Chapter Sixty-One Ashley
SIXTY-ONE ASHLEY
The scream went on and on, high-pitched, frantic.
“Mini!” Ash said, as she took off running down the middle of the pews and out the door, pushing past the woman standing there.
No one stopped her. No one shot her in her tracks.
Ashley bolted across the parking lot to the entrance to the cemetery, through the open wrought-iron gate. Malcolm was behind her, as was a crowd—seemingly everyone who’d been gathered in the church had followed. She could hear their voices:
What’s happening?
Will he kill her?
He’s come for all of us.
Heart pounding, Ashley sprinted past the dried-up fountain with the damaged angel, and at last saw Mini. The little girl was kneeling next to the unmarked grave. There were mounds of dirt around her—the grave had been dug up.
The knackerman was on his knees behind Mini, his great arms wrapped around her, holding her tight. She was crying.
There was a soft glow coming from the open grave, as if a door had been opened and was letting light through.
Ash had the absurd thought then that a door had truly opened, and he’d come through, his spirit called forth by the entire town, by their fear, their longing.
She was almost to them when she heard a voice behind her shout, “Let her go, you son of a bitch!” The knackerman released Mini and she spilled forward, collapsing face-first on the ground.
He rose up, his great leather patchwork coat around him like furled wings. He put a hand on his white bone face.
A gunshot exploded, impossibly loud, making Ashley’s ears ring.
The knackerman went down with a groan and a thud.
Ashley turned to see Cheryl behind her in her barn coat, holding a shotgun, swaying slightly. “We are fucking done… with all of this,” she said, slurring her words a little. “With him running our lives, making us live in fear. It’s over.”
Mini’s sobs turned into a howl and she was trying to form words. “No, no, no, no!” she wailed, crawling over to him. “It’s not him! It’s Willy! It’s only Willy!”
Ash ran to where the knackerman lay on the ground—not a spirit or demon at all, but an actual flesh-and-blood man. She felt for a pulse and there was none. She yanked open the coat and blood-soaked shirt. There was a huge hole in his chest, his heart obliterated. There was nothing she could do.
Mini was pulling the skull mask off, sobbing. She stroked Willy’s grizzled cheek, hanging slack. Ashley gathered Mini in her arms, rocked her, crying herself. Many in the crowd were weeping.
Malcolm had moved closer and was staring down into the eerily glowing empty grave.
“Ash,” he said, voice trembling as he pointed into it.
She looked and saw the grave was not empty.
There was a flashlight down there, turned on, illuminating the remains of a woman with dark curly hair, part of her skull caved in. She was wearing a tattered camel-hair coat.