Nightcrawlers

25

Kenney swallowed. “At the time… was there an investigation?”

“Yes, a very quick one, Tommy told me.” Godfrey was grinding his teeth. “I remember when the Crossen place burned. I remember it very well… people were glad. They talked about it real quietly for a day or two, then purged it from their minds. It was like a tumor had been burned out. They were content that the house and what it contained was history.”

“One last question,” Kenney said slowly. “When you went into that house… how did Pearl know your names?”

Godfrey smiled thinly. But not for long. He shook his head. “That’s troubled me badly over the years, Lou. I don’t have an answer for it. Maybe those from below have gifts of a sort and maybe what’s inside them, maybe it’s something that don’t belong here.”

Kenney didn’t argue the point. With what he’d heard and what he’d seen… who was he to argue anything? If somebody told him the moon was indeed made of cheese, he’d probably believe it, ask if it was Munster or Pepper Jack, and was any good in party dips. Reality had been shattered. He believed and he didn’t believe. He knew something had happened here, some sort of genetic degeneration had overtaken the people of Clavitt Fields, that their descendants crawled like worms through holes in the earth. He accepted that, much as he wanted to completely dismiss it.

“Well, Lou,” Godfrey said, sounding satisfied, “now you know it all. All the things this town, this county has kept secret. It’s high time this shit ends. I’ve broken the sacred trust given me by every sheriff who held this post before me. And you know what? I don’t give a happy shit. I’m glad it’s out. That file in my office is going into my woodstove and when all this… madness comes to light, I’ll be just as ignorant as anyone else.”

“It’s getting dark,” Kenney said, without knowing why.

The shadows were elongating, bleeding out in nighted pools from crypts and monuments and thickets of blighted trees.

“We should go,” Godfrey said. “But, being that you’re in charge of this investigation… what do you plan on doing now? Or should I even ask?”

Kenney sat there, noticing how the shadows were netting the cemetery, how they seemed to sprout in unwholesome tangles. “Oh, I think you know what comes next, Matt. I think you know very well.”