Page 127 of Stay Buried

FIFTY-SEVENASHLEY

October 18, 2016

Ashley clapped her hand over her mouth as she stared down at the skeleton with the horse skull where a human skull should be. The dark eye sockets watched her, daring her to make her next move.

Her eyes moved to the offerings scattered around the altar beside the glass-topped case. And there, amidst the dried flowers, burnt-out votives, coins, and jewelry, was a cameo ring with the carved white face of a woman looking to the left. Ashley knew it well. Had studied it, touched it, asked about it a thousand times when she was a girl and it was on her mother’s finger. It had belonged once to Margaret Endicott, given to her by her own mother, then passed down to Gram, who passed it down to Mom. Ashley picked up the ring and it seemed to thrum in her hand like a living thing, like somehow it held the energy of all the women before her who’d worn it. She slipped it on her finger, just where it belonged.

“Oh my God.” Mal’s eyes were huge. “Mom’s ring! But what’s it—” He stopped, suddenly understanding.

She reached for his hand and took it, squeezing it tight.

They stood like that, letting the truth sink in.

“What’s all that stuff in there with the… uh, remains?” Mal asked, shining the light from his phone through the glass. Tucked into the corners were a tattered leather satchel, papers with faint handwriting on them, some small jars topped with wax.

Ash leaned in for a closer look. “I don’t—”

Ash and Mal jumped as the deep and deafening church bell began to ring out overhead.

The church lights flipped on and flooded the space with bright light.

“Let that alone!” a voice shrieked. They spun to see Josephine, Jack St. James, and Pops from the general store storming down the aisle between the pews. Pops had a rifle.

“Let’s get them out of here before the whole town shows up!” Josephine ordered the men.

Pops and Jack marched grimly toward where Ash and Mal stood, between the main altar and the bizarre quasi-pagan shrine to the horse-headed god this town seemed to live in fear of, the enormous wooden crucifix looming above them all.

“You stay away from us!” Malcolm yelled at them. He grabbed a wrought-iron candlestick from the altar and brandished it. “If anything happens to us, there’ll be hell to pay!” Ashley desperately wanted it to be true, but knew it would be days before anyone—maybe Brian Reyes, Gram’s lawyer? or her boss at the café?—traced them to Boone’s Ferry. Plenty of time for these lunatics to cover up their murders, just like they had their mother’s.

The two men were just a few feet away now, undeterred.

“Come on, now, son,” Pops said to Malcolm in the same irritated tone he’d used when selling them tobacco just a few hours before. He was cradling his rifle across his chest, not feeling the need to aim it at them. “What exactly are you going to do with that thing?” He jerked his chin at the candlestick.

Malcolm stepped forward and swung the candlestick, hard, aiming for Pops’s head. Pops ducked deftly; the candlestick whizzed through the air a good foot over his head, and the momentum of the swing carried Mal off-balance. At that moment Jack St. James barreled into him, crouched low like he was tackling someone on the football field. Mal fell back into the case that held the bones, and theheavy candlestick smashed through the glass top.

“For God’s sake, stop!” Josephine was screaming again. “The shrine! You idiots!”

Ashley rushed to Malcolm, helped him to stand. The side of his hand was bleeding and she smelled the sharp tang of formaldehyde.

FIFTY-EIGHTMINI

October 18, 2016

The church bell was ringing now just like Willy had said it would. He took a break from digging and looked up at her from down in the hole of the knackerman’s empty grave. Only it wasn’t his face looking up at her, but the knackerman’s. He’d been wearing the costume since they left the knackerman’s place up on Saw Meadow Hill.

Then he’d gone through town, in costume, putting the knackerman’s mark on all the doors he could manage—making sure to get Josephine’s, Jack St. James’s, the pub, and Pops’s store.

And when he was finished, Mini had been waiting for him in the cemetery with a shovel and a flashlight just like he’d asked.

She didn’t understand his plan, but when he said, “Trust me,” for whatever reason, she did.

He knew they’d ring the bell to call a town meeting—that everyone would be in hysterics about the marks on the doors.

“I told you, Mini,” he said. “I told you they’d ring the bell.”

Mini hated looking at the face, the dark sockets with Willy’s eyes hidden back behind them. And she hated that he was down there digging up that grave. Not that he would find anything down there.

Mini knew it was empty because they’d dug the knackerman up years ago, before she was born, built the shrine, and put all the relics from his grave into it. Mini’s Grandfather Fitzpatrick was a masterwoodworker and had built the case that held his remains. It was a great honor, that was what her papa always said.