Mystery Walk

Zachary returned to the pickup and climbed in, shivering to his bones.

Full dark covered the forest. Staring into the night through slitted eyes, Ramona had a sense of low-lying clouds running before the wind, just above the swaying treetops. All the world seemed in dark, tumultuous motion, but she had concentrated on rooting herself to the earth, on bending like a reed when the wind swept past so she wouldn't be knocked off her feet. She could feel the Hangman's Oak behind her, its old evil pulsating like a diseased heart. It would have to be cut down, the stump dug up like a rotten tooth, the crater salted. Above her its heavy branches stirred like the arms of a huge gray octopus. Dead leaves spun up from the ground and snapped at her cheeks.

'Do you want some light?' Stanton shouted from the truck. When the woman didn't even move, he glanced uneasily at Zachary and said, 'I guess she don't.' He fell into silence, wishing he'd brought along a snort of moonshine to keep warm and to keep from thinking about what moved along this road in the dead of night.

Headlights glinted through the pines. Ramona's eyes opened fully. The shape grew nearer; it was an old Packard with an ancient black man behind the wheel. The car slowed enough for the driver to get a good look at her, standing before the Hangman's Oak, and then the car accelerated away. Ramona relaxed again. She had decided she would wait for as long as it took, even though she could feel the life within her aching for warmth. The child would have to grow up strong, she thought, and would have to get used to hardships.

Almost three hours later, Stanton stirred and blew into his cupped hands. 'What's she doin'?' he asked, straining to see through the darkness.

'Nothing,' the minister replied. 'She's still standing there. We were wrong to bring her out here, Sam. This whole thing is wrong.'

'I don't think it's gonna happen tonight, parson. Maybe she's scared it off.'

'I just don't know.' Zachary shook his head in awe and bewilderment; his dark brown eyes had gone softly despairing. 'Maybe it's all been talk—probably has been—but maybe . . . just maybe she can do something. Maybe if she believes she can, then . . .' He let his voice trail off. A few drops of cold rain spotted the windshield. Zachary's palms were wet and clammy, and had been since they'd brought the woman out here. He had agreed to ask the woman for help after he'd heard the stories, but now he was truly afraid. There seemed nothing of God in what she could do—if she actually had done those things—and he felt marked with sin. He nodded. 'All right. Let's take her home.'

They got out of the truck and approached her. The temperature had fallen again, and frequent drops of rain struck their faces. 'Mrs. Creekmore?' Zachary called out. 'You've got to give it up now!' Ramona didn't move. 'Mrs. Creekmore!' he shouted again, trying to outshout the blustering wind. And then he suddenly stopped where he was, because he thought he'd seen something flicker like blue fire on the road, just beyond the curve through the screen of dancing pines. He stared, unable to move.

Ramona was stepping out into the road, between the oncoming thing and the Hangman's Oak. Behind the minister, Stanton shouted, 'I see it! My God, I see it!' Zachary could see roiling streaks of blue, but nothing of any definite shape. He shouted, 'What is it? What do you see?' But by then Stanton was shocked speechless; the man made a soft moaning noise from deep in his throat and was almost pitched to one side by a freight-train roar of wind.

Ramona could see it clearly. The pickup truck was outlined in blue flame; it was gliding soundlessly toward her, and as it neared she could make out the windshield wipers going full speed, and behind them the faces of a man and woman. The woman wore a bonnet, her face as round as an apple and beaming with anticipation of the dance. Suddenly the man's brown, seamed face contorted in surprised pain, and his hands left the steering wheel to clasp his temples. Ramona stood at the road's center, the blue-flaming headlights bearing steadily upon her.

Stanton's voice came out in a wild shout: 'Get out of the way!'

Ramona held her hands out toward the blue truck and said quietly, 'No fear. No pain. Only peace and rest.' It seemed she could hear the engine now, and the tires shrieking as the truck slipped and veered across the road, picking up speed for its rendezvous with the Hangman's Oak. The woman in her bonnet was reaching desperately for the wheel; beside her the man writhed, his mouth open in a soundless scream.

'No fear,' Ramona said. The truck was less than ten feet away. 'No pain. Only peace and rest. Let go. Let go. Let . . .' As the blue flame bore down on her she heard Stanton cry out in terror, and she felt a crushing pain in her head that must've been a blood vessel bursting in Joe Rawlings's brain. She felt the woman's confusion and horror. Her jaw clenched tight to hold back an agonized scream. And then the blue-burning pickup truck struck full-force into her.

What Zachary and Stanton saw, they weren't sure. Afterward, they never spoke of it between them. When that truck hit the woman it seemed to collapse like a balloon exploding, and it was all a hazy blue mist as it lengthened and seemed to soak right into her body like water into a sponge. Stanton saw details—the truck, the passengers' faces—while Zachary was aware only of a presence, a swirl of blue mist, and the strange odor of burning rubber. They both saw Ramona Creekmore stagger backward, blue mist churning before her, and she gripped her head as if it were about to explode.

Then it was gone; all of it, gone. The wind seethed like something darkly hideous that had been deprived of a plaything. But the blue-flaming pickup truck was burned into Sam Stanton's eyes, and if he lived to be two hundred years old he'd never forget the sight of it disappearing into that witch-woman's body.

Ramona staggered out of the road and fell to her knees in the grass. For a long moment the two men were reluctant to move. Zachary heard himself whispering the Twenty-third Psalm, and then somehow he got his legs moving. Ramona groaned softly and rolled over on her back, her hands pressed to her stomach.

Stanton came up behind Zachary as the minister bent over Ramona Creekmore. The woman's face had gone gray, and there was blood on her lower lip where she'd bitten through. She clasped her stomach, looking up at the men with dazed and frightened eyes.

Stanton felt as if he'd been slugged with a sledgehammer. 'Sweet Jesus, parson!' he managed to say. 'This woman's about to have her baby!'

ONE

1

Struggling through his arithmetic homework in the warm glow of the hearth, the dark-haired ten-year-old boy suddenly looked up at the window. He was aware that the soft crooning of the wind had stopped and a deep silence had filled the woods. He could see bare branches waving against a gray slice of sky, and a quiver of excitement coursed through him. He put aside his pencil, pad, and book—gladly—and then rose from where he'd been lying on the floor. Something was different, he knew; something had changed. He reached the window and stretched upward to peer out.

At first nothing looked different, and he was mildly disappointed; all those numbers and additions and subtractions were rattling around in his head, clinking and clattering and making too much noise for him to think. But then his eyes widened, because he'd seen the first flurry of white flakes scatter down from the sky. His heart skipped a beat. 'Daddy!' he said excitedly. 'It's snowing!'

Reading his Bible in his chair before the fireplace, John Creekmore looked out the window and couldn't suppress a grin. 'Well, it sure is!' He leaned forward, just as amazed as his son. 'Glory be, weatherman was right for once.' It rarely snowed this far south in Alabama; the last big snowfall he could recall was back in 1954, when Billy had been only three years old. That had been the winter they'd had to accept charity canned goods from the church, after the stone-scorching summer had burned the corn and bean crops to stunted cinders. Compared to that awful year, the last few crops had been real bounties, though John knew it was never a good thing to feel too blessed, because the Lord could easily take away what He had provided. At least they had enough to eat this year, and some money to see them through the rest of the winter. But now he was infected with Billy's giddy excitement, and he stepped to the window to watch the flurries beside his son.

'Might fall all night long,' he said. 'Might be up to the roof by mornin'!'

'Gosh!' Billy said, his light hazel eyes—so striking against the darker coloring he'd inherited from his mother —widening with pleasure and a bit of fear too; he could imagine them all getting very cold and hibernating like bears, snowed in until April when the flowers came out. 'It won't be that deep, will it?'