Unhallowed Ground Read online

  “That’s stupid,” he said to himself between mouthfuls of noodles. “Like the Victorians were the first and only people to ever be afraid of that crap. Hell, it’s probably half the reason crema—”

  Kelly tipped his chin up and listened. There had been a sound like something falling over outside, and he wondered if the wind had picked up again. He hit the mute button on the remote, and the room was cast into silence.

  There was no wind, and the back of his neck crawled. He shook his head gently, getting angry with himself for getting frightened again. “Goddamned snow just falling out of the tree or off the roof, dumbass.”

  He lifted the remote to turn the volume back up, but something hit the window behind the couch with a small clink. Wondering if it was now hailing, he set his noodle cup on the arm of the couch and turned around on his knees. He leaned over the back of the couch and grabbed the edge of one of the blackout curtains over the window, jerking it aside to look out.

  There was a face nearly touching the glass.

  Kelly yelped and toppled backward off of the couch, hitting the coffee table before landing on his side on the floor. The instantaneous dump of adrenaline into his blood allowed him to shove past the pain, and he scrambled to get up, knocking the noodle cup from the arm of the couch to the floor.

  He stood there, his chest heaving, trying to understand what he’d seen. The face had been ghostly pale and the eye sockets vacant. It had been familiar, though, and he was certain it was Grace Suhr. Maybe she had just looked strange with the snow blotting out the street lamp that should have been backlighting her.

  He grit his teeth together and leaned forward to grab the edge of the curtain again. If it was Grace, he knew she wouldn’t be out in the snowstorm unless there was a very bad reason for it. She might need his help, so he sucked up the last tatters of his courage and tugged the curtain to the side again.

  There was no one there, and the street light wasn’t being dimmed by the snow, it simply wasn’t on.

  He let the curtain fall and moved away from the window as an electric jolt coursed down his spine and twisted up in his groin. As much as he detested the town’s street lights, to not see its harsh light outside unnerved him.

  He jumped and spun when there was a bang on the door. Kelly slowly crossed the room, torn between his desire to help the old woman with whatever was going on and the flight instinct welling up within him.

  Kelly grabbed the doorknob and forced up a smile, not wanting to let her know just how spooked he’d gotten. He let out a sharp breath and opened the door. “What’s going...on?”

  There was no one on his small porch, nor anywhere within the limited field of vision allotted by the storm and darkness. Kelly stepped out onto the porch and looked around, calling out for Grace, but there was only the faint sound of the snow falling.

  It didn’t take him long to realize all of the streetlights normally visible from his house were out, but the television was still on, so it wasn’t a power outage. He strained his eyes to look out at the walkway, but there weren’t any prints he could see. Kelly went to the railing and looked at the ground below the window, but there was nothing there, either.

  With his bare feet going numb from the cold, he decided to go back inside the house and locked the door behind him. He went into the kitchen to get a roll of paper towels to clean up the spilled noodles, pulling his phone from the charger and taking it with him. After the mess was mopped up from the wood floor, he stoked the fire and lingered close to it to help warm back up.

  Kelly dialed Ryan’s number as he knelt there, needing some human interaction.

  “Kel, what’s up?”

  “I just had the weirdest thing happen,” he said, feeling foolish for immediately launching into it, but he wasn’t in the mood to goof around. “I heard something outside and looked out the window, and Grace was there. I went out to see what was up, but she was nowhere to be found.”

  Ryan didn’t respond right away, but Kelly could hear him moving for several seconds. “I’m at Dani’s house, and something’s not right. Madgie left for the knit and bitch club, but she hasn’t come home yet. Enos called here looking to see if Corine was here, too. I guess she’s missing as well.”

  Grace Suhr was part of the knitting group and hearing that some of the others were missing didn’t help the growing pain in his gut.

  “You’re sure you saw her outside?” Ryan asked, breaking the silence.

  “I was,” he replied. “The street lights are all out, though. I suppose it’s possible it was just the snow and my over-active imagination, but it really looked like her. I didn’t see any tracks in the snow outside when I went to look, though.”

  “Shit, Dani’s really starting to freak out that something happened to them. I think they’re just holed up in someone’s house for the night. The snow’s almost a foot deep on the road already. Madgie’s old Caddy won’t cut it on the road in this.” Ryan paused for a moment. “I know Dani is already trying to call some of the women in the group. She doesn’t know which of their houses they were heading to tonight. None of the old men abandoned at home so far seem to know a damn thing. If she finds out anything, you want me to give you a call?”

  “Yeah, you do that, and I’ll try calling the Suhrs’ house to see if William knows anything if she hasn’t tried them yet,” Kelly said.

  “Okay, sounds like a plan. Talk to you in a bit.”

  As soon as Ryan was gone, Kelly dialed the number to the Suhrs’ house, but after a dozen rings, he gave up. He tried Grace’s cell next, but he got the generic “user unavailable” message.

  Kelly returned to the couch, turning the volume back up on the television to watch the end of the episode. He didn’t pay much attention, however, getting too wrapped up in his thoughts to really care much about the plight of the crab boats thousands of miles away.

  An hour later, his phone rang and he picked it up. “Any news?”

  “Madgie just showed up,” Ryan said, relief in his voice. “Turns out, all of their cars are stuck at Witch Hazel’s house, and she had to drive them home two at a time in her diesel.”

  Kelly grinned to himself for the childish nickname Hazel McGrath had earned from the locals decades earlier. “Well, flying on her broom was probably out of the question given the weather.”

  “The broom’s been stuck up her ass for too long to extract, however, she does get credit for delivering Madgie and the others,” he said. “I guess she took Mrs. Suhr home first since she’d taken the little car instead of her own pickup, and that was back around nine.”

  Kelly frowned. That would have been before he’d thought he’d seen her at his house. “My eyes must have been screwing with me, then. We’ve been awfully keyed up all day.”

  “I know. It’s been a pisser.”

  “Well, I guess I should crash, then. I’m gonna be sore as hell tomorrow.” Kelly eyed the bottle of pain killers on the coffee table, thinking he should take a few more.

  “From work today?”

  “In the spirit of honesty, I fell off the couch and ricocheted off the coffee table before hitting the floor.” Kelly kicked the table lazily in retribution.

  “Klutz.” Ryan laughed. “Did you have your Life Alert on so they could come to get you back up?”

  “Naw, I toughed it out. I do my own stunts,” Kelly said.

  “Okay, well, good night, Jackie Chan.”

  “Night, Ryan. Talk to you tomorrow.”

  Chapter

  15

  Kelly heard his phone vibrating on the coffee table, and he cracked open his eyes. There was a sharp pain in his neck and upper back as he stretched out his arm to retrieve it, the screen showing Ryan as the caller. Immediately, he feared Henry had decided to get them to work, and he reluctantly answered.

  “Morning, Ryan.”

  “Are you at home?”

  There was something in Ryan’s voice that compelled Kelly to sit up immediately. “Yeah, pretty much right where I was wh
en we talked last night. Why?”

  “My dad went out this morning once the plow got down the highway to go check on the worksite. Kel, someone went out there and fucked a lot of shit up last night,” he said. “Dad’s pissed. He’s already got Deputy Bryant out there.”

  “Messed up how? Is he sure the storm didn’t just screw stuff up?”

  “Not unless the storm opened the engine cowlings on the heavy equipment and cut all the belts, hoses, and several sections of the wiring harnesses.”

  Kelly stood up but did so carefully to avoid injuring himself further. “Who the hell would go out there in that kind of storm to do that? It was already coming down pretty good when we left last night!”

  Ryan sighed. “I dunno. I know a lot of the old folks were freaked out about what we were doing out there, but I can’t imagine them going to that sort of trouble. I doubt the knit and bitch club has that kind of ambition, even if they were AWOL for a while.”

  The thought of the old ladies all hauling out to the cemetery in a blizzard to vandalize the equipment had its amusement value. “I doubt they did it. It wasn’t that dick Robert and his merry band of ass-hats, was it?”

  Robert, though Kelly and Ryan’s age, had never lost his reputation for being the town’s resident juvenile delinquent. He’d been caught stealing and vandalizing things all over and around Brayton countless times over the years, and the group of kids he still ran around with wasn’t a whole lot better.

  “I’m sure he’ll be getting a visit from the sheriff’s department before too long,” Ryan replied. “I dunno, though. As bad as he is, he’s lazy as hell. Trudging out there in a storm that probably would have stranded that piece of crap Honda he drives isn’t really his style, and I don’t think he’d risk getting his work truck stuck.”

  “Yeah, but his buddy Brian has that lifted pickup, and he could have gotten out there just fine.” Kelly wandered toward the kitchen and looked out the window, seeing the snow in the backyard easily two-feet deep. “If they did it right after we bailed, anyway.”

  “Possible... Guess we’ll just have to see what the deputy comes up with, assuming he finds anything out there under all that snow.” He sighed again. “Did you get a hold of Mrs. Suhr ever?”

  “No, you actually woke me up. I’ll call her in a little while. After Madgie verified to you last night that she’d been taken home, I wasn’t too worried about it.” Kelly leaned against the counter, pulling his eyes away from the window, recalling what had happened the night before.

  “Right,” Ryan said. “After my dad brings the truck home, maybe I can swing by. We can go check out the damage for ourselves. I’m kinda curious.”

  “I literally have nothing better to do,” Kelly admitted. “Just come on by whenever you’re ready.”

  Three hours later, Kelly sat in the passenger seat of the pickup Ryan had borrowed from his dad. Though the highway had been plowed, the drive was still slow going as the road had a slick coating of ice. They didn’t pass another vehicle after they moved beyond the edge of town.

  “Dad’s gonna come back out later today with his mechanic,” Ryan said, carefully pulling the truck to a stop on the side of the roadway. “They’ll get a parts list together, then you and I will be sent off to pick them up.”

  Kelly nodded before opening the truck door and sliding out into the snow. He moved to walk the path toward the equipment Henry and the deputy had made earlier that morning. The snow was deeper than it had been back in town, and Kelly wondered how anyone had managed to get out there the night before.

  They moved up beside the excavator that had been used to move the bulk of the dirt from the old graves. Ryan reached out and lifted up the engine cowling and gave a slow whistle. “Someone wanted this thing shut down. Dad said everything out here is like this.”

  Kelly moved closer, cocking his head to the side. As expected, the belts were cut and hanging loose, and there were assorted oily trails down the engine block from the severed hoses. The snow beneath the machine was stained red from the coolant that had bled out. “Damn. Did they get mine, too?”

  Ryan closed the engine back up and looked over, seeing the other machine in the distance, coated in a heavy layer of snow. “Naw, dad said that old thing wasn’t touched. Whoever did this didn’t see it over there in the dark, or the storm got too bad for them to bother going over to wreck it.”

  “I suppose we should go over there and see if it starts,” Kelly said, not really wanting to make the walk.

  “It was twenty below last night,” Ryan replied, shaking his head. “We can try to start it up, but I’d doubt she’ll run. It still had summer fuel in the tanks, to be honest. Dad had me dump some treatment in, but we can try.”

  Kelly nodded and looked around for any other clues, but the only evidence of any human activity were the tracks left by Henry, the deputy, and themselves. Anything else that would have given up the vandal’s identity was long buried under the snow. “Let’s go give it a shot. I saw a case of Howe’s in the bed of the pickup. Maybe we can dump another bottle in. It’d be nice to have at least one of these machines running to push the snow around when you dad orders us back to work.”

  Ryan nodded and motioned for Kelly to lead the way. “Fair enough.”

  The wind tore right through Kelly’s winter clothes, and a few scattered flakes were beginning to drift down from the gray sky overhead. He climbed into the glass-enclosed cab of the backhoe, glad for the brief reprieve from the wind. He pulled the single key for it out of the upper breast pocket of his coat and shoved it into the ignition. Though she protested and was slow to turn over, the old Cat engine rumbled to a galloping start.

  They let it run for about twenty minutes to ensure the batteries were charged and to give the extra treatment they’d dumped into the tank time to circulate through the filter. Convinced everything was all right, Kelly shut it back down and climbed out of the cab.

  “Well, I guess all we can really do is go home and wait for your dad to give us our orders.” Kelly turned away from the machine. “There’s no point in bothering to try plowing the worksite off until it decides it’s going to really stop snowing. Let’s go eat and think of something good to do with the rest of the day.”

  “You wanna swing by the Suhrs’ house afterward?” Ryan asked, knowing Kelly still hadn’t gotten anyone on the phone.

  “Yeah, let’s do that.”

  Chapter

  16

  “Mr. Pennick, is there anyone to back up what you’re saying?” Deputy Dennis Bryant asked.

  Robert Pennick leaned back and spread his arms along the top of the booth seat he occupied. His breakfast was getting cold, and he was profoundly annoyed. It never failed that whenever anything happened in town, he was the first person the law felt compelled to harass.

  “Why in the hell would I go out to bust up Henry’s shit?” he asked right back, narrowing his eyes. “I haven’t gotten in trouble for nearly a year now, so why would I pick last night of all nights to go out and do something like that? I may be an ass, but I wouldn’t go fuck with another man’s livelihood by wrecking his equipment, and I sure as hell wouldn’t go risking my life by doing it in that kinda weather.”

  “But there isn’t anyone to corroborate your claim about being in your apartment?” the deputy asked.

  Robert’s jaw tensed visibly. While he had been laying low for a while, having the deputy find any reason to go to his apartment for a search wasn’t something he needed. “No, because there was a blizzard last night, and everyone in their right mind stayed the hell home, guy.”

  “Do you know what Brian Allister was doing, or where I might find him?” Deputy Bryant pressed on, crossing his arms over his chest as he continued to stand at the end of Robert’s table.

  “At home, and I’d imagine he’s still there,” Robert replied, leaning forward and picking up his fork. “His parents were probably home, too, so he’s probably got a nice alibi. Not that I’m saying any of my friends would have
done that. We’ve got better things to do these days. Most of us have jobs to do, and staying out all night like a bunch of kids has gotten a lot harder. Now, if you’re done unfairly profiling me, I’d really like to eat this. It’s already stone cold.”

  Dennis knew he wasn’t going to get anything else from Robert, and he let his arms fall back to his sides. While Robert was a known trouble maker, doing something like that in the middle of a storm wasn’t exactly in line with his usual shenanigans. “All right. If you hear anything, though—”

  Robert stabbed down into one of the small breakfast sausages on his plate with a little too much force. He was doing his absolute best to keep his temper from boiling over, but he was near his breaking point. “I got it, okay? Unless I’m being detained, go away.”

  The deputy gave no visible response before turning from the table. He’d ruined Robert’s breakfast, and he stopped by the waitress on the way out and slipped her a twenty to cover the young man’s tab.

  Ryan pulled open the door to the diner, nearly running into the deputy. “Whoa, sorry.”

  Dennis moved out onto the sidewalk, offering the two a brief smile. “How’s Henry handling it? He was pretty lit off this morning.”

  Ryan shoved his hands in his pockets and gave a small shrug. “Well, he hasn’t had an aneurysm yet, so that’s a good sign. Any idea on what happened out there?”

  “Dunno, but I’m working on it. Robert’s in there, and I asked him, but he’s not saying a whole lot,” Dennis admitted. “He’s dumb as hell, but I don’t think he’s stupid enough to go way out there for something like that last night. I know there’s still a few of those damned ghost enthusiasts mulling around town, maybe it was one of them. God knows we’ve had calls on enough graffiti and whatnot out that way since they found our town. All this action keeps up, and this town is going to become the only one in a twenty-mile-radius to get its own police department.”