Usher's Passing

Chapter 21

"WHAT I'D LIKE TO KNOW," RAVEN DUNSTAN SAID FIRMLY, "IS why you don't deputize about thirty men and take bloodhounds up on Briartop Mountain. Surely you've at least considered it!"
Sitting across the desk from her, in his Taylorville office, was Walt Kemp, the county sheriff. He was a thickset man with a gray crewcut and full gray sideburns. His square-jawed face was heavily lined, his dark brown eyes now bored with the interview, giving him the appearance of what he actually was: a man who worked in the weather, a well-to-do tobacco farmer with some law enforcement training who'd decided to run for county sheriff because the last man was just so damned lazy. He was in his second year in office, and he was ready to give it up. It wasn't that crime was so bad in the county - it wasn't, except for a few burglaries, auto thefts, and moonshine stills - but the paperwork was mountainous. His office was understaffed, his budget had been slashed, and now here was Raven Dunstan again, pursuing her favorite subject with the tenacity of a coon dog.
"I don't think I could find five men who'd want to hike up there," he replied, lighting a cigarette. "And yes, I've considered it. As a matter of fact, last year I did take two men up with hounds. And y'know what happened? Somebody shot one of the dogs with rock salt and started shootin' at us, too, before we'd hardly gotten out of our cars. I reckon they figured we were gonna find a still or something."
"So you gave up? Why?"
"We didn't give up. We just figured we couldn't search too well with rock salt in our asses, excuse my French." He took a pull from his cigarette and exhaled the smoke through his nostrils. "Those Briartop people are mean as hell, Miss Dunstan. They don't want what they call 'outsiders' on their territory -  and I've found out that means me, too. You know, I deputized one man up there - Clint Perry. He's the only one who'd even listen to me when I tried to find volunteers. The rest of those mountain folks just don't want to be bothered."
She shook her head. "I can't believe this! You're the county sheriff. It's your job to 'bother' them!"
"They don't want my help." Kemp was trying to control his temper. Wheeler's daughter, he thought, could worry the warts off a toadfrog. "When they come at you with guns, what are you gonna do? When they fell trees across the road to block the way, what are you gonna do? Clint tries to help me out as much as he can, but he's just one man. And the folks up there treat him like he's poison for the help he does give me! I'm tellin' you, they don't want the law up there."
"I want to read something to you," she said, and brought out a notepad from her purse. "When I took the paper over from my father, I went back through the old copies of the Democrat. Dad keeps them bound in books at the house. I went over every reference to missing children that I could find, and I want to tell you what I came up with."
"Shoot," he offered.
"Since 1872," Raven said, "there have been three or four incidents every year except one, in 1893, the year of the Briartop 'quake. At least three or four. And those are the ones that were reported. How many others might there be? Add it up. It comes out to more than three hundred. Most of the incidents took place in October and November. Harvest time. Three hundred children, all aged between six and fourteen, all from an area that includes Briartop Mountain, Foxton, Rainbow, and Taylorville. Now don't you think that's worth 'bothering' somebody about?"
"You don't have to get sarcastic about it, now." Kemp drew so hard on his cigarette that he almost scorched his thick fingers. "When you came to me wantin' to see the missin' persons files and all that stuff, I thought you'd write stories about how hard I've been workin' on this thing - not articles takin' me to hell and back. I even gave you the name of that Tharpe boy as a favor."
"I appreciate the favor, but I don't see you doing a damned thing about it."
"What can I do, woman?" he said, more loudly than he'd wanted. The secretary's typing in the outer office suddenly silenced. "Move up to Briartop myself? Sure, something's goin' on up there! I ain't sayin' it's been goin' on since 1872, 'cause I wasn't around back then! And I'd say that figure you've come up with is probably a bit inflated, if those other Dunstans were anything like you and old Wheeler! Okay, we've got kids steppin' into thin air. And I do mean thin air, Miss Dunstan! There's not a trace of 'em left. Not a piece of clothing, not a footprint, nothin'! When you ask questions on Briartop, you get some damned hillbilly holdin' a gun in your face. What am I gonna do?"
Raven didn't reply. She closed her notepad and returned it to her purse. The sheriff was right, she knew. If all the others were as resistant as Myra Tharpe, how could any decent search be carried out? "I don't know," she said finally.
"Right." He stabbed the cigarette out with an angry thrust. Splotches of color burned on his jowls. "Neither do I. You know what I think?" He pinned her gaze with his own. "There's no such thing as the Pumpkin Man. It's a made-up story to scare the children. Whenever a kid goes wanderin' off into the woods and doesn't come home, it's supposed to be the Pumpkin Man got him. Well, what about the ones who just get themselves lost? Or the ones who run away from home? You know, those cabins up there ain't mansions. I'll bet plenty of kids run away to the city."
"Six-year-olds?" she asked pointedly.
Kemp folded his hands together on his blotter-topped desk. He looked more weary today, Raven thought, than she'd ever seen him. "I've gone up on Briartop a couple of times," he told her in a quieter tone of voice. "All by myself. Do you know how big it is? How thick those woods are? The thorns up there'll cut you like knives. You can walk ten feet off a path and get yourself so lost your head spins. There are caves and ravines and craters and God knows whatall. You know what's up at the very tiptop? A whole damned town, that's what."
"A town? What kind of town?"
"Well, it's just ruins, is all. But it was a town, a long time ago. Nobody lives there but one old crazy bird who calls himself the Mountain King." He picked at an offending hangnail for a few seconds. "And I'll tell you somethin' else," he decided. "Clint Perry says he wouldn't go up to those ruins if you paid him five hundred bucks."
"That's a brave deputy you've got. Is he afraid of one old man?"
"Hell, no! Listen, you're not puttin' all this in your newspaper, are you? I thought I made it real clear that what I say is off the record."
"It's clear," she agreed. If she didn't need the man's confidential information from time to time, Raven would have blasted him out of this office by now.
"The damned place is haunted," Kemp said. He gave a quick, crooked grin to let her know he didn't really believe it. "At least that's what Perry says. I've been up there once, and once was enough. Some of the old stone walls are still standin', but they're as black as soot - and I swear to God, you can see the outlines of people burned right into the walls. Now you can laugh if you want to."
Raven might have smiled wryly, but the expression in Kemp's eyes stopped her. He was dead serious, she saw. "People in the walls, huh?"
"No, I didn't say that. I said the outlines of people. You know, silhouettes. It'll give you the creeps to see 'em, I guaran-damn-tee it!"
"What happened up there?"
He shrugged. "Hell if I know, but I've heard all kinds of crazy stories about Briartop Mountain. Supposed to be that comets fell one summer night and set the whole mountain on fire. 'Course, you know about the black panther that's supposed to be roamin' around up there. Bastard gets bigger every year. Then there's the stories about the witches, too. All kinds of fool - "
"The witches?" Raven interrupted. "I hadn't heard that one."
"Yeah, supposed to be that Briartop used to be crawlin' with 'em. Gil Partain, over in Rainbow, says his grandmother used to talk about 'em before she died. Said that God Hisself tried to destroy Briartop Mountain. Guess it didn't work, though, 'cause it's still there."
Raven glanced at her wristwatch and saw that she was going to be late for her meeting with Rix Usher. This visit with Sheriff Kemp had been totally unproductive. She put her purse strap around her shoulder and rose to leave.
"I'll keep you posted," Kemp said, lifting his bulk from the chair. "I told you them stories by way of sayin' that you can't believe everything you hear. There ain't no Pumpkin Man. One of these days, somebody'll find that Tharpe boy's bones at the bottom of a cliff, or caught down in some thorns where he couldn't get loose."
"Then that just leaves us the other two hundred ninety-nine to find, doesn't it?" She left his office before he could reply.
Haven made the drive from Taylorville to Foxton in twenty minutes, and walked into the Broadleaf Cafe just after three. The place was almost empty, except for the bored waitress with the double-dip hairdo and a stocky, bearded man in overalls sitting at the counter with a doughnut and a cup of coffee. Rix Usher was waiting in the same booth they'd occupied yesterday.
"Sorry I'm late," she said as she slid in. "I was over in Taylorville."
"That's okay, I just got here." Again, he'd parked the red Thunderbird around the corner where it wouldn't be seen. After lunch, he'd sheltered himself in his room to look through some of the materials he'd taken from the library last night. The old account books were filled with scribblings and monetary figures, mostly illegible. The letters were more revealing; the majority were from bank presidents, gunpowder suppliers, and steel company presidents, and had to do with Erik's business affairs. A few of the letters, however, were from women. Two of those, still bearing a faint scent of lavender, were positively lewd, describing nights of bestial sex-and-whipping sessions. At two-thirty, Rix had slipped away from the Gatehouse.
Raven waved the waitress away before she could reach the table. "I talked to Dad last night about your proposal," she said. "The first thing is that he doesn't trust you any more than he could run a hundred-yard dash. The second thing is that he wants to meet you."
Better yet, Rix thought. "When?"
"How about right now? My car's out front, if you want to leave yours here."
Rix nodded. In a few minutes he was sitting in Raven's Volkswagen as she drove out of Foxton and turned onto a narrow country road north of the town limits. He had the opportunity to settle back and really look at Raven Dunstan. She had strong, even features and thick, curly black hair that accentuated her fair complexion. She wore very little makeup, and Rix didn't think she needed any. She was naturally attractive, with a strong, earthy sensuality. There was strength in her eyes and in the set of her jaw, and Rix wondered what she'd look like when she laughed. She looked unafraid to go anywhere or do anything; she had guts, he decided. Otherwise, she never would have kept calling Usherland until she finally wore down the opposition. He realized that he actually liked her.
But in the next moment he shifted his position and looked away. His feelings for Sandra were still strong; until he could resolve the question of why she'd killed herself in that bathtub, he couldn't let her go.
Raven had felt him watching her, and glanced quickly at him. Though he appeared wan and tired, she thought he was a striking-looking man. He needed light in his eyes, she decided. They held an inner darkness that disturbed her.
"How'd you get involved with the Democrat? Why didn't you go after a job on a city newspaper, or get into television journalism?''
"Oh, I worked for a city paper for a while. I was a feature editor for almost three years with a paper in Memphis. But when Dad called me, I had to come home. The Democrat's been in my family for a long time. Besides, Dad needed help with his book."
"Then you help him write it, too?"
"No. In fact, I've never seen any of the book. He won't even let me come around when he's working on it. My father's a very private person, Mr. Usher. And he's a very proud and stubborn man, as well."
"That's not exactly the opinion my father has of him," Rix commented, and saw her smile faintly. It was a nice smile, and Rix hoped to see it again.
Raven took a left onto a long gravel drive. It climbed gently through pine woods to a gabled, two-story white house at the top of a hill, overlooking a magnificent vista of sky and mountains.
"Welcome to the homestead," Raven said. As he followed her up the steps to the porch, Rix almost asked her about her limp - but then the front door opened and he had his first glimpse of Wheeler Dunstan.