Unbury Carol(86)

Carol.

What if she says Carol is only sleeping?

And what if Carol were to wake from that sleep…right now?





Rot held her hand. Carol saw it in the glass. Saw what looked like a hand made of cowhide gripping her own. She understood, instinctively, that the veil between the real world, the world in which she slept, and this one had slimmed. She also knew it was the doing of the monster that sat beside her on the coach floor.

He leaned close and whispered, “Look, Carol. Out the coach window. Do you see that cardinal rise to the sky?”

Carol did see it. And while the terror she felt for being so close to Rot ruled her, she couldn’t help but experience the astonishment, still, for seeing anything of the real world while still inside the coma.

But Rot had given her light. Light to see by. Light to see her own end by.

“That,” he whispered, and his breath was meat left out in the yard, “that is how things really look. That is how all things will end.”

Carol understood. For, while she could see the bird rising in the sky, it did not resemble the healthy cardinals she’d counted in her gardens at home. Rather, the bird seemed made of red paper, paper left in a puddle of oil, feathers shining wet with the means by which it could suddenly go up in flames.

Beside her, Rot wheezed and held her hand as Carol tried hard not to look at him in the glass, tried hard not to see the bird, either, the rotting thing flying, rising into the sky, believing itself still alive, not aware how much it had already died.

But Carol had little trouble resisting the urge to move now. Dwight had seen to that. And somehow, to her, this was the most terrible thing Dwight had done. Worse, it seemed, even than trying to kill her.

By loading her dress with rocks and earth, Dwight had made it impossible again for her to move in Howltown. A thing she had tried her whole life to do.

There’s a difference between bad and evil, John Bowie once told her, his voice slurred with brandy. Bad is when you ignore the one you love. But evil is when you know exactly what that person wants, what means most to them, and you figure out how to take it away.





Moxie believed he was going to make it to Harrows by nightfall because if he didn’t believe that he’d go mad.

He’d make it. He’d sleep in the graveyard at the lip of the hole dug for Carol. And when the diggers came and asked him to leave, he’d bury them instead. He’d bury the whole town if he had to. If it meant burying whoever had hired the Cripple. Whoever wanted to stop him from breaking apart the funeral of a living woman.

Carol wasn’t going into the ground. Not tomorrow.

It’s her husband.

Because it had to be. Because only husbands and wives could be so cruel.

The guilt had galvanized, become a solid mass within him. Or rather, had taken the place of his blood, flowed through his veins like oil, slick and sludged.

The husband wouldn’t be the husband if Moxie hadn’t run away.

The husband hired the Cripple. The man of the house certainly read the incoming telegrams.

He knew Moxie was coming. He knew Moxie knew about Carol.

He wanted Carol dead.

But why?

A figure emerged from the brush ahead and Moxie did not hesitate in bringing forth his gun. The man stumbled and Rinaldo’s description of a crippled hit man came scorching aflame to the foreground of Moxie’s mind before he understood the man had only been drinking.

Close call. Near death for the drunk.

“Hey there, feller!”

Old Girl continued and Moxie did not respond.

“Hey there…hold up now…stop for a minute why doncha…”

The man stumbled against the trunk of an enormous oak then stumbled back onto the Trail. Moxie and Old Girl were beside him now and the man looked up, unnecessarily shielding his eyes from a sun that was long tucked away for the night.

Later, the man’s wife wouldn’t believe him. She’d tell him he was drunk and leave him stewing in the kitchen. But ultimately he would know that it was true: that when he looked up at the man on the mare the man looked down at him and the man looked like he had no face, like the only features he had were Guilt and Rage and both were wrapped like gauze tied tight to his fiery skull.

“It’s true!” he would holler at his wife, his words slurred, his vision blurred. “Truer than anything I’ve ever seen. His eyes burned and his face was made of stone. He held his gun between my eyes, he did, and he said something I’ll never forget. He said it like I knew what he was talking about, like we were in the middle of a conversation. He said, She’s not going into the earth. How was I to respond? Hell’s heaven, I shivered and fell to my knees on the Trail! Drunk or not, I saw the face of Guilt out there! And I saw the rage it takes to atone for it!”





Opal was sitting at his desk when the doctor walked in. He was well dressed and his full silver hair was combed back from his forehead, expressing confidence in the striking features of his face. A thick silver mustache highlighted his square chin, and Opal had a feeling he knew who it was before the man introduced himself.

“I’m Doctor Alexander Wolfe.” He had bright science in his eyes. “Are you the sheriff then?”

“That I am.”

“Care to talk? Do you mind if I sit down? I’ve driven all the way from Charles. My coachman is sick this evening and I’ve had to make the trip alone.”