I propped an elbow on the window frame and watched as a blur of black, white, and green passed by. Cows and fields. Wouldn’t life be easier if that’s all there was to it? Cows and fields. “And then he’ll go on to a better place.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in anything like that.” He turned the wheel, and we jounced down a rutted dirt road. “That you thought we simply stopped existing.”
“Who’s to say not being isn’t better than all this?” I could see a house through the trees, flashes of faded rose brick. “One long nap. Maybe you haven’t taken a really great nap, Allgood, but I have. I’ll take that over fluffy clouds and annoying harp music anytime, thanks.”
He didn’t call me on a philosophy that wasn’t precisely dripping with sunshine and roses. After all, he had a file on my past-on Tess, my mother, that nightmare bastard Boyd. What I’d done. He knew I came by my beliefs honestly. He knew what had made me.
Or unmade me, depending on your point of view.
“This it?” I went on. I rolled down the window, and the cloying smell of honeysuckle drenched the hot air that flooded the car.
“The first,” Hector confirmed. “File’s on top.”
I fished the folder up off the floorboards and paged through it. I was sure I looked ludicrous, thumbing the pages with black gloves that didn’t exactly go with the jeans and green long-sleeved T-shirt I’d packed. That was the thing about the gloves; they went with the whole All Seeing Eye gig but not so much with the casual look of a good old Southern boy. Forgetting about my ego for a moment, I scanned the pages. The house was dated back to the late seventeen hundreds. A man, Jeremiah Farrell, had built it for his wife, Felicity. They’d lived there and multiplied. Damn, and had they multiplied. Thirteen kids in thirteen years. Apparently, they’d also been a robust family, and infant mortality just passed them by. By year fourteen, Mrs. Farrell had either had enough or had flat-out lost her mind. There wasn’t any postpartum depression back in those days; there was only crazy. And sometimes there was pure homicidal mania.
Felicity killed them all. Every last one. But unlike Lizzie, she didn’t stick to an axe. Her husband was a hunting man, as all men were back in the day. She hacked and shot and bludgeoned until the wooden floors coursed with blood, a blood that never came clean. To this day, the floors shone ruby in the light.
Or so the story went.
It was a legend that had lived for hundreds of years. Trouble was, it couldn’t be backed up by any records. There had been a Jeremiah and Felicity Farrell, and they had had several children. That had been confirmed by an old church registry. There could’ve been a murder… or seven or ten. Or they could’ve moved back to the Old Country or out West. It was all lost in the mists of time. Until me.
Great.
We pulled up to the house… or what was left of it. The porch was a sagging disaster area, and the windows and front door were boarded up. I climbed out of the car and glanced askance at the moldering ruin. “Not exactly on the tour of historic houses, I take it.”
“Not quite. They’re working on it, I hear.” As Hector strode through the knee-high weeds, I heard the rustle of a snake heading for the high ground. “Preserving history is an admirable goal.”
“Yeah? I don’t see any historical society lining up to support my ass, and I’m all about history.” I looked up at the second story, which was covered by a creeping wall of poison ivy. “And I’m much better-looking than this heap.”
“A great opportunity missed on their part, I’m sure.” He went to the trunk and pulled out a crowbar. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll have us inside.”
Ah, that would be hell no.
“I am not going in there, Hector. No way, no how.” I made my way through the weeds to the porch and pulled off a glove. “If fourteen murders actually took place here, I’ll just have to touch a wall to know. I don’t need to be feeling around for phantom blood on the floor. Jesus. You want to see another seizure?”
“I stand corrected.” After leaning the crowbar against the car, he followed me. I’d started to climb up onto the porch, but after a good look at the gaping holes and the warped wood, I headed for the side of the house. It was doubtful the wooden front structure was original to the home, anyway.
Clenching my bare hand into a fist for a moment, I sucked in a deep breath. “Okay. If I look like I’m swallowing my tongue, do me a favor and shove me away from the wall. You know, if you’re not too busy taking notes.”
“I have a near-photographic memory,” he countered impassively. “I’ll transcribe them later.”
“Smart-ass,” I muttered. Then, giving up on stalling any further, I stretched out my hand hesitantly, Charlie’s excruciating death still firmly in mind, and touched warm brick.
I saw it.
I saw it all.
Every year. Every day. Every moment.
Love. Hate. Hunger. Warmth. Laughter. Tears. Loss. Abandonment.
Blood.
Death.
But no more so than usual in a house that had lived so long. I dropped my hand and pulled my glove back on. “The only thing Felicity Farrell killed was her husband’s sex drive when she threatened to treat his dick like a chicken neck and give it the chop. And after thirteen kids, who could blame the woman?”
“No violence, then?”
“Not the kind you’re talking about. A few fights. Someone’s granny fell down the stairs and broke her neck, but no murders. Although Lily Ann’s dog ate her sister’s rabbit. I guess the rabbit might call that murder.” I swatted at a deerfly buzzing about my head. “So, one down, how many to go?”
“Too many.” Hector grunted and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Sweat. The man was actually human after all. Someone write that down. Oh, wait, Hector had a near-photographic memory. He could simply remind me later. I ducked the fly again and headed back to the car.
“When do we stop for lunch?” I called over my shoulder. “I’m starving. Not that the yogurt wasn’t a filling breakfast-you really know how to keep your psychics happy.”
“I believe I liked it better when you were sullen and silent.” Hector moved past me and got behind the wheel.
“As opposed to?” I drawled, slamming the car door shut after I slid into the passenger seat.
“Sullen and sarcastic.”
• • •
Lunch was a long time coming. We went through two more ancient houses and a feed store and finally ended up at a cave. The houses had come up dry, and the feed store had been host to one murder, though not the massacre legend had painted. And apparently, that was not enough violence to make it a target for Charlie. The cave, Hector promised, was the last one before we ate, and I was holding him to it. No food, no mojo.
“We’re here.”
I wasn’t dozing, not really, but the voice was jarring nonetheless. Too many winding Georgia roads, too much hot sun through the windows. I last remembered a spill of rotten fruit along an orchard we’d passed. Red, gold, and brown, the peaches had rolled free of a wicker basket. As pictures went, it was sad in a way, wistful, but it was beautiful, too.
“Where’s here?” I muttered, rubbing tired eyes. “The hole in the ground?”
“Yes, Carlson Caverns. Sawney Beane’s American summer home.” Hector stared through the windshield, and his mouth twitched minutely, which I’d come to recognize as his version of a scowl. “Tourists. Look at all the tourists.”
It was more than a few. There were dozens of people milling about the gravel parking lot in front of the path that, per the huge sign, led to the cavern.
“What are you, a vacation Grinch?” I yawned. “And who the hell is Sawney Beane?” The name actually sounded vaguely familiar, but I was tired and starving and not in the mood to chase the thought around my weary brain.
He checked his watch, decided the tourists weren’t going to dematerialize to suit him, and turned to address my question. “He was head of a legendary family of cannibals. The Beane clan supposedly lived in a Scottish cave in
