Roll Them Bones

By David Niall Wilson

First Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press & Macabre Ink Digital

Copyright 2010 by David Niall Wilson

Cover Design by Neil Jackson

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DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to Rich Chizmar of Cemetery Dance Publications, who was the original inspiration.  He asked me to write a novella about Halloween…and here it is.  He asked me to write about a small town setting, a group of old friends…here they are.  This is also dedicated to Kay Reynolds, who was very supportive during the writing of this and a very bad section of my life.  Finally, as in all things, it is dedicated to the love of my life, Patricia Lee Macomber for loving me against all the odds…and to my kids (of which I can field a basketball team) who help me continue to feel young.

ONE

Jason pulled his sleek black Volvo in beside a faded, rust-pocked Chevy truck in front of Macomber’s General Store and killed the engine. He couldn’t suppress a shiver. If it hadn’t been for the peeling paint on the side of the building, and the new feed and grain store across the street, he’d have believed the trip was all a dream and he was twelve again. So little had changed.

Old Bob Macomber was on the porch of the store, rocker creaking slowly as he took in Jason’s car with a dubious stare. Curiosity, like everything else in Random, was slow to blossom. Jason stepped from the car and closed the door slowly, turning to scan Main Street. The Post Office and the Sheriff’s office were one building, a duplex, grey-concrete blocks bonded with cement and too-thick coats of paint. The American flag hung at a forty-five degree angle beside the front awning of each door.

“Hasn’t changed much, has it boy?” Old Bob’s voice broke the silence like a stone through glass, and Jason started, turning back with a sheepish grin.

“Not much at all,” he agreed, stepping toward the porch, and the store. “It’s been a long time, Bob.”

Bob nodded toward an empty rocker a few feet to his side. “Sit a spell, Jason. It ain’t every day one of our wandering sons returns.”

Jason stepped up to the porch and took the offered seat, watching the old man with a slowly spreading grin.  “Don’t even offer a beer?”

“You know where the beer is boy,” Bob rumbled, “And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll bring two. It’d damned hot out here. And don’t be thinking ‘cause you’re Glen Stiller’s boy you’ll be running a tab.  Ain’t nothing free here.”

Jason laughed. He rocked forward and stood in an easy motion, turning to the store and pushing through the door. The cooler stood along the wall, just to his left, as it had stood when he’d gotten his first Coca Cola about twenty years in the past. The hum of electricity and the sudden sense of deja vu nearly stole his breath.

It was like stepping through a time-warp portal into another place. Hank William’s Sr. yodeled from an ancient, RCA radio on the counter.  Flies buzzed around a barrel of apples in the corner, and on the wall above the cooler, James Dean winked at him slyly from a poster advertising a brand of cigarettes that no longer existed.

Jason leaned on the old cooler for a second, the cool porcelain supporting him easily, then he lifted the lid, snagged a couple of long-necked Budweisers and turned toward the door. The cooler closed behind him with a soft “whoomp.”

He handed one to Bob and returned to the empty rocker, unscrewing the top of the bottle with a quick twist of his wrist and tossing the cap in a lazy arc toward the can beside the door. It clipped the rim, then rolled in.

“Lucky,” Bob grunted. “Always was lucky.” He flicked his own cap into the can with practiced ease.  “I guess you’re lookin’ for Ronnie?”

Jason stared at the bottle in his hand. Condensation had beaded the deep brown surface and dampened his fingers. He nodded. “I guess I am,” he said softly. “He called me about a month ago.”

Bob rocked, sipping his beer. He didn’t speak for what seemed hours and was probably not a full minute.

“He called some others, too,” Bob said at last. “Lizzy is here, and Frank. Ain’t seen a one of you since you graduated high school, but here you are.”

“They’re here?” Jason said, maybe too quickly.

Bob looked around slowly, then laughed, tipping the beer bottle up and draining it. “You see ‘em?”

Jason smiled despite himself. “Nope,” he answered, swallowing his own beer in a single gulp.  He rose, taking both bottles and returning to the store.

As he slipped through the door once more, Bob called after him. “Lizzy is here. She’s staying over at Mae’s. I reckon there’s a couple more rooms. Frank is due in tomorrow, or so Edna says.”

Jason grinned again. Edna would know. Edna knew everything that happened in Random, or nearby. The only contact with the outside world was the phone lines, and the phone lines went through Edna.

“They ever put in that automatic switchboard?” Jason called, as he grabbed two more beers from the cooler.”

He slipped back out onto the porch, noting that the sun had dropped a little closer to the skyline. It was a deep orange sunset, seeping over the tops of the trees and staining the black asphalt of the road as it stretched away across endless miles of open farmland.

“Nope,” Bob answered with a chuckle. “Edna couldn’t figure how to tap into it, so she put them off another year.”

“What is that, about fifteen years she’s ‘put them off?’” Jason chuckled again. This time his bottle-cap sailed into the can cleanly.

“Something like that,” Bob answered, and for the first time, the old man grinned. “It’s good to see you boy.  Don’t you think for a minute I’ve forgotten you owe me for ten comics, either.”

This time Jason’s laughter was clear and loud. “Let’s see,” he replied, “at twelve cents apiece...”

The silence that followed was deep and comfortable, and Jason sipped the beer, rocking gently and letting the voices of a thousand crickets calm him.

Mae’s was just down the street, and Jason let his gaze fall on the faded, whitewashed front of the old building. In it’s day, the place had been a saloon, a flophouse, even a temporary school. Now it served as motor lodge, hotel, boarding house and general rent-all. Whoever needed a room, for however long, was welcome. Jason felt welcome, and he hadn’t even left the store. It was good to be home, odd as it felt, out of place as he was in his Ralph Lauren Chaps and his Italian leather shoes.

The trees were painted with all the colors of autumn, and the air was brisk, but not yet cold. The high school would be getting ready for homecoming soon, and the scarecrows and fake spiderwebs already lined the street. Jason glanced over at old Bob and grinned.

“What’s the going price on toilet paper and paraffin?” he asked.

“You better believe it’s gone up,” Bob laughed. “Won’t be too many kids can find the price of a good paraffin stick this time of year.”

Jason grinned and drained the beer, standing quickly.

“I’d better get on over to Mae’s,” he said. “Don’t want to miss dinner. I’d hate to have to come back and wake you up.”

“Don’t sleep so much these days,” Bob said softly, more softly than Jason had anticipated.  “Seen a lot of sun ups, and sun downs, boy. Reckon these days I prefer to be awake for both. You get on over to Mae’s, but you need a beer, or a sandwich, or a pair of ears to yak at, you come on back.  Reckon I’ll be right here.”

Jason nodded, then took the space between them in a few quick strides, extending his hand.

“It’s been way too long, Bob,” he said.  “I’ll be back to take you up on that beer before I head out.  You can count on that.  Likely be here for a couple of those sunrises, as well.”

“You do that, boy,” Bob smiled, showing that at least two of his teeth had not weathered the test of time. “You bring that Frank with you. I’d like to see how old Jim Moss’ boy turned out.  Seems everyone leaves Random before they get old enough to have any sense, and those that stay…”

Tom’s words trailed off, and Jason didn’t question him. He turned with a quick wave and headed up the block toward Mae’s, leaving his car parked where it was. No sense starting it up to drive 100 yards, and for some reason he didn’t want to crawl back into the stuffy interior of the car just then.

The loud jingle of a bell startled him as gravel shot out of a too-quickly turned tire as a boy, maybe ten, sped past on an old Schwinn bicycle.

“Jeez, Mr.,” the boy called back, leaping the bike onto the sidewalk and whipping around the first corner with practiced ease.  “Watch where you’re goin’.”

Jason laughed, trotting the last few feet to Mae’s. He hesitated as soft laughter floated out through the screen door. The voice was familiar, achingly so, and moments later he heard Mae’s throaty chuckle joining in.  No mistaking that voice.

Jason knocked, then pulled the screen door open and stepped inside. Back in New York this would have been rude, but as each moment passed, he felt the sense of home more strongly.  Etiquette in Random was a wholly different animal, subject to an older set of rules.

Those gathered around the dining room table fell silent as Jason entered. Lizzy looked up, then down to the floor with a shy blush that made Jason smile. He knew it was her. He hadn’t seen Lizzy in over twelve years, but he knew that smile, and that blush.

“Hey Lizzy,” he said softly, then turned to the head of the table.  “Mae,” he nodded.

“Hope you got a room with a soft pillow and a real air conditioner.”

Mae laughed, standing slowly. She flowed from her chair, flowered dress spinning out around her in a whirl of color. To say Mae was a large woman would be like saying the Ocean was a big pond. The floor groaned with her weight, and her rumbling laughter rattled the china in the cabinet along the wall. Long, braided red hair fell over her shoulders and tumbled across her breasts.  Her eyes flashed green across the room and Jason tumbled back through time.

“You’ll be lucky, and happy, to get a bed with clean sheets and a room with a ceiling fan,” Mae asserted, hands dropping to her ample hips. “And if you don’t sit that skinny butt down in about two seconds and start eating, you can say ‘excuse me, Mae, for missing dinner,’ and hightail it back to that store for Doritos.”

They all burst out laughing at that, and Jason regained enough control of his limbs to seat himself next to Lizzy, letting his gaze trail over her soft features. She still wasn’t meeting his gaze, but she was smiling. Jason glanced instinctively down to her finger. No ring. That would be a tale for later, he guessed.

Without hesitation, Jason grabbed a plate and spooned a generous helping of mashed potatoes into the center. There was gravy for the potatoes, meatloaf, corn and a casserole of mushrooms and spinach coated in thick cheese that had Jason’s mouth watering just from smelling it. Some things never changed. No one could eat a meal at Mae’s table and really wonder how she’d reached such prodigious girth. The real question was how those who surrounded her avoided it.

“You want to pass me that milk?” Jason asked, nudging Lizzy gently.

As she moved to grab the carton, he added.  “You look great, Lizzy.”

“You leave that girl alone,” Mae called from the end of the table. Her eyes were twinkling, but it was clear that she wanted Jason to know she was looking out for Lizzy.

“Um...” Jason laughed, “I can’t reach the milk, Mae.”

Lizzy slid the carton within reach and Jason poured the glass full with a smile.

“You know what I meant, son,” Mae chuckled. “You just mind your manners, and we’ll all get along fine.  She’s been through enough.”

“Mae!” Lizzy cut in quickly, the pretty blush returning.

Mae didn’t answer, but she let it drop. Jason watched Lizzy for just a second, then smiled and turned back to his food.

“Frank will be here tomorrow,” Lizzy said softly.

Jason nodded, not looking up.

“Ronnie will probably be here later tonight.  He’ll want to talk to you, Jason.”

“I know,” Jason replied between mouthfuls. “I guess he’ll want to talk to us all, eventually.  Isn’t that why we’re here?”

Lizzy looked away again, and Jason sighed. “It will be okay, Liz,” he said softly, laying his fork aside for a moment and placing his hand gently on her shoulder. “We’re not kids anymore, you know?  Even Ronnie must have grown up.  He did actually write the letter.”

Liz nodded, and Jason saw the hint of a smile crease the corner of her lips, but she didn’t really laugh.  He watched her for a moment longer, then turned back to finish his food in silence.

He wasn’t really looking forward to seeing Ronnie either. Ronnie Lambert hadn’t been anyone’s close friend when they were younger. They’d hung with him because the alternative was to have him beat the crap out of them every time he saw them for not hanging with him. Besides, Random Illinois didn’t boast a huge population of kids at any given moment; their options had been limited.

Now here they were, Jason, Lizzy, and pretty soon Frank, all gathered together like a bunch of school kids because Ronnie Lambert had called them. Red-neck Ronnie still had that control, that tone in his voice, even when the words were written and not spoken. Jason felt suddenly foolish, and pushed back from the table and his empty plate with a sigh.

“Was a time you liked my meatloaf,” Mae observed, cocking one eyebrow.

“You know it isn’t the food, Mae,” Jason said thoughtfully. “It’s been a long time, is all,” he added lamely. “Guess after driving fifteen hundred miles, I’m finally asking myself what I expected to find here.”

Lizzy turned, suddenly reaching out and laying her hand across his.

“I’m glad you came,” she said softly.  “Very glad, Jason.  I was worried you wouldn’t.”

It was Jason’s turn to blush.

“Hell,” he said softly. “What fun would it be spending Halloween in the city, alone? It was about time I got back here anyway.”

Mae watched the two for a moment in silence, then cut in.

“Kids are like really good books, you know?”

They all turned to her, and Mae nodded, continuing. “You read the dang thing once, and it’s wonderful. Every bit of it sticks with you. Then it’s out of sight, out of mind. You get to living and learning and forget about it, but flashes of what you read stick with you all your life, until one day, there it is. You have some time, and you pick that book back up, and damned if you didn’t miss a lot the first time. I can read an old book over and over, Jason. It’s good to have you home.”

Jason smiled. Mae could always put a thing into words. Among the kids, it had been Frank who had that gift—tall, bespectacled Frank. Of them all, it was Frank they would recognize most easily. His face was splashed regularly over the New York Times book review pages and the novel racks at every bookstore, airport, grocery and news stand in the country. Skinny little Frank with his piles of spiral-bound notebooks and his wild ideas.

Very suddenly, Jason missed Frank. He had the urge, quickly stifled, to lean over and hug Lizzy. Whatever happened over the next few days, he knew he was going to make certain it wasn’t the last time he saw them. All his life he’d been running, running from the little dead-end town, running from relationships and responsibilities. He’d run to college, run out with a degree and found a good job.

In those days, the job had been the bottom line. Everything would be fine as soon as he had a job that paid him approximately twice what his small-town parents had made and let him have shiny cars and shinier women. That had been the formula for happiness. Life, add money. Live and learn.

The door opened again, and before Jason could pass on his new sentiments, there were quick, heavy steps and a hand smacked down on his shoulder.

“Hey, Jason,” Ronnie’s voice boomed too loud in the once-comfortable silence. “Good to have you home.”

~ * ~

The dishes had been cleared quickly, and what seemed only moments later, the three of them were on Mae’s front porch, only the bright moon and a sprinkling of stars for light. Ronnie had brought beer, and as he and Jason sipped slowly, Lizzy curled up in a wicker chair and worked slowly on a cup of hot tea.

Ronnie was a big man. He’d been bigger than most as a child, and the size ratio had followed him to adulthood.  He stood a good head taller than Jason, and his shoulders were broad and strong.  Farm life had suited him well.

Ronnie took a pull at his long-neck, then grinned. There was something not quite genuine in that smile, but still it was infectious, and Jason’s stomach took a roll. Memories surfaced and he almost frowned. How many times had that same grin sucked him in, only to spit him out later, unhappy, in trouble, or hurt? Jason glanced over at Lizzy and saw that she had retreated into herself again and was examining the cracks on the wooden floor.

“I ain’t never talked about that night,” Ronnie began, leaping right into it without preliminary small talk.  That had always been his way.  “Not to anyone.” He grew silent for a moment, taking another long drink, then went on.  “Guess I couldn’t really talk to anyone who didn’t see.”

Jason nodded, but his heart chilled. It hadn’t been said in so many words, but the reason for calling them all back was clear in his mind.  That night wouldn’t let Ronnie go, and it sure as hell hadn’t released Jason. They needed closure, though a word like closure would be as foreign to Ronnie as a real smile.

“Frank ought to be here before we really get into it,” Jason replied at last. “No reason to talk it over twice, you know?”

“Frank’s thought about it plenty, Jason,” Ronnie frowned. “Don’t you read his books? I know, and you know, where a lot of that came from. Been meaning to ask him about a couple of those characters.  Hell, been ready to black his eye more than once.”

Ronnie took another drink, and Jason watched him carefully. This was something new.  Reading? Ronnie? And if the big man had been reading Frank’s books all along, he’d met Roger Simmons, and Bert Taylor, probably others more subtle, who were modeled on himself.  Hurtful bullies, bigger and stronger with less compassion than other characters. Characters who invariably came to a bad end.  Maybe it hadn’t been such a great idea to come back.  Maybe even more so for Frank.

“They’re just characters,” Jason said softly.  “Frank has his own way of dealing with things.”

Ronnie drained his beer and turned to Jason, eyes blazing suddenly. “I know that, Jason. I said I wanted to kick his ass because he wrote it too close to the truth, you know? Hell, I was every bit the bully he made me in those books.  He didn’t pull any punches on any of us.”

Jason nodded again, again surprised. This adult, reasoning Ronnie wasn’t living up to Jason’s nightmares.  It was almost enough to make you feel sorry for the characters in the novels.

Lizzy looked up suddenly.

“Frank wrote about me too,” she said softly. “Sometimes, when I look back at Richard, and the kids, and how all that ended up, I think I should have listened more to what he was writing.  It used to piss me off, the things he wrote.”

Lizzy sipped her coffee, then looked straight up into Jason’s eyes. “I called him once, screamed at him for changing the ending to my life.  He was right.”

Jason’s heartbeat had speeded nearly double. He knew which book it had to have been. “The Crying of the Trees,” and in it, the long-time bachelor computer engineer gets a call from the girl back home he’d always loved. They meet after her life has tumbled to chaos and despite a run-in with a seriously demented, redneck, Ronnie-acting serial killer, manage to live happily ever after.  Frank had always believed Jason and Lizzy were the perfect couple.  Looking into her eyes just then, it was easy to believe he might be right.

“You two knock it off,” Ronnie growled suddenly. He leaned, flipped open his cooler, and tossed Jason another beer without asking if he wanted it. “I didn’t call you back here to see if Frank was a good matchmaker.” He twisted the top off the beer with a hissing pop and took a long drink.

“We have to go back.”

Jason nearly dropped the beer he was opening, and Lizzy’s tea sloshed out of her cup as her hand started to shake. There it was, just like that, and now that it had been said, it had to be dealt with, one way or the other.

“Why?” Jason asked quietly. “Why would we go back to that place. What do you expect to see, Ronnie?  Ashes?  Christ, no one’s been there since we were kids.”

“That’s what I thought too,” Ronnie said, glancing out toward the road and the town beyond. “So I went back. Knew it was silly to say anything to the rest of you, so I just got in my truck, drove out there, and walked back to the clearing. Didn’t think I could do it, but when I got closer, it seemed sillier, and by the time I was actually in the woods, I was almost laughing. Right up until I saw it, that is.”

Ronnie fell silent, and tipped his bottle up again, not looking back to where Jason and Lizzy were staring at him, waiting. Jason’s brow was coated in sweat, very suddenly, and Lizzy was shaking, trembling so violently that her cup nearly fell from her fingers.

Finally, Jason couldn’t stand it.

“What the hell did you see Ronnie?”

Ronnie turned back suddenly. “That damn cabin, that’s what I saw. I came up close, so there was a break in the trees, and there it stood. Not a bit different than it was last time I saw it. There was smoke coming out of the chimney, wood piled by the door. Jason, the damn thing is back!”

“What did you do?” Lizzy’s voice quavered, nearly breaking.

“What the hell do you think I did? I ran like hell. Don’t think I’ve run that far or that fast since the last time we were there. All of us. Together.” He grew silent again, then spoke, but in lower tones.

“We have to go back, all of us.”

Jason frowned. “How do you know it isn’t someone else?” He asked. “I mean, we saw her in that fire, Ronnie. Saw the whole place up in flames. They had a funeral, for God’s sake. Who do you think they buried?  It’s probably someone else completely.”

Ronnie shook his head. “I asked around, Jason. Most folks looked at me like I was crazy.  Hell, maybe I am. No one here has seen anyone new. Where would they buy clothes, or food, if not in Random? How the hell did they get lumber and roofing and paint out into those woods and build that cottage without anyone noticing? You tell me that, and I’ll believe there’s someone else.  The damn place is just back, that’s all. I think she’s waiting for us.”

“She’s dead!” Lizzy hissed from the corner, rising in a single fluid motion and running quickly to the door. She fumbled with the latch, cursed, and was nearly inside when Jason rose beside her and drew her back into his arms.

“Don’t,” he whispered. “Let him talk, okay? If it’s someone else, we all get a pleasant walk in the woods, and maybe we can put this behind us for good.  You want that, don’t you Lizzy?”

She turned then, releasing the door with a soft sob. Jason found her suddenly pressed to his chest, head on his shoulder, crying softly, and he held her.

“I’ll see you two tomorrow,” Ronnie said, grabbing his cooler and stepping off the porch. “You let Frank know what’s up. I’ll get everything together and bring the truck around after supper.”

Jason didn’t turn to say goodbye, and Ronnie didn’t wait.  Moments later, the sound of a final beer-top hissed through the darkness, followed by the truck’s engine catching. Quick spurt of gravel, and Jason and Lizzy were alone on the porch.

Without a word, Jason turned and drew her down into his lap, still held tightly to his chest. He leaned in close, brushing her hair with his lips and whispered.

“I’ve missed you.”

Jason’s shirt was damp with her tears, but he felt her nodding against his chest, and he tightened the hug. They sat there for a long, long time before Lizzy uncurled sleepily and took his hand. Jason let her pull him to his feet, and through the door. They didn’t even pause outside his room in passing.

TWO

Jason walked alone down a darkened trail. Tall trees closed in on both sides, low-hanging branches looming like long arms with skeletal fingers groping. He ignored them. Ahead was a light, flickering in the darkness.  The fire.  Her fire.

Jason hurried his steps.  He called out into the darkness. “Lizzy!”

“Frank!”

“Ronnie!”

Nothing.  No answer.  Bursting from the line of trees at a full run, he entered the clearing.

In the center was a fire, a small fire, no bigger than you’d use to roast hot dogs and marshmallows over—no larger than you’d have in your fireplace, or a park barbecue. Beyond that fire she sat, waiting. Jason couldn’t make out the old woman’s features, but his memory pieced them together.  He could hear her rasping, heaving voice.

“For an evil past, no deed atones; to know the future?  Roll them BONES.”

Jason’s throat was dry, and his feet moved as though kicking their way through molasses. He could see her eyes now, glittering like two brighter coals beyond the flickering light of the fire. She didn’t move, and there was no sign of the others, but he knew they were there. They’d all come into the woods together.  He remembered.

“Where are they?” he croaked. The words stretched, echoing endlessly, going nowhere and everywhere at once.  Her eyes glared at him through the flames, but she didn’t speak.

Then he saw it. Something shifted within the flames, slowly, then more quickly, rising and swaying from side to side. Jason stumbled forward, arms outstretched and his mouth twisted into a scream that wouldn’t cut loose of his throat.

Lizzy. Lizzy was in the flames, dusty with ash and eyes pleading, rising like a Fourth of July “snake,” flaking away in the breeze. Beneath her, Frank’s head popped free of the coals, and a voice croaked through parched lips.

“Don’t let her get away this time, Jason. You two, are like THIS,” fingers twisting and snapping, popping in the flames and Ronnie’s massive shoulders break the hot, glowing surface. Lizzy is half gone, her fingers first, sifting away toward the elbows, the remnant of her reaching out to Jason. Her lips move, but there was no longer any sound.

Behind them all, cackling, old Tara had risen. She shuffled back and forth, muttering under her breath and cackling like a hyena.

“KNOW that future boy,” she cried. “Know it and live it, I ain’t NEVER gonna die.”

“Jesus CHRIST!”

Jason sat bolt upright in the bed, the sheets clutched tightly to his chest, body bathed in sweat. He was trembling uncontrollably. The sheet was soaked, but he clutched it tightly about himself.

Lizzy was nowhere to be seen, and the morning sun was pouring in through the window. The clock, ticking loudly on the nightstand, read 8:15. Jason stared at it, not really comprehending what he saw. He sat, and he rocked, hunched over and so tense his body twitched, until the door slid open quietly.

A soft breath of perfume floating around him, a brush of air, and Lizzy was sitting on the edge of the bed, her fingers on his cheek.

“Jason,” she said softly. When he didn’t immediately acknowledge her, she raised her voice, gripping his shoulder gently.  “Jason!”

Jason turned his head slowly, blinking. Lizzy’s face came into focus and he stared at her. He wanted to grab her, to draw her into his arms and hold her so nothing could part them, but he couldn’t.  He couldn’t unwrap his own arms from the cold, wet sheet, and he was suddenly aware of the stench.

“Jesus,” he said softly.

“What happened?”  Lizzy asked.  “Jason what happened?”

He shook his head gently.  “A dream,” he said softly.  “Just another dream.”

She took in his drenched, shivering form. “That wasn’t just a dream, Jason. Dreams don’t cause—this.” She reached out and grabbed the damp edge of the sheet, holding it up where he could see, and smell.

Jason turned away.

Lizzy slid in behind him, and before he could flinch or pull away, she’d wrapped her arms around him, ignoring the sweaty sheets, and pulled him back against her.

“I have the dreams too,” she whispered. “It’s okay. You’d better get cleaned up though.  Frank will be here any minute, and I’d like to have some time with him before Ronnie gets back.”

Jason was shaking again, suddenly, but he nodded. Lizzy let him go, and he slipped from the bed, letting the sheet trail behind him as he slipped into the bathroom.

When the sound of steaming water echoed from the tiles, Lizzy rose, reluctantly, and left.  As she gripped the door, her hand trembled.

~ * ~

Breakfast had long been cleared away when Jason finally joined Lizzy and Mae at the table.  There was coffee, in a chrome carafe that kept it fresh and hot, and, despite her hard and fast rules about being on time for meals, there was a small plate of muffins in the center of the table.  Jason almost smiled.

Mae was looking him up and down, her smile half formed. Jason had the sudden sensation of being inspected, and he stood a little taller instinctively.

“Your bed don’t need much attention this morning, I’m told,” Mae rumbled at last.

Jason blushed, then grinned and reached for the coffee.

“I’m a light sleeper,” he said half jokingly.

“To hear the story,” Mae continued, “you are anything but. I’ll be charging you double if those sheets are sweat-stained.”

There was a momentary uncomfortable silence, then Lizzy broke it.

“I have those same dreams, Mae.”

There it was. Out in the open, and where someone not involved could see it, hear about it.

Jason reached for a muffin, not raising his eyes from the coffee as he poured his cup full.

“I didn’t think you kids came back here just to spend Halloween with Ronnie, or even ol’ Mae.  Frank too?  He has the dreams?”

“Don’t know,” Jason said softly. “If he does, he never says so. Frank is different. He has the words, the writing.  We all have our nightmares, Frank captures them and shares.”

Mae nodded. “I read those books. I’m surprised he’ll come back and face folks after some of the things he wrote, but damned if I can find fault in anything he said about me. There’s others feel differently.”

Jason shrugged. “I read them too, Mae. They can bitch all they want, Frank’s a good judge of folks, and most of what he wrote is right on the money.  Sure had me pegged.”

Jason glanced sidelong at Lizzy, who was watching him carefully. They’d never spoken to a soul about that night. None of them. It wasn’t a rule they’d made, just a thing they’d done. As far as anyone in town knew, there had been a fire in the woods. Old Tara’s cottage had gone up in flames, probably from some overturned cauldron or incense burner. Odd that it happened on Halloween, but never associated with any other event of that long ago night.

Not by anyone else.

Jason might have said more, then. Might have spilled the whole story and let things fall as they would, but the silence was shattered by the doorbell’s insistent ringing, and Mae was rolling to her feet in an easy, fluid motion.  The moment had passed.

Frank stepped into the room and sized them up carefully, as if gauging his welcome. Though he’d aged over a decade, there was little changed about him. His glasses rode low on his nose, and his pants were just a tad too short. Even expensive tailoring hadn’t changed the boy they knew.

“Hey Frank,” Jason said softly, rising and offering his hand.  “It’s about time.”

Frank took the offered hand in a tight grip, covered it with his free hand and smiled.

“Halloween is sort of difficult for me,” he apologized with a grin. “My agent and publicist seem to think I should be off on a book-signing tour, or guest-starring at the Podunk County House of Horrors.”

“The lifestyle of the rich and famous,” Lizzy said, laughing.  Frank released Jason’s hand and stepped closer to give Lizzy a quick hug.

“How you doin’, Liz?” he asked softly.

“Guess you ought to be askin’ the two of them that together,” Mae laughed. She slapped her hand into Frank’s back, causing him to stagger half a step, then turned toward the kitchen and was gone.

Frank stood, staring first at Jason, then at Liz, then back. His smile widened, and, for just that instant, he was the boy who’d come running into school each day, notebooks gripped tightly, and his eyes bright with the inspiration for his newest story.

“No way,” Frank said at last.

Lizzy blushed, and Jason grinned. Frank started laughing. “Guess I haven’t lost my touch,” he said with a grin.

“I’m going to get some more coffee,” Lizzy said, still not meeting Frank’s eyes.  She grabbed the carafe and followed Mae’s retreat to the kitchen, leaving the two old friends standing by the table.

“You sure don’t waste any time,” Frank observed.

“I wasted half my life,” Jason said. “I’d say it’s about time.” He hesitated, then went on. “Ronnie was here last night.”

“Well, that’s why we came, yes?” Frank nodded. “I suppose he’s ready to kick my ass.”

“Surprisingly,” Jason replied, returning to his seat and taking a sip of his coffee, “he seems to have gotten past that. He read all your books, Frank. All of them. Damned if he didn’t understand them, if you can believe that.”

Frank looked down at his hands.

“I never really meant to write anything hurtful,” he said softly. “I just wrote what came to mind.” He hesitated, just for a second, then continued. “I used to have dreams, Jason. Horrible dreams, and always with you and Lizzy and Ronnie, always that night.”

Jason shivered.  “I know.  I still have them.”

“The writing helps,” Frank shrugged. “Don’t know how, or why, but as long as I write what seems ‘true,’ then everything evens out for a while. Not for long, but long enough to keep me sane.”

“Ronnie says the cabin is back,” Jason said softly.

Frank glanced at him sharply.  “Back?”

Jason nodded. “Said he went out there, just to visit the place and try and leave it all behind. He never made it to the clearing.  Got close, and there it was, just like there’d been no fire.”

“That’s a bunch of crap.” Frank spoke so sharply, so quickly, that Jason jerked back in shock.  Blushing, Frank went on in a rush.  “I mean, we fucking saw what we saw, Jason.  Christ, is that what he brought us here for? A Halloween scare in the woods? That’s what started it last time.”

Frank fell silent, and he glanced down at the table, just as Lizzy returned to the room with the coffee. She held another empty cup in her free hand. Her smile vanished as she caught Frank’s expression and the echo of his outburst.

“I didn’t say I believed him,” Jason said softly. “Just telling you what he said. He seemed pretty spooked, Frank.”

“He always could get us going,” Frank mumbled.  “Christ.”

“We have to go,” Lizzy said softly, setting the cup in front of Frank and pouring it full of coffee. “You knew that when you came here. It doesn’t matter if it’s just Ronnie being an idiot again,” she pursed her lips, thinking, “what matters is that we find a way to put an end to it. I’ve tried to do that for a very long time by myself, and I can’t.”

“Neither can I,” Jason said. “You saw that this morning. They both turned to watch Frank, who was sipping his coffee, eyes on the floor and brow furrowed.

“I don’t like it,” Frank said. “I didn’t like it when I was a kid, but I was too small to do anything about it. That isn’t true anymore, and I just don’t know if I want to go off into those woods again, just because Ronnie says we have to.”

“We’re asking you,” Jason pointed out, “not Ronnie.  You haven’t even seen him yet.”

“Besides,” Lizzy said, almost giggling suddenly, “he didn’t ask, he just said he’d be back here after lunch.”

“Just like always,” Frank muttered.

“Hell,” Jason laughed suddenly, “when was the last time you went camping in a real woods, Frankie?  I bet about as long as it’s been since anyone called you ‘Frankie.’”

They all laughed at that, and as the rest of the coffee disappeared slowly, they shifted subjects, letting the evening to come hang in its own dark limbo. None of them mentioned it again, but as the day wore on, it hung over them like a pall.

~ * ~

The road was rough, and being seated in the bed of Ronnie’s truck didn’t help things as the corrugated bed pounded into Jason and Frank’s backsides. Lizzy had slipped into the front, beside Ronnie, pressed so tightly to the passenger side door she looked as if she might press it open and pop out onto the road.

Jason watched the line of houses retreating behind them, dwindling slowly as they drove away from Random’s main street. The Jack-o-lanterns would be lit in a few hours, when the sun faded, and the kids already bustled about in their yards, putting up scarecrows and preparing for the following evening’s festivities.  Jason smiled despite it all.

Random still had the untouched charm that had formed their childhood. Not too many outof-towners stopped through, and even fewer on a holiday. It was a town where you could let your kids wander the streets in search of candy and treats and not worry they’d come back with razor-blade spiked apples.

The bottom line was, he’d come home, and after all the years and the nightmares, he realized he’d missed it.

He turned to Frank and tugged his friend’s shirtsleeve.  “Hasn’t changed much.”

Frank glanced at him distractedly. “Huh?” he shouted, cupping his hand to his ear. The wind nearly snatched his glasses from his nose and he held them in place with his free hand, suddenly annoyed.

It was too comical.  Jason burst out laughing and slapped Frank on the thigh.

“Never mind!” he shouted.

Frank eyed him for a moment, then grinned in return. It was just like the old days, and Jason felt a warmth he hadn’t in many years.

Then Ronnie slowed and pulled to the side of the road with a lurch, slamming Jason into Frank and leaving them both in a disheveled heap in the truck bed, tangled in tents and sleeping bags and banging painfully into the side of the truck.

The driver’s door slammed, and Ronnie was suddenly leaning in and grinning over the edge of the truck bed.

“Forgot you girls wouldn’t have been in a truck for a while.  Sorry about that.”

Frank glared at Ronnie silently, and Jason extricated himself, sitting up and rubbing his arm ruefully.

“If I didn’t know better,” Jason said, “I’d think you were trying to hurt someone, Ronnie.”

His words were greeted by silence that grew thicker by the moment, then Ronnie reached out a hand slowly.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

Jason watched him carefully, then took the hand and pulled himself to his feet.  Ronnie’s grip was firm, but not painful, as Jason had feared. Once he was on his feet, he reached back and helped Frank up as well, and the two slid over the side of the truck bed and down to the ground. Lizzy came timidly around the tailgate to stand close beside Jason.

Trees lined the road on both sides, and the sun had dropped slightly, elongating the shadows and sending them creeping across the road. The air was cool, not cold, but cooler than Jason would have liked, and he pulled his shirt collar a bit tighter, staring into the trees.

“You sure this is the place?” he asked, knowing it was a stupid question, but hating the silence.”

“You know it is, Jason,” Ronnie grunted, grabbing his pack in one hand and one of the tents in the other. He dropped the tent and slipped the pack onto his shoulders easily. “You’ve been here enough times. A little easier in a truck than it was on bicycles, but this is the place alright.” He fell silent, turning toward the trees and staring into the distance. “We’d better get going. If we want to pitch camp and get a fire going before it gets dark, we don’t have much time.”

Jason and Frank helped one another with their packs, and Jason slipped Lizzy’s smaller load in place gently.

“After last night,” Ronnie said, glancing at Jason and Lizzy with a grin, “I decided to bring that extra tent. My first thought was we’d all share one big one…safer that way. Guess me and Frank will have to rough it alone.”

Frank looked a little uneasy at this, but Ronnie placed one huge hand gently on his shoulder, and the moment passed.

“I’m not that boy anymore,” Ronnie said softly.  “Hope you’ll know that before this is over.”

He turned, with those words, and started into the woods.  The others grabbed what was left of their gear and supplies and hurried to catch up, leaving the truck, and the road, behind.

They walked in silence. None of them wanted to be the one to broach the subject of what was to come, and it was enough, for the moment, to lose themselves in the memories of a childhood long faded to nightmare.

Jason felt the chill of the air slipping away as he warmed to the effort of keeping up with Ronnie’s pace. The leaves had all turned, half of them fallen to carpet the forest floor and the rest a glittering panorama of color overhead. Maples, oaks, scattered Hickory trees with their nuts scattered.  There were acorns and walnuts.

“Jesus,” Jason whispered to himself. He tried to remember the last time he’d had a walnut, or a persimmon.  Even a Hickory nut.  What had happened to his past?

Stumbling a little, he leaned to the ground and grabbed a handful of the dark, rough-shelled nuts. Frank caught him at it, and did the same with a sheepish grin. There was a camaraderie in that shared moment that warmed Jason’s heart. Crazy as the whole “adventure” was, he was beginning to enjoy himself.

“This is about as far as we can get tonight,” Ronnie said at last, dropping his pack suddenly in a reasonably flat, clear area and flopping onto a fallen log. “It’ll still take most of tomorrow, at this pace, to get there.  Best to make camp while we have a little bit of light left.”

Jason dropped his pack and looked around. He wanted to sit, as Ronnie had done, but he was tired, and he knew it would be best to get whatever work was left ahead of him done first.

Frank and Lizzy had no such problem. They flopped where they stood, packs slipping off behind them. Lizzy lay back over her pack with a long sigh, stretching. Jason was riveted by that image, just for a moment, long, cat-stretch and quick smile as she caught him staring.

Ronnie had opened his pack and pulled out a fifth of Jack Daniels.  He unscrewed the top and took a swig, watching the others quietly.

“Never thought I’d say it,” he said moments later. “Missed you three. Hell, there wasn’t anyone else here the whole time I was growing up I cared to see again. Almost everyone left. Jeb Hutchinson is still around, running his dad’s garage. Emily Jacobs is working over at the library, and Helen Powers grew up to teach at the school. Got kids bussing in from all over now. Not just Ransom kids any more.  Helen did real good.”

Something in Ronnie’s voice when he mentioned Helen’s name made Jason turn and watch the man carefully.  Had there been a tinge more than admiration in those words?

“What about Madge Johnson?” Frank asked.

“She found that Doctor she always wanted,” Ronnie laughed, “and hightailed it out of here.  Most everyone we knew did the same. Not much in Ransom to hold a person…” his voice softened, “except Ransom.” Ronnie took another swig of the whiskey and tossed the bottle to Jason without a word.

Jason caught it, ready this time, remembering the beer bottle projectile of the night before.

“They got Jack in New York?” Ronnie asked, grinning.

Jason didn’t answer. He unscrewed the top, took a long slug, and slipped top back on easily, handing the bottle absently to Frank.

“That,” he said with a laugh, “is a stupid question. I think the first bottle to cross the counter of every respectable liquor store in America is Jack.”

Ronnie frowned. “You callin’ me stupid?” His brow furrowed, and he started up off the log suddenly.

Jason froze in place, and Frank backed up a step, holding the bottle up in front of him like a glittering shield.

Ronnie glared at them, then his face crumbled, his hands hit his thighs, and he fell back on his ass, laughing.  Tears streamed from his eyes, and he could barely catch his breath.

Frank stared, nearly dropping the Jack Daniels bottle. Jason stepped away, as if from a crazy person. Lizzy remained curled in a ball, waiting to see what would happen, and if she should run.

Ronnie paid no attention to any of them. He was fighting back the laughter, failing, and rolling onto his side, hand clutched to his stomach.

Jason walked closer, hands on his hips. Taking a leap he never would have as a child, he brought his boot up and slapped it into Ronnie’s ass smartly.

“Fuck you,” he said, trying not to laugh.

Ronnie gained a bit of his senses and rolled to a sitting position, wiping his eyes.

“Sorry,” he said.  “Damn, just wanted to see if I could get a rise out of you.”  He sat still for a moment, then continued more calmly. “Been a long time since I laughed like that,” he said. “Too long.”

Standing, he dusted off his jeans and reached for one of the tents with a grin.

Frank was still standing, bottle held at the ready, as if he didn’t trust the laughter. His brow was furrowed, and when Jason turned and caught that expression, his heart chilled for an instant. It didn’t look like the Frank he knew at all. Someone else stared through those eyes. Someone cold, and calculating.  The bottle suddenly looked less silly in context.

“You gonna help with these?” Jason asked, grabbing the second tent and shaking it at Frank.

The mood broke, and Frank lowered the bottle to the ground, suddenly grinning.

“Yeah, if I can figure out what to do with it,” he replied.  “Been a long time, Jason.”

Ronnie was still chuckling as he spread the first of the two dome tents on the ground and began to pound in the stakes. Lizzy had risen, slowly, and moved off into the woods quietly. Jason almost started after her, then let it go. Moments later he smiled as she returned with a small pile of wood in her arms. She was tougher than she looked, and Jason caught a crooked half smile aimed his way as she made her way to the center of the little clearing and started to set the fire.

The tents were up pretty quickly, despite Frank and Jason’s lack of recent experience.  Modern technology came to the rescue in the form of flexible tubes that served as poles, running through loops sewn to the skin of the tent. There was still the red hint of sunlight glittering through the uppermost branches of the trees when they sat back, satisfied they were prepared for the coming night.

Lizzy had the fire blazing, circled with carefully stacked rocks to prevent any spreading of coals or sparks. None of them questioned the extra effort. Just having the fire was enough to keep them all on edge, necessary as it was.

Ronnie had pulled the fallen log he’d first sat on closer, making a sort of backrest. He and Frank were leaned against it comfortably, staring into the fire. Jason was sitting on the far side, Lizzy pulled back into his lap and wrapped in his arms. They had a pile of sleeping bags and back-packs propped behind them. The bottle of Jack had made several rounds, and they’d made a quick meal of hot dogs and pudding cups. None of it mixed well with the whiskey, but nobody complained.

Lizzy had made a small pot of hot water and brewed tea.  She shied away each time the bottle was passed her way, and no one asked why. No one needed to. None of them had stayed in as close contact as they’d have liked, but all of them knew about her ex-husband Richard. They sipped the whiskey, and she cupped her hands tightly around her tea, ignoring it. For the moment, it was comfortable.

“I reckon it’s time,” Ronnie said at last, “that we talked about why we’re here.”

No one answered.

He watched them all, taking a long slug off the bottle. “I figured it wasn’t going to be easy, so I gave it some thought. Don’t’ you laugh!” He suddenly turned to Jason, scowled, then laughed himself.

Jason laughed with him, more easily this time, and even Frank gave a dry chuckle.

“I was thinking,” Ronnie went on, “that we should just tell the story. Every bit of it we remember. Take turns, you know? We could start right from the beginning, and we ought to have enough of this,” he held up the bottle, “to get through it all tonight. Maybe we’ll see something we forgot. Maybe one of you saw something I missed; maybe I saw something. We never talked about it then.” Jason stared into the fire. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to walk that way again, but at least he wasn’t asleep. At least it wasn’t a dream and there was no chance the others would be crawling, piles of animated ash, from the pit of the fire. At least he might make it to the end without waking in a puddle of his own sweat. He hugged Lizzy tightly and replied slowly.

“I’m up for it, if everyone agrees. I’d kind of like to get the whole thing straight in my head too.”

Lizzy leaned against him, closed her eyes and nodded, saying nothing. Only Frank waited. He was staring fixedly into the flames.  His hands shook, and his lip quivered slightly.

In the distance, a “hoot owl” let out a quick, mournful cry. Frank glanced up just then, eyes wide.

“I’ll try,” he said. “I’ve written this story again and again, you know? Twisted and turned it every which way, but that was different. When I write, I can control it. The beginning, and the ending.  I can make the story up, and it’s okay.”

He fell silent, tossing another stick onto the fire and watching the sparks leap into the air.  “Don’t know if I’m any good at telling the truth.”

“If you don’t have any problem with it,” Ronnie said, handing the bottle to Jason, “I’ll start.”

As Frank continued to feed logs into the fire, Jason wrapped Lizzy just a little tighter and leaned back, closing his eyes. Ronnie’s strong, powerful voice cut through the night. The years rolled back, and it was Halloween night.  They were on their way to see the witch.

THREE

“I remember the way that firelight danced through the trees as we got closer,” Ronnie began.  “I think I saw it flickering from almost a mile away. Didn’t think much of it at first, but after a while it started to bother me—like the shadows were alive and moving.”

Lizzy was nodding, and Jason pulled her back against him. Frank watched Ronnie, who had let his head fall back so he could stare at the stars through the patchwork of branches overhead.  If he looked at it just right, the moonlight filtering down reminded him of the light of that other fire, that other, darker place, so far in the past. Jason closed his eyes and listened, letting the years slip away - remembering.

The trees grew sparser as they approached her cabin. Old Tara hadn’t cleared them. Jason’s father had said they died, shriveled and shrunk away from that place. The leaves fell quickly near that clearing, leaving nothing to shield their approach.

“I see her fire,” Ronnie said softly.

They all saw the fire. They’d seen it for a long time, flickering and dancing in the distance, like a giant will-o'-the-wisp.

“I don’t see why we have to go there,” Lizzy said, stopping in her tracks.  “My dad says she’s crazy.”

“So what’s to worry about with a crazy old lady?” Ronnie snapped. The tension was a bit more evident in his voice than he’d intended. “I want to know if she’s really a witch. It’s Halloween for Christ’s sake.”

“What if she is,” Frank asked. He had stopped too, but he didn’t look reluctant to go on. He looked fascinated.  Jason shook his head.

“This whole thing is crazy.  We’re just asking for trouble.”

Ronnie turned very suddenly and grabbed Jason by the shirt.

“You already got trouble if you don’t cut the crap and come on. We’re doing this. We decided already, and we’re here.”

Jason wanted to explain that only Ronnie had decided, but he kept his mouth shut, and the grip on his shirt relaxed.

“Now come on, and keep quiet,” Ronnie growled, heading off through the trees toward the firelight.

They all moved in behind the larger boy. Jason saw that Lizzy was near tears, and he moved up a little closer behind her.  Frank brought up the rear, a little too eagerly for Jason’s taste.

“Shhh,” Ronnie called back, waving his hand at them.  “I think I hear her.”

They all stood very still. At first, there was nothing but the breeze sifting through the branches overhead, but then Jason heard it, and he could tell by the sudden stiffening of her shoulders that Lizzy heard it too.

“What is that?” Lizzy whispered.

“It’s her, that’s what,” Frank answered.  His voice wavered, but he was obviously excited.

“Who is she talking to?” Lizzy asked softly.

“Not talking,” Frank answered with authority.  “Chanting.”

Nobody questioned Frank, but Ronnie started forward again, more slowly. The firelight, moments before a dim flicker in the distance, had become a glow, haloing the stark, leafless trees like an army of silent giants. Shadows danced around the base of each tree as the flames flickered. Ronnie moved as though mesmerized. His steps were slow and even, but he kept banging his shoulder on the trees, and more than once a root threatened to send him sprawling.

Frank crowded up close behind Ronnie, then Lizzy. Jason brought up the rear, glancing uneasily over his shoulders into the gloomy shadows behind them. The chanting—Frank had been right, it was a chant, or some odd, mumbled song—grew louder as they approached the clearing surrounding Tara’s cabin. They could make out the dark outline of the old woman’s home, and the bright glow of a fire out front of the place.

“She’s there,” Ronnie whispered hoarsely.

They all crowded closer. A single, thin line of trees separated them from the clearing surrounding the old cottage. The firelight was bright, and as they watched, the flames flared up, illuminating the old woman’s face. She stared at them through those flames, her lips moving in the endless chant, and her eyes wild with crazed humor.

“Shit,” Ronnie said softly.

Frank wasn’t listening. Before Jason could reach out and grab his friend’s arm, the thin, bespectacled boy was stepping clear of the trees. He never looked away from that fire, and he never looked back.

Jason stumbled forward after his friend, and Lizzy grabbed hold of his shirt, dragged along behind. It was only a moment later—or was it longer?—when Jason realized that Ronnie wasn’t with them.

“Ronnie?” Jason called out softly, then louder. “Ronnie!” No answer. Only shadows surrounded them, and now it was too late to turn back. Tara had seen them—had probably known they were there all along—and now she was standing, swaying on the other side of the fire and beckoning to them with a curled finger of one hand.

“Where did you go?” Lizzy cut in, breaking the spell of Ronnie’s tale. The images faded and the fire flickered, drawing them all to the present. “Where the hell did you go Ronnie? I mean, you never told us. There we were, scared to death, walking into that place, and you were nowhere to be seen.”

Ronnie tipped the bottle again, not answering immediately. He turned away from them, staring into the shadows.

“Got scared,” he said, shrugging. “Saw her staring at us through that fire. No way she could see into those shadows, but she was looking right at me.  Just creeped me out.”

Frank was laughing.  “You chickened out!”

“Don’t get used to it, Frankie,” Ronnie snapped. He took another swig of whiskey and they all laughed.

“So you saw what happened, then,” Jason said slowly.

“No,” Ronnie said, growing red.  “I slipped back out of site.  Didn’t come back until later.”

“Guess one of us had better go on from there, then, Jason said thoughtfully. I thought you knew everything, Ronnie.  I thought you were out there, somewhere, the whole time.”

Ronnie shook his head.  “Couldn’t do it, man.  Not proud of that, but there it is.”

Frank was frowning. “I’ll go from there,” he said at last. “I was in front, got there first. heard what that old witch said—all of it.  I’ll never forget.”

“Neither will I,” Jason whispered, falling silent as Frank accepted the bottle from a still disgruntled Ronnie and took a long swig.

“I never really saw the fire, or the cottage,” Frank began. “All I saw from the moment we stepped out of those trees was her eyes.”

Jason closed his eyes and leaned back again. He could still see old Tara’s eyes, and he could hear her voice, cackling at them across the clearing.

“Come closer!” she’d said, swaying as if trying to mesmerize them by her motion. “Come visit with an old woman on a special night. A night for darkness and fun, yes? A night to push the limits.”

Tara sidled around the fire. Jason’s mouth was dry, too dry to speak, though he wanted to cry out.

“Know you,” Tara giggled, smiling and showing the huge gap between her front teeth.  “Know you Frankie boy.  Know your daddy, yes indeed.  Daddy tell you to come see old Tara?”

Frank stopped cold. He shook his head, nearly turning to run, but it was too late. Tara slipped those last few feet closer, clutching his arm with her bony fingers and too-long nails.

“Surprised,” Tara cackled. “The boy is surprised. Know ‘em all,” she said, tugging on Frank’s arm.

Numbly, Frank followed her halfway around the fire and before he knew it, was seated on one of the logs set up like benches. Jason and Lizzy followed uncertainly, wanting very badly to cut and run.

“Come to old Tara for a Halloween scare, eh?” she muttered, turning and releasing Frank’s arm. Moments later she was seated again, just as she’d been when they first saw her, rocking slowly back and forth. For just a second, Jason thought she’d forgotten they were there. She rocked and rocked and he heard her start mumbling to herself again. Before he could whisper to Lizzy that they should get up and go, she swept her gaze in a slow arc from Frank, to Jason, the Lizzy, and back to Frank.

“Daddy tell you old Tara was a witch, boy?”  She didn’t laugh now, only waited.

Frank didn’t answer immediately, and the silence thickened.

“Speak up boy.  Asked you a question.”

Frank swallowed again, then managed to choke out an answer. “No, Ma’am,” he said. “He said you could tell the future.”

Tara stared at Frank for a long time, as if she could slip into his mind and tell if he were making it up.

“Told you about the bones, did he boy?”

Frank watched her, his gaze shifting to his feet.  He nodded slowly.

Tara threw her head back suddenly and began to laugh. It was a high-pitched screech. The hairs on the back of Jason’s neck rose slowly, and he slid closer to Lizzy on the log. Frank sat, mesmerized.

“Not all it’s cracked up to be, young Frank,” Tara snapped, her eyes flashing. It was impossible to tell from where Jason was sitting whether she was smiling, or scowling. “Future is the future, best left for tomorrow. Halloween is for the dark ones, the spirits. Can you feel them?”

Tara was rising slowly as she spoke, still swaying from side to side, more gracefully than Jason would have given her credit for. The flames seemed to move in time as she danced, and Jason caught shadows, just at the edges of his peripheral vision, flitting among the barren trees. He turned his head more than once, but each time he found that there was nothing to see. The swaying, dancing old crazy woman dragged his attention back to the fire.

“You feel it,” she laughed. Her voice sounded younger, full of energy, and life. “Young Jason feels it.  It is in his eyes.”

Tara spun away from the fire, and back again, so quickly that it reminded Jason of a strobe light at a school dance. Her hand was extended, and something glittered in the flickering light. Something white.

Tara’s eyes danced. Jason knew it was impossible to see those eyes, that the light wasn’t good enough, and she was too far away, but he knew what he’d seen was real, at the same time. He didn’t answer her; there was nothing to say.

Whirling back to Frank, Tara knelt suddenly in the dirt, her dirty grey hair falling forward, hiding her hands and her features from them all. Her hair brushed the dirt beside the fire, and they could hear her voice, chanting again, singing—something—something they couldn’t quite make out.

Lizzy grabbed Jason’s arm and jerked at him. Her eyes were wild, but he held fast, letting his hand grip her wrist tightly.

“Jason!” Lizzy’s voice was shrill, and her nails dug into his arm, but he shook his head stubbornly.

Turning from Lizzy’s frightened gaze, Jason saw that Frank had dropped from his seat to his knees.  He was staring intently at the old woman, waiting—for something.

Tara remained prostrate, her forehead now brushing her hands, which she held before her on the ground. Frank leaned in closer, as if he might touch her on the shoulder. Closer. Closer still, until Jason couldn’t quite make out old Tara’s head beyond Frank’s kneeling form.

And then she rose. So suddenly that Frank reeled back in shock, hitting the log he’d been sitting on and nearly toppling over backward. Lizzy screamed, clutching Jason and rising, trying to drag him away.  Jason didn’t move.  He watched, and he waited.

Frank wobbled for a long, precariously balanced instant and then fell back onto the log again, seated as he’d been seated before.

“Ready then?” Tara asked, her voice low, but carrying, rippling with energy and—promise.  “Ready to know the future, young Frank?  Ready to know what lies ahead?”

Frank didn’t nod. He didn’t move. He watched, and Jason watched. Lizzy, giving up on tugging Jason from the log and out of the clearing, was huddled close to Jason’s side, shivering.

Tara was swaying again, on her knees. Her hands were clasped before her, something rattling around between the cupped palms. Her gaze was locked to Frank, and her thin lips were twisted in a crazed grin. Then she drew one hand back, over her head, and shot it forward. A handful of white, glittering objects flashed in the firelight, glittering as they fell to the dirt, forming patterns. Jason couldn’t look away, could only stare, and suddenly Tara’s voice, mesmerizing, chanting loudly.

“For an evil past, no deed atones; to know the future?  Roll them BONES.”

Bones. Jason stared at the white gleaming things in the dirt between old Tara and Frank.  Bones?  What kind of bones, he wondered very suddenly.  Whose bones?

Frank was leaning in again, staring.

“What,” he said softly, “what do they say?”

“Say?” Tara cackled. “Say?” she repeated. “They say nothing. If they were here, and you were here, it would mean nothing. Nothing at all. Have to be read, boy. Have to be understood.  You hear them bones saying anything?”

Frank blushed suddenly and shook his head.

“Didn’t think so. Just like your Daddy,” she grinned. “Want it all to be cut and dried, want it written in a book of rules somewhere, the story of the future in three chapters with footnotes.”

“You knew I’d come here,” Frank said softly.

“I know a great many things, young Frank,” Tara cackled suddenly. “A great many things, including a couple I suspect you and your mama would rather not know. Things your Daddy didn’t add into the story, I expect.”

“Are you saying...” Frank stopped before he could ask the question and Tara glared at him, her smile fading fast.

“Not saying a damn thing,” she said shortly, “Saying there’s always more to a future than you want to know. Look.”

Old Tara poked at the ground between them, and Frank did as he was told, following her finger with his gaze. She brought the gnarled tip of one cracked, yellow nail to rest on a bit of white bone extending straight up from the dirt, spun her finger in the air, leaving a trail that imprinted like a symbol of fire in Jason’s mind before slipping back to the earth, and the next bit of bone, and the next. She wrote in the air, hand spinning, eyes closed and her lips moving, silently continuing the chant.

“Stories,” she said softly, her voice growing in strength as she focused. “Voices, young Frank. Your voices. More voices than you knew you had in you and clamoring to get out. Voices that tell you stories you don’t want to hear, stories you have to spit out and away to keep you sane, and then only more stories, taking the place of those that came before. Told and done, more and more and more until they make you want to scream, and then still more.”

Frank was backing away slowly, as if he heard those voices already, as if they were filling his head as she spoke.

“No,” he said softly.  “That isn’t how the stories work.  I make them up, I…”

Tara through her head back and screeched with laughter. “No one just makes the stories up, Frankie boy. Your Daddy didn’t make this one up, did he? All those years, all this time, and here you are.  So strange.”

“What are you saying?” Frank blustered, standing a little straighter.  “What are you saying?”

She ignored him. Turning slowly, Tara raised her finger to point straight at Jason, pinning him in place.

“What are you saying you old witch?” Frank tried to step forward, to grab her by the shoulder and turn her, make her listen.  Something happened.

Dust swirled up around Frank’s feet, or something like dust, dark and spinning. Frank cried out sharply, staggering backward, but Tara paid no more attention to him than she might have a large mosquito. Her gaze, her attention, and the waving finger, still drawing in the air, all were leveled at Jason, who shrank back against Lizzy. He wanted to watch Frank, to see what was happening, but he couldn’t look away from Tara’s burning eyes.”

~ * ~

The campfire crackled, and Frank grew silent. The silence dragged on, and finally Ronnie cleared his throat.

“What happened next?” he said.  “I know there was more than that.”

“There was a lot more,” Jason tossed in. “A hell of a lot more.” Then Jason chuckled, and Frank glared at him, handing over the bottle.

“Why did you stop?” Ronnie asked, watching Frank grow steadily more red in the face. “You didn’t chicken out too, did you, Frankie?”

“No,” Liz cut in. “He fell on his butt.” She burst into a fit of giggles at that, and Jason joined in quickly.

“I tripped,” Frank cut in sharply.  Something grabbed my ankles, and I tried to get away.”

They were all laughing, and very suddenly, Frank levered himself to his feet, his face livid.

“You think it’s Goddam funny?” he snapped.

The others grew silent.  Jason stopped with the bottle half-way to his lips, staring.

“It wasn’t funny,” Frank said, turning away, his face red now with more than embarrassment. “Not funny at all. Something grabbed my ankles. Something that shouldn’t have been there, shouldn’t have even existed. You all laughed when I told you the first time, and you’re still laughing.  One minute that old witch is hinting she slept with my father, and the next there was— that thing. I don’t see how you can find anything in it to laugh at, considering everything else that happened.”

“Ease up, Frankie,” Ronnie said softly. “The laughing, it just makes it easier, you know? Hell, I didn’t see you fall on your ass, and I sure as hell didn’t see any phantom dust cloud grab your ankles.  Don’t have any trouble believing you though.”

Frank didn’t answer, but the angry set of his shoulders eased. Eventually, he turned back. “I didn’t just fall on my ass.  I wish to God I had.  Wish I’d seen what happened next.”

“Sit down, have a drink,” Jason said, gesturing to where Frank had been sitting, “and I’ll tell you what I remember, which would be everything. Can’t get it out of my head any other way, let’s try telling the story.”

Frank nodded, dropping back to the ground and accepting the bottle back from Jason, who leaned into Lizzy and closed his eyes again, drifting back to that night, and those images.

“She wouldn’t let me go,” Jason started. “I don’t know how to explain it. I wanted to go and help Frank, and Lizzy wanted me to just turn and run,” he hugged her close to his side to let her know it was okay—and that it had been okay. “There was something about her eyes, and the way she was writing in the air.  I could almost see the lines as her finger moved.”

~ * ~

Old Tara jabbed her finger down toward the bones again, and Jason nearly leaped from his skin as her voice crackled through the air. “You can run, boy, but you can’t run fast enough, or far enough, to catch it.  That isn’t the way.  Run and run and run, and get nowhere.”

Tara’s nail flicked out, dislodging a single piece of bone and sending it spinning toward the fire. Before it could reach the licking flames, she grabbed it, grinning and shaking the fist that gripped it at Jason’s face.

“Nothing you think changes it boy. You go on and run away. You run and study and buy yourself a new life and see if I’m a crazy old lady.  You can’t run away.  You can reach what you need from here, and you don’t even see it.”

And her hand flicked the bit of bone to the dirt with the others. Jason wanted to protest. He wanted to tell her he wasn’t running anywhere, that he had a plan for his life.

“Doesn’t matter how bad it is at home,” Tara intoned softly. “You shouldn’t run. You just have to run back, and it’s a long, long way.”

Jason shook his head slowly, trying to speak. He couldn’t find the words. Words were what Frank was good with, and Frank hadn’t come back. Only Jason, old Tara, and Lizzy who shivered against his side.

Tara turned to Lizzy then, as if Jason’s thoughts had alerted her to the one visitor she’d neglected.

“So pretty,” Tara crooned. “No one ever tells you, do they dear? No one notices, but oh— you will be the one. You will be the one who attracts the boys later on, more boys than you want. More attention than you want. The little-hearted ones follow, always they follow the pretty ones who don’t say no.  You remember girl.  Say no.”

Tara was swaying again, rising slowly. Her movements reminded Jason of a cobra, rising slowly, ready to strike. Tara’s hands were raised over her head and her eyes were closed. She moved back and forth with a rhythm that called music to mind, that worked its way into Jason’s thoughts.

Jason felt himself stirring, deep inside. He felt his pants a little tighter, felt the spell that old Tara wove gripping him in ways that made him blush and shrink away.

Lizzy had stopped tugging on Jason’s arm. She cowered against him, as if his slight frame could provide some sort of protection against the madness. Jason didn’t feel as though he could protect himself.  He held Lizzy close, but he wanted to push her away, to cut and run.

“Run away,” Tara laughed, dancing in a slow, meandering circle, stepping carefully around and among the bones. Never did she come too close to any of them, and the longer that Jason stared at her flashing feet, the more convinced he became that they wove patterns in the air, just as her finger had done.

“Run away,” she whispered. The words carried, impossibly loud, louder than Jason’s crashing heartbeat and he staggered suddenly to his feet, dragging Lizzy with him.

The flames flickered, grew taller, then spread. Suddenly, it wasn’t just the camp fire any longer. It was the clearing, and the forest, ablaze with light.  Tara danced in circles, oblivious, as her clearing, her home, burst into flame. Flames licked at the walls of her cottage, working their way slowly up and onto the roof. The windows glared with reflected light and the heat rose suddenly, as if the fire had been there all along and Jason hadn’t noticed.

~ * ~

“Wait,” Lizzy said softly. “Let me tell this part.  You were too caught up in things.”

Jason fell silent.  He hugged Lizzy tighter.

“Okay,” he said softly. “I have to say, it’s getting a little creepy. I’ve never seen the whole thing so clearly, not even that night.”

Ronnie nodded. “Damn straight,” he said softly. “Hell, for me this is the first time hearing most of it.”

Frank was staring at Ronnie.  “I always thought it was you.” he said at last. “I always figured you set that fire, Ronnie.”

Silence so sudden the snap of a branch in the fire rang like a gunshot, echoing endlessly in the gloom.

“You might want to rethink that,” Ronnie said softly. “I been a lot of bad things in my time, Frankie boy. Been about as bad as it gets, I guess, ‘cept for that. I never killed anyone. I never burned anyone’s house.”

Frank was still staring, but at last he turned away with a quick nod.

“It’s easier to believe that now,” Frank said at last. “Most of the bruises you left have healed.”

The silence was just as complete, but somehow less ominous. Jason took a last sip of the whiskey and leaned over to hand the bottle back to Frank. As it passed around, back to Ronnie, Lizzy began to speak.

“I don’t know how it got out of control so fast,” she said. “One moment we were sitting there, listening to that crazy old woman talk, and the next the world was on fire. That’s how it seemed.”

Jason nodded. Exactly like that. He leaned on Lizzie’s shoulder and listened, letting her sweep him back across the years once more.

The fire had been hot, too hot. Jason remembered shielding his eyes with his arms and feeling that heat licking at him, washing over him in waves as the flames danced in the wind. The roaring blaze had cut off all but the faintest of sound from Tara, who continued to dance madly about, capering in wider and wider circles. She didn’t seem to see the fire, or hear it. Her lips continued to move to some inner rhythm, though no sound reached Jason’s ears.

Lizzie was clutching his arm in a death grip.

“We have to go Jason,” she wailed in his ear.  “Come on!”

Jason whipped around, looking for Frank. There was no sign of the other boy. Either he’d run already, or fallen behind the log.

“Frank!” Jason screamed, but there was no way anyone could have heard him over the sound of the fire.  “Frank!”

Lizzy gripped his wrist and yanked him painfully away from the fire.

“He isn’t there Jason.  Come on.  We have to go, have to get help.”

Jason turned back, but before he could do as Lizzy suggested, his gaze was trapped by the old woman’s dancing form. He held fast as Lizzy tugged frantically on his arm, he stared. Old Tara didn’t seem to feel the heat at all. She was dancing, her arms thrown over her head and her long, thin gray hair whipping through the air.

She was near the doorway, now a blazing arch of dripping flame and billowing smoke. The smoke swirled around her, obscuring her from site, then wisping away to reveal her another couple of feet closer to the burning home.

“Stop!” Jason screamed. He pulled against the anchor of Lizzy’s grip. “Stop! It’s burning. Don’t you see the fire? You have to stop.”

“She can’t hear you Jason.  Please.” Lizzy was crying, and Jason knew that she was right.  If old Tara heard him, she ignored him. The last site he had of her was her squat, whirling form ducking through the cabin’s doorway.

Jason could remember it so clearly. She’d turned, at just that moment, and her eyes had blazed brighter than the sun, brighter and hotter than the fire. Her lips had moved, and, impossibly, he’d heard her words. Repeated, reverberating through the clearing, and through his mind—echoing as Lizzy finally won the battle against his dazed brain and yanked him toward the trees and into a dead run.

Old Tara’s voice had floated after them on the breeze, as the fire crackled and the nearest of the trees began to catch.

“For an evil past, no deed atones; to know the future?  Roll them BONES.”

~ * ~

“You heard it too?” Jason asked, cutting Lizzy off. “I thought it was all in my head. All these years, I’ve thought of that old woman, burning herself alive, and turning back to call out after me.”

“I heard her,” Lizzy nodded. “At the time, I didn’t care. I was terrified.” She hesitated and then leaned back closer to Jason.  “I still am.”

The fire had died down, and Ronnie rose slowly, tossing on the few remaining branches and stirring the coals with one of the longer sticks.

“Guess we all are, in a way. I got back to the clearing just in time to see you all tearing out of there like you were the ones on fire. I wanted to go and see, but I didn’t want to be left in the woods, either.  Just pulled in behind you and lit out through those trees without looking back.”

Jason nodded. “I never really noticed when you and Frank got back to us, just that we were all together when we reached camp,” he said. “We broke some kind of record getting the tents down and the bags packed.”

“If I didn’t know my dad would kill me,” Ronnie chuckled softly, “I’d have said to hell with the tent.”

Lizzy shivered. “It’s getting late,” she said softly.

Jason hugged her. “I’m a bit tired myself,” he said. “Why don’t we call it a night and take this up tomorrow?  We have quite a hike ahead of us still, and we’ll want an early start.”

Ronnie didn’t say anything, but Lizzy rose instantly, turning to flash a grateful smile at

Jason.  Frank stayed put. “If you’re up for it, Ronnie,” Frank said, “I’m thinking there’s still plenty in that bottle.” Ronnie looked up suddenly, studying Franks face in the dim firelight.  “I’d like that,” the big man answered.  “I think I’d like that a lot, Frankie.” Jason and Lizzy slipped off into their tent, leaving the other two to sit by the fire and sip the

whiskey, an odd ending to an odd night. In the shadows, small skittering sounds echoed, and in Jason’s mind, tiny white bones flickered in the dying light, rolling into patterns no one could see.

FOUR

Branches slapped painfully into Jason’s cheeks as he ran, roots snarling and snaking across the ground, catching at his toes and nearly sending him sprawling. The flames licked at his heels, roaring in hunger and devouring the trail behind him as quickly as he could cross it.  Never closer, never further behind, just there.

He could hear voices, faintly, calling to him from the flames. Glancing behind him, he saw bony hands stretching from the depths of a wall of flames that slipped ever closer. The fingers of those hands, curled into talons, groped ahead, grasping at tree limbs and digging into the earth, only to be dragged free by Jason’s flight.  As he ran, the flames roared in pursuit.

Voices floated from all directions, voices he knew, but he couldn’t put the words together. Urgent cries broke into meaningless syllables, punctuated again and again by the branches, whipping across his cheeks and stinging his forehead.

He knew they were back there, the others. Lizzy and Frank, Ronnie, even old Tara, but he couldn’t help them. He couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t get away, couldn’t stop running and each slap of the branches drove the futility of his flight deeper into his soul. Each groping, tripping undulation of the roots and ground beneath his feet set his heart trip-hammering faster.

“No,” he breathed, voice ragged with the effort, frantic with the need to escape.

“Roll them BONES, boy.”

The words were clear, cutting through flame and shadow and the years, slicing into Jason’s heart cleanly. He cried out, dove forward, out, away, arms flying up and back to protect his head, praying not to slap face first into the trunk of a tree, and Tara’s laughter echoing, growing louder, blending to the roar of the flames.

“No,” he whispered.

The slap was harder this time, the voice clear, close. No heat. The crackle of the campfire, burned very low as the night slipped away toward dawn, had replaced the roaring of the flames.

“Jason!”  Lizzy’s voice. Another crack on Jason’s cheek and he clutched her wrist tightly.

“Enough,” he breathed.  “Please...”

She stopped, very tense for a moment, then dropped, draping herself over him like a warm, protective blanket.

“I couldn’t help it,” Jason said, sliding his arms around her, cheeks still stinging. As an afterthought, “how many times did you slap me anyhow?”

Lizzy didn’t answer.  She melted against him and rocked slowly from side to side.

Then, when he thought maybe she’d fallen asleep, she finally whispered. “What are we doing here, Jason? What are we going to see?”

Before he could answer, she cut in again.

“What if it’s true?”

“I don’t know,” Jason answered. “I just don’t know. Those stories…it all came back so clearly. I could see that old woman’s eyes, the bones imbedded in the dirt. I could hear her voice, and the fire.  I can’t ever seem to escape the fire.”

“Do you think Ronnie did it?”

Lizzy’s question caught him off guard, and he didn’t answer at first. She lifted herself slightly, meeting his gaze.  He could see the flash of her eyes, despite the darkness.

“Do you think Ronnie set that fire?” she asked again.  “Frank seemed to think so.”

“I don’t know, Lizzy,” Jason said softly, sliding his hands up to cup her cheeks, his fingers slipping easily back into her soft hair. “I just don’t know. I used to think a lot of things about Ronnie that I might have to rethink after this weekend.  I guess even the bullies grow up.”

She stared into his eyes for a moment longer, then nodded, slipping closer for a kiss. Jason had other things he might have said. The words swam through his mind, but Lizzy was robbing his concentration, the heat of her body and the soft, moist press of her lips to his, and he left the words unsaid.  Words weren’t going to change their situation, only time could do that.

Maybe Ronnie wasn’t the ‘bad guy’ after all.  Maybe he was the one to bring it to a close.

The heat that rose to replace the flames of his dreams erased it all, memory and fear, past and present, and the two drifted together, gently, insistently, and completely. The night ended, and morning brought new life. The sun heated the forest floor gently, slipping through the mosquito netting and nylon tent in a glow that found the two of them tangled and sleeping deeply.

Ronnie was the first to rise, and then Frank. Coffee was brewing over the fire, and the sizzle of bacon cut through the quiet of the morning, sifting through Jason’s pounding pulse to his brain and drawing him to reality.  He stirred, shaking Lizzy gently.

Her soft, protesting murmur brought a smile to his face, despite the whiskey-induced headache that throbbed behind his temples. Jason slid free of their embrace and found his jeans, pulling them on quickly. He tucked both sleeping bags over and around Lizzy’s still slumbering form and tugged on his socks and boots.

Grabbing his shirt, he slipped out the slitted front of the tent and into morning sunlight far too bright. The air was chilly despite the sun’s rays, and Jason wrapped his flannel shirt around his shoulders, slipping his arms in place and buttoning quickly, fingers lost in a breath of fog from his breath.

“Christ,” he mumbled, hurrying to fasten the last of the buttons and tuck the shirt in tightly. “Where’s my continental breakfast?”

The sight of him, half-dressed, half-conscious, hair tousled and eyes red was too much for Frank and Ronnie.  In stereo they burst into laughter, doing nothing good for Jason’s headache.

“That coffee ready?” he asked, ignoring their mirth.

“Yeah, ready and strong,” Frank answered, reaching down, grabbing one of the tin cups and tossing it Jason’s way.  “Help yourself, Romeo.”

Jason took a stab at the cup, missed, then leaned to retrieve it from where it had miraculously landed bottom down in the dirt.

He stepped in close to the fire and grabbed for the pot. Momentarily, the sound of the blaze, small as it was, caught at his senses, and he wavered.

“Whoa,” Ronnie said, stepping closer quickly and gripping Jason by the shoulder. “Easy there, Jason.  You really need to drink more often.”

They all laughed at that, Frank slightly forced, Jason through a haze of pain and Ronnie with a full-throated rumble that told the other two he felt the night’s activities a lot less than they did.

“Lot of walking ahead,” Ronnie said softly. “You might want to poke Lizzy and get her a cup too, while you’re at it. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather it wasn’t too dark when we got there.”

The others nodded. Jason snagged a second empty cup and filled it from the pot before moving back to the tent flap. He laughed when Lizzy poked her head through, as if on cue. He handed her the second cup and staggered to one of the logs, flopping back with a sigh.

“I can remember a time when this wouldn’t have been a problem,” he said ruefully. “What was in that bottle anyway, Everclear?”

Another round of laughter, a little more genuine than the last, and Jason managed to grimace his way through the first couple of sips of coffee. There was a commotion in the tent, and Lizzy emerged, fully dressed, Jason’s extra flannel shirt tied around her tightly, and her arms held over her chest as if she was freezing.  In one hand, the already empty coffee cup dangled.

She scowled at them, and they burst into laughter.

“Glad you all think it’s funny,” she said, heading for the coffee.

Jason watched her move appreciatively, laughing so hard he nearly fell backward off his log-seat. Lizzy poured her coffee, stood, very stiff, back to them all, then started to laugh herself, nearly spilling the hot coffee down her front.

“Well, this is certainly better than I expected,” Frank said after they regained control. “I have to tell you, Ronnie, I expected to have eaten one of those fists by now, and to be thoroughly upset with myself for coming in the first place.  You’ve surprised me.”

“Don’t think it never occurred to me, Frankie boy.” Ronnie winked. “I just got over it. Hell, maybe it was therapeutic, reading all those ways I might have died if I didn’t grow up.”

Again the laughter: clean and cleansing. The stories of the night past began to fade slowly, and the morning sun began to promise actual warmth.

It didn’t take them long to ready themselves for the day’s hike.

“I figure it will be just about sunset by the time we get there, Ronnie said, slinging his pack onto his broad shoulders. That’s with the stop by the lake. The trip back won’t take so long. We might even get back in time for a few more stories, and the rest of that bottle.”

Jason wasn’t certain why exactly they had to go to the lake. They’d all spent a lot of time there as children, but it really wasn’t related to the night in question. Ronnie had insisted. He said he wanted them to see how the place had changed, but it made little sense to Jason.  It would put them at the clearing where the cabin had stood in the evening. Jason would have preferred to arrive when it was still light.

Lizzy had protested as well, but, surprisingly, Frank was eager to visit their old stomping grounds.

“Hey,” he said, “I’ve written that lake into so many pages now I feel like it should be in my back yard. I want to see it again, see what has changed. Maybe it will make a new chapter sometime soon.”

Jason had grumbled, still, but since the others were set on it, he acquiesced. When you got right down to it, Jason didn’t want to go to the clearing in the daylight either. He could still hear the old woman’s laughter, echoing in his mind.

Not for the first time, he wondered why he’d agreed to the trip in the first place. The nightmares were a problem, but how returning to that place was supposed to quiet them was much less than clear. The closer they drew, the tighter the cold ball of ice in his chest constricted.

They left the campground in silence, each lost in memories, and thoughts of their own. Jason felt the years sloughing off slowly. Ronnie moved ahead, as he always had, and things slipped into that old-time groove. Like driving from state to state and suddenly all the channels play nothing but oldies. Jason walked in a daze, thinking thoughts he’d not thought in years and staying as close to Lizzy as humanly possible.

Frank was the first to break the silence.

“You remember my book, Night of Silence Screaming?” he asked, dropping back to walk at Jason’s side.

Jason nodded. He glanced up at Ronnie, then grinned and shook his head ruefully. “How could I forget that one? We were all there, walking to the lake, just like this.”

Frank nodded. “I can remember the night I wrote that scene, and the night that first inspired it, as if we were walking through the pages right now.”

They walked in silence for a moment, then Frank continued. “It shouldn’t feel that way, should it?  I mean, years have passed.  Things have changed—everything has changed.  Why is it I suddenly feel like a twelve year old kid again?”

Jason nodded again. It was true. All the years, the money, everything he’d gone through in his life suddenly paled before the impact of a short walk through the woods of his childhood. He shivered, reaching out to take Lizzy’s hand. She glanced up from where she’d been studying the trail before them in silence and gave him a fleeting, nervous smile. All the old walls were in place, and Jason sighed. The happy feel of the morning was fast fading.

Ronnie had forged a little further ahead, either impatient with their pace, or just eager to get to the lake.  Jason suddenly felt distanced.  Old fears and emotions kicked in.

“Wonder why he’s in such a hurry?” Frank asked, kicking a branch out of his way.

“I don’t know, but I wish I did,” Jason answered. “I don’t buy this story of seeing the cabin back in that clearing, and this whole detour to the lake thing is making little sense to me. I feel like I used to feel, like Ronnie is leading me into something I should know better than to be part of, but can’t resist.”

Frank laughed, but it rang hollow and empty, and Jason didn’t join in.

The trail sloped gently upward, then down and wound through the last of the trees. As the forest thinned, the shimmering expanse of Lake Quantal stretched out before them. The sun glimmered on the tips of the waves, and Ronnie waved to them from the shoreline. He’d already shucked his pack and started to gather wood for a fire.

“He’s certainly happy,” Frank observed, frowning suddenly. “You wouldn’t think he was a man trying to rid himself of a nightmare.”

“Give it a chance,” Lizzy said softly, surprising them both. “He seemed fine last night, and this morning.  I don’t think Ronnie has many friends…maybe he’s just enjoying our company.”

“I know I’m enjoying the company,” Jason said, grinning and pulling her against him.

Frank rolled his eyes, grinned, and started forward again, more quickly, heading for the shore line.

“If I’d known you two would be so sickeningly sweet together,” he called over his shoulder, “I’d have written you both into dead end relationships in faraway places.”

Jason smiled, hugging Lizzy closer. Then he frowned. Something in the way Frank had said that last bothered him. As if they’d been “written” together. As if the words could mold the reality.  Very suddenly, Jason wondered what Frank was writing now, and just how it ended.

He shook the odd thoughts away like cobwebs and strolled down the gentle slope to where Ronnie and Frank stood watching the waves ripple.

Ronnie turned away and moved to his pack. Moments later he was screwing two halves of a very short fishing rod together, the kind you bought from television ads for $19.95 and they “really, really work.”

Jason laughed softly. “You don’t have a build-it-yourself gun in there for hunting, too, do you?” he asked.

Ronnie grinned. “Never really got into hunting. Not sure why. I like to fish, though. It’s quiet. Gives a man time to think.” Ronnie turned to Frank then, his expression flickering from something deeper, to a slow smile, so quickly that Jason wasn’t certain he’d seen anything but the smile.  “Gives a man time to catch up on his reading, too.”

Ronnie stepped up to the water then, drew back and let fly with a long cast. He’d baited the hook with a gob of cheese he’d pulled from the depths of his pack. They all watched in silence as the yellow ball took off in a long, slow arc, breaking the placid surface of the lake with a soft “plunk” and dropping from sight. Ronnie held the rod still for a long moment, letting the bait sink, then turned the handle on his reel, drew the line tight, and wedged the small rod between two rocks on the shore.

“Who knows,” he said, turning to the others at last, “maybe I’ll get lucky and get us some fresh catfish for lunch. When was the last time you had fresh catfish—any of you?”

Ronnie’s grin was infectious.

Frank laughed. “In New York, they ship the catfish in fresh, farm-fed and fat.  It is filleted in the market where you buy it—fresh. You can pay as much as fifty to a hundred dollars a plate for a good catfish dinner.”

The others grew silent, watching Ronnie’s face as Frank painted this picture. The big man looked pained.

“It never tasted half as good as what we caught here,” Frank finished with a grin.

The tension slipped away in the breeze and Ronnie turned toward the lake, shaking his head. “You sure grew a set of balls, Frankie,” he said with a chuckle.

Down the shoreline and around a bend, a rickety dock rocked on the gentle waves. Something about it bothered Jason, and he took a few steps along the lake shore, trying to remember.

“That dock,” he said, “it…it was gone—before.”

“Gone?” Lizzie repeated, quizzically.

“Gone,” Jason asserted. “It got washed away that summer the river rose, remember? We used to sit at the end of it and fish, went swimming off there, then it was gone.”

They all stared, lost in thought.

“You’re right,” Ronnie said finally. “Hell, I’m not sure when it came back. I didn’t come out here for a long time after that night…but I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t there—or didn’t, until now.” He stared at the dock, bobbing gently, and frowned. “I’ve been fishing from that dock for years.”

A quick flash of motion, whirr of nylon on steel and they all turned at once to where Ronnie had left the fishing rod propped against the stone. Line was screaming out of the reel, and the short fiberglass rod was bent nearly doubled.

“Jesus,” Ronnie gasped, diving for the shore line and gripping the handle tightly.  He dragged back against the line, setting the drag tighter with a practiced flick of his thumb, and the line quit spinning off into the lake.  The muscles in Ronnie’s forearms instantly corded, taut with effort.

“What the hell is on the other end of that?” Frank asked, whistling softly.

“I don’t know, Frankie boy,” Ronnie grunted, but whatever it is has different ideas about our lunch than I do.”

They gathered around, the pier forgotten for the moment in the quick excitement of the battle with the fish. Though the effort was slightly exaggerated by the short length of the pole, when the dark silhouette of the catfish slithered near to the shore-line, they all gasped in surprise.

“Christ,” Jason said softly. “I’ve never seen a catfish that big. What are they doing, stocking this thing now that I’m gone?”

“Not that I know of,” Ronnie answered, almost reverently. He leaned down carefully, drawing the line toward the shore. He didn’t have a net, or anything, really, just his hand. One bad shake of the head and that fish would be fading into the muddy water.

“Careful,” Frank said, unnecessarily.

Ronnie had reached to his belt with one hand, flipped the Buck-knife free of it’s leather sheath, and had it open with another subtle motion of his thumb. Before that soft “snick” could fully register, his arm shot up and down, and the blade impaled the catfish, directly between the eyes. Blood washed out and around the thick, flat head, and the tail thrashed wildly.  It was going nowhere. Ronnie’s strong thrust had dug the blade deep into the bone of its skull, pinning it as it fought a futile battle with time, and Ronnie’s blade.

“Oh.” Lizzy stepped back, turning her head away quickly. Jason stepped back to circle her shoulder with one arm, but he didn’t look away from the fish. The motion had been so sudden, the destruction so casual and complete. Only Frank had stood his ground, watching carefully. It was as if he were memorizing the scene for some future novel.  Maybe he was.

“One of you might want to work on that fire,” Ronnie said, not looking away from the fish.  “It’ll take me a bit to get him cleaned and gutted, but we don’t want to spend too much time at it.”

Frank moved away, leaning immediately to gather a handful of driftwood from the shoreline.  Jason turned Lizzy so her face fell against his chest and held her.

“It’s just a fish,” he said softly.

Jason felt Lizzy nod, but her shoulders still shook, and inwardly he cursed. Why couldn’t Ronnie have pulled the fish out of the water first? Why such a display? Why now? The trust that had been building slipped a notch. Jason’s gaze slid away from Ronnie’s back and down the shore-line once again, locking onto the pier.  The pier that shouldn’t be there.

A lot of things could be done with such a pier. If one were to come in from the water side, things could be done in the woods without anyone’s knowledge. The far shore of the lake was draped in a heavy mist, obscuring what Jason knew was there. More piers, homes, the outskirts of Pendleton, a slightly larger community than Random. Something was itching at the back of Jason’s mind...something he couldn’t quite put into place.

“That’s one serious lunch,” Frank said, breaking the silence.

Ronnie had already begun the task of gutting and skinning the catfish.  Now that the head had been removed and tossed, the surreality of the moment eased somewhat. It was a fish, after all. Jason had gutted his share, as had Frank, and even Lizzy had once been pretty handy with a filet knife.

It had been the sudden, deadly stroke of the knife, no warning, that had done it. Ronnie was being everyone’s friend, the bully dead and buried, but there was still a streak of something deep inside that had to be watched, and worried over. As Jason watched Ronnie work, steady and confident, a red haze slid over the scene. Blood, rippling in the lake, mixing with the mud and slime.  The helplessly thrashing tail.

Jason shook his head. Frank had returned, dropping an armload of wood beside the small fire. He set immediately about the task of building that dancing flame. Jason slipped gently free of Lizzy’s embrace and moved to his pack.

“I think I have the tinfoil,” he said, forcing a light tone to his voice that he no longer felt.

“I’ve got some spices tucked away,” Lizzy said softly. She knelt to sift through her pack slowly, still pointedly avoiding any glance in the direction of the catfish, or Ronnie. Jason noted that her shoulders were trembling, and again he cursed himself for agreeing the whole crazy trip.

Grabbing the small box of aluminum foil from his pack, he slipped closer and knelt beside her as she dug through her own belongings.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.  “I didn’t know it would be like this.”

“There was no way you could have known,” She replied, barely a whisper. “No way any of us could know.” She glanced up at him then with an intense, taut expression stretching her usually pretty features. “We don’t know now. It was a bad moment, but I’m seeing this through.”

Jason watched her for a moment, thought of things he might say, discarded each, then nodded, rising and moving to the fire. Frank was poking the coals with one of the longer branches he’d found, and at just that moment, Ronnie headed toward them from where he’d been washing the now gutted carcass of the fish in the lake. It was truly a magnificent catfish, all of ten pounds, bigger than Jason could ever remember seeing.

“Hell of a fish,” Frank said, glancing up.  “Almost like he knew you were coming.”

“If he’d known that, Frankie boy,” Ronnie laughed, tossing the fish onto the bed of foil that Jason had prepared, “he’d have been far away from this place. Good luck, though. There’s plenty here for everyone.”

Jason saw Lizzy drop her eyes and knew there would likely be more for the four men to eat than expected. Heaving a sigh, he slid the foil toward her and watched as she carefully sprinkled the herbs from her pack over the fish, curling the foil around it and moving to lay it across the bed of coals. Her motions were slow and cautious, and Jason had the sudden realization that it was hard for her to approach those coals; to put the fish inside was harder still.

Jason’s mind blanked for a second, and he leaned against his pack, fighting for balance. In that instant, eyes had glared back at him from the coals, hands had reached, long claw-like fingers groping toward Lizzy. The sizzle of the fish hitting the fire, white-noise distraction and he was back.  That quickly, shaken and coated with cold, drying sweat.

“Jesus, Jason,” Frank called to him, “If you’re that cold, carry it over her to the fire.”

Jason shook his head and rose, nodding. No words were possible, he knew they’d sputter out in an embarrassing mumble, or be the wrong ones. Even as things muddled and grew stranger, Jason knew with a sudden certainty that there was something underlying this trip that they couldn’t see. Not all of them anyway. Every word might matter. Every thought shared was a possible link, or a possible snare. Even with the almost-noon sun lighting the lake, the shadows had grown long and deep.

As he slipped up beside Lizzy and seated himself on the log, the aroma of baking fish slipped up through his senses, calming him and drawing him back across the years. Just to the right, a glint of waves caught his eye for a moment. The pier jutted out into the empty expanse of the lake.  Jason followed the shimmering water out to where it lost itself in the mist.

FIVE

The sun had slipped most of the way behind the tops of the trees, and Jason knew it couldn’t be much further. His memories of the forest itself were muddy, the distance faded in and out of perspective as flashes of that night, of fire and old Tara’s wrinkled face haunted him. No matter how hard he tried to will himself to be calm, he could not.

He walked very close to Lizzy’s side. He wanted to protect her, to offer strength she could use to get her through whatever was to come, but he had nothing to give. He trembled, fighting just to manage the uncontrollable shakes that gripped his frame.

It was eerie how they’d fallen into step.  At the lake, they’d all been a group, still smiling, if a little more subdued than they’d been the night before, or around the morning camp fire. Now they’d dropped into old roles—Ronnie in the lead and Frank close behind, the old eagerness to see what might lay ahead obvious in his pace and the way he stumbled over roots and brush. Of all of them, Frank seemed most desperate to reach that clearing. Not for the first time, Jason found himself watching his old friend, and wondering why.

Frank claimed to write the dreams out of his system, but did he? He showed little sign of the stress the rest of them had faced.  Even his fear of Ronnie seemed forced.

Darkness was dropping over them fast, making it harder to be certain where they were, or how far they’d come.  Ronnie plodded on steadily, as if he’d walked this trail a thousand times.

Had he? Jason wondered suddenly. Had he only come back to this place once, as he’d said, or was it all a setup?

Jason shook his head and slipped a little closer to Lizzy, nearly bumping her hip into one of the passing trees and barely catching a branch before it could whip back into his face at Frank’s passing.

“Hey,” he said softly, “be careful up there.  I’d like to make it with both eyes.”

No one answered, but a few moments later, Ronnie stopped. He cocked his head to one side like a dog, searching for a scent.

“I don’t hear anything,” he said at last.  “This is about where things started to get strange.”

Jason looked about the small clearing dubiously. “How can you remember that so clearly?” he asked. “I’ve dreamed about this place thousands of times and I remember little details: the color of her dress, how the house looked as it burned, those damned bones.  I remember her eyes, and her voice—but I don’t remember where we were when we first heard the sound. I don’t remember which direction you ran before we moved from the clearing.  I barely remember which direction we ran afterward, and that only because we made it back.”

Ronnie stared at him for a long time.

“What are you saying, Jason?”

Jason met Ronnie’s gaze steadily. “I’m not saying anything,” he replied, “except that it’s damned odd that you remember this part so well when at this point nothing had happened yet.”

“My night was different from yours,” Ronnie said, turning away. “I don’t have the clear images you do. I didn’t walk into that damned clearing and face down the witch, remember? I saw it all from different angles, heard it all in the sound of your voices. I’ve heard you tell the story, even read it a couple of times in Frankie boy’s books. But this part of that night? And the trip back?  Those are the parts I do remember, that I think of time and again, wondering if I could have or should have done something different.

“I always felt like I let you down.  Thought about that a lot, believe it or not.”

Jason stared at the larger man until he thought his eyes would water, then nodded. “I guess I do believe that.  Sure as hell can’t get it out of my mind.”

Before they could say anything further, Lizzy let out a soft cry and clutched Jason’s arm tightly.

Jason spun, as did Ronnie, but before he could get the question out of his mouth, he saw that she was pointing off through the trees. The twilight was giving way fast to the shadows sliding out from the bases of the trees. Through that murky darkness, light shimmered. A sheen of— something—that hadn’t been there before.

“Christ,” Frank said, brushing his hand back through his hair—so like the habits of his childhood that Jason nearly smiled despite it all.

Ronnie was standing very still, and Jason thought he might have caught a tremble in the big man’s shoulder.

“It’s just a light,” Jason said, suddenly. “There could be kids out here camping, yes? Wouldn’t be the first time. Could be hunters. Could be almost anything. Let’s get over there and see and get this over with so we can get back to the fire.”

No one answered, but Ronnie shook his head slowly, as if clearing it of unwanted thoughts, and started toward the light, winding through the ever-thinning trees without a backward glance.  Frank was close behind. He kept stopping and staring out through the trees, as if he could make out something that way that the others would miss. He would then start forward again just before Jason and Lizzy bumped into him.

The air shimmered, and the light grew brighter as they walked. Everything shifted slightly— that was how it seemed to Jason. It felt like one of his nightmares, not quite real, not quite believable. No way they could all be there, together, again. No way that light was shining, just as it had shone so long ago—just exactly as it had shone.

What had begun as a soft glow was now a dancing flicker, flames.

“I see her fire,” Frank said, echoing the past, and Jason stopped, angry.

“It isn’t her fire, Frank. She is dead. You saw her walk into that burning house. I saw it. Tara isn’t fucking out here, and neither is that damned cabin.

“What’s wrong with you?  What’s wrong with all of us?”

No one answered. Ronnie and Frank eyed him with what might have passed for accusatory glances, if they’d had anything to accuse him of.

“Crap,” Jason said, starting off and tugging Lizzy along behind him. “I’m going to get to that fire, share a drink with whoever’s there, and get back.”

Lizzy allowed herself to be led reluctantly ahead of the others, but it was obvious that she didn’t share Jason’s certainty. The air was charged now, crackling with potential. What would they find?  Who? Why was a fire burning in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night?

No one spoke now. The light grew brighter. Long shadow tendrils danced through the trees.

One thing had not changed over the years. The closer you got to the clearing where old Tara’s cabin had stood, the fewer trees stood in your way. Plants and shrubs seemed to have shrunk back against the wall of the forest.  There was no sound.

Jason stopped so suddenly that Frank and Ronnie fell over themselves trying to avoid sprawling them all in a heap.

“What the,” Jason made a shushing noise at Frank’s outburst.

“Listen,” he said softly.

They all did as he’d bid them. Nothing. Not the normal quiet of an evening in the forest, which was really no quiet at all, but a vacuum of silence.

“Where are the birds?” Lizzy whispered.  “Jason, there were birds.  I was listening to them.”

Jason hugged her closer. “I know,” he said, “I know.”

They moved ahead more slowly. The light from the fire was bright enough now that they could find their way easily, but somehow that didn’t ease the sudden chill in the air. Their footsteps echoed, but the sound was dull, dying more quickly than it should. Jason’s senses slowed and grew more acute, shifting things just enough that they felt off-kilter and skewed.

He wanted to tell them again that it was stupid, that they were worrying over nothing, but his resolve was fading. Jason’s legs wobbled and he felt as if he’d shrunk, or the world had grown. The trees had grown impossibly tall, stretching up to where the firelight met the darkness and beyond.

“What’s that?” Ronnie asked softly.  “What the hell is that?”

They stopped again and Jason tried to listen over the pounding thunder that was his heartbeat.  He tried to distinguish sounds beyond the rasping of his breath. A sudden rush of blood to his head nearly toppled him and only Lizzy, clutching his arm so tightly that he felt her nails digging into his skin, kept him upright.

The words slowly pounded through to him, slowly and he fought to understand. “What is that?” Over and over, repeated, variations, “What the hell is that...Jesus, what is that?” Slowly Jason recovered his senses.

“Jason. Jason!” Lizzy’s voice cut through the haze. “Don’t you do this to me, Jason! What is wrong?  He lifted his head...caught her hand before she could slap him again.

“I’m okay,” he said softly.  “Wait.”

Then he heard it, sifting through the pounding and the reverberating voices. Another sound—another voice. Monotonous and insidious, low—so faint he could barely hear it—but there.  The chant.

“No,” he whispered.  “No, that isn’t possible, I…”

“Get up, Jason,” Frank said urgently, gripping the arm that Lizzy wasn’t and lifting. “Get up man. I don’t know what’s going on—don’t know if this is someone’s sick idea of a joke, but I hear it too.”

Ronnie was moving ahead again, very slowly. His arms were down at his sides. His boot caught on an exposed root and it nearly sent him sprawling, but still he staggered forward. He seemed in a trance. Somehow that image dragged Jason the rest of the way back to the moment.

“Ronnie!” Jason called out.  “Ronnie wait.  Don’t go there alone, man.”

Jason stumbled toward Ronnie’s retreating back, and the motion dragged both Frank and Lizzy along in his wake. They didn’t protest, but neither did they press ahead. Jason felt their weight, their reluctance, as he plunged through the trees.

Ronnie ignored them all. If he heard them, he gave no sign. If he heard Jason’s words, they slipped over and around him unheeded. He moved through the trees like a zombie, unable to turn away, or back.

Jason hurried his steps.

“Come on!” he urged the others. “We can’t let him go running off through the woods alone.  If those are hunters up there, it might not be such a great idea to bust in on their camp unannounced.”

“Hunters don’t chant.” Frank said it nonchalantly, but the finality of his words ran rampant down the paths of Jason’s mind. He ignored it. No time to worry about that; concentrate on Ronnie.  Stop him, regroup, get them out.

The trees were thinner still, and as the three friends drew up behind Ronnie, the clearing seemed to suddenly flash into sight. What had been a flickering glow of firelight was bright now, dancing beyond the trees.  It was a campfire, but whose?

The odd, rhythmic chanting grew louder, but no clearer. Jason’s sight blurred, and he brushed his hand across his eyes to clear the sweat. They were nearly to the edge of the clearing, and he could just make out a shadowed figure, seated on the far side of the fire. Ronnie was sliding to the side, skirting the trees, as if trying to get a better view, but Jason’s gaze locked on that fire. His heartbeat sped until it thudded painfully in his chest, and he had to stop for a moment to regain his balance.

“No.” The word was his, the voice Lizzy’s. She echoed his thought so cleanly that Jason believed, for a moment, that he had spoken.

Jason gripped her hand. At the same moment, he realized he no longer had hold of Frank.  He wanted to turn, to make sure his friend was okay, but he couldn’t. The fire held his gaze, and with a lump in his throat that nearly cut off his breath, he stepped forward.

Beyond the fire he could clearly see the frame of the old shack. The outline was dark against the backdrop of trees, the firelight too bright in the foreground of that image for Jason to make out any details clearly.  He knew that shape though, that structure.

“Jason, no!” Lizzy pleaded.

He heard her, but he didn’t stop. “We have to, Lizzy,” he said softly. “There isn’t any going back now.  We have to see who that is.”

Jason stepped past the line of trees and moved forward slowly. Lizzy held back at first, tugging at his grip as if she would break free, then suddenly following quickly and pressing against his back. The figure beyond the fire didn’t move, or, more precisely, continued to move steadily, swaying back and forth. The chant echoed from within and without of Jason’s mind.  He remembered the sound, remembered it clearly. He heard it just as clearly, the voice eerily similar, and yet—not possible.

“That isn’t her,” he said softly. Lizzy gripped his arm more tightly. “That is not her,” he said again, “and I’ve had just about enough of this.”

He started forward more quickly.  The spell of the moment was fading.  He heard the voice in his mind, and the voice in the clearing, and there was a dissonance. He’d relived that moment too many times, heard that sound deep within his heart before a thousand campfire dreams. It was like tuning a guitar. You hit the two strings, and you listen for a waver. The sounds were wavering in an eerie, off-beat harmony.

“She would be older,” Lizzy said, again sharing his thoughts. “It doesn’t sound exactly the same, but neither do you.  The chanting is the same.  Be careful.”

Then, almost as an afterthought, she asked, “Where’s Frank?”

Jason spun, wide-eyed, and scanned the clearing. He turned a full circle, but he saw no one.  Nothing.

“Frank!” he cried.  “Frank, where the hell are you?”

Nothing. Jason went from nervous to angry in seconds, face reddening. “God damnit Frank. Get your ass out here—Ronnie!”

The words echoed from the trees, joining in counterpoint to the chant, but there was no answer. None at all. Jason turned, catching a glimpse of Lizzy shaking and clutching her arms about herself.

Without hesitation he moved to her side and slipped his arm around her shoulder.

“We’re out of here,” he said, glancing angrily at the fire. “I don’t know whose idea of a joke this is, but it isn’t funny.”

He turned, drawing her toward the trees. He hadn’t gone a single step when a voice cut through the night like a knife, the chant ending sharply.

“Thinking bout that evil past, boy?”

The voice was cracked with age, roughened by the weather and too much smoke from too many fires.  Jason stopped.  He didn’t turn, but neither did he continue toward the trees.

“For a wicked life, no deed atones,” Jason whispered. Lizzy was shaking so hard she nearly fell, and only Jason’s last-second grab stopped her from passing out.

Holding her in the crook of his arm, he turned back to the fire.

“Ran all the way back, didn’t you, boy. Told you.  Running wasn’t the answer, never is.”

Jason didn’t answer.

“And you, girl.  Told you to say no.”

“To know the future,” Lizzy whispered, “roll them bones.”

Jason growled and started toward the fire again. Lizzy cried out as he pulled away, but this time he ignored her. The figure continued to sway from side to side, unperturbed by his approach, but Jason didn’t waver.

“Maybe you ought to roll those damn things for yourself,” he growled.

The fire popped and crackled, and he could just make out the glint of eyes beyond the flames.  Jason fought off the shakes.  It was too surreal, too perfect.  Too much.

A spark shot suddenly from the fire, drawing his gaze. He slowed, just for an instant. It was in that instant that the world chose to crumble.

Fire burst from the old shack, licking up and out the windows, and washing hungrily up the walls from within. Jason cried out, backing away and turning, reaching back toward Lizzy.   Lizzy was standing and staring, transfixed like a deer in headlights. Her lips were moving, but there was no sound—none that Jason could make out over the roaring and crackling of the blaze.

“Lizzy,” Jason cried out, dashing to her side, “Lizzy!” He grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her and turning her so that she faced away from the fire, and so that he could make it out more clearly.  All those years, all those fires, but the terror wasn’t there.

The figure beyond the fire had risen and was turning slowly toward that burning building.  Jason started forward, half a step, then stopped.

A figure crashed through the trees to his right, bellowing like a bull moose and waving his arms over his head like a maniac. He was headed straight at the smaller fire, as though he intended to run through it and come out the other side.

“Ronnie.” Jason breathed.  “Ronnie!  Wait.  It isn’t her man, it...”

Too late. Ronnie skirted the fire, just to the right, barely missing stumbling through the center, and barreled on toward the shack. Beyond him, Jason saw the crouched, cackling figure from beyond the fire turn, and he heard the faint echo of dark laughter. Before he could react, the flames licked out and up the wooden frame of the door.

Ronnie reached that door, plunging through without hesitation. Reluctantly, Jason forced himself to follow. Lizzy was tugging at his arm now, her head shaking uncontrollably from side to side, but he ignored her.

“I have to,” he said softly.  “I can’t leave Ronnie in there alone.”

He tugged free of Lizzy’s grip gently and started to move more quickly. In moments he’d reached the fire, crab-walking around the side as the heat blistered the near side of his face. He stumbled on a large stone, staggered and dropped to his knees heavily.

“Christ,” he spat, catching his breath for a moment before starting to rise slowly. He lurched to his feet, reeling, and the world swirled toward black. He saw white spots, gleaming, blurring, then growing clear.

The ground was littered with them—tiny, sun-polished and glittering in the firelight. Bones. Small, large, tossed casually into the dirt, just as they’d been so long ago—even the placement so close. Was it right? He couldn’t tell, couldn’t think. His balance failed, and the world tilted, the ground growing closer way too quickly. His head struck hard, sending hot sparks of pain shimmering through the rising darkness.

Jason somehow managed to roll to the side, landing roughly on his hip, the curse mouthed but not spoken as his body failed and his mind spun away from his grasping thoughts. Then there was another sensation, softer—fingers sliding under his head and lifting. Jason fought not to pass out, fought against the second round of stars brought on by being tugged back to a sitting position.

“Jason,” Lizzy whispered.

No slaps. That is what brought him back. He raised his hands shakily, covering his face.  “No slaps,” he muttered, trying to struggle to his feet, failing miserably.  “No...slaps.”

“I’m not going to slap you Jason but you have to get up! Ronnie’s in there, and I don’t know where Frank is.”

Jason shook his head, regretted the motion instantly and nodded more slowly.

“Did you see them?” he asked.

Lizzy didn’t speak. She bit her lip and nodded in return. Jason closed his eyes, squeezing them so tightly together that his head throbbed.

“I ran away,” he whispered.  “I ran away, just like she said.  Came back to…to .. .”

Lizzy wrapped an arm around his back, clutched under his arm and lifted urgently.

Jason took a deep breath, pressed his hands behind himself and pushed off, launching recklessly to his feet and nearly pitching headlong into the fire. Lizzy grabbed his arm, holding him steady, and his head began to slowly clear.

They moved toward the old shack, together, and more carefully. The flames ate away the eaves, poking yellow-bright fingers through the warped shingles of the roof. Jason took another step closer, then stopped. The air was thick with the heat. It robbed his breath and dragged the moisture from his body, burning his eyes with sweat.

Cupping his hand over his eyes, he stared into the flames, willing his sight beyond the blazing frame of the doorway. He couldn’t see a thing—only more and more flames and billowing smoke rising in a swirling cloud to join the darkness far above.

“We have to get out of here,” Lizzy said, moving up behind him, using his body as a heat shield.  “We can’t get in there, Jason.  It’s too late.”

“No,” he said.  Then again, more loudly.  “No.  We go around.”

With a quick spin, he headed for the tree line to the right, turning away from the searing heat and drawing Lizzy after him. She followed with a soft, surprised cry as he took off quickly enough to make her stumble.

“Why?” she called out.  “Why go around? What do you think is back there?”

“I don’t know,” Jason answered, “but if there is anyone walking away from that fire, they didn’t come this way.  I have to know.”

Jason didn’t tell her the whole truth. He didn’t mention that he’d woken up too many nights, screaming, seeing her face engulfed in flames and Ronnie’s hair lit like a torch. He didn’t mention the coals, or the way they erupted, night after night, spilling his friends into his private hell.

“Not this time,” he muttered to himself.  “We all go home.”

The trees blocked most of the heat, but the bright flickering flames sent shadows dancing all around them, making it hard to see where they were going. Jason moved slowly, but steadily, not wanting to risk another tumble.

As he made his way through the shadows, the image of those bones—embedded in the dirt— strobed in his mind. It wasn’t possible. After all those years, Tara would have been pushing a hundred. Even saying she survived the fire, and somehow rebuilt that shack, no way she was moving so quickly.

The words echoed in his mind.  No deed atones.

Lizzy had moved up beside him, and together they rounded the side of the clearing, working around the side and angling back toward the shack as they neared the back corner. The smoke billowed from two back windows and danced around a back door, hanging limp from one hinge and swinging eerily.  There was no movement in the smoky clearing.

Jason stopped, sweeping his gaze over the trees. Lizzy stood very close, clutching his arm and staring into the flames.

Jason was about to turn and move back to the main clearing, when suddenly Lizzy gripped his arm so tightly it hurt. She screamed, backing away from the clearing and dragging him after her, as her motion caught him off guard.“Wha...” Jason spun back to the shack, wrapping one arm around the nearest tree to stop Lizzy from tumbling him over backward.

The smoke had parted at the doorway of the old shack, and a shadowed form stumbled into view. Impossibly, Ronnie was staggering out the door, clutching his face and completely unaware of his surroundings.  He took two, maybe three steps, and fell to his knees.

“He’s still too close!” Jason cried, shaking loose of Lizzy’s grip. “We have to get him out of there.”

Lizzy wasn’t moving, and Jason couldn’t wait. He took off, breaking free of the trees, banging his shoulder painfully off one slender trunk and nearly slamming face first into a second before he bounced into the clear and lurched toward Ronnie.

“Ronnie!” he screamed, fighting the roar of the flames. “Ronnie get up! Get the hell up! We have to get out of here.”

If the big man heard him, he made no sign. Ronnie’s shoulders were scrunched in tight, and he rocked from side to side, his hands clutched to his face in obvious agony.

“Christ,” Jason cursed softly, putting one arm up to shield his face. It did little good. The heat washed over and around him.  He felt his skin nearly blister, and still he moved forward.

He reached Ronnie quickly, reaching down with both hands and gripping the big man’s arm tightly.  Ronnie jerked, nearly pulling free, but Jason was screaming at him.

“Ronnie, it’s Jason, man. Get up! We’re both going to burn with that building if you don’t get on your feet.”

Ronnie turned to him, and Jason felt the baked fish nearly surface. Ronnie’s face was blistered—the skin was red and puffy, nearly closing both eyes. His hair was singed and it was obvious that, though he’d turned toward Jason’s voice, he saw nothing.

Jason hauled back and lifted, and somehow Ronnie made it to his feet. Jason didn’t stop. He started moving the second the big man was upright, half-leading, half-dragging his blinded friend from the clearing. He never looked back, though he could hear Lizzy screaming again. No way he was looking back. No way.

He reached Lizzy’s side quickly.

“Go,” he cried.  “Let’s go.  We have to get out of here.”

Lizzy wasn’t hearing him. Her hands hung limp at her sides and her eyes were wide and glazed.

“Lizzy!”

Jason turned, drawing Ronnie to a stumbling halt. They were just past the first line of trees.  He had a clear view of the clearing. The roof of the old shack was collapsing inward, sparks shooting up in a fountain of glittering orange jewels of light.

From below, coming around the corner on the far side of the shed, a stooped, withered form scampered into view.

“Run, boy,” that voice rasped, impossibly loud, carrying like a bullhorn. “Run! You been running all your life, ain’t NEVER gonna get away.”

The laughter seeped through Jason’s soul, and he spun, grabbing Lizzy in one hand and gripping Ronnie’s arm with the other.  He pressed Lizzy ahead.

“Go!” he screamed.  “For God’s sake, go Lizzy! I have to help Ronnie. He can’t see.”

Lizzy stumbled, caught her balance, and lit out through the trees. Once she started moving, Jason was hard pressed to keep up. He wanted to yell for her to slow down, to stay in sight, but he couldn’t spare the breath.  Ronnie was staggering and banging off tree after tree.

Behind them, cackling laughter rang through the trees, followed by a single, final word.  “Run.”

SIX

The three stumbled through the trees, which grew closer together and more difficult to avoid as they went. Jason’s face and arms were bruised and cut, welts and scratches striped his face.  His breath was a painful, rasping burn.

Beside him, just behind, Lizzy stumbled in his wake. He could hear her sobbing, wasting breath she needed to move, but he couldn’t do a thing to help her. Ronnie was a lead weight on Jason’s shoulder, blubbering like an overgrown child, and it took every ounce of Jason’s strength and concentration to keep the man from running headlong into every tree in their path, or just stopping, laying down, and passing out.

“A little more,” he gasped.  “We have to get a little further away.”

In reality, Jason hadn’t a clue how far they’d gone, or in which direction. He had tried for a Westerly slant, hoping to come—eventually—either to their camp, or to the road itself and follow that. Barring either of these, he wanted as much distance between them and the clearing as possible.

His mind was a wash of questions and grief. Where was Frank? Why hadn’t he even called out? He could still see the old woman, dancing in the clearing, cackling at him and calling after him to run, and still something didn’t quite mesh.

Jason couldn’t bring it into focus. He wanted to believe Frank was alright, but how could he be? Who had that been, dancing and cackling like a demon? Thoughts that Jason did not want to think were surfacing, as well as some doubts of his own ability to judge character, and his choice of friends.

Was it possible Frank was behind it? How was it possible? One thing was certain, that had not been Frank back in the clearing. Not nearly tall enough, and the voice—cracked with age, eerie. All of Jason’s instincts pressed him against the wall of what he’d seen. She had been there, and she had been very real, but who?

The trees thinned suddenly, and Jason gasped in relief. It was the trail from the lake. They’d bisected it, and he could see a rail-road-track line of dark shadows lining the way back toward their camp, lined in silver from the bright moonlight.

They’d come a lot further than he would have believed possible. The moon hung low in the sky, angling through the trees, and Jason glanced down at the softly glowing hands of his watch.

“Jesus,” he muttered, stopping in the middle of the trail and standing, staring back through the woods.

Midnight had come and gone. It was nearly 2:30, and they had come far enough that even the glow of the fire above the tree-line had faded.  The evening might have never happened.

“Where are we?” Lizzy asked, shivering and moving closer. Ronnie had slumped to the ground at their feet.

“Not far from camp,” Jason answered. “I think about halfway to the lake. We have to get Ronnie back to camp, get the fire going, and see what we can do for his burns.”

Lizzy shivered when he mentioned the fire, but she nodded. Jason studied her face for a moment in the dim moonlight. She was scared, but not like the first time—not like in the nightmares. She was scared, but she was strong. Jason felt a sudden lump forming in his throat, but he pushed the emotion away for the moment.

“Help me with him,” he said, gripping Ronnie under one shoulder again. Lizzy took the opposite arm and with Jason doing most of the work, and a surprising burst of strength from Ronnie himself, they got the big man up and moving again.

It was much easier going on the trail. Jason led them as quickly as he could, and with Lizzy helping to support and guide Ronnie, they made better time. The moon dropped from site, eventually, and the red glow of the morning sun kissed the tops of the trees as they staggered, at last, into the camp.  It was cold.

Jason hadn’t noticed the temperature as much before they hit the trail, but once the initial adrenaline and fear released his heart and mind, the weather had begun to exact a toll on each of them. Lizzy was the worst. Her small frame was wracked with shivers, and after a while Jason had taken Ronnie fully onto one shoulder as she pulled away to wrap her arms tightly about herself.

The camp was just as they’d left it, and Jason paused only long enough to deposit Ronnie against one of the logs before attacking the fire. He dug down deep, but there were no coals left, and with a sigh he began piling what remained of the kindling in the center of the ashes, creating a small lean-to of larger branches over the top and setting the two or three bigger pieces that remained close to hand.

When he was satisfied that it would burn, he reached into his pocket and rummaged around, cursing himself for not smoking.

“I don’t have a match,” he said, feeling the frustration well up suddenly as he turned to face Lizzy.  “I don’t have a damn match...”

“Pack.”

The word was spoken weakly, and it was hard to make out. Jason turned to Ronnie, who had somehow managed to push himself to an almost upright, sitting position. “My pack...” he said with an effort, forcing the words through parched, chapped lips.  “Matches...in my pack.”

Jason nodded, uncertain if Ronnie could see him, and moved to the pack. Moments later he was fumbling a box of wooden kitchen matches in his hands, fingers so numb the feeling had long since left them, wondering when it had gotten so damned cold. He broke the first match in half, and it sputtered, dropping to the ground and going out with a soft hiss. Cursing, he managed to extract a second match and this time he ground it along the flint, sparking it to life.

Jason waited one agonizing moment, letting the flame grow steady, then slowly lowered it, hand shaking as he held the flame beneath the kindling. It caught, the small flicker of heat and light spreading through the short web of twigs and licking up at the branches above. Moments later, as Jason pulled his hand away, too late to avoid a burn that his fingers were too numb to feel, the fire came to life with a whoosh, and he tossed on one, then another of the bigger branches.

“Don’t use it all at once,” Lizzy said, her teeth chattering.

“I’m going for more,” Jason replied, rising and moving to her side to wrap his arm around her shoulder and give her a hug. “You are freezing, and we need light. We still have to get a look at Ronnie’s face.”

“Don’t leave me here,” she pleaded, gripping his arm with icy fingers.

“I won’t go far,” he promised, tugging free gently.  “We have to have wood.”

Lizzy didn’t answer. She stared into the fire, and Jason wondered what it was she saw. He glanced at the dancing flames and looked away quickly.

It was cold in the shadows beyond the clearing. Jason moved as quickly as he could, picking up each piece of wood he tripped over, gathering an armful slowly. He was careful to keep the faint flicker of the fire in his line of sight. It was getting closer to morning, but the woods could be tricky, and he knew he was nearing the end of his strength.

Spotting a small pile of branches that would finish the armload nicely, he reached down and scooped them up quickly. He didn’t want to leave Lizzy alone, not with Ronnie in such bad shape, and no way of knowing if they’d been followed. As he lifted the branches, something snapped, tumbling from the center of the pile. Something white. Something that fell apart and tumbled, glinting in the dim light.

Jason stopped, standing very still, gaze locked to the tiny white bits. A bird, long dead and now a complex jumble of fragile bones, fallen to the forest floor in an intricate design that made Jason’s knees weak.

“Christ,” he said, gripping the wood more tightly. Turning to the clearing, he hurried back through the trees.

~ * ~

When Jason returned, he found that Lizzy had warmed up a small pan of water, and after a quick search, they found that Frank had brought an extra shirt. They needed to get Ronnie cleaned up and see how bad it was.

Jason tore the shirt into strips they could use, and with these crude tools, they set to work. Ronnie was more coherent after the rest. The burns weren’t as bad as they’d looked at first, but they were bad. His eyes were intact, but the skin of his cheeks, his forehead, and most of his exposed skin was red and blistered.

“We have to get you to a hospital,” Jason said, swabbing one of the cloths very gently across the big man’s cheek. “These are nasty burns. Don’t think you’ll be posing for Playgirl any time soon.”

“Whiskey,” Ronnie mumbled, and Lizzy hurried off to fetch what was left of the Jack Daniels.

“Man,” Jason said softly, “That has got to hurt.”

Ronnie began to shake, and Jason moved closer, steadying him for a moment, until he realized the big man was laughing.

“Hurts, yeah,” Ronnie said at last. “Damned if it doesn’t hurt.” He was quiet a moment, sipping at the bottle Lizzy had handed him. “Where’s Frankie, Jason? And who the hell was that back there?”

“Don’t know,” Jason answered. He stared at the ground, thinking. “It wasn’t her. I don’t know how I know, but something just didn’t feel....right.”

“That’s what I thought,” Ronnie nodded, taking another sip and grimacing as a drop of the liquor splashed onto his burned face.

“We have to get you out of here,” Jason repeated. “You have to see a doctor, get treated.  It’s bad, Ronnie.”

“Reckon it is at that,” Ronnie replied. His voice was weak, but steady. “Sure didn’t figure on this. Dreamed of that damned fire a million times…never figured to be the main course at that old witch’s barbecue.”

“It wasn’t her,” Jason repeated.

“Whatever,” Ronnie said, gasping slightly as he sat back too quickly and stretched the burns. “Either way, we can’t just leave Frankie back there.”

Jason was staring into the fire again. Something was itching at him, something that wouldn’t let go no matter how hard he tried to concentrate on Ronnie’s words, and the moment. He was hungry, and tired. His vision swam and the day re-played slowly. The morning, at that same fire, all the laughter, the joking.  When had it turned?

Quick morning sunlight flashes of the trail, and Ronnie’s back, Lizzy’s hand in his tight and her hip close to his, the lake, Frank and Ronnie back-dropped by shimmering waves.

Jason shook his head. The woods, dark, firelight dancing and Ronnie and Frank, moving ahead.  Then—gone.  The figure, swaying, and that voice.

“Jason!”

Lizzy’s voice, frantic. The words echoed through Jason’s thoughts, not really dragging him from the visions, reverberating through them—shifting things again, like ripples—waves. He saw the dock, waves slapping against the wood, jutting out into the middle of nowhere.

“Jason stop it!”

Lizzy slapped him so hard he tumbled over backward from his where he was squatting, falling painfully against the log and cracking his elbow.

“Jesus!” he growled, grabbing his arm and gripping it to his chest.  “What was that for?”

“You keep doing that!” Lizzy said, not backing down. Her eyes flashed and her arms were tight to her chest. “You keep leaving me, going…I don’t know where the hell you’re going. Away. You are here, and you aren’t here, and I need you here. Damn it, Jason, I’ve needed you here for so long I can’t remember and you are not going off into la-la land on me. Not now. Not ever.”

Jason blinked, sitting up. He forgot the pain in his arm quickly. Something deep inside melted, something he’d been suppressing too long.

And something else. The visions had cleared, but not completely. He knew what it was he’d forgotten, and he knew what he had to do.

“Christ!” he said, rising quickly, the banged elbow completely forgotten. “We are getting old.”

“What?” Lizzy was taken aback. She’d clearly expected some reaction, anger, apology— something—but not this.

“I have to get back to the lake,” Jason said, moving toward the tent and his bags. “You’ll have to try and get Ronnie to the truck, go for help.”

“You goin’ south on us, Jason?” Ronnie asked weakly. “What the hell would you want at that lake?  Haven’t you had enough?”

“Not by a long shot,” Jason replied, standing up and wrapping a blanket around his shoulders.  “We’ll have to leave most of this stuff here, come back for it later.”

Lizzy was shaking now.

“What are you talking about?  What do you mean you have to go to the lake.  Jason, what...”

Jason moved quickly to Lizzy’s side and hugged her tightly.

“Trust me this time, okay? I’m not going crazy, and I’m not going off into space somewhere, either.  I’m going to get our past, and our future, back for us.”

“You’re gonna get lost,” Ronnie growled.  He was starting to feel the pain—and the whiskey. “What we need to do is to get the hell out of these woods and get someone back here to find Frank.”

“I’ll find him,” Jason said with certainty. Under his breath he added, “If he’s still out here, I’ll find him and I’ll bring him back.”

“You know the way to the truck, right?” Jason said quickly, releasing the hug and stepping back from Lizzy, who was staring at him now, a mixture of curiosity, anger, painted across her pretty face.

Lizzy nodded, and Jason turned before the others could say anything further. “I’ll try to make it back to the road.  Send help there.”

Without another word, Jason turned and headed off into the woods again, turning down the trail toward the lake. About six yards into the trees, he bent down to scoop something from the frost-covered ground, then he turned away and disappeared.

~ * ~

The trail felt different without the others. It was like taking a side-step into his dreams, into the nightmares. He heard things moving that he wouldn’t have heard, saw shifts of shadow and light that would have slipped past and over his senses with Lizzy gripping his hand.

He was tired, too tired to be hiking, and his thoughts drifted -ahead, behind, all over. The trail curved away and up the mound of the hill leading to the lake, and Jason found he had a hard time concentrating on the shifts in the sloping ground beneath his feet.

He could feel the sun warming his back, but he was cold through to his bones. He was shivering, partly from the cold, but more from fatigue, and a deep, burning nausea that wouldn’t release his guts. He thought and rethought the events of the past two days. Conversations replayed in his mind, echoing, reverberating, the words blending and mixing and swirling back in combinations that made no sense.

It had all been too elaborate, too perfect. The clearing, the cabin, the old woman—even her voice—eerily staged.  Recreated for whose benefit?

Jason’s legs ached, and his head pounded. The daydreams gave him no peace. He blinked, and the sun turned the sparkling frost on the trail into bones, tiny white bones, a carpet of them that crackled and crunched beneath his feet. They twisted and whirled before his tired eyes, forming patterns.  Forming words and faces and shimmering back to frost as he shook his head to clear it, glancing up the trail.

The rise was just ahead where he and Lizzy had paused. He knew that the lake and the dock would be in site within moments. Jason took a deep breath, slowed his pace, and slipped off the trail and into the trees.

Moving more slowly, Jason reached the top of the rise, lowering to one knee and shielding his eyes against the glare of the morning sun. At first he couldn’t see a thing, then, the glare faded slowly and he could make out the waves lapping at the shore.

He saw where their fire had burned itself to ash, and he had a sudden flash. The catfish, skinned, blackened and eaten, nothing but the skeletal remains protruding from the edge of the fire, burning low.  Glowing coals and too-white bones.

Jason shook his head. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open, but he knew he had to go a little longer.

“My kingdom for a double espresso,” he whispered.

Turning he glanced down the shoreline to the dock. Jason stiffened, holding himself very still.  There was a boat, long and sleek, bobbing alongside the tiny pier.  No one was in sight.

Jason watched for a long time, then slipped from the trees and quickly down the beach. He scanned the shoreline constantly, keeping a close watch on the forest at his back, but no one appeared. Moments later he was stepping onto the wooden planks, the sound of the water washing against the boats sides echoing through his mind.

Jason stepped to the side of the polished wooden craft and stared down. A wave of vertigo nearly toppled him into the lake, but he took a deep breath, steadied himself, and turned away quickly. Without hesitation, he ran from the beach and back down the trail.

~ * ~

Jason staggered out of the trees and into the road a little after noon, bleary-eyed and haggard.  His legs and feet ached, and the sweat cooling on his skin had brought uncontrollable shivers. He clutched his arms tightly to his chest and stared down the road toward Random. Nothing in sight.  Cursing softly, he began to stumble back toward town.

He’d only moved a short distance when the roar of an engine sounded in the distance. Jason stepped to the side of the road and leaned on a tree, waiting.

The truck bore down on him quickly. Jason couldn’t make out the driver’s features.  Sunlight was glinting off the windshield, and the tires were churning up a cloud of dust that half-obscured the vehicle from view.

When it pulled along side him, he could see that it was Lizzy behind the wheel. The passenger side seat was empty. Jason breathed a sigh of relief. He was in no condition for showdowns.

He slipped around and dragged himself into the truck carefully, barely stifling a groan as his tortured muscles protested the effort.

“Thank god,” Lizzy said quickly, leaning over to wrap her arms around him. The truck lurched and she cried out, righting herself and putting it in park before returning to the embrace.

“Easy,” he said softly.  “I feel like I’ve been the ball in a two hour soccer game.”

“What happened in there?” she asked?

“I’ll tell you when we get back. How’s Ronnie?”

“He’s at the hospital.  They said the burns will heal, but he’s in for observation.  They tried to keep me, but I told them I had to get back out here.”

“Frank?” Jason said softly.

“He’s at Mae’s,” Lizzy answered. “He won’t come out of his room. Mae says he’s in shock.”

Jason nodded. “Let’s get back there then. I’ve about had it with all of this. It’s time to put it to rest.”

Lizzy looked far from ready to let it all drop, but she turned, put the truck in gear, and started back toward town. Jason watched her for a few moments. Somehow she must have gotten a few moments of rest. He could barely keep his eyelids parted, but Lizzy was glaring at the road, as if daring it to throw anything else her way.

The miles passed in silence. Jason slid his hand to Lizzy’s thigh, letting it rest there as he leaned back into the seat. The multi-colored leaves of the trees blurred to a surreal flash of color and the next thing he knew, there was a sudden jerk, and Lizzy was shaking him by the shoulder.

“Jason, Jason wake up.  We’re back.”

Jason shook his head to clear away the darkness. No dreams.  He’d been sleeping, maybe the first time in his adult life, with no dreams.

Lizzy was already hopping down from the truck, and Jason reached for the handle, popping the door open and sliding tiredly to the ground.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Lizzy asked softly.

Jason stepped closer, drawing her against his chest.

“I will, but you have to trust me. What I have to say—I can’t say it to just you. I need to have Ronnie, and Frank– everyone who was there.  Okay?”

She pulled back, as if she might turn away, and then stopped. Nodding quickly, she fell into his arms.

They turned toward the door then, together. It opened before they could mount the top step. Mae stood, watching them approach with a worried frown.

“You’ll want to know Ronnie is here,” she said. “They told him to stay put, but he wouldn’t hear it.  Said you had his truck.”

Jason almost laughed.

“Come on,” he said softly, drawing Lizzy closer and up the stairs in a single motion. Suddenly his mind was clear, the fatigue dropping away.  “Let’s do this and be done with it.”

They stepped through the hall and into the dining room to find Ronnie propped in a soft, upholstered chair off to one side of the table. His face was tightly wrapped in bandages, as were his hands.  He was sitting so stiff and still that for a moment Jason thought he was asleep.

“You get my truck back in one piece, Lizzy girl?” Ronnie asked. He didn’t move. The words floated out from the figure in the chair as if it were a recording, amplified through speakers.

“The truck is fine,” Jason cut in.  “Where’s Frank?”

“He won’t come out of his room,” Ronnie answered. “Frankie boy got scared, Jason. Can’t say I blame him.”

Jason didn’t answer, but he tugged gently free of Lizzy’s embrace and moved off down the hall.

“Jason, don’t…”

Lizzy stopped. Something in the set of Jason’s shoulders must have tipped her off that it was a pointless plea.

Jason banged on Frank’s door.  Nothing.

“Frank, come out of there,” Jason said. His voice was louder than he’d meant, and he softened it.  “I’m not kidding Frank.”

Nothing.

Cursing, Jason tried the door.  It was locked.

“Mae!” he called out.  “Mae, you got the key? Quick.”

The sound of hurried footsteps, a door closing and Mae was beside him, pushing him to one side and sliding the big brass key into Frank’s bedroom door.

“What is it Jason?” Mae asked.

He ignored her. As the lock clicked, Jason turned the knob and opened the door quickly, stepping past a startled Mae and making straight for the bed, where Frank’s form was clearly visible beneath the blankets.

Jason shook his friend by the shoulder.

“Frank.  Frank wake up.”

Nothing.

Jason cursed and yanked the blanket back.  Frank’s face was pale, his features slack.

Mae had moved up beside the bed, and after one quick glance, she gasped and ran from the room.

“Call for an ambulance,” Jason instructed unnecessarily.  “Hurry.

There was nothing he could do for Frank, so Jason turned away and moved past the bed, toward the small desk along the wall.  There was a laptop open on the wooden surface, the cursor blinking slowly on a white background. Text covered the screen. Jason watched that blink, standing very still.  A moment later, Lizzy was at his side.

Gripping her arm tightly, Jason led her to the desk.

“What is it, Jason?” she asked? Lizzy was turning, watching Frank. Already the sound of sirens ripped through the night. Beside the laptop, a small bottle lay open. Jason reached out and snagged it, trying to read the label and unable to focus on it. It didn’t matter. Whatever they were, Frank had taken all of them.

“Give this to Mae,” Jason whispered, sliding the bottle into Lizzy’s hand.

“But…”

“Go,” Jason said.  “Then come back.”

As she moved to comply, Jason was already leaning in to study the screen of the laptop.

“Jesus,” he said softly.  “Jesus fucking Christ, Frank...”

Jason slid the red button that moved the cursor to the “save” icon and clicked once, then, when the machine had stopped whirring, he hit the power button and closed the top.

Without a word, he turned toward the door. Several men in white suits moved about behind him, working over Frank’s body. Jason knew he was gone. He’d been listening through the haze that was the remnant of thought. He’d heard the words, registering them only now that his mind was returning to the world.

Lizzy was waiting just outside the door, and Jason slipped his arm around her waist.

“Let’s get some rest,” he said softly.

They stopped long enough to help Ronnie to his feet, and then into a room. There was no way the big man was driving, and it was getting late. Mae fussed around them all, wanting to cook, or to talk, or to make coffee, anything but to see them all disappear, as they did, into separate rooms.

Later, when Frank’s body was carried from the house, the sheet pulled up and tucked tightly over his head, the others slept.

ENDINGS

The services were spectacular. Once the press got hold of the news, famous horror writer returns to his hometown—to die—Halloween weekend—there was no keeping them away. Random had never seen anything like it, nor had Jason, Lizzy, or Ronnie. They stood, silent and grim, as a world-famous preacher spoke words about some man none of them had ever known for a world-wide audience. The words washed over and away. The reality of Frank’s body, peaceful, as if sleeping the first real sleep of his life, filled their sight.

Then it was over, and the trucks rolled out. The press packed up, tired of asking the same questions to the same people and satisfied they had all they needed to provide the “true story” to the world. They stowed their cameras and notepads and drove off, heading for the closest airport.

Jason watched as one after another of them disappeared without a backward glance. He was leaning back in one of the chairs on the porch of Macomber’s General Store.  Bob held down one of the other chairs, Lizzy sat beside Jason, and Ronnie was perched on the rail, a bit of his cockiness returned to him as the burns had begun to heal.

“Not sorry to see ‘em go,” Bob said slowly.  “Not a bit of that boy Frank in any of it.”

Jason nodded, then reached down beside his seat for a yellow envelope he’d set on the floor.

“You got that right, Bob, but there’s more to the story.”

“‘Bout time you said so,” Ronnie growled. “I knew you didn’t wander off into the woods like a crazy man with no reason.”

“Not crazy,” Jason said, agreeing.  He opened the envelope slowly.

“I wanted to share this with you before,” he said, “but I thought maybe we’d be sharing it with Frank too.” Jason took a deep breath. “When he was gone, well, I guess I figured they just didn’t need to know.”  He waved toward the fleet of cars leaving town.  “Nobody did.”

They were all quiet. Lizzy moved closer so she could lean her head on his shoulder, and Ronnie popped the top on a Budweiser, holding it awkwardly in his bandaged hands. Bob just rocked, waiting quietly.

Jason shuffled the papers for a moment, then spoke.

“Frank was writing while he was here. He was working on a new novel, but it ended up— something else. You’ve all read his other books, so you know the characters—you know the story. Most of it, anyway. I wanted to just tell you. I wanted to tell you what I found…but when I saw this, I knew Frank could tell it better.  He could always tell the stories better.

“Before I go on,” he reached into his jacket pocket slowly, “I’ll tell you what I found…what I guessed. You remember, Ronnie, what I said about that dock? The one that shouldn’t have been there?”

Ronnie nodded.

“Well, it was back for a reason. When I went back, I found a boat there. Frank’s boat. I ran the license number just to be certain.”

“Why would Frank have had a boat?” Lizzy asked. “Why there? He hasn’t been here. He hasn’t…”

”You know the answer to that if you think about it,” Jason said softly. “Frank has been coming back here for years. He has a lot of money. Sometimes I forget just how much, and just what one can do with that sort of money.

“Frank told us that he got through his nightmares by writing the story. By telling the world, he exorcized his demons.  We never were very good at telling when Frank lied.”

“The boat, Jason,” Ronnie cut in, sipping his beer. “What about the damned boat?”

“Figured you would have guessed,” Jason replied. “You asked us yourself how someone could have gotten all that stuff in there and rebuilt that shack without anyone knowing.  Someone did. He brought in the materials from across the lake at in Pendleton, and he worked fast. He counted on you to return there. Probably figured you went every year. He couldn’t get the images out of his head, no matter how many times he wrote them, so he brought it back to life.”

“Holy shit,” Ronnie whispered.

Jason began to read.

“He watched Ronnie stagger from the shack, hands to his face to clutch his burned flesh. He wanted to call out, to go to his friend and help him, but he could not.  If he did, it wouldn’t work.

He turned and watched as the old woman danced, cackling the words he’d scripted so carefully from memory. She was nearly perfect. If he closed his eyes, he could see the clearing of years past, could see his friends, young, their lives ahead of them, wide-eyed and frightened.

The walls were collapsing, and he moved away. No sense being trapped in the flames. Enough flames in his dreams.  Enough flames for a lifetime of nightmares.

The images were already reforming in his mind. The story, shifting, changing just enough that he could put it—again—in words, that he could drive it into the shadows and keep it there, hold it all at bay.

It was supposed to end now. All of it. He heard the crashing steps of his friends, rushing through the woods. He saw, again and again, the burned, ruined flesh of Ronnie’s face.  He heard Jason, crying out, calling for him. He heard the anguish in their voices. He ignored it. The words called him back.  The bones spoke to his soul.

He had never been able to forget the pattern. The intricate, bone on bone on ground symmetry of the universe. The pattern swirled, the plot rewrote itself in his mind. It didn’t end.  None of it ended, ever.  Nothing ended but the relief, and that ended all too quickly.

He moved off into the woods, not toward the camp, but toward the road. He knew a car would be waiting. Everything had been planned. Everything had been staged and scripted and rehearsed.  No good.  It was all no good.

He still saw that pattern, dancing behind his eyelids, denying sleep...denying rest. The words whirled and spun, dancing through his mind and begging for release.  The story was there, and he could follow that line, write it out. Share it. Bare another piece of his soul, and of those who mattered most, but all it would do was spawn the next story.

The woman, and the others he’d hired and trained, would find their way out. The boat was waiting to ferry them across the lake and out—out of his life, out of the story. The old woman’s cackling voice remained. He heard her words, not the words being spoken, but the words he couldn’t forget.

Frank saw his mother’s face, and his father’s, strobing. Tears slid down his cheeks, and the too-bright, maddened eyes of the old woman rose to blur the vision.

Lot of things your Daddy didn’t tell you.

“No,” he whispered. The pattern ate at his soul.

And so he drove, parking just outside Random and wandering into town on foot. No explanation—no words. A quick stagger into Mae’s and disappearing into his room. To the keyboard.  To the words.  To the bottle and the pills.

I know you’ll find this Jason. Read carefully. The pattern is just a scramble of bones. Your life is your own—and Lizzy’s, now. You know the story, I’ve written it before. No reason to finish this one.

Ronnie, you surprised me. In the end, you almost saw through it all to me. I couldn’t let that happen, you know? You were the bully. The evil one. You couldn’t be my friend, I never would have allowed it.  Not in the script.

Money is good for a lot of things. Some people use it to forget their past. I used the money I built up rewriting my past to bring it to life. I don’t think I’ve slept in ten years. Not real sleep. I won’t dream those dreams. I wish I could. Wish I had your strength. I write them. Late at night, early morning.  Her voice dictates and I transcribe.

Nothing left now, nothing but lights that flicker too brightly and words that are blurring so I can barely type.  The pills do that.

I wanted to fix it. I wanted to write it and play it out so we could all be free. I wanted to be the hero.

Not in the cards—not in the bones. Can’t type, so I will say…goodbye. She was right, you know.  She was right.  No deed atones.

I hope you find your futures.”

Jason let the papers drop to his lap and fell silent.

“Jason?” It was Lizzy, her voice very quiet, yet carrying through the silence.

“Jason, what did you see at the lake?  How did you know?”

“I found the boat,” Jason replied quietly. “I didn’t know for sure whose it was. I still thought it might be Ronnie at that point.  No way I could believe that after this.”

He drew his hand from his pocket. He held a copy of a novel. The novel was not one any of them had read, but a new work.  The cover was marked “Advance Reading Copy.”  The title read “You Can Go Back Again.”

Jason tossed it on the wooden floor, and reached once again into his pocket. He drew that hand forth in a slow arc, tossing the bones he’d grabbed in the forest, what had once been a bird, and he tossed them into the air. They tumbled, spinning in white, gleaming arcs toward the cover of the book, rebounding and bounding in patterns, spreading over the floor.

Without a word, Jason rose, taking Lizzy by the hand, and walked toward Mae’s. The night was drawing over them like a cloak, and for the first time in years, he believed he might sleep.

About the Author

David Niall Wilson has been writing and publishing horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction since the mid-eighties.  An ordained minister, once President of the Horror Writer's Association and multiple recipient of the Bram Stoker Award, his novels include Maelstrom, The Mote in Andrea's Eye, Deep Blue, the Grails Covenant Trilogy, Star Trek Voyager: Chrysalis, Except You Go Through Shadow, This is My Blood, Ancient Eyes, On the Third Day, The Orffyreus Wheel, and Vintage Soul – Book One of the DeChance Chronicles. The Stargate Atlantis novel “Brimstone,” written with Patricia Lee Macomber is due in of 2010. He has over 150 short stories published in anthologies, magazines, and five collections, the most recent of which were "Defining Moments" published in 2007 by WFC Award winning Sarob Press, and the currently available “Ennui & Other States of Madness,” from Dark Regions Press.  His work has appeared in and is due out in various anthologies and magazines.  David lives and loves with Patricia Lee Macomber in the historic William R. White House in Hertford, NC with their children, Billy, Zach, Zane, and Katie, and occasionally their genius college daughter Stephanie.

You can find more about David and his work at his website:

Glimpes Into An Overactive Mind

You can find more of David's work on Kindle and other e-Readers, as well as audiobooks at:  Crossroad Press

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