Beyond the Pale Read Free Page A

thistles and walked around the side of the house. Behind the place were a pair of outbuildings. They were far enough away from the main house that the fire had not gotten them. Dull paint peeled from their walls, and their doors were sealed shut with rusted padlocks. Storage sheds of some sort. Between the buildings was a narrow run, almost like an alley. Had something moved there in the dimness?
    He took a step into the space between the sheds, and in the murk he glimpsed a pile of scrap metal and an old rain barrel. That was all. He was about to turn away when he noticed a glint of light by his feet. He squatted down and saw tracks in the ground. Water had seeped from the earth to pool in the tracks and reflect the waning daylight. The prints had been made by small, cloven hooves, probably a mule deer. They wandered all over the valley. With a shrug, Travis stood and turned to head back to the truck.
    This time the bells were closer. Much closer.
    Travis whirled around. There. Something
had
moved—a dim form by the rain barrel.
    “Who’s there?” he called out. No answer. He took another step, deeper in. Shadows closed behind him, and a new sound drifted on the air, a sound almost like … laughter. It was high and trilling, the mirth of a child, or that of an ancient woman. The rain barrel rocked back and forth, then toppled. Water gushed onto the ground, dark as blood.
    Travis’s heart shriveled in his chest. He started to back out of the alley. The mocking laughter rang out again. He bit his lip to stifle a cry of fear, turned, tripped over his boots, and broke into a run.
    He was brought up short by a tall, stiff object, and this time he did cry out. He stumbled backward and looked up.
    “Can I help you with something, son?”
    The man standing before Travis looked like he was eighty years too late for a funeral. His black suit of moth-eaten wool was archaic and oddly cut, with a long hem and a high collar. The suit hung loosely on the man’s spare frame, while the shirt beneath had turned the yellow of old bones, its neck bound with a limp string tie that flapped on the air.The man snatched a hand up to keep his broad-brimmed hat from taking off on a gust of wind.
    “I said, can I help you, son? I mean, are you in need of some aid? Forgive my saying, but you look as white as Lot after he slipped on out of Sodom.”
    The man’s voice was dry, like the rasp of a snake’s belly against sand, but coated with a sticky Southern sweetness. This was a voice to invoke dread and devotion in one fell swoop. A grin split the man’s face. His teeth were the same dull yellow as his shirt, and his eyes glinted like black marbles.
    “You aren’t simple, now are you, son? You can talk, can’t you?”
    Travis managed a nod. “I’m fine, really. It was nothing, just an animal by the sheds.”
    Instinct told him to get out of here. The man gave Travis the creeps, him and his papery skin and that skeletal smile. He had to be some sort of vagrant, what with those thrift-store clothes. And there was something foreboding about him. Not violent, but perilous all the same.
    Travis swallowed hard. “Listen, I need to get going. I have … I have something I need to do.”
    The man watched him with those black eyes, then gave a solemn nod.
    “So you do, son. So you do.”
    Travis did not reply. He hurried past the other, kept his eyes fixed on the ground, and hoofed it as fast as he could across the field without looking like he was out and out running. To his great relief, he made it back to the truck. He climbed inside, then cast one last glance over his shoulder. The man in black had not moved. He still stood in front of the ruined orphanage and clutched his hat while waves of grass surged around him. He gazed at the horizon, like those dark marble eyes of his could see something coming, something other eyes could not.
    Travis shivered, shut the truck’s door, and cranked the key in the ignition. With a spray of gravel