When the Bones Sing

Chapter Ten

Ten

The Ozark Howler has been striking terror in these hills for centuries. Folks say he’s a monster with the body of a bear—huge and black and shaggy—but with curling horns like a ram and the glowing red eyes of a demon. The claws of a saber-toothed tiger. The razor-sharp fangs of a wolf.

“There is no Ozark Howler, Lo.” I’m trying to reassure him, but he only looks more terrified. “It’s only a mountain legend.”

“I’m scared, Dovie,” he whispers. “I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

The rain is coming even harder now, and the thunder and lightning are competing for our attention. When the wind kicks up real good, a solid wall of water gets blown into our faces. With everything going sideways, the little overhang isn’t doing much to keep us dry anymore, and I’m starting to get really worried about being electrocuted. I wish like hell we’d run a few steps farther to Daddy’s gallery, but there’s no getting there now. His cozy little shop might as well be on a different planet.

There’s an explosion of thunder so loud it makes me see stars, and that’s followed immediately by a deafening crack as lightning splits a tree maybe a hundred yards away. We both scream, and when Lo jumps in front of me to push me back toward the double doors behind us, one of them swings open.

“Hey!” I shout. “It’s unlocked!” I pull him into the deserted church and push the door closed behind us, and the storm is instantly hushed. The rain is still pounding on the roof, but it seems quiet in here compared to the chaos outside.

The church is dim in the gloom of the storm, and the stillness of the air is suffocating. There’s a light switch by the door, but when I flick it, nothing happens, and I realize the electricity must be off. Of course.

Lo is shivering, and I guide him toward the back pew and sit him down so I can wrap my arms around him. I reach up to brush his wet hair away from his forehead.

He relaxes a little in my arms, and we look around the sanctuary. There’s not much to see.

“I haven’t been in here since I was little,” I say.

“I’ve never been inside before,” Lo tells me, and he raises one eyebrow. “It’s my very first time in church.” I knew that, of course. He wouldn’t be welcome here. But it still seems odd. He’s definitely not cut from the same cloth as Brother Turley and his bunch, but Lo’s a true believer. I bet he knows more about the Bible and scripture than most regular churchgoers in this town. “Here we are.” One corner of his mouth twitches up in the beginnings of a familiar grin. “The witch and the atheist.”

“Seems like a great day to get struck by lightning,” I joke.

Lo gets up and moves down the center aisle toward the front of the church, so I get up and follow him.

It’s funny, walking down this aisle with Lo. It reminds me of when we used to play wedding and he had to be the groom and the minister.

When we reach the big cross on the wall at the very front, behind the pulpit, we stop to stare up at it.

“Why’d you quit coming here?” Lo asks me. “You and your dad.”

There’s another low rumble of thunder and a sudden flash outside the big picture window lights us up like fireworks. For a second, I see that huge cross reflected in Lo’s eyes. “Daddy just stopped believing, I think. After Mama left.”

“What about you?” Lo asks. “When did you stop believing, Dovie?”

“In God?”

Lo’s damp hair is drying in waves around his ears, and I have this urge to reach out and touch it again. “In anything,” he says, but I just shrug. “Did Nana ever come to church?”

I shake my head. “She wears that cross around her neck, but Turley and them wouldn’t have wanted her here. Half the town thinks she’s a murderer.” I can hear Lo breathing beside me. “Besides, Nana’s like you,” I whisper. “She doesn’t need this building. Or Brother Turley. Everywhere is church for her.”

We stand there for a few more seconds, dripping on the wood floor. Lo’s staring out the window into the rain now, like he’s trying to make out something lurking between the sheets of water pouring off the roof of the church. I think I see something moving out there in the storm, too. The outline of a hulking shape heading around the corner of the building toward the cemetery.

Then the sky goes blindingly bright again, and I see there’s nothing there. Nobody there. Just the graveyard gate swinging wildly back and forth in the wind.

There’s another deafening crash of thunder, and I feel Lo’s fingers go tight around mine. “Dovie.” His voice is breathless. Hushed. I turn to look at him, and now his eyes are fixed on a Bible that’s lying open on the pulpit.

Lo moves in closer to get a better look in the dim light, and he pulls me with him. He’s staring at five or six big drops of bright red that stand out like the scarlet letter against the bright white of the Bible pages. “That’s blood,” he tells me, but I’d already figured that out. “Look.” He points at more obvious splatters trailing across the wood floor, leading from the pulpit to the back door.

Lo’s flipping through the open Bible now. He stops when he comes to a passage that’s underlined in red ink. Someone has pressed so hard with the pen that it’s torn through the thin pages in a couple of places.

Lo runs his fingers over the markings, then reads aloud from the underlined section. Leviticus. Chapter four. Verse three. “If the anointed priest sins, bringing guilt on the people, he must bring to the Lord a young bull without defect as an offering to atone for the sin he has committed.”

He keeps leafing through the Bible until he comes to another underlined section, red ink bleeding out across the pages. Psalms this time. Chapter thirty-two. Verses three through five. Lo reads aloud again, like some kind of preacher in the strangest two-person church service. Our very own Mass. “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.’ And you forgave the guilt of my sin.”

It’s silent for a second. This is where the “amen” should go, but we’re both too busy thinking. “He’s feeling guilty about something,” I say.

Lowan nods and flips on through the Bible. White pages flutter like ghosts in the airless sanctuary. We’re suffocating under the weight of the mid-July heat.

And Brother Turley’s secrets.

We find one more highlighted passage, the page dog-eared to mark the spot. Proverbs. Chapter twenty-eight. Verse seventeen. “Anyone tormented by the guilt of murder will seek refuge in the grave; let no one hold them back.” Lo’s voice is clear as he reads it out loud. Melodic and rolling. Hushed, but not afraid. He would have made a good preacher. Something about him makes people want to believe in the impossible. The unseen.

He pushes the Bible toward me, then points to where someone—Turley, I guess—has scrawled a line in messy handwriting along the margin. Jesus Christ, only you can wash the blood from my hands and make me clean again.

“What’s that about?” I ask, and my words echo in the empty church.

“What if it’s him?” Lo is staring at me. “What if he’s the one?”

“What are you talking about?”

“What if it’s Turley doing the killing around here?”

“Why would Turley be murdering hikers?” I’m struggling to keep up. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Why would anybody be murdering hikers, Dovie?” I guess that’s a fair question. “Don’t you see it?” Lo’s eyes are wide with the shock of revelation. “Brother Turley’s underlining his confession.”

The back door is jerked open with such sudden violence that it slams against the outside of the building with a deafening bang . Lo snatches the Bible and we both dive for cover behind the nearest pew.

It’s only a few seconds before a wail cuts through the church. It’s almost like the sound of the Howler. Partly human and partly animal. Goose bumps break out all up and down my arms.

But then the wail turns to a choked sobbing.

I peek through the pews and Turley is kneeling in front of the huge cross. He’s dripping wet and covered with mud.

Lo scoots backward, like he’s desperate to put distance between himself and the keening preacher, but he bumps into the pew behind us and it rocks back and forth.

“Shit,” I mutter, and Turley immediately goes silent.

“Who’s there?” Turley demands from the front of the sanctuary. “Is someone there?”

“Go,” Lo hisses at me, but I’m already on my feet and running. We shove open the front doors and tumble down the steps so fast that anybody watching us would think the building was surely going up in flames.

When we hit the ground and look up, Turley is looming like an avenging angel in the open doorway.

This has always been a land of spirits. These hills have been home to Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians, various exiled Christian sects, European witchcraft cults, faith healers, Native medicine men, and traditional hoodoo practitioners. Mix all those different people and ideas in with the dark places of the Ozarks—deep and mysterious holes in the mountains and dim, shadowy coves—and you have a recipe for ghosts and hauntings. But I’d wager this ground we’re standing on has never felt anything like the thrumming electricity that connects Lo and Brother Turley in this moment.

I look from Lo to the preacher and their eyes glow with identical fire.

“May a gentle God have mercy on your soul, Lowan Wilder.” Turley’s words ripple out into the graveyard and whisper through the trees, and just for a moment, something so terribly sad settles across the preacher’s face. “And on yours, Dovie Warner.”

“And on yours,” Lo tosses back. “For the wages of sin is death.”

Brother Turley’s face goes pale. His mouth opens and closes before he says, “You’re right, Lowan. I’m already condemned.” Then he looks back and forth between Lo and me. “But maybe it’s not too late for you.”

The preacher sweeps down the steps, and I think he’s coming for us. But he skirts around the spot where Lo and I are huddled together in the aftermath of the storm, then he stumbles across the strip of grass that separates town from woods. As we watch, he hurls himself onto the Aux-Arc Trail and disappears into the trees, heading up into the hills.

Lo gets up and pulls me to my feet. He’s still clutching that Bible to his chest. We stand there stunned, trying to figure out what the hell we just witnessed.

“Did he say he’s already condemned?” I ask, and Lo turns to look at me. His face is pale. It reminds me of Turley’s. Drained of blood.

“That’s what I heard,” he answers.

The rain has stopped, but water is still running down the middle of Mud Street like it’s become a river.

Daddy opens the door to his gallery and steps out on the sidewalk. “Bird!” he shouts at me. “Y’all okay?”

“Yeah,” I shout back. “Just wet and muddy.”

“Get on home and get cleaned up,” he tells me. “And check on Nana. Make sure she’s all right.”

“Heading that way,” I tell him, and I grab Lo’s hand and pull him toward our house as quick as I can move.

When we hit the bridge over Lucifer’s Creek, I look down to see that the docile blue stream has become a swirling brown torrent. The rotten-egg smell makes me want to vomit, and the rushing sound of it makes my chest tighten up.

All along Mud Street, people are stepping out of shops to check out the damage. They’re already sweeping up leaves and picking up branches. I hear them whistle long and low and look up toward the sky.

That was a bad one.

Came outta nowhere.

Ain’t had a storm like that in years.

They go silent when they see Lo and me, and their eyes burn holes in our backs as we pick our way around the puddles and through the debris. Clovers and Wilders have always been outsiders here.

When we reach our blue house in the middle of town, Nana is standing in the yard staring at Mama’s crepe myrtles. The storm has torn the blooms to shreds. Bits of pink litter the ground like dirty confetti from a party that ended a long time ago.

Lo takes Nana by one hand, and I take her by the other, and we help her back up the steps. We kick off our muddy shoes at the front door and walk her into the kitchen.

“It’s okay,” Lo tells her, as we get her settled in her chair at the table and I fix her a glass of iced tea. “Everything beautiful blooms again.”

“Sweet Lowan,” Nana says, and she pats him on the hand. “That it does.”

Lo and I spend the rest of the afternoon with Nana, helping her get the yard picked up and making dinner. We get a roast in the oven, then Lo snaps green beans while I mix up biscuit dough and Nana works on a pie. She sings us old mountain songs, but she never comes back around to the one about the white rose and the drowned girl. The one she was singing last night. The same one Granny Pearl was singing this morning.

By the time Daddy comes home from the gallery and we get the roast on the table, the violence of the storm seems like a dream. And so does that image of Brother Turley kneeling before that huge cross and crying out in pain.

Dinner is fine. Daddy talks about the big stained glass piece he’s working on for Ira. He tells Lo and me he might need both of us to help him get it hung up in the lodge. “Biggest piece I’ve ever worked on,” he says, and I can tell he’s proud of it.

Nana’s face brightens at the mention of Ira’s name, and she tells Daddy to bring him by the house soon. “Always liked that boy,” she says, and it makes me smile. Ira’s no boy anymore, not by a long shot, but I guess everything is relative. I figure he’d get a kick out of Nana describing him that way.

After dinner, Lo and I help Nana clean up and then we head upstairs to my room. I pull Riley’s newspaper photo out of my shorts pocket, and it’s ruined. I do my best to unfold it, but it comes apart in my hands. It doesn’t matter, though. That image is burned into my brain.

The trail angel card that Hannah gave me earlier is all soggy, too. But the little gold angel is fine. I take the tiny, winged cherub off to pin it to the fluttering curtains over the air conditioner, then I toss the wet card in the trash with Riley’s destroyed photo.

Lo glances around the room before he pulls Turley’s Bible out of my desk drawer where we stashed it earlier, then he takes my hand to lead me into the closet. At first, I worry that he’s seeing ghosts again, but when I look in his eyes, I can tell that’s not it.

He pulls the light string and eases the door closed behind us, then we settle on the floor. Knee-to-knee.

“Do you think it’s him?” he asks. His eyes are dark and he’s chewing on his lip.

“I don’t know,” I tell him.

Lo’s flipping through the Bible again. Running his fingers over the underlined passages of scripture. “What else could all this mean?”

I’m not president of his fan club, that’s for sure. But thinking the preacher might be a murderer is a whole other thing.

“Come on,” I say, and I drag him to his feet. I take Turley’s Bible and hide it on the shelf in my closet, under a pile of sweaters I never wear. Then I tug the string to turn off the light and push open the closet door. I lead Lo over to my bed. It’s early still—barely after eight o’clock—but Lo looks like he hasn’t slept in days. I spread back the quilts, then I strip off my socks and my shorts and climb in. “You have to rest, Lo. Just for a couple of hours.”

We used to sleep together all the time, curled up like baby rabbits, but it’s been a long time since we crawled under the covers together. It’s funny how we’ve gone back to being kids again this week.

I reach for the lamp on my bedside table, but Lo stops me with a hand on my wrist. “Leave it on,” he says. “Please?” Then slips out of his shorts and his muddy socks and I scoot over to make room for him in my little twin bed.

There’s something so comforting about the weight of the quilts. The soft light from the lamp and the hum of the air conditioner. Lo’s warm and familiar body pressed so close. He relaxes as I slip my arms around him, and I’m glad I can offer that little bit of peace.

A little bit of safety.

For just a few minutes we don’t talk about Turley or the hikers or any of that. We talk about the things we used to talk about. We talk about the wind in the pines. It’s a lonesome sound, we agree, but we love it because it sounds like home. We talk about how the peaches are ripe now. And that means pie. With homemade ice cream. How we’re longing for fall weather. The cool, damp sweetness of it. We talk about Granny Pearl’s apple cider and Nana’s pumpkin bread.

He rolls over to face me and we’re nose to nose, both of us fighting to stay awake for just a few more words. If I could only do one thing for the rest of my life, I’m pretty sure I’d pick talking to Lo.

I’m half hypnotized by the way his lashes sweep low and slow across his eyes as he blinks at me. Every time those big brown eyes drift closed, it takes him a little longer to open them again, and each time I think that’s it. He’s asleep. He won’t open his eyes this time. But he always does.

Until at last he doesn’t. And I don’t know if I’m relieved that he’s finally sleeping.

Or disappointed.

I breathe in a deep lungful of him. Burned sage and cedar. “Sweet dreams, Lo,” I whisper, and I brush his hair back so I can see his face one more time before I slip off to sleep myself.

I’m surprised when his eyes flutter open at my touch, just for a second, and he pulls me closer.

I’m even more surprised when his lips brush mine. It’s the most ethereal ghost of a kiss, and I’m not even sure if he did it on purpose, but it makes me gasp and I shiver under the quilts.

Lo’s eyes are already closed again. “I love you, Dovie,” he murmurs, and the words are more breath than sound. I feel them against my skin more than I hear them, and they almost feel like another kind of kiss.

“I love you, too, Lo,” I whisper, but I know he doesn’t hear it. His breathing is too deep and even. That’s okay, though, because I feel myself slipping under too.

I close my own eyes and stop fighting, and I finally let myself fall asleep wondering about all the other ways Lowan Wilder might kiss me.

It’s hours later when I wake up—just after two o’clock in the morning—and Lo and I are tangled up like vines. The first thing I remember is that phantom kiss. I wonder if maybe I dreamed it.

I’m not sure what pulled me out of such a sound sleep, but I think maybe I heard something. I lie as still as I can for a few seconds, listening. But there’s only Lo’s rhythmic breathing. The creaking of an old house. The scraping of tree branches against the roof.

And then there’s something else. A strangled howling so incredibly faint it’s like that kiss. I can’t be sure it happened at all.

I untwine my arms and legs from Lo’s and crawl over him as slowly and carefully as I can. He shifts in his sleep and mumbles my name, but he doesn’t wake up.

When his breathing evens out again, I pull on my shorts and tiptoe over to the window. I pull back the lace curtains with the gold angel pin and stand on my tiptoes to peer out over the top of the air conditioner into the night.

Something is moving out there in the dark. I watch a shape drift along the fringes of the light. It skirts the edges of sidewalk on the other side of Mud Street, opposite our front porch, lurking in the pools of inky blackness where drooping tree branches hang low. It walks upright, like a human, but I can’t tell who it is until he steps out into the open.

The clouds are thick and they all but block out the moon, but what little glow slips through is reflected off the blowing blond hair of the boy that creeps out of the shadows to stand in the middle of Mud Street.

He’s pale and painted all in silver—lit only by that strange, cloud-filtered moon—but I recognize him instantly.

My heart has stopped beating in my chest, but I guess a good southern girl never forgets her upbringing, because I raise my hand to wave at the ghost that’s come to haunt me.

And out in the stifling, claustrophobic stillness of an Ozarks summer night, Riley Alden waves back.