Balefires Read online

  "Aw," Kernes said in disbelief and again put a hand out for the object. This time Deehalter let him take it. Despite all the ginger-haired man's tugging and pushing, the teardrop held together. It was only after Kernes, sweating and angry, had handed back the object that Deehalter found the trick of it. You had to rotate the halves along the plane of the separation-which, since there was no visible line, was purely a matter of luck the first time it worked.

  "Let's get on home," Deehalter said. He nodded westward toward the sun. Sunset was still an hour away, but it would take them a while to drive back. The ridge was already casting its broad shadow across the high ground to the east. "Besides," Deehalter added, almost under his breath, "I don't like the feeling I get up here sometimes."

  But it was almost two weeks before Deehalter had any reason for his uneasiness…

  ***

  Despite the full moon low in the west and the light of the big mercury vapor lamp above the cow yard to the north of the barn, the plump blonde stumbled twice on the graveled path to the car. The second time she caught Deehalter's arm and clung there giggling. More to be shut of her than for chivalry, the farmer opened the passenger door of the Chrysler and handed her in. Naturally, she flopped across his lap when he got in on the driver's side. He pushed her upright in disgust.

  It was 3 a.m. and there were no lights yet in Alice and her husband's house. Deehalter knew they had seen him bring Wendy home in the evening, knew also that Wiener would awaken them as he chased the car. Kernes had once complained to Deehalter, red-faced, about the example he set for his nephew and nieces by bringing whores home to their grandfather's house. Deehalter had told him that under the will it was his house, and that when Kernes and Alice quit fucking intheir house, he'd consider quitting it in his. The smaller man hadn't quite taken a swing as Deehalter had hoped he might.

  When the car began to scrunch down the drive past the new house, Wiener came loping toward them from the barn. He barked once every other time his forefeet touched the ground. The noise was more irritating than even a quick staccato would have been. The car windows were closed against the night's damp chill. Deehalter's finger was poised on the switch to roll the glass down and shout at the mongrel, when Wendy's scream snapped his head around.

  The bank to the left sloped up from the drive, so the thing standing there was only in the edge of the lights. It was wire thin and tall-twice the height of a man at a fleeting glance, though a part of Deehalter knew that was the effect of the bank and the angle. A flat lizard-snout of teeth glittered sharply. Then the beast turned and the big car leaped forward down the drive as Dee-halter floored the accelerator. Wendy was still screaming, her face buried in her hands, when the car banged over the slotted cattle-guard and fishtailed onto the gravel county road.

  Deehalter kept his speedometer dangerously above sixty for the first three miles, until they reached the tavern and gas station at Five Points. There he braked to a stop and turned on the dome light. The girl whimpered. Deehalter's big hands gripped her shoulders and hauled her upright. "Shut up," he said tightly.

  "W-what was it?" she blubbered.

  "Shut up, for Christ's sake!" Deehalter shouted. "It wasn't a goddamned thing!" He brought his face close to Wendy's. The girl's eyes were as fearful as they had been minutes before at the sight of the creature. "You saw a cat in the headlights, that's all. You'renot going to get everybody and his brother tramping over my farm shooting my milking herd. You're going to keep your goddamn mouth shut, do you hear?"

  The blonde was nodding to the rhythm of Deehalter's words. Tears streamed from her eyes, and when she tried to wipe them she smeared the remains of her eye shadow across her cheeks.

  Deehalter released her suddenly and put the car in gear. Neither of them spoke during the rest of the ride to town. When the big farmer stopped in front of the girl's apartment, she stumbled out and ran up the steps without bothering to close the car door. Deehalter locked it after he slammed it shut.

  He drove back to the farm at a moderate pace that slowed appreciably as he came nearer. The night had only its usual motions and noises now. Deehalter was waiting in his locked car an hour later, alone with nothing but a memory to disturb him, when Kernes came out of his house to start milking.

  ***

  After lunch-a full meal of fried steak and potatoes; Deehalter had cooked for himself and his father as well before Old John died-the big man walked down the drive and began searching the grassy bank to the left of it. Once when he looked up, he saw his sister watching him intently from the Kernes' kitchen window. He waved but she ducked away. Toward three o'clock, Kernes himself came back in the jeep from inspecting the fences around the northwest pasture. Deehalter hailed him. After a moment's hesitation, the ginger-haired man swung the vehicle up the bank and stopped.

  "Come look at this," Deehalter said. The turf was marked fuzzily where he pointed. "Doesn't it look like three claw prints?" he asked.

  Kernes looked at him strangely. "Claw prints? What do you mean, Dee?"

  "It-oh, Christ, I don't know," said the big man, straightening and lifting his cap to run his hand through his hair. He looked glumly back past the barn to the long bulk of Sac Ridge.

  "Haven't seen Wiener today, have you?" Kernes asked unexpectedly.

  "Not since I took Wendy home this morning," replied Deehalter, his own expression odd. "Barked at the car as usual. You must've heard him."

  "Learned to sleep through it, I guess," said Kernes, and the words did not quite ring true… though that might have been the blurred print on the ground and Deehalter's blurred memory of what had made the print. Kernes got into the jeep. "Usually he chases a rabbit, he gets back for breakfast. Kids've about worried me to death about that damn dog."

  "I'll ride to the barn with you," Deehalter said. They did not speak about the dog-or the print-for the rest of the afternoon.

  ***

  In the evening, after Deehalter had finished his turn at milking, Alice came out to the barn to help wash down the equipment. Alice Kernes was ten years younger than her brother. Though they had never been close, there was a thread of mutual affection despite Deehalter's reciprocated hatred for his brother-in-law. Alice hummed as she polished the glass tubing and stainless steel; a short woman with her black hair tied back by a kerchief and a man's shirt flapping over the waistband of her gray skirt.

  "Wiener been back yet?" Deehalter asked with feigned disinterest.

  "No, have you seen him?"Alice said, pausing to catch the shake of Deehalter's head. "Susie's been crying all day. Tom went out to quiet the dog down this morning and I think he scared him off. But he'll be back tonight, I figure."

  Deehalter flipped the switch that would drain the water now being cycled through the transfer piping. "Kernes got up to chase him?"

  "Uh-huh. Did you get the big tank?"

  "Yeah, we can call it a night," Deehalter said. Bloodstains are hard to identify in heavy grass, harder even than footprints in the sod beneath, so he made no mention of the splotches he had found thirty yards from the drive that afternoon. There had been no body, not even a swatch of dog fur torn off in a struggle.

  But despite that, Deehalter guessed that the mongrel would not be coming home that night.

  ***

  A cow awakened Deehalter with a blat like a cut-off klaxon horn. His Remington. 30-06 leaned against the window frame, bathed in moonlight. Deehalter stripped a shell into the autoloader's chamber from the full magazine before he pulled on his dungarees and boots. Shirtless, his baggy trousers weighted down by the rest of the box of ammunition, Deehalter unlocked the front door and began running across the yard.

  There were one hundred and sixty cattle in the barn, and from the noise they had all gone wild. Over their bellows came clatters and splintering as the frantic tons of beef smashed the fittings of the barn. Normally in the summer, the cows were free to wander in and out of the yard and to the pasture beyond, but tonight Deehalter had penned them for safety. He was a hu
ndred feet from the electric fence of the yard, cursing his mistake in having concentrated the herd and then left it unprotected, when one of the black-and-white Holsteins smashed from the barn into the cow yard through both halves of the Dutch door.

  There was something behind it.

  The thing's tongue and the blood on its jaws were black in the mercury floodlight. Erect against the side of the barn it was almost eight feet tall, though only the shadows gave mass to its spindly limbs. It saw Deehalter and skidded on the slippery concrete, its claws rasping through the slime. Deehalter threw his rifle to his shoulder. It was as if he were aiming at a skeleton made of coat hangers, the thing was so thin. Deehalter's hands shook. The creature bent forward, cocking its hips back for balance. It opened its jaws so wide that every needle tooth seemed pointed at the farmer. Then it screamed like a plunging shell as Deehalter fired. His bullet punched neatly through the side of the barn ten feet above the ground.

  With a single stride, the creature disappeared back within the building. Deehalter slammed another shot through the empty doorway.

  Panting, the big man knelt and fumbled out the box of ammunition without letting go of the rifle. His shoulder ached. The empty cases shone silver pale on the grass to his right. When Deehalter had reloaded, he shuffled forward again. He held his rifle out as if he were thrusting it through fluid. The yard was filled with milling cows. Deehalter moved past them to the low milking parlor and tried in vain to peer through the dusty windows. Then, holding the rifle awkwardly like a huge pistol, he unlatched the door and flipped on the light. There was nothing in the parlor, and its metal gates to the barn were still closed.

  Deehalter turned on the lights in the main building. There was only a score of frightened cows still within. The half-loft eight feet above the bare floor had only a little straw in it. The loft door in the south wall hung askew. There were deep scratches around its broken latch. From the left, Deehalter grimly surveyed the barn. The interior walls were spattered with blood. A heifer was dead in her stall; long gouges reddened the hides of several others of the herd.

  It was almost dawn. The black-haired farmer stood at the loft door, cursing and staring out into the red sunrise, which pulled the shadow of the ridge like a long curtain over the pasture.

  The door to the milking parlor banged. Deehalter swung around and raised the muzzle of his rifle. It was Kernes barefooted and in torn pajamas with Alice, wide-eyed, behind him. Seeing the blood and the dead heifer, she shouted at her husband, "My God, Tom, have you and George been shooting cows?"

  Kernes gaped. Deehalter couldn't understand why the question was directed at his brother-in-law."No, it was a, a-"Deehalter began and stuttered to a halt, uncertain both of the truth and what he should say about it. To change the subject he said, "We got to phone Doc Jepson. Some of the cows' been-cut."

  "Phone the vet?" blazed Alice-Kernes still had not spoken. She reached back into the parlor for the extension which hung on the wall higher than a cow carries its head. "We'll call the Sheriff, we'll call-"

  "Put down that goddamn phone!" Deehalter said, not loudly but too loudly to be ignored by anyone who knew him well.

  Alice was in a rage herself, but she stepped back from the phone and watched her brother descend carefully from the loft. "What did it, George?" she asked.

  "I didn't get a good look."

  "Goddammit, George," Alice said, letting go of her anger now that Deehalter had cooled enough not to shoot her dead in a fury, "why won't you let me get help?"

  "Because we're in the milk business," the big man said, sagging against the ladder in mental exhaustion. Kernes wasn't really listening; Alice's face was blank. "Because if we go tell people there's an eight-foot lizard on our farm-"

  Kernes swore. Deehalter shouted, "All right, I saw it, what the hell's the difference? Something killed the cow, didn't it?" He glared at the others, then went on, "First they'll think we're crazy. And then when they learn it's true, they'll say, 'Strontium 90,' or 'What're they spraying their fields with to do that?' or 'There's something in their water.' And we'll never sell another pint of milk from here as long as we live. Youknow what the dairy business is like!"

  Alice nodded sharply."Then we'll just raise hogs," she said, "or corn-or we'll sell the farm and all get jobs with Purina, for God's sake. Spring Hill Dairies isn't the whole-"

  "Alice!"

  Kernes' eyes were flicking from one sibling to the other, a spectator rather than a referee. Alice glared at him, then said to her brother, "All right, George. But I'm taking the kids into town to stay with Iris until you come to your senses." Then, to her husband, she added, "Tom, are you coming too?"

  "If you leave here, Kernes," said Deehalter quietly, "you'll never come back. I don't give a shit what the law says."

  The men stared at each other. "I'll stay," Kernes said. Alice banged through the gate and into the milking parlor without a look behind her."I'd have stayed anyway, Alice!" the smaller man shouted.

  "Call Doc Jepson," Deehalter repeated wearily. "We can tell him it was dogs or something-" the tooth marks were too high and broad for that to be other than a transparent lie-"and hope we can scotch this thing before worse happens."

  Numbly, Kernes made the call. As the little man hung up, they heard the rasping starter of the old station wagon. A moment later, gravel spattered as Alice rocketed down the drive. Almost as fast as he himself had driven the night before, Deehalter thought.

  "It's because of what we took out of that mound," Kernes said in a small voice.

  Deehalter shook his head in irritation. "This thing didn't come from a skull or a little bit of iron," he snapped. "It's big, big enough to kill a Holstein."

  "It was there just the same," Kernes replied. "We've got to close that grave up with everything in it again. Then maybe we'll be okay."

  "You're nuts," Deehalter said. But he remembered the thing's eyes and the gape of its jaws; and he knew that sometime that day he would help Kernes bury the objects again.

  ***

  Deehalter walked to the mound and the parked jeep without speaking. In the field behind him, the crows settled noisily on the carrion again.

  Kernes had lifted out a pair of shovels and the gunny sack holding the objects. "Well?" he asked.

  "Yeah," said Deehalter with a shrug, "it was Wiener."

  Kernes began to undo the knot which closed the sack's throat. Without looking up, he said, "I think it's the moon. That's why it didn't come out when we opened the mound. It needed the full moon to bring it out."

  "Bullshit," said Deehalter."Isaw the thing and it's not moonlight, it's as solid as you or me. Damn sight solider than old Wiener there," he added with a grim twist of his head. "Moonlight's just light, anyway."

  "Fluorescent light's just light too," Kernes retorted, "but it makes plants grow like they don't with a regular light bulb. Christ, Dee, don't youfeel the moon on you at night?"

  Deehalter did, but he wasn't about to admit that weakness even in the noon sun. Kernes had paused after opening the bag, unwilling either to dump the contents back into the hole without ceremony or to touch them again barehanded. The big man hesitated also. Then he glanced at the guns in easy reach, between the front seats of the jeep, and lifted out the skull.

  The bone felt warm. Because Deehalter had not really taken a look at it before, he did so now at this last opportunity. The teeth were damaged in a way that at first he could not explain. Then the farmer cursed, set the skull down on the ground, and stretched out in the open trench. The angle was too flat for Deehalter to have been able to see anything even if he had brought a flashlight this trip, but his fingertips found the shallow grooves he expected in the under-surface of the slab.

  "Christ," he muttered, standing up again. "That poor sucker was alive when they covered him up in there. He didn't have a damned thing to dig with, so he tried to scrape through the stone with his teeth."

  Kernes stared at the skull and looked a little sicker than he had before. H
is finger traced but did not touch the front teeth. All four of the incisors were worn across the flats as if by a file. They had been ground down well into the nerve canals. One of the front pair had cracked about halfway from the root. "Yeah, I'd seen that but I didn't think…" he said. "Jesus, what a way to go. He surely must've known he couldn't chew his way through a foot of rock."

  "Maybe he didn't know there was a foot of it," Deehalter said. "Besides, he didn't have a lot of choice."

  Carefully, the big man set the skull as far back into the mound as his arm would reach. The litter of bone and rock chips within scrunched under his shirtsleeve.

  The rippled, iron teardrop was still closed. Deehalter looked at it for a moment, then twisted it to split the halves because they had been separate when he found them. The metal divided with a soft gasp like a cold jar being opened. Deehalter set the halves under the slab as carefully as he had the discolored skull.

  Almost before he rolled out of the way, his brother-in-law was tossing a shovelful of earth into the hole. Kernes worked feverishly at the soil pile he and his son had thrown up in digging the pit. By the time Deehalter had brushed himself off and picked up a shovel, the blast-crumbled edge of the slab had been buried again.

  They finished their work before noon, leaving on the mound's side a black scar that sealed off the greater blackness within.

  ***

  The barn windows were green fiberglass which the western moonlight outlined sharply against the walls. The diffused illumination was weak and without distinct shadows, It made the loft floor an overlay of grays on grays which wobbled softly as Deehalter paced along it. The cattle penned below murmured, occasionally blatting loudly at their unfamiliar restraint. At each outburst, Deehalter would pause and lean over the loft rail with his rifle forward; but the bellowing was never for any reason that had to do with why two armed men were watching the barn tonight.