Page 54 of Stay Buried

I wondered what she’d seen to spook her so.

“Where the hell is he? Where is Clarice?” Benjamin demanded now. He was pale, breathing heavily, his face damp with perspiration. Was it the flickering light from the kerosene lantern he held or was his skin taking on a yellow coloring?

We left the stable, and followed the footprints to the cabin next.

Luther pulled open the heavy door and stepped inside, aiming hisgun at the shadows.

Benjamin stumbled in behind him. “Not here.” He was struggling to form full sentences now. Uncle Thomas and I proceeded to join them in the cabin. With the door open and the two large windows, the cabin was better lit than the stable had been. It was a single room with a table and one chair, a bed with a wooden frame and a sheepskin laid upon it. A bearskin rug was spread out on the floor. Hooks by the door held a soiled shirt, a wide-brimmed hat. There was a small woodstove in the corner with a pot and a coffee kettle on it; beside it a shelf holding a few simple housewares. A broom hung from a nail on the wall. The wide plank floors were clean, and the cabin smelled pleasantly of woodsmoke and pipe tobacco.

Again we heard whimpering. I turned to see that the little shaggy dog had followed us. She was right behind me now, watching from the open doorway, head cocked, hesitant to come inside.

“Clarice!” Benjamin called, stumbling back out into the yard, his voice high, desperate.

We tried to make sense of the footprints all around the yard, crisscrossing, going this way and that. Luther studied them, said, “I think this is more than two people, but I can’t be sure.”

“Maybe Emile is with them?” Uncle Thomas added. He stood, holding his medical bag, frowning at the tracks in the snow. The sun had come up behind the hill but was weak, filtered through heavy clouds and thick fog.

Luther frowned down at the tracks. “Maybe he’s leading them.”

Benjamin blinked at him. “Leading them? I can’t imagine my Clarice following that man anywhere.”

“Maybe she’s not your Clarice anymore,” Luther said. “Maybe she’shis.”

Benjamin gritted his teeth, made a fist, and raised his arm as if to strike Luther.

“Luther,” Uncle Thomas said, stepping between the two men. “That’s a great deal of supposition, and I find it highly unlikely that—”

“They’re roaming the town like a pack of mad dogs,” Luther said, getting strident now. “Demons haunting the woods.”

“It’s my wife you’re talking about,” Benjamin said, stepping forward, arm down but hand still clenched.

“Is she?” Luther was getting louder. “Is she still? Or is she something else? Has she too risen from the dead? Does her heart still beat in her chest or is something else propelling her on?”

“Enough, Luther!” Uncle Thomas’s voice was raised now.

Without a word, Benjamin moved to the thick woods at the eastern edge of the property, and started down a small path there. He moved somewhat drunkenly, his steps unsure. The jumbled tracks did seem to head that way, so we followed him. The dog came along, nudging at my hand. From time to time I stopped to give her reassuring scratches behind the ears. “Out of biscuits, I’m afraid.” The dog followed anyway.

We walked for forty minutes or so, following the tracks down the snow-covered path. It was well used, the branches cut back. The temperature was finally warming, the sun breaking through the clouds.

The path, and the tracks following it, led to the back side of the factory, eerily silent with all the men out searching. I realized that the morning bell had not rung. The whole town marked the passage of time by the factory bells that tolled out three times a day Monday through Friday, and the church bell that rang each Sunday at ten.

The bare footprints in the snow went back down Main Street, but were soon lost, muddied and stepped on by others. We followed them as best we could back through town and to the little road that we’d already followed up the hill to the knackerman’s place. Discouraged, we doubled back to the pub. As we made our way back through town, I noticed plates of food and bottles of ale and rum left out on the front steps of several homes. Some plates even held coins.

“What is all this?” I asked.

“They’re for the knackerman,” Luther explained. “Seems some folks are thinking that if they leave him something, he won’t bothertheir family. Won’t bewitch any of them.”

My uncle’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing.

We were met outside the pub by the group of men led by Michael Knapp. Reverend Davies was with him, along with Bert Osbourne and a dozen or so men who worked at the clothespin factory.

“Any sign?” asked Michael.

“He’s been up at his place recently,” Uncle Thomas said. “Emile and Mrs. Stoddard too, it seems. No one is there now, though. We followed the tracks back down the hill.”

“They’re going in circles,” Benjamin added, exasperated.

“But why?” asked Michael. “What does it mean? What are they doing?”