“Help me!” Grant croaked, but the man didn't even turn to look.
The blows became distant and the pain a dull roar all over his body as consciousness receded. In a dark haze, he was dimly aware of being lifted, and felt the cold air of outside wash over him before the hard, rutted metal floor of a pick-up truck rose to meet him with a jarring impact.
Everything hurt. He swam in and out of awareness as the truck roared to life and pulled away. There was nothing else in the back with him and he slid left and right as they drove, banging into the metal sides with dull thumps and grunts of pain. Was he going to die now? Thoughts of throwing himself from the truck, heedless of further injury, rose in his mind. Anything was better than lying here awaiting his fate.
He braced himself to rise despite the pain in every part of him, pushed himself to hands and knees. Something hit him in the jaw and he fell sideways, stunned again. Through a haze of pain and semi-consciousness he saw Cliff Stallard sitting on the side of the pick-up, hanging onto the roof-mounted hunting lights with one hand, leering down at him. Cliff raised his boot again and Grant gave up and let the darkness in. His last thought was that he had let Cassie down and would never get the chance to save her, to help her away from Wallen's Gap.
Chapter 15
Cassie looked down at Grant with an expression of deepest regret. She reached down to touch his battered face, and he flinched away. She frowned and her expression grew dark.
And then her hair darkened. And her eyes.
It was Jazy looking down on him.
“I told you we should go away together. Now look what's happened to you.”
He tried to answer but could only manage a dull moan. He hurt all over.
“Aw, does it hurt?” Her words were sympathetic, but cold pleasure gleamed in her eyes. “Here, I'll kiss you where it hurts.”
She leaned in close, and her face… rippled. Her hair fell out and her skin turned gray and scaly. Her teeth sharpened into yellow fangs, and her face elongated into a snout.
Grant thrashed about as the thing that had been Jazy drew closer. He wanted to fight it off, but his arms were like lead.
“What's wrong?” the creature hissed. “Don't you think I'm pretty?”
He watched in horror as it flicked out its tongue and licked him across the forehead.
“No!” He screamed and sat up.
“Settle yourself down, son. You ain't in no condition to be leaping about like that.” Strong hands pushed him onto his back. He wanted to resist but his body failed him. He lay back and felt a cold cloth pressed to his forehead. “That's right. Just relax. You're safe here.” The smoky voice was familiar, though he couldn't place it just yet.
“Where am I?” he rasped, scarcely recognizing his own voice. His throat felt like sandpaper and he hurt all over.
“You're at my house. Somebody done messed you up and dumped you in the creek.”
Grant blinked to clear his vision and looked at the speaker. The room was dark, with only a sliver of light through the doorway to illuminate it. As his eyes adjusted, he recognized the man.
“Amos?”
“That's me. You're lucky me and my grandson was out catching crawdads when you come tumbling into the water. Whoever done it knew just where the deep place was. You'd have drowned long before you was conscious.”
“The Stallards,” he croaked.
“I ain't surprised. You didn't really think you could go tooling around town with Jed's girl and them not do something about it?”
“Who, Cassie?”
“Jazy. Everybody knows about her and Jed.” Amos cackled. “Lord, his mama don't like it none. A preacher's son going around with the town mattress.”
“Wait a minute.” Grant sat partway up, supporting himself with his elbows. His head swam, but he ignored it. “Jazy is Jed's girl? But she was the one who…” He shook his head, and pain lanced through his skull. “I don't get it. She practically begged me to take her away for a few days, and was really pissed when I didn't.”
“Who knows why that girl does anything? I warned you she was trouble. Now, you need to get yourself some rest. You're bruised from head to toe and I wouldn't be surprised if you got a cracked rib or two.”
“I can't.” He forced himself up to a sitting position and gasped as a new wave of pain shot through his body. “You know Cassie Brunswick, don't you?”
“Sure do. Good girl, bad life.” His assessment was as accurate as it was succinct.
“I think something's happened to her.” He drew a ragged breath. “I think her dad, Carl, and the Stallards are all in on it.” The pieces began to fall into place as he spoke. “Jazy's a part of it too. They tried to tell me Cassie had gone to stay with her aunt, and I thought it was bullshit until Jazy told me the same story. He pounded his fist on the bed. “That's why she wanted me to take her away. They were using her to keep me from looking for Cassie.”
“What exactly do you think they've done to her?”
“Amos, have you ever heard of Kaletherex?”
The old man sprang to his feet faster than Grant would have thought possible, turned, and strode to the door. Before Grant could apologize, the light clicked on, blinding him for a moment. When he opened his eyes again, Amos was once again seated in a chair beside the bed.
“Such things are not to be spoken of in the dark.” He sighed. “That's a dangerous question, boy. Wallen's Gap's darkest secret.”
Grant waited as the old man's eyes took on a faraway cast.
“Kaletherex is a religion. Nobody wants to talk about it, of course, except in whispers, because there ain't no telling who's in it and who isn't, but everybody walks soft around here.”
“What are they about?”
“Nothing good. I did some researching when I was younger, trying to figure it all out. Best I could tell, they get up to some nasty stuff- animal sacrifice, sex rituals, evil things.”
“What about,” Grant swallowed hard, “human sacrifice?” He didn't want to think that was the fate planned for Cassie, but he couldn't forget the pictures he'd seen in his father's book.
“Two times, best I can tell. Both times, a young girl went missing and was found much later, all torn up like some wild animal done it. I don't believe it, though, because both times it happened was some of the darkest times in this town's history.” He ran a hand across his leathery brow. “People went plum crazy. Children kept having accidents, as they called them. You couldn't leave your house for fear somebody'd rob you blind while you was gone. Old feuds that died a hundred years before sprung back up. It's like all the evil in people's hearts just bubbled to the surface. It lasted until the next full moon, and that was the worst night of all.”
“You talk like you were there.”
“I was, for the last one. It was 1962.” He lapsed into silence.
“What happened?” Grant urged.
“They went wilding. Leastways, that's what some of us called it. All these men in white robes went through town howling at the moon, setting fires, laying hands on any man or woman who dared stick their nose out the front door. Soon as I saw it starting I got home and we hunkered down here and prayed they wouldn't come our way.”
“Didn't you have a gun?”
Amos laughed. “I was a black man in Virginia in 1962. A white man could have killed my whole family right in front of my eyes, but if I took a shot at him, I'd be the one going to prison. Yeah, I had a gun, and I would have used it if I had to, but it wouldn't have made much difference. There was too many of them.” He looked down at the floor. “Next morning, it was like everybody woke up from a bad dream. People pulled together and rebuilt what had been destroyed, and nobody talked about what had happened.”