Emerald Hell

Chapter 14

After wetting a bandana and wrapping it around his neck, Duffy Ferris pointed to the inlet at the base of the dark lake and said, "I see they broke camp over that'a'way this mornin'. There's still a faint trail of smoke risin' from the last of their embers."

"I see it too,"Deeter said. "That's gator ground."

"Crossed over to the other side and goin' deeper into the morass. Notice where they tore up the twigs passin' through? All the mud they raked up and log litter they broke past? We comin' up to the marsh prairies. We're only two, three hours behind 'em."

"I spot two cold camps," Deeter said, shielding his eyes from the sun."One a bit aways from the other. Them teenage girls come through this way too, mayhap the night before. None'a them are gator bait yet."

"Which ain't to say there ain't still a chance for it."

"No, which ain't to say that at all. Gotta admire them girls' pluck though. All of 'em with child. Ain't a one of 'em that's what you might call weak-willed."

Duffy grabbed the pole and began stobbing again, his muscles corded and the thick veins twisting along his arms. "You think Dorrie Mae Wilkes is among 'em?"

Deeter furrowed his brow. "Which one's that?"

"Pretty young thing, blonde hair halfway down her back, fine shapely figure on her. She won Miss Peach Pit over in Waynescross last summer, rode up front on the float during the Peach Pit Parade. You don't recall?"

"Wilkes's got four girls, so I'm havin' some trouble decipherin' which particular one she might be."

"Don't matter none." With nostrils flaring, Duffy sniffed the air. "You smell it?"

"Can't smell me nothin' but that ole boy gettin' riper in the back of the damn boat."

"Corn griddle cakes. And fried turtle eggs. No breeze here to carry the aroma off,"

"Yeah?" Deeter put a hand on his belly as it emitted an audible growl. "Them boys are livin' the honeyed life out here, for certain. Wish we could stop for some food. It's gettin' on lunchtime."

Duffy whispered, "That Jester don't eat but what he finds flattened dead on a broken white line, so I guess he expects the same of us. How I do wish we never run into that hell preacher."

"No more so than me," Deeter said. "Bless my ears, I hear him still conversin' with that deceased codger."

"Naw, he done quit that a while back. Guess ole Plume Wallace wasn't reciprocatin' enough. Now preacher's just prayin', except they ain't like no prayers I done heard any man mutter before."

The Ferris boys turned together to check on Brother Jester, who sat in the stern of the skiff with the corpse, doing little besides mumbling and staring. The flies were so heavy back there that a dark cloud hovered and wreathed about Jester, who didn't seem to notice.

They both thought, He gonna eat that old boy?

Jester's shadows let him know this. It almost made him smile.

He'd eaten much worse things than human flesh. He'd supped on his own venom, he'd swallowed the tenets of God's law. He'd drank from puddles of rain provided by the great seraphim. Warm waters which tasted of the great flood and Noah's destroyed earth. Tasting God's wrath and the near-end of humanity in stagnant pools by a roadside-now that weighed on a man's heart. Or it would've, if Brother Jester had still been a man.

The silver whipcord thread chimed beside him and he felt the impeding return of Plume Wallace's ghost rushing toward the skiff.

After a moment the spirit appeared and jester asked, "How went your mission?"

"Weren't no damn mission," the bound ghost said, "just a wrong-hearted errand you sent me on. Like we dead got nothing better to do all the long day but attend your beck and call. My first wife Ettie, now she was a lot like you, son. Would get it into her head at all crazy hours of the night that she needed herself some Epsom salts for her foot bath, like I'm'a gonna go be able to find her salts at three in the morning just 'cause she got bad corns. Yeah, you and Ettie got a lot in common-"

"I want an answer," Jester said. There were just as many flies crawling across his forehead as there were on Plume Wallace's ashen brow. "What did you see?"

"You already know what I saw, you sent me to go see it."

"Stop being contrary."

"The morning a man's murdered for his boat and his poor wracked body brought along on a snipe chase is a day meant for bein' cantankerous, I say. But all right, all right, I'll tell you what you crave. I seen John Lament, growed up. Side by side with a big red fella lookin' a little dinged up hisself. They're up yonder, across the basin in a bad patch of land, where the wind is colder and the jungle got itself teeth." The ghost grinned with its ethereal lips. "John Lament. All these years gone and still you a'fear him, the one who was just a boy at your bent knee, learning the ways of God by your very own tutelage."

"I know his past as I know my own. I didn't ask you about that."

"And I'd say you still need to hear about it anyways, 'lest you be forgettin'. You ain't minded your Bible, preacher. You reapin' what you done sown."

Brother Jester's hand began to burn. It ignited buzzing flies and soon the air was filled with their blazing flights until they all disintegrated. Jester plucked at the silver cord connecting spirit to corpse. It vibrated and hummed like a choir of ill children, and Plume Wallace winced and let out a sob. "Lord God, no, don't do that. It-it pains me so-"

"God not only can't help you, child of man, but He won't. He chooses not to, as is His way. I control your afterlife. I can leave you in oblivion forever if I choose. Such is my power, instilled in me by His very angels." Jester pulled at the thread and drew the ghost to him until they were nose to nose. "I serve God's purpose. He decrees this to be your fate, not me."

"No, it ain't possible, a foul critter like you. It just can't be…"

"It is," Brother Jester told him, and a hint of sadness entered his voice. "But you'll meet the Lord this day and then you can argue His folly to His great beatific face if you so choose. But first you're obligated to me. Now tell me what I wish to know."

"I done told you already what I seen."

They passed close to the shore as Duffy Ferris stobbed them toward the inlet to the dark lake, palmetto leaves and fronds pressing in on the skiff. Some loblolly berries fell and bounced off the face of Plume Wallace's corpse and rolled across his blue lips. The phantom jutted his tongue as if trying to taste the sweet flavor one last time. He reached to touch his own chin but he couldn't put a hand to that flesh anymore.

"You're a ghost now, not bound to body or the five senses. Tell me what you know beyond your being. Stop your chattering and say what you experienced and brought back with you."

"But I… wait, there was… they were in a bad spot, rife with murder." Surprised by his own phantom knowledge, Plume Wallace began to speak of what he hadn't witnessed but still somehow perceived. His gaze took on that same faraway, understanding clarity that Jester's wife's eyes had. His voice lost some of its expression. "That's right, they're in a bad place of pain. There were many other who were dying or already gone, all of 'em with smiles on their faces."

"Yes?"

"They been brought to a patch of swamp used as a farm… a blood farm. They went about writhing, in the graceful arms of the swamp itself." The ghost made as if to wipe sweat from its brow. "I don't like this sight. I ain't cut out to be deceased!"

"As much as any of us, Plume Wallace!"

"Well, they heard as much about the men gone missing from Granny Dodd's granddaughter, Megan. Granny Dodd, she's gone now too, poor woman, and her witchy ways are weakening. The chains she forged to hold back evil have broken. And I presume she's handling her state of interment better than me. Better than I will, once I get interred, is my meaning."

"What of the demon, what do you prophecy of him?"

"Ain't no demon,just a big ole red fella tryin' to help out some folks in trouble. He's powerful, tinged by great fate. He's got an admirable heart. You recognize that already. He's got a good many blessings on him. He's righteous. So's Lament. He's got grace, that boy, an old and wise soul."

"And my daughter?"

"I ain't seen nor felt her passin' by, neither livin' nor otherwise. Can't tell you nothin' more."

Brother Jester nodded, "Then go on now, Plume Wallace." He held the silver thread up to his mouth and snapped it apart with his teeth. "I release you from this earthbound custody. Go on up the jeweled stairway to Jesus, if you think you can find it."

He tossed the cord into the wind, but the ghost of Plume Wallace continued to sit in the skiff another moment. He said, "God got you in His sights, son. He'll be comin' for you soon enough, devilspawn."

And then was gone.

But his words struck Jester as wonderfully amusing. Absurd even, considering his own damnation and who he now followed.

Devilspawn. He snickered as he shoved at the corpse beside him and threw it into the lake, watching it roll over behind them.

On the far shore two bull gators crawled down a hillock of mud and began to swim toward the body. Jester couldn't control himself and continued laughing until he was whooping.

The Ferris boys moved closer together in the bow of the skiff, staring at the madman. Brother Jester tossed his head back and howled, and the black clouds ushered in across a sky of pain.