his mouth found hers.

# Chapter 13

Aaron opened his eyes and peered out the windshield at the darkness. Shadows moved across the bridge. He rolled his window down and watched them with uneasiness like a condemned man before the barrels of a thousand rifles. No desire to leave infected him. Aaron Miller was no coward.

"You came from the grave to claim the guilty... didn't you?" He said to an entity without solid form. "The others doubted every action from that night. You deserved that beatin' just as the whore of my old man's sperm deserved t' be whipped."

'Retribution.'

The single word seemed to breathe through the vents in the dashboard of his truck. Aaron froze, for a brief instant his courage left him. Dana's would have been a safe haven; the bridge governed a corner of hell.

"You deserve no retribution of any kind. Before you... this place was unscarred. There was no evil... and then you come... a soul damned. Ain't no way somethin' like you should feed on the innocent. Ain't no way no offspring of yours can be allowed life. They killed the evil thing in Bobbi's belly."

The shadows on the bridge gave no response.

***

Wilson led Bobbi behind the barn. She stepped on her discarded top as she all too willingly followed.

"Where we going?" She asked.

He pulled her against him and placed a finger to his lips, quieting any future questions for a moment.

Bobbi didn't resist. She allowed herself to be led into the woods behind the barn and down the path, which led to the creek under Miller's Bridge. They moved swiftly through a course he shouldn't have known. She felt conscious of her missing upper garment and knew, without doubt, they were going to make love in the same place where she offered herself to him two nights past. They were lovers now, after last night in the barn. She would let him take her anywhere he wanted.

Time moved faster than it should have. Wilson stopped where the trail emerged beneath the bridge. She snuggled up behind him, shielding her nudity from the wild.

"Someone's up there," he stated.

"Who?"

"Your brother."

"How can you tell?" Bobbi moved around to Wilson's side. She folded her arms over her breasts.

"Tonight... this place draws him. Revenge... evil begets evil."

"And what are you... Wilson Pierce, evil or good?"

"Like most I'm a little of both."

Bobbi dropped her arms to her side. She wanted to submit to Wilson's dominance. She slowly unfastened the bottom at the top of her jeans. Wilson watched as she guided the zipper down.

"Did you make love to me with the part of you that's evil... or good?" Her question dripped with sexual arousal. She kicked her sneakers off and lowered her jeans and panties past her hips as one.

"Not certain," he softly responded, "the part of me that understands the shadows has to have you. The part of me that caressed the scars on your back... loves you."

***

Aaron stepped from the shelter of his truck. Beckoned by desired retribution.

'Bobbi.'

The wind breathed his sister's name.

"Show yerself," Aaron offered, "if you want me to believe in your presence. Show yerself drifter... show your fuckin' face as the man my whore sister fucks in the barn."

'Pieeeerce.'

The name touched the night air without benefit of a breeze. A demonic response to a human dare.

"Yer one and the same aren't you? No ghost... no demon... one man who didn't die on this bridge... who didn't die on the rocks. Clever... I have t' give ya that. Joey the drifter and Wilson... Pierce... one and the same."

'Pieeeerce.'

"Cut the fuckin' shit and show yerself."

Shadows gathered behind Aaron, and to each side. A vile darkness, seething with the aroma of death closed in, surrounding the one living carcass on the bridge.

Aaron felt the breath that accompanied a dead voice.

'Pieeeerce... with Bobbi... beeeeneeeeath bridge.'

"Show yerself," Aaron demanded as he backed up against the rail and tried in vain to see through the shadows as they thickened.

His nostrils closed. His voice vanished with a cry caught in his throat. He held the iron rail on the bridge tightly, a lifting sensation played with the muscles of his legs. He clung to life, wanting air, wanting to hold on to solid reality. He spit evil spew from his mouth, tasting the vile spores.

"Haven't you taken enough?"

The voice in the oily darkness belonged to Wilson Pierce. Aaron recognized the calm modulation. He understood the shadows, and the stranger in town to be one. He was wrong.

"Dylan... Calvin... revenge and redemption are not of the same nature," Wilson called out. "Tell me Joey... what is it that you seek?"

***

The dense shadows parted, like an unholy sea governed by a dark prophet. Aaron saw Wilson Pierce beyond the cloud, in wrinkled pants and shirtless. Bobbi stood at the boarder's side, bare legs, clutching a shirt at her chest belonging to her lover.

"Sleep with 'em all... don't cha Bobbi?" Aaron blurted out his condemnation.

"Step away from the side of the bridge Aaron," Wilson's voice echoed through the shadows.

"The others were guilty.... In their heads," Aaron nearly screamed into the night. He pointed to his left temple with the hand free from the safety grip on the rail. "They could no longer live with their actions."

"Aaron... that same guilt is yours," the female with bare legs responded.

"What would you know about guilt... whore?" The shout from Aaron vibrated through the night. Before him stood a repulsive creature, one he would spend money for, if the blood in her veins wasn't the same as his.

"Redemption," Wilson Pierce called out, "the shadows of your sin seek redemption. Retribution... revenge... brings more evil. You've seen enough... Aaron... you.... your sister... this town."

Aaron pulled himself against the side of the bridge. He leaned over the rail, peering into the murk below. He considered jumping. His sister and the boarder were too far away to have any hope of stopping him.

"Aaron... please... don't give in," his sister's voice called out.

He briefly hesitated, considering a different world, before throwing himself off the bridge.

# Chapter 14

A note of confession was found on the front seat of Aaron's pickup in the early morning. Deputy Hecht read the scribbled admission and understood that three suicides had come to replace one murder.

No witnesses came forth.

"Guess this explains all there is t' know," Sheriff Townsend said of the note.

"The three of them... Calvin, Dylan and Aaron... beat the drifter to death... and then threw him off the bridge to simulate a suicide."

"Joshua Miller won't be pleased," the sheriff commented.

The response seemed strange to Harland Hecht, but so many recent events were.

"If Aaron and his father were close," Sheriff Townsend continued, "news like this might crush an old spirit. Hatred runs deeper than love in the Miller clan. Joshua Miller hates everything this bridge has come to represent."

"He still has Bobbi," Harland Hecht said as they walked back to the cruiser.

"No... I don't believe that. Old man Miller hasn't had a daughter for six years. Bobbi Miller lives beneath his roof... in a house of hatred, silently accepting what little is offered. Both his children sought compassion elsewhere, Bobbi in the arms of the drifter her brother... and his friends murdered, Aaron in the arms of prostitutes."

"No foul play here... I guess," the deputy muttered.

"Just as it was before," the sheriff responded, "just as it should have been left."

***

Bobbi cried briefly and he held her in his arms. She made love to Wilson again, in the hayloft, as the sun crested over the horizon, her eyes red with spent emotion, her kisses tasting of salt. Naked, her flesh clung to his with a desire to keep him from disappearing into the dawn.

"I've wished it on them all ya know," Bobbi said quietly, "from the first moment... in here... when they stripped me... whipped me. I believed then that Joey killed himself... maybe some demon made him jump... but no one killed him. Murder is a hard thing for the soul to deal with."

"They didn't kill a man," Wilson stated.

"I know that now," Bobbi responded. "In a way they didn't kill at all. A human spirit couldn't have done that. It couldn't have come up from the grave and... forced its will on others." She sat up, giving Wilson a full view of her tender body. "It couldn't have... could it... if it was human... if it was Joey?"

Wilson looked at her face, full of fear. He smiled gently and Bobbi felt a soothing peace settle over her exposed skin.

"I think guilt is the only evil that ever touched Wilkesboro, the guilt of three men, who were in essence kicked out of Eden."

When she didn't respond to his words, Wilson sat up. For a long moment his eyes gazed into hers. Feeding her mind his belief, his core. Where Joey the drifter was evil, Wilson Pierce contained goodness. She closed her eyes and he took one more taste of her sweet lips.

***

A white Firebird sat on the dirt shoulder at the junction of the main road leading out of Wilkesboro and a non-descript state route. Its driver wore her short black hair uncovered. The blonde wig was packed neatly in the trunk, along with tools of an ancient trade.

Turning north, on the road before her, would lead her home, south would lead her to places where the blonde wig would be worn again. Decisions that mattered most could not be taken hastily. She pulled her vehicle to the side of the road and watched the sun through her rear window.

A new day's heat rose from the pavement. The grill of an oncoming car rippled in the waves on the horizon. She waited, telling herself that the vehicle came as sign. She would follow the direction it took, north toward repentance, south toward sin. The vehicle closed on her, its engine purring. She recognized the design. Not many of its model on the road today, not in mint shape. The white Impala slowed to the stop sign alongside of her. Its passenger, a young girl with brown hair turned to look at the Firebird. The driver submersed in the shadows, seemed vaguely familiar.

The Impala turned left, heading south of Wilkesboro. The driver of the Firebird wiped away a bead of sweat from her forehead before turning the ignition. She pulled off the shoulder, catching her rear wheels in the sand and hugged the faded white line at the intersection's beginning. The Impala was nearly out of sight. An image of the girl and the vehicle's driver having sex in the backseat slipped through her mind and aroused her. She flipped the signal downward and for a long moment watched the blinking light indicate her desire to turn left. An oncoming truck, on the state route, passed her heading north. She released the brake and headed south.

# Chapter 15

"I'm glad you came," she said.

Her friend sat at the table, directly across. He folded his hands neatly on the placemat in front of him. "You called Stephanie... and said you needed to see me. I am always here for you."

"I think I gave in to the darkness."

"What makes you believe that to be fact?"

"I was in a jail, dressed like a slut. I don't remember anything... just that man named Wilson Pierce."

"Was he the one you...?"

"No, no," she shook her head rapidly. "I think I did... I think I met someone at a bar... someone with a truck."

Noah made a steeple out of his fingers and brought them against his lips. "I see," he stated.

"It touched me Noah... the darkness. It was inside of me. I can't forget what it felt like. Didn't we...?"

"Evil is never completely eradicated from this world. Without darkness there would be no light." He sipped his coffee as Stephanie just looked at hers.

"This Wilson Pierce," Noah continued, "I looked into his background for you. Not a very nice individual it seems before a violent car accident left him in a coma. No memory of his past. Sometimes light finds its way into the darkness, illuminates it. Seems this Wilson Pierce is one of those cases."

"And I am the light tainted by darkness."

"You are... and always will be someone I've come to cherish."

"You know I can't be like that for you Noah. You are a minister. I don't know what I am anymore."

"So where are you going?" He asked.

"South. Wilson and the girl were heading that way. I might run into them again."

"And what if you don't?"

"I don't know."

"You could always come to upstate New York. You could stay with me."

She cast her eyes at the table. They focused on his hands. They were nice hands, un-calloused and clean. "Your parish might talk, especially the old ladies."

Noah Cote took the check and rose from the table. She did not raise her head to offer a goodbye. She watched his leg turn and walk a few strides from the table. He paused and she looked upward. He turned his head slightly and said. "Maybe we should let them... talk."

# The End

# Other Books by Paul Donaldson

Dark Places of the Soul

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Crossroads

***

Coming Soon:

Vindication (Part 3 in the Dark Soul Trilogy)

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Second Chances

# 
