Revenant Read online

  “I know, I know, don’t get upset, baby.” Raven held her hands up in a placating gesture. “You’re right, I do know it will work, it’s just hard not to be a little nervous, that’s all. I can’t believe you’re not nervous, too!”

  “Why would I be? If what you’ve told me about this special rock is true, we have nothing to worry about. Right?”

  Raven said nothing.

  “Right?

  She finally nodded.

  Max thought he had never seen a less-convincing emotion. He continued staring until she dropped her gaze to the floor and left it there. Then he reached over and unlatched the boxes, lifting both lids. Inside the plain box was the zip-locked plastic bag containing Earl Manning’s heart, now completely thawed and looking exactly like what it was—an unmoving lump of dead muscle tissue.

  Inside the more ornate box decorated with the intricate Navajo carvings was the baseball-sized stone Max had stolen from Don Running Bear three months ago in the Arizona desert. The stone looked almost ordinary but just a little . . . off, somehow. Max gazed at it almost as if expecting something mystical to happen. Nothing did. The stone sat in the middle of the box, ancient and inanimate.

  After a moment Max reached inside and rolled the stone to the edge of the box. He needed to free up space inside the small area for its new roommate. He then picked up the sealed plastic bag containing Earl Manning’s heart and lifted it out of the plain box, placing it next to the Navajo stone in the ornate box. Then he stepped back and waited expectantly.

  And he waited.

  And he waited.

  And nothing happened.

  Max turned slowly, his face reddening. He glanced pointedly from the wooden box to Raven’s face and back again, saying nothing. She backed up another step, her mouth working overtime but managing nothing more than a tiny squeak of barely controlled fear.

  “Why is nothing happening?” Max said softly, the words more menacing for their lack of volume than if he had screamed them.

  “I. . . I . . . it’s . . .”

  Max took a step toward her and her pretty green eyes widened in terror. But she was no longer looking at his face. She was peering intently over his shoulder.

  He stopped and turned.

  Walked back to the table.

  Looked in the box.

  Inside the clear plastic bag, Earl Manning’s severed heart was beating, slowly and steadily.

  9

  Sharon Dupont had never been so miserable in her life, and she was not without considerable experience against which to compare and measure her present pain. She had grown up essentially on her own, her father retreating into a beer bottle after the death of her mother when Sharon was twelve. She had followed his path, becoming an addict as well, eventually trading sexual favors for drugs and booze as a high school student, convinced she would never escape the tiny town of her birth.

  She had eventually been saved from the cycle of destruction by none other than former Paskagankee Police Chief Wally Court, who took her under his wing her senior year of high school, giving her something she had been missing for most of her formative years—a reliable and responsible role model. It was because of Chief Court that Sharon had decided to dedicate her life to law enforcement, attending the FBI Academy in Herndon, Virginia before being forced to return to Paskagankee to care for her terminally ill father.

  Then had come the serial murders last fall, the horror reaching its peak during the town’s annual pre-Thanksgiving bonfire, when the vengeful spirit had taken Sharon, nearly killing her in the process. She had been saved—barely—by Mike McMahon and in the days and weeks following the chaos, had cherished her growing attraction to him, but had been forced to watch helplessly as her mentor and hero, Walter Court, was vilified, the dead ex-police chief blamed for the killing spree.

  So Sharon was well-acquainted with misery. But what she was experiencing right now was worse than anything she had gone through. Ever. To hurt Mike like she did, to tell him she was no longer interested in him, to watch his reaction—the pain and confusion evident on his handsome features—was worse than the most hopeless morning she had ever faced as a frightened and confused high school drug addict, worse even than waking up injured and helpless last fall at the mercy of a centuries-old spirit.

  She wheeled her cruiser around the corner of Main Street and Route 24, turning right at the Baptist Church, theoretically patrolling for speeders but in reality just passing the time, lost in her thoughts. What choice had she had than to let go of Mike? She knew this town much better than he—she had been born here, she grew up here, had raised hell here, and then had left, certain she would never return. But she had returned, after just a few months away, meaning almost her entire twenty-six year lifespan had been spent right here in Paskagankee.

  As a life-long resident, Sharon knew how closed-minded the town’s elders could be, how intractable and bull-headed they were regarding the decisions they made in what they believed to the town’s welfare. And it was only a matter of time, and probably not very much of it, before they came to the conclusion, if they hadn’t already, that the chief of police living with one of his officers was not a suitable arrangement.

  Her only other option would have been to quit the force. Realistically, that was probably what she should do. Resign from the Paskagankee Police Department and leave town; look for work elsewhere. Her parents were both dead, there was nothing holding her in Paskagankee anymore.

  Nothing except Mike McMahon.

  If she left now, she knew she would never see him again, and that scenario was unacceptable. So she did the only thing she could do, and that was break off their relationship. But the pain was raw and throbbing and the last thing she wanted to do after work was face Mike. She decided she would go for a drive after work and give him an opportunity to get all his things together in private and move them from her house back into his old apartment. The place was still available and she knew he would have no problem renting it again. It wasn’t like people were flocking to this remote village and demanding housing.

  The police radio squawked. “Unit Two, come in.”

  Sharon lifted the handset and keyed the mike “This is Unit Two, go ahead Gordie.”

  “Yeah, Sharon, we just got a call about a missing person. We need you to go out to Old Mill Road and take the complaint.”

  “I’m on it. What’s the name and address of the complainant?”

  “Address is Forty-Seven Old Mill Road.”

  Sharon’s heart skipped a beat. Forty-Seven Old Mill Road. That was an address she knew from a lifetime ago, when her entire being revolved around drugs and alcohol and sexual favors. Her stomach seized and she thought she might be sick.

  The dispatcher continued. “The complainant is the victim’s mother. Name of the victim is Earl Manning.”

  ***

  Sharon rolled the cruiser to a stop in the dusty driveway outside a run-down mobile home that had probably not seen any significant maintenance in forty years. Threadbare roofing shingles covered a home tilting precariously to one side, as if the concrete foundation was simply crumbling away, which was probably exactly what was happening. Ancient aluminum siding, warped and cracked and weathered, covered the exterior walls, and the windows appeared not to have been washed since the Nixon Administration.

  An old Ford F-150 pickup was parked next to the home; a vehicle Sharon remembered all too well from her high school days. It had been creaky and rust-dotted and ready for the junkyard back then and she could hardly believe the thing was even safe to drive now. Based on her memories of its owner, that wouldn’t have stopped him. She sat staring at the truck, stomach churning, until it occurred to her that it might look odd to be seen sitting motionless inside her cruiser staring in horror at a rusted hunk of metal.

  She sighed nervously and exited the car, glancing in all directions as she approached the broken-down trailer. The area seemed deserted, which was unsurprising since this address was remote even by Paskagankee
standards. Sharon rapped once with her knuckles on the flimsy door and it swung open before she had a chance to knock a second time. It was obvious the trailer’s occupant had been waiting for her to approach and she wondered briefly if her reluctance to exit her cruiser had been observed.

  Standing in the door was a fleshy woman who might have been fifty or eighty or anywhere in between. The woman didn’t strike Sharon as grossly overweight; she was just large. Her arms hung from her sides like they had been tacked on after the rest of her body was sculpted from a chunk of Maine granite. Deep crevasses lined her haggard face and sagging jowls made it look as though she might be storing food in her mouth for her next meal.

  “’Bout time,” the woman said by way of greeting.

  “Hello, Mrs.Manning. You called about a missing person?”

  “That’s right. My boy’s disappeared. Someone goes missing and the best the cops can do is send a tiny little girl?” The woman gave a snort that sounded like the air being let out of a balloon and threw the door open the rest of the way, retreating into the trailer’s tiny kitchen. “Come on in, then.”

  Sharon pulled a small notebook and a pen out of her breast pocket. “This is about Earl?”

  The woman dropped onto a tubular aluminum chair with a padded seat covered in garish orange vinyl that had to have been manufactured in the 1950’s and swiveled her head, looking up at Sharon suspiciously. “You know my boy?”

  “Uh . . . yes. We . . . uh, we went to school together, Mrs. Manning. Earl was a couple of years ahead of me but I . . . uh, knew him.” She knew she sounded like the village idiot and mentally kicked herself. She was here to take a missing person’s report, not to review her long history of poor life choices.

  “How long has Earl been missing?” she asked, determined to rebound from her poor first impression.

  “Well, let’s see,” the woman answered, placing her massive chin into one cupped palm. “I’d say it’s been over a week now.”

  “Your son has been missing a week and you’re just getting around to reporting it now?”

  Anger flashed in the woman’s eyes and she gazed at Sharon with contempt. “That’s right, missy. I’m just reporting it now. You’re quite the sharp detective, ain’t you? Sometimes Earl goes away for a few days; stays with friends and such. Better he stay put if he’s on a bender than to be driving around this God-forsaken town trying to get home, don’t you think?”

  Sharon mentally kicked herself again. She hoped her brain didn’t start to bruise inside her head from all the kicking going on. “I wasn’t passing judgment, Mrs. Manning, just trying to pin down exactly how long Earl has been gone. When was the last time you saw him, exactly?”

  “Guess it woulda been a week ago yesterday. Friday night, I believe, before he went down to the Ridge Runner like normal.”

  “And he didn’t come home last Friday night?”

  “Already told ya that. I ain’t seen him since.” The woman started to cry, one large teardrop rolling down her face, zig-zagging from one crevasse to another until it arrived at her chin and dropped onto the kitchen table where she angrily wiped it away with the sleeve of her housedress. “Earl’s stayed away a few days every now and then, but never for this long. Something’s happened to him, I’m sure of it.”

  “Did Earl seem upset or preoccupied at all before he disappeared?”

  “No more’n usual,” his mother replied. “Earl ain’t never been what you’d call a fountain of optimism, even on his best days. What would he have to be happy about? No job, no money, alcohol problems, always getting harassed by you people.” She gestured vaguely in Sharon’s direction.

  She felt the woman’s attention wandering and tried to refocus her. “So in the days before his disappearance, Earl seemed to be acting normally.”

  “You catch right on, don’t ya?”

  “Mrs. Manning, I’m trying to help here. Is it possible Earl took a trip without telling you?”

  “A trip. And how would he get where he was going on this ‘trip’ when his truck is right out front? What’d he do, walk? No,” she said, finally answering the question. “Earl didn’t go on any trip. He don’t know anyone outside this town, anyway. He ain’t got no reason to go nowhere.”

  “You said he went to the Ridge Runner last Friday night. How did he get there if his truck is parked here?”

  Mrs. Manning nodded and a smile tugged at the edges of her mouth. She pulled it down before continuing. “Maybe you ain’t quite as hopeless as you look, little missy. Good question. The answer is, I went and picked up Earl’s truck. When Monday come around and it was still sitting in the Ridge Runner lot, Ol’ Bo Pellerin called me and told me he ain’t seen Earl in a few days and if he didn’t want his truck towed, he better come get it. So I called my sister and she come and took me down there and I picked it up and drove it home. That was Monday afternoon. The truck ain’t moved from here since.”

  “We’ll get right on this, Mrs. Manning, I promise,” Sharon said, closing her notebook and ignoring the woman’s snort of derision. “If you think of anything else that might be helpful, anything at all, please call.”

  “Yeah, call, right. Sure.

  Sharon retreated out the front door of the trailer and struggled to close it behind her. The sagging structure had pulled the aluminum door frame out of square and the damned thing didn’t want to click shut. Finally she heard it catch and she hurried to her cruiser, glad to be out of there. She backed out of the dirt driveway in a cloud of dust and turned toward Paskagankee proper.

  10

  Max Acton stared at Earl Manning’s heart, severed from Manning’s dead body and sealed inside a plastic bag next to the mystical Navajo stone. The heart was beating softly, throbbing roughly once per second, steadily regaining color as Max watched despite the fact it was connected to nothing—no blood supply, no oxygen, nothing. The detached veins and arteries jiggled slightly with each beat.

  The scene was terrifying and awe-inspiring. Max had fully expected their plan to work; he was a believer in much that was non-traditional. In fact, he had barely batted an eye when Raven—one of his followers back in the Arizona co-op that was really a cult—came to him with the story of a mystical Navajo stone with the power to reanimate the dead. But now, seeing the actual heart of a man he had killed and gutted with his own hands beating serenely inside the box, it was almost too much to comprehend.

  Almost.

  Max feasted his eyes, not wanting to move, wanting to drag this moment out forever. This was what it must feel like to be God. He could hear Raven’s ragged breathing as she peeked around him and into the box, getting her own view of what could fairly be described as a miracle.

  The possibilities were endless. Max’s brain swirled with possibilities. He had always craved power, and in fact was a natural leader. The impressive following he had built up over a very short time in Arizona testified to the truth of that statement. Max was handsome and charismatic and inspired loyalty in his followers. He was Jim Jones minus the suicidal tendencies.

  But this discovery, this stone he had liberated from that idiot Indian back on the reservation, was a game-changer. A world-changer, in fact. Max now had in his grasp the key to the acquisition of more power than even he had ever had the temerity to envision. His own heart, the one beating inside his chest, soared as he allowed himself to visualize all the possibilities.

  But first things first. He had a job to do that must be completed to everyone’s satisfaction before beginning to fulfill his true destiny. The job involved a transaction which would earn Max money, lots of it, money which would give him the freedom to pursue his bold vision.

  Behind them, a crinkling noise coming from the heavy plastic tarp on the floor brought Max back to the present, reminding him of the short-term significance of the miracle he had just wrought. He and Raven turned simultaneously and he gasped at the sight greeting him despite being prepared for it. Raven stumbled backward, beginning to scream and then clapping her tin
y hands to her mouth. She took shelter behind Max, squeezing into the space between his body and the table holding the two wooden boxes.

  Atop the heavy tarp, Manning’s dead body began to stir. Already the deathly grey pallor of the corpse was receding, replaced by a more life-like hue. His cheeks couldn’t be described as rosy, not exactly, not even by the most wide-eyed optimist, but the skin-tone appeared slightly more alive.

  It was impossible, of course, all of it; Manning had no heart in his chest with which to pump blood through his body. And he was dead. There was no question about that. Max had done the job himself, making absolutely certain the poor sucker’s heart had stopped beating. Then he had frozen the man for a week and cut his heart out.

  Dead.

  This was impossible.

  But right here on the basement floor was proof of the opposite: Earl Manning, his legs and arms moving in more or less a random manner, before seeming to coordinate themselves and forcing his corpse into a sitting position. His back was to Max and Raven, facing the other end of the basement, and he swiveled his head nearly one hundred eighty degrees—another impossibility, but there it was—and gazed at the two of them with clear, questioning bewilderment in his eyes.

  The milky caul was gone. His eyes were blue and piercing. Lifelike. The corpse opened its mouth as if to speak and then closed it again. Behind Max, Raven was breathing heavily. He thought she might pass out. He didn’t care.

  “Hello, Earl,” he said.

  The corpse blinked once and behind him Raven screamed again, this time long and loud. “Who are you?” the thing that used to be Earl Manning asked. Its voice was low and rough and Max didn’t remember it sounding like that when the drunken loser appeared at their door on Raven’s arm. Whether the change was a result of the Navajo stone’s magic or the gaping hole Max had cut in the man’s chest he had no idea.