Cry Baby Hollow (2 page)

She crunched along at barely twenty miles an hour and was aware that even at that snail’s pace, she was dangerously exceeding her visibility. She hit a pothole and her iPhone sailed out of its cradle and hung down by the wire, flopping against the gear shift with every jolt of the rough road. She reached over to grab it, taking her eyes off the road only for a moment, but when she looked back she saw a pair of luminous eyes directly ahead of her. She slammed on the brakes and came to a skidding halt, throwing up a tide of gravel and stopping mere inches from the frozen deer. When her heart stopped pounding, she tapped her horn and made a shooing motion at it. It turned its head away from her, looking out into the fog, but it didn’t move.

“Idiot,” she swore, unbuckling her seat belt. She opened her door and put one leg out, half-standing.

“Get,” she told the deer sternly over the top of her door. It looked back at her; its huge, dark eyes glowing brightly in the beam from her headlights. She saw its legs, mere inches from her front bumper, trembling.

She glanced over her shoulder and shuddered. There was no way that she was backing all the way to the turn-off, not in the middle of the night with a heavy fog, and certainly not in a car that was less than three months old. She gauged the width of the road, wondering if she could make a three points turn.

“Get,” she snapped again, peeved that the animal was so shaken by its near-miss that it couldn’t get out of her way. She picked up a handful of loose gravel from the road and stepped further out of her car so that she could be sure of not hitting its hood. She chucked the gravel at the deer, underhand, trying to scare it into flight. It flinched as the gravel rained down on it and shifted nervously from side to side, but it didn’t budge.

“God damn it,” she muttered, looking at her watch. It was almost eleven. She stepped out and slammed her door shut with enough force to rock the car. Taking a menacing step toward the animal, she waved her arms over her head.

“You’re supposed to be skittish,” she shouted at it with her mind awash in thoughts of rabies and lime disease. She stepped up reluctantly to shove it away.

It waited until she was within arm’s length and then darted out of reach, just outside the pool of her headlights. Aubrey saw another set of eyes below and behind it and wondered if it was a mother, and if its strange behavior were somehow meant to protect its fawn. She decided it was far enough out of the way for her to pass and was just turning to go, when it let out a terrifying scream that she never would have imagined a deer was capable of, and lurched around directly at her. She felt something moist hit her face and heard a noise somewhere between a laugh and growl come echoing out of the fog. She wiped at her face and then looked at her hand. It was covered in bright red blood.

She jumped behind the wheel, slammed the car into reverse, and floored it. The car leapt backward, and she cut the wheel hard. Her front tires left the gravel and hit the soft dirt of the shoulder. They spun uselessly for a moment before catching and sending her hurtling back the way she had come. As she came around she had one final sight of the deer.

It was laying in the center of the road, its back to her, and she could see one of its legs sticking nearly straight up in the air, twitching spastically. Its head thrashed and something crouched behind it, a looming shadow that used the deer’s body as a shield from the light as it tore at its belly. The last thing she saw before the dark and fog engulfed the ghastly scene was the huge, full moon eyes of the deer turning toward her entreatingly. It was still alive, and resting on its flank she saw what looked like a hand, holding it still. Aubrey gagged.

She traversed the lake road and made it to Vina’s in record time, her heart pounding in her chest as she checked the rearview mirror every few seconds. She took the turn into Vina’s at high speed, and when she hit the bump where the gravel road met Vina’s paved driveway, her iPhone bounced free again. This time she let it dangle.

Aubrey pulled up the drive and careened to a halt as close to the front path as she could. She hopped out and dashed up to the house, taking the front steps two at a time.

She hit the doorbell, glancing over her shoulder into the fog, and stepped to the right of the door out of long habit.

Vina was partial to thrusting open the door with an abruptness designed to startle the person on the other side into hopping backward and falling down the front steps. It was an old trick of hers. She had, to the best of Aubrey’s knowledge, the only out-swinging front door in existence. If you asked her why, she would tell you with a good deal of fake authority, how it was harder to batter down or force your way in through an out-swinging door. If you had the guts to ask her who she thought was going to try to force their way into a somewhat decrepit looking farmhouse that was surrounded by national forest and a ten minute drive from the nearest road sign, she would confide, depending on her mood and how much of an idiot she thought you were, either that the ATF had been looking for an excuse to take her out of the equation for years now, that zombie incursions always started in rural areas no matter what the government claimed, or (and this was Aubrey’s personal favorite as a child) she would point to the forbidding forest that loomed all around and simply whisper “werewolves”. Tonight, with memories of the deer fresh in her mind, Aubrey didn’t think it was very funny at all.

When the bell failed to bring a response, Aubrey began pounding on the door with the heel of her hand. After a few minutes, her heart still racing and her hand growing sore, she dashed back to the car, jumped in, and locked it. She picked up her cell phone and dialed Vina’s number.

“Hi,” Vina’s voice said after two rings. “I ain’t gonna be home tonight on account of we’re all going over to visit with Germaine, and then I have to take Betty home ‘cause she can’t drive until she gets her cataract surgery. By the time I get back I’m gonna be tired so don’t bother leaving a message and don’t call back until tomorrow. If this is Aubrey, I left you a key under the gnome in case you show up early, which is rude, by the way. Wait for me in the kitchen and help yourself to the booze.” BEEP.

Aubrey swore under her breath. If you’re going to tell the whole world where the key is, why not just leave the door open? It would be a hell of a lot more convenient since the gnome was in the backyard, halfway down to the lake, buried amid the sea of hostas that surrounded a venerable old oak tree.

Aubrey reached into her bag and pulled out her mini-maglight and her stun gun. She switched off the safety and pressed the button to test it. A thick band of electricity arced between the two prongs on the top, and a crackling sound like bacon being thrown into a hot pan pierced the air. Aubrey stepped out of the car and did a slow 360° turn, flipping on her flashlight and shining it in every direction. Seeing nothing but fog, she left the driveway and started cautiously down the stepping stones that led beside the house and toward the lake. The fog grew thicker the closer to the water she got, and played odd tricks with sound. She heard a car crunching along on gravel, but she knew from experience that that could be all the way on the other side of the lake, and at one point she stood stock still, convinced that she heard footsteps close behind her.

She had to leave the path to reach the hostas and the lawn had been freshly mowed. Wet clumps of the cuttings instantly coated her shoes, and whenever she hit a particularly large patch she lost her footing and slid. By the time she found the oak and began pushing the fat leafed plants aside with her foot, searching for the gnome in their midst, she was thoroughly annoyed.

“Well, hello there,” said a voice, inches from her ear.

She spun around and was confronted by a wall of a man standing well inside her personal space. The thin beam from her inadequate flashlight played along his face, but all that registered was his leering grin and the sledge hammer he carried casually propped against his shoulder. She jabbed the stun gun into his abdomen and hit the button.

He fell to the ground, looking more shocked than hurt, and twitched.

The flood lights on the back of Vina’s house came on and the reflection from the fog made the entire backyard instantly bright. Aubrey looked up and saw Vina standing a dozen steps away, feet planted shoulder distance apart, arms crossed against her chest. She was barely five feet tall, might have weighed a hundred pounds if she was carrying two bags of flour, and admitted to being ninety-two, though everyone suspected she was lying by at least five years, and yet she still looked as intimidating as a center lineman.

“Which part of ‘The Key is Under the Gnome’ did you not get?” Vina demanded by way of a greeting.

Then she caught sight of Aubrey’s blood spattered face and the man lying on the ground at her feet.

“Jesus Almighty,” she exclaimed. “You’ve killed Joe.”

CHAPTER TWO

There was no
way they could m
ove him, so they just stood over his prostrate form, waiting silently. As soon as he opened his eyes and started to get up Vina asked, “Did ya piss yourself?”

He shook his head.

“I think I hit my head on the sledge when I fell, though,” he told her, getting shakily to his feet.

“Damn, I thought they were supposed to piss themselves,” she told Aubrey accusingly.

“I could sure use a beer,” Joe said in the thick, regionally unspecific accent of a TV southerner. He abandoned the sledge hammer on the lawn and staggered toward the house.

Vina shot Aubrey a look of scorn and took his arm, helping him up the back steps.

Once he was seated at the big table in the kitchen, a beer in hand, Vina rounded on Aubrey.

“Just what the hell were you doing?”

“Me?” Aubrey squeaked. “I was looking for the gnome. What was
he
doing walking around in the fog with a sledge hammer in the middle of the night?”

Vina grabbed her by the sleeve and dragged her to the front door. She flicked the light switch, slid back the deadbolt and opened it. Stepping out, she pointed down. Aubrey glanced over her shoulder and saw the gnome, standing guard just below the doorbell.

“I didn’t see it there,” she said lamely. “I thought you meant the one in the hostas.”

“Why the hell would I put the key all the way back there?” Vina demanded. “Just because my idiot step-children are trying to have me declared incompetent don’t mean I am.”

She turned and stalked back to the kitchen, leaving Aubrey to shut off the light and lock up.

When Aubrey came back into the kitchen, Joe was looking better and working on a second beer. She took a moment to examine him. Tall and broad, he wore jeans and a plaid shirt unbuttoned far enough to show off well-defined muscles and a deep tan. His hair was light brown fading to gold where the sun hit it and his eyes, when he looked up at her, were a gentle blue. He had deep smile lines and crow’s feet at the edges of his eyes, making his age hard to guess, but she put him at around forty. He looked oddly familiar but he was handsome enough that Aubrey was sure she would have remembered him if they’d met.

“This is Aubrey,” Vina told him, pointedly ignoring her.

“I gathered as much,” he drawled and stood, extending his hand.

Aubrey realized she was still clutching the stun gun. She flicked the safety on and set it down on the counter.

“I’m sorry I startled you,” he told her, grinning. “I was out of beer and I remembered I’d left some here when I cut the grass today so I headed over. It’s closer than the store.”

She shook the offered hand, feeling awful. She had electrocuted him and he was the one apologizing. His hand was huge, completely engulfing hers but he shook it gently and released it reluctantly.

“So you’re the infamous Joe?” Aubrey asked, giving him the once over. She had heard stories about him, of course. Nothing happened in the hollow that wasn’t endlessly chewed over, but in her minds eye the fishing, lawn mowing, beer drinking Joe had been older, fatter, and considerably less polite.

“Tuesdays I am,” he told her. “The rest of the week I drop the infamous and just go by Joe.”

“Do you always carry a sledge hammer?”

“Once I got close, I saw the light around the back of the house so I came to check things out. We’ve had some boys takin’ out mailboxes and I thought they might have moved up to felonies. I picked up the sledge from beside the garage just in case.”

“I’m very sorry,” Aubrey told him.

“Why are you covered in blood?” Vina finally asked, apparently forgiving her now that she had apologized.

“There was a deer,” she tried to think of a way to explain the incident on the road, the sense of malice and impending disaster it had instilled in her.

“You hit it with that?” Vina asked, pointing to the stun gun.

“You are from the city,” Joe said with a chuckle. “The deer in these parts aren’t known to be vicious.”

Aubrey shook her head.

“My car…”

When she didn’t finish, Joe got up from the table and walked shakily to the front door. Aubrey saw a line of grass clippings stuck to his back where he’d fallen on the wet lawn. He flipped the lights back on and walked down the steps of the front porch to her car, with Vina and Aubrey trailing behind.

He stood in front of it, shaking his head.

“You hit a deer with this little toy, and the deer didn’t win?” He said in amazement.

“It’s a Mini Cooper,” Aubrey told him, “not a toy, and I didn’t hit it.”

Vina looked at her questioningly.

“It was in the middle of the road, and I barely stopped in time. I was trying to get it to move when something attacked it.”

“Something?” Joe asked.

“Bear?” She suggested, not believing it herself.

Joe shook his head and headed back inside.

“The only bear around here are blacks, and they don’t attack deer. They might charge a person if they get between them and their cubs, but not a deer. Probably coyotes or wolves.”

“Wolves?” Aubrey sputtered. “There haven’t been wolves in the Smokey Mountains in ages.”

“They been breeding red wolves in captivity,” Vina told her as they followed Joe back to the kitchen. “They started releasing ‘em into the wild a while back on account of them being nearly extinct. It’s had all the farmer’s panties in a bunch.”

“I thought I saw a hand…” Aubrey told them reluctantly.

“Was it shot?” Joe asked, confused.

Aubrey shook her head.

“I didn’t hear anything but a growl but I really think I saw a hand… And eyes. They were glowing in the headlights.”

“People eyes don’t reflect like that,” Joe told her. “I’d bet it’s just coyotes. Should I go move the carcass before someone else hits it?” He asked Vina.

Aubrey shuddered.

“I’m not going back out there,” she told them.

“Where’d this happen?” Joe asked Aubrey.

“On the lake road.”

“It’s got a name now,” Vina told her proudly. “Red Bank Road on account of all the Indians that got slaughtered there.”

Local legend held that there had been a massacre in the hollow, which was where Murder Creek got its name, and that if you walked along it in the moonlight its banks still glowed red with blood. More recently, the entire area around the lake had been dubbed Cry Baby Hollow, supposedly because a young woman had drowned herself and her illegitimate infant in the lake rather than face the scorn or the townsfolk. They said that when the fog was thick, you could hear the baby crying. Aubrey knew that while the first story might have some basis in fact, Vina had made up the second herself, to keep visitors away. Still, she imagined they had had a tough time deciding which macabre name to go with for the road.